Galloping Ghost Aracde

[Dan Iacovelli]

just found out via facebook that a new arcade is opening up in IL not too far from me

Galloping Ghost Arcade 9415 Odgen Ave Brookfield,IL

http://www.gallopingghostarcade.com

Sat and sunday grand opening $15.00 door entry all games on free play for those days

I'm planning to go after I get off work(only about 12 mins away from me)

[Crazy Climber]

HOLY SCHNIKES!!!

They have 120 arcade games listed on the "working" list and 50 more or so they say are being repaired. How big is this place? Sounds awesome!!

[Tom-Lynx]

Maybe I'll see you there early Sunday afternoon Dan. My older son and I might go check it out.

 

Tom

[Dan Iacovelli]

Maybe I'll see you there early Sunday afternoon Dan. My older son and I might go check it out.

 

Tom

I was going today,but it might be better for me to go on sunday. I'll prob be there from noon till 2pm or later.

[Crazy Climber]

If you can get a few pics guys. I make it down to IL about once a year so I will likely be able to check it out one of these days.

[Dan Iacovelli]

If you can get a few pics guys. I make it down to IL about once a year so I will likely be able to check it out one of these days.

there is a couple videos on you tube:

[Crazy Climber]

If you can get a few pics guys. I make it down to IL about once a year so I will likely be able to check it out one of these days.

there is a couple videos on you tube:

Good God, that has to be one of the coolest looking arcades I have seen in a LONG time

[VectorGamer]

 

there is a couple videos on you tube:

 

Good God, that has to be one of the coolest looking arcades I have seen in a LONG time

 

And you know what's cool is the video shows just how packed the arcades were BITD. They could have packed the place with friends and neighbors but it's still a cool video that conjures up fond memories of my local arcade when I was a kid.

[Crazy Climber]

 

there is a couple videos on you tube:

 

Good God, that has to be one of the coolest looking arcades I have seen in a LONG time

 

And you know what's cool is the video shows just how packed the arcades were BITD. They could have packed the place with friends and neighbors but it's still a cool video that conjures up fond memories of my local arcade when I was a kid.

Yeah, seeing all the people playing the games and having fun was huge! I would love to go there. Many of my later memories of arcades were not like that, the place was usually empty. Nothing beats a packed arcade like the good ol days, even if I have to wait to play it is totally worth it.

[Dan Iacovelli]

just returned from the place.

it huge 50% of the arcades were working the rest being fixed

the place was empty today when I got there prob gets full

at night.

when they get a the hours done and charging figured I won't mind going on sundays.

[Dan Iacovelli]

here is some information on the arcade from the owner:

It will still be $15 to get in with everything on FreePlay (that will be the regular price). We are working on a frequent player card too, so the more you come the cheaper it will get. The hours are:

Monday - Friday 1PM - 2AM

Saturday - Sunday 11AM - 2AM (we may be open later on the weekends if people are still here having fun)

Edited August 18, 2010 by Dan Iacovelli

[yuppicide]

OMFG! I wish I lived closer. I'd be a frequent player. Maybe they'd make a monthly pass.

 

Looks amazing! 122 working games, another 120 or so being fixed, and another 50 or so they're looking for. That's the kind of place I want to start here in Jersey.

[Lendorien]

Reviving this thread. I live up in Mailwaukee. Brookfield, IL is about an hour and a half from me. I only found out about the place last night and since my Girlfriend and I were looking for something to do today, we decided to drive down and check it out. It's in a nicer suburb of Chicago on a fairly busy street with a good variety of restaurants around. My Grilfriend and I made a day of it and spent about 7 hours there.

 

I have to say with complete honesty that visiting Galloping ghost is one of the coolest afternoon activities I've done in quite a while. They had about 200 working cabs from all eras. It's clear that some of them are pretty cobbled together, but it doesn't hurt the experience much. They have a really large selection of fighting games from all eras, a pretty solid collection of gun shooters and racers and a decent selection of early classics like pacman, etc.

 

I talked to one of the owners briefly and told him I'd come all the way from Milwaukee to find him. He seemed a little surprised and flattered. He seemed like a really down to earth nice guy. Apparently, he'd owned his own business for a while as a workaholic, sold it and made enough to finance his new venture and the arcade game he and his business partner are working on. There's clearly a lot of love that went into the place.

