Founded in May 2006, Awesome Arcades was born to serve the growing appetite for home leisure products in the electronics entertainment sector.  The current market demand for gaming devices has also produced a segment for "retro" fans who wish to relive the glory days of arcade gaming, and for those who are a little younger to play games from the "golden era".  Awesome Arcades can now offer a product range which not only offers the best in classic gaming at home, but at the best possible prices.  We are committed to providing quality products that you can enjoy, and we have tested our Awesome Arcades on real-life gamers like you, so we know there good!  Every Awesome Arcade shipped from our workshop is hand-built to order with quality components used throughout, and it doesn't leave until we are 100% satisfied.  Meet some of the key people involved at Awesome Arcades below...

Curt Vendel – Founder / CEO and “Big Kahuna”

Curt’s incredible reputation in the video game arena precedes him.  As one of the most respected historians of the Atari legacy as curator of the Atari History Museum, Curt is sought out by outlets worldwide for his knowledge and insight into some of video gaming’s most beloved classic titles.  Utilizing his technical background combined with his love for video games and consumer electronics, Curt has headed up several successful product launches in both of those industries.  Due to his high standards for perfection and staying true to the classics, Atari (now owned by Infogrames in France) contacted Curt through his other venture, Legacy Engineering, to spearhead the development of the Atari “Flashback II” which proved to be a staggering success during the 2005 holiday season. 

Over the past 20 years, Curt has produced products and consulted for numerous other entities, including Commodore, Jakks Pacific, Fossil, and Fortune 100 companies including American Express, Credit Suisse|First Boston, Barclay's Capital, GE and Mitre.   

Loni Reeder – President, Media Rep. and “Second Banana”

No stranger to the video game industry, Loni’s roots go back the Atari era when Nolan Bushnell was still “King PONG” and Chuck E. Cheese only had one location.  Since those days, Loni has had a noteworthy career both in and out of the video game industry, including stints at NASA/Pioneer Space Project, ByVideo and Full Spectrum Productions, where she worked as an associate producer/set designer and scriptwriter.  In 1997, she partnered with Bushnell to shop several ventures around to VC’s, with uWink (the company she named and co-founded with him) being the company to take wings.  After leaving in 2000 to start her own business, Loni has become a much sought-out P.R. rep, media maven and writer, having regular features in RePlay Magazine (a publication for the coin-operated video game industry), Hawaiian Style Magazine and The Wave (a San Francisco Bay Area-based entertainment publication for which she just secured an exclusive one-on-one interview with American Idol winner, Taylor Hicks for an August 2006 issue).

Karl Morris – Director, Web Development & Infrastructure and “Cyberspace Captain"

Another avid "Atari" historian (www.atari-explorer.com), Karl has worked closely with Curt since 1997.  Karl started selling home computers as soon as he left college and has spent over 10 years in the IT industry, many of those spent with Gateway Inc. in sales and product marketing, working with many of the leading IT companies such as Intel, HP, Epson, Logitech, 3COM etc.  Having also tipped his toes into Video Game content aggregation with Vector OEM (UK), Karl spent most of the early 21st Century caught in the .COM bubble with companies such as ICAN (Production and IT Manager) before becoming a freelance graphic and website designer.