By Steve Brawner. © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

When Daniel Solis was eight-and-a-half years old, he told his dad he wanted to own an arcade someday. “Hold on,” his dad said, leaving the room and returning with a sketch pad, where the two drew out the plans. 

Now 55, Solis owns The Vortex Classic Arcade in Sherwood, featuring 230 vintage arcade games and pinball machines. PacMan, Ms. PacMan, Galaga, Frogger and Donkey Kong are all there. For $10 at the door, a visitor can enjoy unlimited play all day.

“We ended up with about 90% of what we drew, my father and I,” Solis said. 

Solis, the youngest of seven children from northern California, grew up preparing himself to own an arcade. Whenever he visited a place with a game, he’d try to talk to the person who knew something about it. He learned where to get parts. He saved two years to buy his first cabinet game and promptly ruined it by spilling a drink on its circuit board. His dad, Robert, bought him a different game.

“He died about 10 years before I was able to open it, so he didn’t get to see the end result,” Solis said of his dad. “But he always believed in me, and I think without that support from the second I told him what I wanted to do, I don’t think I would have made it.”

Adult life likewise prepared him to own The Vortex. After graduating high school, he worked briefly at Atari testing games. Eventually he moved to Arkansas with wife Jennifer and worked at a cabinet shop and at IK Electric, both of which taught him skills to repair games. He worked at a North Little Rock game supplier and then managed Playtime Pizza. Finally, in 2013, he opened his first arcade, Z82 Retrocade. It later became The Vortex.

“I still say God really moved me where I needed to be to get the experience to do every aspect of the business,” he said.

Solis comes to work early each Monday, when the arcade is closed, and stays until the evening maintaining and repairing the 40-year-old games. All but about five of the 230 are operating at any one time. He stores parts and supplies in seven rented 10-by-30 storage facilities. To validate high scores, the boards and monitors must be original, and the joysticks must adhere to original specifications. A team of dedicated volunteers helps. Solis also repairs customers’ machines and rents out games for events. 

Customers have come from as far away as Japan. An Indiana family travels to Arkansas every November and plays throughout the weekend. The arcade has a yearly Donkey Kong tournament, Kong Klash, where players fly in to compete. 

A parent thanked him for providing a weekly haven during a difficult time. He’d finally gotten custody of his son, and now they were playing the games together. Another said he’d been coming twice monthly with his stepson. One day as they were leaving, the stepson told him, “I love you, Dad.” The man said he had never looked at him as his father before that day.

“It was always about families,” Solis said. “It was always about having a great time and making it affordable. And that was the little kid in me. I never looked at the business as a business, and I believe that’s why it does so well.”

Those 1980s games were simpler than today’s. Shoot spaceships. Eat dots. Jump barrels. Get your frog across the road without getting squashed by a car.

They also come from a simpler time. It could be just my nostalgia speaking, or the fact that I was young back then and not paying as much attention to the world. But it certainly seemed there were fewer things to be scared of, and fewer voices in our ears constantly trying to scare us. There was a lot more agreement about who the bad guys were, and most seemed far away. Technology was something we controlled rather than it controlling us.

A sign over the door reads, “No matter where you’re from or where you’re going, thank you for making The Vortex part of your journey.” 

Sometimes a person could use a little simplicity on that journey, if only for a few hours. Sometimes you might just want to shoot spaceships and eat dots. And if you get hit by a barrel or squashed by a car, it’s OK. You can just play again.