 

At $15 dollars a person for unlimited play on any machine, it's an amazing deal and given the broad selection, well worth the trip if you happen to be within a few hours drive of Chicago or are going to be in town for a bit. Seriously, every machine is rigged for free play, including machines that aren't programmed for it.

 

My girlfriend and I had a blast. The best part is, she's not much of a gamer... and the arcade got her interested in a lot of games she probably wouldn't have been interested in before.

 

On the down side, I've decided I REALLY need to build a Mame cabinet now. I'm hooked.

[Dauber]

Sorry to bump a dead/comatose thread, but I checked out Galloping Ghost this past weekend.

 

So far, of the three (allegedly, in one case) retro places I've visited this year -- No Limit, Logan Hardware, and Galloping Ghost -- Galloping Ghost is, by far, the best, considering 1) selection, 2) ratio of real games to obvious fakes, and 3) ratio in terms of good condition to bad condition...

 

Having said that, it's not the end-all, be-all....for example, I don't think the staff is as attentive as the staff at, say, No Limit, where staffers are constantly circling the gaming area and making sure things are up and running; at Galloping Ghost the staff all seemed to hover around the front counter (and didn't notice that the Food Fight machine was stuck in an endless reboot), but hey, they were friendly and receptive. And although I'm not a huge pinball fan, it would have been nice to see a few pinball machines. (Or do they have them in a separate room???)

 

The game selection is very impressive, and had I truly played everything I wanted to play, I easily could have spent an entire day there instead of just the two hours I gave myself...(had to get home and feed the dog!) There were still some games missing that I would have loved to have seen - Stargate, Exciting New Pac-Man Plus!, Millipede, DK3, to name a few - but they had most of the "core" classics -- Pac-Man (an original machine, not a thrown-together hack like they tend to be, and set for five lives), Ms. Pac-Man (high-speed version, some issues with the colors -- like Ms. Pac-Man being a blurry orange), DK, DKjr, Popeye, Missile Command (in a small cabinet and one of the few games with graphics issues), Centipede, Defender, Burgertime, Gorf, both Zaxxon games, at least one of the Tron games....I was surprised to not see Berzerk, actually...

 

Both aurcade.com and Galloping Ghost's web site list Jr. Pac-Man and Super Pac-Man among the games there...but they're not separate games; they're actually in a two-fer cabinet that I'd never seen before, with a switch to toggle between the two games...and to be honest, I think it's a machine that was hacked from various parts...the monitor is obviously a rotated hi-def PC monitor -- you can actually see the edges of the monitor through the cabinet's glass, and when the screen went blank, there would be a little message in the corner (rotated) saying, simply, "PC." I don't think it was a MAME box because I couldn't get Super Pac-Man working so I asked the staff to reboot, and it was available in half a second, but I don't know what it was....My goal was to beat their Super Pac-Man record, which was also listed as a "world record" but without the Twin Galaxies name on it. (And after seeing the machine, I completely understand why; I doubt Twin Galaxies would ever consider entries from it!). However, the difficulty settings were ridiculously impossible, and on the Super Pac-Man side, the screen would at random times black out for a few seconds (displaying the "PC" message, of course)...that kind of put me off...

 

The Donkey Kong Jr. is either a bootleg or a custom version.

 

I didn't check out the other rooms, with the consoles...so I can't comment on those.

 

Parking is easy...there are a few spaces along the building, but they were filled, so I parked on the side street near the building. Plenty of parking there.

 

Definitely worth a return trip...

[simbalion]

Man, I wish this was near to me in Ohio!

[Dan Iacovelli]

help Galloping ghost expand donate toawrd thier kickstarter campaign https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gallopingghostarcade/galloping-ghost-arcade-expansion-project

I put in 9.00 for it, I wish to put more being unemployed sucks, I plan to donate more when I go there in may)

[Dan Iacovelli]

theres been major changes to arcade

Edited October 12, 2014 by Dan Iacovelli

[Hydro Thunder]

Awwww sheeit. Going to _have_ to get there soon! It was always kind of on my "maybe bucket list", but now it's a place I MUST visit within a month or two if I can swing it!

[Dan Iacovelli]

I plan on stopping by on friday afternoon for a walter day event

Edited October 12, 2014 by Dan Iacovelli

[Cynicaster]

I'll be in Chicago in a few weeks and will be visiting this joint. Can't freakin' wait!

