Main Street Mavericks Business Spotlight: Vector Volcano Classic Arcade

When Brett Pulliam decided to leave his job as a Pixar animator and open a classic arcade, he knew he wanted to live in a resort town with good foot traffic that didn’t have a classic arcade yet. Bend was the winner. Pulliam’s arcade is jam-packed with nostalgic and iconic arcade games and pinball machines. Regulars make a stop after work to try to beat their high scores, school kids come with their friends, and tourists pop in for a few minutes after walking by the bright lights and sounds.

We met Pulliam and played some arcade games ourselves on our final day of the Main Street Mavericks’ road trip.

Vector Volcano is still Bend’s only classic arcade — and each game is picked and rotated with care. Come meet Pulliam and learn more about this thriving small business.

Q&A With Vector Volcano Classic Arcade

Tell us about your small business.

We are just a small little arcade in downtown Bend. We do mostly admission here, so it’s $8 on limited play for an hour. All the games are set to free play. We do have some pinball that takes dollar bills; you don’t have to pay admission for that.

But it’s a classic arcade; it’s mostly games from the 80s, some 90s games. And it’s fun for the whole family. We serve beer but no food.

We’ve been open for eight years.

Tell us about your proudest moment owning your business.

Just basically reaching my goal of how I wanted this business to be like the looks and the feel and the success. It’s never a guarantee that something like this will work anywhere.

What’s one challenge you are facing, and how can the community help?

COVID was a challenge, and if the community wants to help, just come into my arcade a lot.

What is your top piece of advice for small business owners just starting out?

Don’t go too big right away. And make it your own. Don’t just copy somebody. Put your own twist into whatever you’re going to do. It can be a similar business as something else, but you can always add something that’s new to you and to your business.

What is the best part of being a business owner?

No boss. I mean, you have complete control of your business. Also, I really like the creative ownership I have.

What does chimp flipping mean?

Oh, so when people pound on the flippers … really hard, and it’s kind of like playing like a chimpanzee.

I used to have pinball on free play along with all the video games, and it was just too hard to maintain pinball being played that much, and so kids would play like this [chimp flipping], and so I just kept the sign because I like the monkey and it’s cool and everything.

They also call it seal flipping. When you’re pounding on the flippers like this, you look like a seal chip. When you play pinball, you want to hit one flipper at a time, you know, a better score, and it just doesn’t have this big bang on the pinball.

So, are you a collector first?

Oh, yeah. I’m still a collector. I have about 60 or so more games in storage at my house. And, uh, I rotate some of them, but a lot of them are in my private collection there. People want to kind of see the stuff they remember, mostly the classics like Pac Man, Centipede, and Star Wars.

I have more rare games that a very small percentage would know here or appreciate, but I’m still into it.

When I wanted to do something else beyond Pixar, I started to see a revival that was happening [with classic gaming]. And I’ve already had a bunch of games I’ve been collecting and know how to fix them and everything. And then, just like everybody else, I didn’t want to live in the Bay Area anymore.

I looked at Tahoe and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and settled on Bend because they didn’t have an arcade here. And it was affordable at the time.

How do people hear about you?

I get locals here when the weather’s bad, but I rely on foot traffic. I only wanted to open downtown. If I hadn’t, I would do things a little, maybe a little bit differently. If there wasn’t the foot traffic, maybe I would advertise more. But, you know, downtown’s pretty expensive, but, you know, I’m paying for people walking by and seeing the business and the visibility. I think visibility is important.

And we have to ask if you have a favorite game.

I mean, I like Robotron a lot. I didn’t like it as a kid because it was too hard, but it’s, yeah. And I like the pinball a lot. I mean, I like all of these games, really. Um, yeah, it’s hard to decide on one.