When I rarely have a few minutes of downtime every few months, I'll check YouTube for any recently uploads of under-the-radar vacation footage of Canada's various amusement areas (Niagara, Wasaga Beach, Yonge Street) in hopes to find footage of some obscure long-lost attraction, or even better, something I've been after for years. Yesterday, this paid off big time.
This incredible video was uploaded to YouTube recently, showcasing the Niagara region in 1994. After a brief shot of the abandoned bridal path, turned miniature go-kart track, turned walking path, at the 10:04 mark the cameraman enters the Skylon Tower's legendary amusement park, of which very little is actually known. This is despite it being one of the most popular amusement attractions in The Falls from the 1970's to 1990's, and although limited photos exist, establishing the layout of the vast indoor park has been next to impossible until now. This clearly shows the location of the Shooting Gallery, Miniature Golf Course, Bumper Cars, Go Karts, Carousel, the famous Bavarian Nut Shop, and most importantly, where all this was located in relation to what's there today. The cameraman enters the doors on the West side of the building just off of Murray Street, near where the bridge across the street to Fallsview Casino is today.
This entrance to the complex remains, and while the amusement park has been gone for nearly 25 years now, the extensive arcade that filled every other square inch of the basement is still there, although massively downsized. One cool thing in this footage is seeing the original facade of the Adventure Into the Unknown dark ride that was designed by legendary Italian artist Armando Tamignini for manufacturer Bertazzon, imported to Canada, and re-assembled by park staff. The facade would be opened up a very short time after this to include a load station and 2nd floor balcony visible from the outside, however originally it looks to have been contained within the walls of the attraction, adding to the "Unknown" theme. A coffin scene outside the attraction looks to be a static prop, but may have been Tamignini's Dracula in a coffin figure he used in many of his attraction, just shut off. The Dracula figure was definitely a part of this attraction as it's in the auction listing after it closed, but where it was located in the attraction is fittingly, unknown.
Mural along the front of "Adventure Into the Unknown" that was removed a short time later.
There's some great footage here of the shops on the second floor during better days, but sadly the cameraman doesn't visit the Skylon's undocumented and unfortunately now-abandoned third floor which contained the roller rink and potentially the ever-mysterious World a Million Years Ago attraction. There was a Star Trek Exhibit which opened in the Skylon around this time, however if replaced World a Million Years Ago, the Potvin Miniatures Museum (theorized to have been in the basement next to the amusement park), or neither, is unknown. On the escalator back down into the amusement park, a small shooting gallery-type attraction immediately to the left of the escalators near the Capcom bowling lanes can be seen that appears non-functional, however looks to be the same manufacturer as Dazzleland's mysterious "Fire Department 911" water gun shooting gallery game.
The mystery game in question can be seen at the bottom of this screenshot.
At 42:22 there's some brief but cool Clifton Hill footage showing the exteriors of several attractions including Dazzleland, Castle Dracula, Dinosaur Park, and Movieland, however the footage isn't anything groundbreaking at this point compared to some of the more-depth videos of The Hill that have surfaced in recent years. What is groundbreaking however comes at 48:40 when the cameraman enters the Minolta Tower. After a journey to the Pinnacle Restaurant, observation deck, and top of the tower gift shop, the cameraman journeys to the basement.
Now if you know the tower's history you know the basement was home to one of Niagara's previously "lost" attractions - one that had next to no documentation. A legendary arcade operated here from the 1970's to sometime in the early 2000's. Here it is in all it's glory, complete with footage of an attempt on it's 90's crown jewel that makes documentation of this arcade so sought after in the classic arcade community - Galaxian 3. If you know what that is, you probably just got goosebumps, if you don't, let me give you them. Galaxian 3 is the 5th title in Namco's popular Galaxian/Galaga series (don't ask why it's called Galaxian 3, the series' naming order has always been beyond confusing). This game completely overhauled the gameplay style of the classic vertical shooting games in the series that came before it however, and introduced a 3D, first-person rail shooter style that would end up setting the precedent for the genre later popularized by games like Star Fox and Time Crisis.
