2025 Year In Review

As 2025 draws to a close we wanted to look back on this year and some of the arcade games, events, and other significant moments that made it special!

Wonderville on Coin Return

We had the opportunity to sit down with Coin Return and talk about our space and community. Check out their segment below:

New Games and Installations

This year we brought in several new arcade cabinets and installations! Most noteably, the majestic Nightmare Kart arcade cabinet, built by Arcade Commons, debuted along with Wonderville’s 666th birthday in June. We also brought in Oshi Gokko by Team Wario this year. In October, we partnered with Checkpoint to launch a new free photobooth! Lastly, in November we were lucky to receive Quantum Jungle by Robin Baumgarten which we will be hosting for the forseeable future! We are eventually sending it back to Europe so make sure you come by and check it out while you can!

Museum of the Moving Image Residencies

In 2025 we continued our partnership with the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Beginning in July, they featured WeatherSys Admin in the Hearst Lobby. We’re looking forward to bringing in a new game next year, so keep an eye on our social media channels for that announcement!

Other Partnerships

We also continued our partnerships with other venues across NYC to host arcade cabinets. Currently, Powerboat Italia ‘88 is at Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park in the 2nd floor Trees Lounge. They also got their own Black Emperor arcade cabinet so make sure you check them out! Super Sharp Birds is at LoFi in Prospect Park, Volleygon resides at All Night Skate, and Slam City Oracles is at the Windjammer in Ridgewood (in partnership with Footlight Presents).

We started a new partnership this year with Purgatory in Ridgewood, who are hosting the DreamboxXx arcade cabinet. We look forward to continue to partner with new venues in 2026 to host more cabinets. Check our website, newsletter, or instagram for updates!

Residencies

This past year, we launched 8 games on our two seasonal residency programs. On the Wondercab we featured Scythe Machine, One Million Stars, Kick Kick Boom, and Jump & Puzzle. On the Pico-8 arcade we had Cosmo Mambo No 5, BLASTODROME, Lemon Shark, and My Lovely Wife vs 100 Draculas.

Community

Our monthly playtest nights hosted by Blake Andrews continue to be a huge success, with 20+ developers showing up each month to showcase games on the last Tuesday of the month. On the first Saturday of the month, Blake has also been facilitating the 2 Hour Game Jam Club where attendees learned how to make games using RenPy, Bitsy, M.U.G.E.N., ZZT, Môsi, Mario Builder 64, Google Sheets, Doom Level Builder, and more! We are grateful to all of the work Blake has put in and are excited to grow this community more in 2026!

Check out the 2 Hr Game Jam archive to play some of the games built during these workshops!

We also love this video by Sam Leigh who attended a majority of the game jams and made 22 games:

Events

Wonderville events continue to impress, and we’re so appreciative of our recurring events like WordHack, the Donut Lounge hip-hop showcase, LiveCodeNYC, Disasterpiece movie night, Brooklyn Experimental Electronic Music Night, and Wonderville Karaoke! We also have recurring DJ Parties like Smash Bash, Growl Arcade, and City Soul. This year our New Year’s Eve party is hosted by Weeb Adjacent - a Sonic/Saya No Uta Rave! Presale tickets are on sale, so grab them before they’re gone!

Drag shows keep getting better and better, and in 2025 we hosted Undertale/Deltarune drag, Muppet Drag, and the Black Parade. Thank you to Sour Something, Problem Child, and Toby/Toast for organizing!

We started new partnerships with the Bladerverse for our monthly Beyblade tournaments, as well as Red Parry who will be hosting Feats of Strength - a weekend-long fighting game tournament - in January! We also started hosting Robot Karaoke every other month, where the lyrics are algorithmically replaced by a dataset of your choosing. You gotta see it.

Every Wednesday is our Killer Queen Open Hive Night, and it’s been wonderful to see the community around that game grow over the years. In addition to livestreaming Killer Queen, we’ve also grown our virtual community on our Twitch channel (check out Fort90 TV every Monday!) and have archived over 400 livestreams since 2020 on YouTube

Alt.Ctrl Festival

In 2025 we kicked off the first official annual Alt.Ctrl Festival on August 24th. This one-day event featured 10+ games using alternative controllers, and we look forward to hosting it every year! Be sure to check back for our open call for submissions in the summer.

Gachapon Machines

This year we started collaborating with a Gachapon distributor GachaNOW to bring in authentic figures from Japan! Check our newsletter each week to see what’s in stock!

Randwiches

2025 was our fourth year working with Jenn de la Vega aka Randwiches! We featured 6 new signature hot dogs this year, bringing the grand total to 63 hot dog recipes since we started this partnership! We’re celebrating with Jenn by hosting our annual Hot Dog Appreciation Night on Sunday February 1st so come meet the chef and eat some dogs!

Wonderville Projects

With everything going on in the world, we are grateful that we can contribute a litte bit of positivity through our small arcade space. Last year we launched Wonderville Projects, a 501(c)-3 organization, that helps to fund much of the community endeavors. We look forward to continuing these programs in 2026 and starting new partnerships and events!

If you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation, just follow the link below:

We also offer monthly memberships to Wonderville, which include discounts on event tickets, drinks, and merch at the bar! If you’d like to check out our membership tiers, head over to our WithFriends page!

Wonderville Merch

You can also support us by buying merch! This year we rolled out a new T-shirt designed by our friend Chris Pickett. We also made enamel pins for four of the arcade games residing at Wonderville! Check out our online merch store for more details!

Do you have another idea or want to collaborate in some zany way? Send us an email! We look forward to hearing from you!