BEST PC GAMING ROOM

eJoy Internet Cafe

Comments (0) Thursday, Sep 30 2004

Half wired coffee house and half gaming center, the eJoy Cafe, housed in what used to be a Bank of America branch just off Mill Avenue, is far from the most serious fragging spot in town. The twentysomething ASU students serving up espresso and scones in the front room are often clueless about fixing the poorly maintained PCs running the memory-intensive games in the back (recently, a bored hacker managed to install software at every station that allows anyone with the similar program at home to control the computers remotely). And heaven help the gamer who needs an extra copy of the Diablo II Expansion CD to load the game. But at only $10 a day -- five bucks for kids under what the staff guesses to be 18 -- it's the only place in town where you can play Warcraft, Counter-Strike, BattleField 1942 or The Sims Online 'til 2 a.m. on the weekends for less than a case of Red Bull. If you can take the heat in the Vault, an actual converted bank vault where headphones are optional (as long as you close the hefty steel door), up to eight of your closest enemies can wage their own private war. Fire in the hole!