Popular Bay Area arcade has soft opening for location on Monterey’s Alvarado Street

MONTEREY, Calif. (KION-TV)- The owners of a popular Bay Area arcade had a soft opening Thursday to welcome the people of Monterey to their new location on Alvarado Street.

The owners of High Scores have their new location at 459 Alvarado Street. They told KION that they could have opened sometime this week but wanted to make sure all their games were available and everything was just right.

Owners, husband and wife, Shawn and Meg Livernoche started their first arcade in New Jersey 13 years ago after filling their one-bedroom apartment with classic games and realizing they needed more room. In 2012 they moved to California and started their flagship location in Alameda.

After spending a year looking in California they settled on Monterey as a second location, after their Hayward location was a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Owner Shawn said he picked Monterey because when envisioning California living in New Jersey, a place that looked like Monterey came to mind as the ideal picture. Shawn says people have been friendly and he loves the beauty he sees on the Monterey Peninsula.

Currently, the Livernoches say they have more than 170 games in their collection Monterey and Alameda have 40+ games on the floor at any given time. They will routinely cycle between game titles to showcase their entire collection.

Shawn says his stage is made up of local young folks ranging from 19 to 23. The goal is to impart the greatness of old games to a new generation.

"We will be training them in a lot of the first response electronic fixes of these 80s games, joysticks, buttons, monitor adjustments."

Being a teacher at a retrieval school in New Jersey for many years, Shawn says youth outreach is a part of our culture.

"We sincerely strive to make the experience for our young employees be growth-oriented, so regardless, what field they are pursuing in the future, they are trained how to learn specialized skills quickly, and have a good model for working on a team and with others," said Shawn.

Shawn says they work out hours in the coming weeks. All games within the arcade are free to play with the purchase of a $10 hourly admission fee.  

Their soft opening hours are as follows: Thursday 7/27: 3-9 p.m., Friday 7/28: 3-9 p.m., Saturday, 7/29: 12 noon - 10 p.m. and Sunday, 7/30: 12 noon - 9 p.m.

They will finalize their hours in the coming weeks once they are acclimated to the area.

If you want to see their game collection, click here.