BOISE, IDAHO — Reams Arcade is this week's Made in Idaho feature.
- Realms Arcade was opened last year by Todd Nielsen and his son
- Todd worked as a semiconductor manufacturer for over 30 years
- You can see more of Realms Arcade by clicking here.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story.)
Having worked in the industry for the last 33 years, Todd Nielsen knows a thing or two about semiconductors.
"Well, you know, everything that's in your your phones, your TV's, your computers, all of the micro electronics. They're all the chips that make it all work. That manufacturing is vital to make the world run these days. Without it, everything would be dead and stopped," said Realms Arcade Owner Todd Nielsen.
He knew from a young age that electronics were in his future.
"I've been interested in electronics since I was a little kid. I used to tear apart everything. Made my parents angry because I would take things apart," laughed Nielsen.
That interest included video games, which started with playing Pong on the Atari and collecting newer systems ever since.
"And it was always a dream of mine to have an arcade of my own ,and I started out at home, you know, just collecting pinball machines and things like that. And then my son and I talked for years about opening our own arcade," said Nielsen.
But the dream didn't become a realistic idea until 2020, a year after he sold his employee-owned company, and his son, who was an English teacher in Japan, was forced to come home due to the Covid pandemic.
"We were home, you know ,playing pinball all day and just hanging out, and that's really when it started to gel that hey let's try to put this together," said Nielsen.
Once they found their spot, it was just a matter of filling it with the main attractions.
"At first it was curating the games, and really that's what it is. It's kind of like a museum. A lot of the games came from Utah, we traveled to Utah, we traveled to Washington, we traveled to Oregon. A lot of them have been shipped, you know, from the East Coast, Midwest," said Nielsen.
And some are from much further away after finding an importer for some of the games his son would play while living in Japan.
"These are authentic Japanese games, they take yen, although here were free play so nobody has to use coins or anything," said Nielsen.
And it's not just the games people are going to Realms for since opening in late June of last year.
"Surpassed our expectations. We kind of feel like this is a community center as well where people can bring their kids, they can hang out, they can have birthday parties, we can have music, and we will play pretty much anything in here. You know, we just like to support our local music scene as well," said Nielsen.
But no matter what it is to you, for Todd, it's a Made in Idaho fairy tale.
"Oh it's a dream come true. To have this here is just this culmination of planning and observing and doing reconnaissance to other places and going to Japan and things like that and bringing it all back and gelling it all together it's just a great feeling. It's very rewarding," smiled Nielsen.
