The venue, on the Northbourne strip of the Sydney Building, has both video games and e-sports, which are video game competitions between a number of players, all in a bar setting.

The owners, software developer Ravi Sharma and internet café operator James Andrews, discussed the idea of the venue for a number of months before Reload was born.

"It grew out of a conversation and just a growing realisation that an e-sports and video games bar is now a viable prospect – we believe there is strong demand for it," Mr Sharma said.

"On the west coast of the United States there's now a big e-sports scene. Recently they hosted an international competition with a $10 million prize pool, so the winners went home with basically the same as Wimbledon."

Reload opens Saturday night, with games including Super Smash Brothers 8, Mario Kart, FIFA, Halo, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Starcraft, and retro game Street Fighter on the consoles for the launch.

Sticking with the video game theme, cocktails include Princess Peach, Los Cantos Sunrise, Sonic the Hedgehog and Master Chief to celebrate the recent release of Halo, and there is table service so visitors don't miss the action from their game.

The venue, formerly Envy Nightclub, is next door to where nightclubs North Bar, Meche Nightclub and ICBM closed down in September, and all are still vacant.

Mr Andrews and Mr Sharma have designed the venue to create a social atmosphere with lots of couches around consoles and multi-player games.

Far from a dark gamer's den, Andrews believes that "nerdy is kind of blending with mainstream in a way", and the owners hope to attract a wide-ranging crowd.

"Pretty much everyone's had fun playing video games at some stage, so we hope to attract a casual crowd. We've gone to a great effort not to make it somewhere only a hardcore gamer would feel comfortable," Mr Andrews said.

"For example Super Smash Brothers, you can have eight people playing at once, which is pretty fun and pretty frantic."

The owners are hoping that childhood instinct kicks in and there will be no fights over the consoles.

"Anyone who grew up with video games will remember organic rules," Mr Andrews said. "You grow up with a whole bunch of kids on the couch playing the Nintendo, and basically the rule is you get one stage or until you die – a turn or a life.

"That's a natural way to play video games so we're basing it on that, and we'll be encouraging that sort of behaviour."