Welcome to the Netherworld, a scrawled, messy fan letter to the things we loved growing up and still do to this day – classic gaming, genre movies, pinball, monsters and board games.
My first console was a Master System II. I’d champion through ‘Alex Kidd In Miracle World’ in between movies I’d taped off television (With the commercials carefully removed thanks to my elite Pause/Record skills) and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books. These were things you were supposed to grow out of, except no one around me ever did. We just got older and added beer to the mix.
In the great and glorious previous site (well, a lot of it anyway) of The Shamrock, The Step Inn and The Underdog, we’ll be laying our tentacle like roots with a venue that should already exist, but doesn’t – a Barcade (an internationally copyrighted term, so a term we won’t use again). Jimmy Nails (Pinball wizard), Kieran Ryan (Crossword connoisseur) and myself spent a surprisingly long time looking for a location and once the opportunity came to inhabit a portion of 186 Brunswick St, it just felt right. It’s a strange looking collection of rooms that make up the venue, but strange is good. The name came afterwards.
The mouth of the Netherworld was a collaboration design from Buxton St and Tilly Milne.
Being a gamer of all kinds, just having arcades in the joint was never going to do. Don’t quote us exactly on the numbers, but we’ll have roughly 25 arcade cabinets, ranging from a stack of the classics through to light gun games and all the 90’s fighters that come immediately to your head. We’ll have around 15 pinball machines, ranging form the 70’s through to brand spanking new Sterns (Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!). We’ll have a small selection of 80’s and early 90’s consoles to play on ‘saved from the tip’ tube televisions at some tables and then all the bloody board games you can shake a cardboard token at, mostly taking advantage of the modern resurgence of board game production. All of us have previously been part of the local beer industry, so expect a gnarly, large line up of local beers and cider. Bryn Griffith is commanding the diner, delivering a fun menu we’re incredibly proud of that is very friendly to alternative diets.
The who’s who of The Netherworld: Jimmy, Ben and Kieran.
Most of all, we just like having a drink and playing a game. Instead of just doing that with our friends, we’ll be doing that with the rest of Brisbane.
Drink up, game on and we’ll see you in the Netherworld.
– Ben Jungles