[VectorGamer]

I'll be in Chicago in a few weeks and will be visiting this joint. Can't freakin' wait!

 

There's a few more arcades in Chicago you should check out while you're there.

[Cynicaster]

 

There's a few more arcades in Chicago you should check out while you're there.

Yeah, will probably hit up Logan's as well, since I'll probably walk right past it at some point. The Underground Retrocade looks like it's a fair bit out of the way.

[+Yurkie]

It's nice to see this arcade is still alive over 4 years after the original post was made about it. It is a pretty long drive from here in Toledo, but I would love to check it out sometime,

[Cynicaster]

I made it over to the Galloping Ghost this past Monday, and it was quite the experience. In terms of number of games, I’m pretty sure it’s the biggest arcade I’ve ever been to, not just as an adult retro-freak, but in my entire life.

 

Not sure when that video from a few posts up was filmed, but it is probably a 95% accurate representation of what I saw when I visited, in terms of the current layout of the arcade and what games are on the floor and running.

 

I spent about 7 full hours there while my girlfriend attended her conference for work, and I still had to be selective in what I played to make sure I didn’t run out of time before getting a chance to spend time with all of the games I was interested in trying.

 

Would I go back? Yes, I would happily give many more $15 admission fees to visit that place in the future, if I’m in the area.

 

With all that gushing out of the way, the place isn’t a perfect arcade heaven. While the owner clearly strives to make everything as original as he can with the resources and time that he has available, there are lots of games in non-original cabinets with non-original sticks and buttons. This is probably no big deal for a game like Rush N Attack (which I played and enjoyed), but some games just need the real parts, otherwise I might as well just fire up the emulator. For example, the DK Jr. cabinet at GG has a bat-top joystick, which I’m guessing is some Happ product. The Bosconian at GG appears to be a Zaxxon cabinet, again, with a generic bat-top stick. Contra was missing the bezel artwork, so I could see the fasteners holding the monitor to the frame.

 

Another thing that was a bit disappointing was that there were several classics that I was really looking forward to playing, but the cabinets were in dire need of a tune up.

 

For example, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years playing Robotron in MAME, and I was stoked to finally have a chance to play on a real machine, with real leaf-switch sticks, at the proper 10”-11” spacing. Unfortunately, to my dismay, the left joystick was a mess. The centering grommet was worn to shit and the diagonals would only register intermittently at best, which makes a precise game like Robotron unplayable. There were several games I tried but had to walk away from because of similar joystick issues. Another issue that I don’t really understand is that some of the games didn’t have sound. Not sure if that is a problem with the boards or if certain games are purposely turned down to keep the cacophony of the arcade reasonable, but when I fired up Defender (again, for the first time on a real machine), I walked away as soon as I realized I wasn’t going to hear the legendary Williams sound effects. In the shoot-em-up room, I was amazed to see a DoDonPachi cabinet, but again, no sound. The sound on that game is freakin’ bad ass, and constitutes half the experience for me, so it absolutely has to be there if I am to have any hope of enjoying the game.

 

I thought that maybe spending time in an arcade of that size might make MAME feel disappointing after the fact, but oddly, it had the opposite effect—I think, if anything, I thank the heavens for MAME even more now. Not only do I now realize just how accurate MAME emulation is for most games, but when I play at home on my cabinet, at least my joystick always hits diagonals, the screen is always bright and clear, and the sound effects are as loud as I want them to be, regardless of how old the game is. Preservation, indeed.

 

I kind of hemmed and hawed about posting the “negative” aspects of my review here because I really don’t want to seem like I’m slagging on anybody who puts so much heart and soul into keeping this hobby and its culture alive, but I decided to be brutally honest.

 

I’m sure the owner has heard all manner of unsolicited “expert advice” from know-it-all customers on how best to run his business, but IMO, the place would be better if he culled the herd a bit and used the freed up time, cash, and resources on keeping games like Robotron and Defender in tip-top shape at all times.

[Dan Iacovelli]

with over 400 games, you have give him time fix games and such, he does fix them, I saw constant updates on fb on whats being done.

they also have other games being ready for the floor but room is limited thats why the fundraiser is being done,so they can buy out the store in center and

to add more and fix out game rooms in the other area .