Underground Retrocade - East Dundee, IL

[Dauber]

This little joint opened in June, I think. I checked it out this past Friday night.

 

Underground is relatively small, but a decent selection of games -- they especially have a lot of Atari coin-ops, including Atari Football. It has most of the core games, but noticeably absent was Burgertime. But chances are if you had a favorite core game from the golden age, it's there.

 

Price -- can't beat it...$5 for half hour, $10 for unlimited, including re-entry.

 

All the games on the main floor are in good working condition. I saw a few consoles -- Atari VCS, Intellivision, Sega Genesis....possibly more.

 

Your first check-in on Yelp rewards you with a free drink from the fridge.

 

The place has a very homey feel; you feel like you're in someone's (very large) living room!

 

And it's the only place I know of near me that has a Turbo Jr. Pac-Man -- which I never knew even existed until Underground posted about it on Facebook! So that was my big reason for going. I love the Pac-Man games, but Jr. Pac-Man is a BEAST....wanted to see if the "turbo" version was any more playable....well, guess what...on my second attempt at the game, I beat the house high score of about 232,000....kind of like at Galloping Ghost, on each game there's a little card propped up listing the house high score and the world record....which, for Turbo Jr. Pac-Man, they had listed at.....233,000-something. My final score?? 296,300!!! WOOHOO!!!! World record!!!!

 

 

.......until I got home and checked Aurcade and found that ten days earlier, someone beat that score by about 74,000 and Underground hadn't updated their records yet....d'oh!!!!! Oh well...gives me reason to go back. (And nice to know that I apparently have the second-highest score worldwide. )

Edited October 21, 2012 by Dauber

[NightSprinter]

Congrats on that record score, man. If I find myself up in Illinois ever, I'll have to hit it up.

[Dauber]

Well, my 2nd-highest score didn't last long -- only about a day and a half. Someone blew mine out of the water and got over 400k --- AT Underground! ha!

[NightSprinter]

Just see that as "Challenge Accepted".