Paco FunWorld (iMall)

Paco FunWorld at iMall is an arcade in the basement of the mall on Marine Parade Central, a few minutes on foot from Marine Parade station on the Thomson-East Coast Line.

Rhythm games are what it does best. The maimai DX cabinets here are on Sega’s own list of Singapore sites and they are kept in good order, which is the difference between a satisfying run and a frustrating one. Claw machines fill the rest of the floor and the prizes get swapped often enough that the same rack is rarely there twice. The room is properly ventilated and it does not fill up, so you can settle in at a cabinet for an hour without queueing behind anyone or cooking. Staff work the floor rather than sitting at the counter, and if a machine is new to you they will come over and walk you through it. It opens at 10.30am and runs to 10.30pm Monday to Saturday, closing an hour earlier on Sundays.

Go down, not up. It sits below ground level with little to announce it from the mall’s main floors, so take the escalator to the basement rather than hunting the upper levels — plenty of people walk straight past without knowing it is there. Turn up rather than ringing ahead. If you are bringing young children, the sister outlet at Kallang Wave is the one built around them; this floor is pitched at people who came to play.