About nineteen years ago I was working for Gilbert Williams running an arcade and doing technical work at a Chuck E. Cheese franchise he owned. Gil had been a VP at Atari and was one of the original seven people who started the company. When Atari sold to Warner communications Gil got a half a million, big money at that time. Gil is a Welshman who came to the States as an adult. While at Atari he helped set-up the Ireland factory. Former Atari and Chuck E. Cheese President (both times under Nolan Bushnel) Joe Keenan (originally of Kee Games of Los Gatos) and a few other investors were interested in an adult version of a Chuck E. Cheese type experience. Better food and a full bar were obvious ingredients for this concept. The first location was to be on Stevens Creek Road in San Jose, it was a very large building next to an expressway on this busy street. I was supposed to become a manager at this store. Unfortunately, while in the planning stage a serious fire struck this building. During the delay to find a new location my boss Gil decided to opt out so I was never directly involved. They did decide to use Gil's first name for the concept.

The first store opened in the small downtown of Campbell, California (part of Silicon Valley.) It was a somewhat rustic looking building and had loads of video games, foosball and pool tables as well as darts. There was also live music some nights. Future locations kind of dropped the Gilbert and primarily were known as Zapps. A more elaborate Zapps concept opened in Cupertino next door to a Kmart in a strip mall. This one had a higher tech look about it. Scantily clad males and females were projected on the wall in the restrooms (males in the woman's, etc.) They also had a payphone booth like out of Mad Magazine. You would enter and pay your money then select from a variety of background noises such as an office environment. The idea was of course, to deceive your boss or wife (this is before the PC thing took over.) They eventually opened at least two more Zapps, these being in Florida I believe. The Cupertino Zapps had problems with the anchor tenant Kmart which led to it's closing (a fifties-style night club replaced it, Sha-Boom was it's name I think.) I'm not sure what happened to the other Zapps.

Tom Rose
Silicon Valley