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Vintage MoCo Commercials #3

Enjoy the latest round of local commercials from the past.

​Before Dave & Busters, Rio was home to the 55,000 sq. ft. Sportland America. Sportland, which opened in February 1993, featured an indoor miniature golf course, two artificial rock-climbing walls, batting cages, two huge mazes of plastic and steel for kids to climb in, a roller rink, a bumper car arena, a Velcro-jumping area (where you stick to the walls), a billiard parlor, a snack bar and an awesome assortment of video games, pinball machines and other electronic entertainment devices like laser tag.

This excerpt from an August 1993 Washington Post article sums up Sportland perfectly: “It is Saturday night at Sportland America in Gaithersburg and it sounds like all 277 electronic games are exploding at once. Tanya, the reigning queen of Mortal Kombat, has just kicked the head off a grunting Ninja warrior, splashing blood across a 42-inch video screen. Raptors are roaring loose at the Jurassic Park pinball machine, which is gobbling tokens like a starving tyrannosaurus. Four teenage motorcycle racers are screaming around a computer-generated racetrack, leaning $32,000 worth of full-size, hydraulically mounted bikes into curves so dangerous that only kids too young for a driver’s license would dare to risk them. Mix in the rock-and-roll rhythm of a roller rink, the drumbeat of a dozen bumper cars, an a cappella chorus of teenage mating calls and then crank up the volume until it sounds like one of those car stereos you can hear from three lanes away with the windows rolled up, your radio on and the air conditioner blasting.”