The game was originally developed as an interactive theme park attraction in Japan that held 28 people, however Namco had the foresight to also market it as a 6-player sit down arcade machine inside a massive cabinet for arcades with the cash to buy one. The plot features you piloting guns on the ship "Dragoon" against an army of alien-bug attackers as per the series' theme, but this time the threat is much larger. The aliens have a superweapon named the "Cannon Seed" which threatens Earth, and you must fly your way in to the core of this weapon through a tunnel and destroy it's reactor. If this sounds a little familiar narratively speaking to a certain film franchise, that's actually deliberate. When Namco's Kazunori Sawano first designed the original Galaxian back in 1979, he wanted to make a Star Wars game, but licensing issues and technological limitations prevented this. The film's presence in the Galaxian series is felt heavily in everything from the ship in Galaxian resembling a Star Wars Y-Wing, the Galaga ship clearly being modeled after the iconic X-Wing, and the symphonic theme music introduced in Galaga and carried throughout the series.
A Galaxian 3 cabinet as seen on KLOV (Museum of the Game).
If you're a retro arcade fan and a Star Wars fan (those two things seem to go hand in hand), this game is a masterpiece. It's incredible music, technology, and thrilling narrative are a love letter to the previous games, the sci-fi genre, and the original vision of the series' creator years prior. This game has been deemed "lost" due to its obscurity, with several locations destroying them after they were decommissioned due to their high repair costs, easy conversion into other attractions, and the amount of arcade floor space they took up. While a small handful of these machines are owned by private collectors allowing it to be documented, and there's fairly decent documentation of the Japanese theme park ride version, this footage may very well be the only footage of the arcade machine on-location at an arcade.
The game's climactic battle.
The footage of the rest of this arcade doesn't disappoint, featuring a plethora of 90,s arcade staples including Konami's 8-player widescreen X-Men game, Final Lap 2, and more. Perhaps the coolest thing here is the giant blacklight mural on the ceiling resembling the Tron game grid. It also appears there was some sort of small non-mechanical zero gravity ride here that required an attendant to operate. Just a year after this footage in 1995, a section of the arcade was leased to Cybermind, a Canadian company that imported "Virtuality" VR arcade machines to Canada and started a short-lived chain of attractions in various major Canadian cities and tourist areas. It's unknown how much of the traditional arcade remained after this, but Galaxian 3 certainty lasted until the basement's closure.
The arcade's awesome ceiling that looks straight out of the 1980's.
The biggest highlight of this video to me however comes right after exiting the Minolta in the form of footage of Waltzing Waters, the dancing fountain lightshow that ran next to the Minolta Tower from 1962 to 2000. This attraction was one of the earliest amusement projects by Robert Dunham, who would go on to start the Waxattract company and work on some of Niagara's most iconic attractions like The House of Frankenstein, Movieland, Circus World, and the Boris Karloff Wax Museum. It was his first amusement attraction in Niagara Falls proper, with his only other attraction at the time being Fantasy Land at the nearby Crystal Beach Amusement Park. The impressive programmable computer technology that ran the fountain was lightyears ahead of its time, and foreshadowed the company's invention of early programmable animatronic figures for the House of Frankenstein less than a decade later. The lightshow concept would re-surface again with a horror theme in Dunham's beloved Castle Dracula chain of haunted attractions with locations in Niagara Falls, Myrtle Beach and Panama City Beach. The Myrtle Beach location even featured a Waltzing Waters style fountain in it's lightshow room, although if the Niagara location's lightshow had a water component is unknown.
Waltzing Waters was expanded and updated in the 1970's, resulting in the version seen in this footage. The show used a switchboard so the operator could customize certain elements of each show, encouraging return customers and no two shows being exactly alike. Until now the only brief footage of Waltzing Waters in action has been on silent 8mm reels. This high-quality VHS footage complete with sound is an incredible window into an iconic gone but not forgotten attraction. Huge thank you to Bryce Barnett for taking, preserving, and uploading this footage to YouTube. Please support his channel and like this video.