Aladdin’s Castle: St. Lawrence Center

St. Lawrence Center in Massena, New York opened in 1983 as the town’s first enclosed shopping destination. By the late 1980s, Space 100 housed an Aladdin’s Castle arcade, positioned just inside the main entrance at 100 St. Lawrence Center, bustling with Pac-Man and Galaga cabinets.

Local nostalgia blogs and Arcade-Museum forum posts recall school-fundraiser events held in the arcade—“Token Thursdays”—where students gathered to ping-pong between Ms. Pac-Man and air-hockey tables late into the afternoon.

The arcade closed in the early 2000s when the mall shifted toward big-box tenants; today the former arcade site supports a specialty retailer, but longtime Massena residents still share memories of those token-powered battles.