Guy spends $26,000 converting his apartment into an arcade, complete with candy dispensers and a physical high-score list. Fiancée promptly dumps him.



Chris Kooluris realized a fantasy when he converted his apartment into an arcade. Unfortunately, that reality cost him a fiancée.

As reported by the New York Daily News, the 37-year-old Kooluris decided to sell his furniture--including his bed--in order to spend $26,000 transforming his apartment into an arcade that consists of games like Pac-Man, Punch-Out, and Street Fighter II. He did this after unsuccessfully trying to sell his Manhattan apartment when he moved into his fiancee's apartment in Brooklyn. He began to feel uncomfortable living with her and her things, and after reading the Ernest Cline sci-fi novel Ready Player One, he had an epiphany of sorts.

"The book just blew me away," he said. "It awakened something in me and I started thinking that I can't believe I'm not surrounded by all these things that I grew up loving."



In the process of creating an apartment filled with not just arcade games, but Transformers action figures, a futon with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles blankets, candy dispensers, and a high-score board, his fiancée decided to leave him.

Kooluris, who is a senior vice president of PR company Weber Shandwick, invites friends over regularly to enjoy his creation, but he finds himself enjoying it less because of his newfound single status. "Now that my fiancée and I are no longer together, it's hard to enjoy the room as much as I want to," he said. "I always end up thinking about her."

Should you be in the area and want to check out the arcade for yourself, Kooluris has an email [email protected]--that you can email to express your interest.

But Kooluris is reminded of a valuable lesson every time he fiddles with that joystick: "If you are going through relationship issues, you need to invest time in the relationship and work on it. Do not work on your arcade more than your relationship."

...Kooluris had moved in his with fiancée to her place in Brooklyn and put his own apartment on the market... he began feeling claustrophobic living in his girlfriend’s apartment with all her stuff...

ne day when his ex came over to see the finished project, he showed her that he was sleeping on a convertible sofa bed with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bedspread. “Well, at least I don’t need to worry that this room will ever get another woman wet,” is how he recalls her reaction. (Kooluris’ ex-fiancée declined to participate in this story.)