Marshfield arcade relocates to community center

A family owned and operated arcade filled with vintage games reopened over the weekend after making a short move from its previous home of five years.

Saturday was the grand reopening for RetroZone Marshfield LLC, which relocated to the Marshfield Community Center at 118 E. Commercial St. The new home is less than a half-mile from the arcade’s original location on the downtown square at 202 S. Crittenden St.

Melanie Fraker co-owns the arcade, which has over a dozen video games and pinball machines, with her husband, Lyndall, and their two sons, Logan and Landon.

“He got us to open it over on the square,” Melanie said of her son, Landon, who runs RetroZone. “He has an interest in old arcade games.”

Fraker said relocation and renovation costs were $10,000, which included installation of air-conditioning for the arcade’s roughly 1,800-square-foot space. The Marshfield Community Center building, which was once the home of Marshfield Junior High School, is owned by Fraker, after she purchased it for an undisclosed price in July 2022 from the Marshfield Public Schools Foundation.

For 14 years, Fraker has owned Imagination Station of Marshfield, a children’s learning facility for ages 2-12, at the community center. The community center includes a rentable gym that is open year-round for activities such as sports, parties and roller skating. It also has inflatable bounce houses available for rent, she added.

She said moving RetroZone appealed to the family to since it expanded the venture’s entertainment options.

“We wanted a full entertainment center,” she said, adding the arcade is located across from a party room and near a newly opened doughnut shop. “We wanted the campus to provide a variety of programs at the same time to the community.”

She said the family is looking into providing wristbands that would offer weekend visitors to the community center with access to the arcade, roller skating and bounce house room for a single price.

The game lineup at RetroZone includes well-known options such as Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, while also providing players with access to additional choices such as vintage gaming consoles, Skee-Ball and air hockey. Fraker said the arcade charges $5 for entry, which provides unlimited free play on all games, except for the pinball machines, which are 50 cents per game.

Aside from business ownership, Lyndall Fraker’s career has included stints in Webster County and state government, including eight years as a state representative and four years as state director of the medical marijuana section within the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. He exited the latter role in 2022, and was succeeded by Amy Moore, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.