For the longest time, I had no idea that Round1 was a thing. There’s this YouTube show I love called Jet Lag: The Game, and the arcade was mentioned in the show twice. The most recent time it was mentioned was in a recent episode just a few weeks ago in Japan. I thought to myself, an arcade like that sounds amazing, I wish I could go one day. Literally a couple days after that episode aired, I found out that there’s a Round1 location opening up in my city just a few stops away from me by bus.
A few days after that, I found out that they’re doing a collab with Hololive, which I love. So I told myself that I had to visit no matter what, which was what I did earlier today. This location is in Flushing, New York at the Skyview Mall and it’s official Grand Opening event is later this month. I had the day off and today was the first day of the Hololive collab, so I decided to spend an hour there. I spent some money on Hololive merch, played some games, and overall I had a lot of fun.
At first, I was surprised by both how big the place is and by the pricing. There’s more than 100 crane/craw games and dozens of arcade games. You can play the arcade games by yourself or with friends, and many of them give tickets that can be redeemed for prizes. There’s also a bunch that you can just play for fun, and I’ll talk more about those later. My first order of business was getting a membership card. It costs $2 for a card which is how your credits and tickets are stored. But you can pay an extra $5 for a yearly membership that gets you bonus credits and a special design.
Since today was the first day of the Hololive collab, I paid the $7 for the membership and special card that features 14 Hololive talents. I also spent $20 to buy 87 credits just because I wanted to try out some of the games. If I didn’t have the membership, $20 would have only gotten me 80 credits. With my card in hand, I spent an hour exploring the massive arcade. I looked at all the cool crane games, but I didn’t play any because they were pretty expensive.
It costs 9 credits for the mini crane games, 11 for the normal ones, and 14 for the jumbo ones. Honestly, I think that’s a bit expensive. The games on the other hand are a bit more fair because they range between 10 and 14 per attempt. I think there might have been some that were cheaper too. I played a game where you have to toss balls into a toilet, a basketball game, and a ring toss game. I had fun and made off with 200 tickets because I was so bad at many of the games. You can see a bunch of photos here.
If you’re competitive and you want tickets, you’ll have fun with these kinds of games, but I think the main draw is the timed play games. You can buy a timed pass during the week for $8 or $10 on the weekend that gets you unlimited play at certain games for an hour. There aren’t that many of these kinds of games, but the selection is really good. Unfortunately because I went alone, I wasn’t able to partake in any of the bigger attractions. I’m addition to more games that you can count, there’s also pickleball, billiards, and a bowling alley.
Lastly, I checked the merch catalog for Hololive. Since today was the first day of the collab, everything was available. There were acrylic stands, keychains, mousepads, buttons, clear files, cards, stickers, and more. I only bought a mousepad of Shirakami Fubuki because it was only $14. I would have bought more stuff if more of the talent that I love were on the roster and most of the items weren’t mystery packs.
There’s two different sets of collab merch. The first is the 2026 collab which included talent like Fubuki and Fuwamoco. The second was a 2025 event that included additional talent like Hakos Baelz. You can see the entire list of Hololive merch here. After my first hour, I was pretty happy with what I spent. In total, I spent $41 for a yearly membership to the arcade, a Fubuki mousepad, and seven arcade game events over the course of an hour.
After lunch, I went back and brought my friend. We each paid the $8 to get an hour of free play at select games. We tried a Transformers game, a zombie shooting game, a snowboarding game, a rhythm game, and a round of air hockey. Then we bought ice cream and I tried their Hololive drink which came with an exclusive coaster for $10. Since we went in the afternoon, there were more people, but it was still very empty overall. Honestly I had a blast both times and it’s worth checking out. There’s lots of locations that you can visit and the one in Flushing will have a grand opening event later this month.