ericttspikes
Footballguy
As most kids of the 80's, arcades were a big part of my life. So glad to see them on the comeback. Took my kids to The Galloping Ghost, outside of Chicago in Brookfield, IL. It was like walking into a time warp. almost 700 games, all the classics and many I've never seen. $20 all you can play. It was a trip. No ticket games, no skee-ball, no modern games of any kind really; just classics. I don't think they had anything older than mid 1990's.
https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/games-list/
This place has to be one of the better retro arcades in the country. They seem to hold national high score events and draw people from all over the world.
My oldest fell in love with Millipede and parked herself there for 3 hours. My youngest was a bit more adventurous and tried almost everything. She gravitated toward the shooters and martial arts games. They even had a Sega Holosseum, a game I'd never seen in the wild before. It was a holographic fighter game made by Sega in 1992. Huge cabinet with a concave stage where the holograms were projected. It was pretty cool. Here is a video that doesn't really do the play justice. It looked like a 3-D object, kinda like the Star Wars chess board.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3O1ojAGtPw
I talked to the guy there who said these games were really expensive to play back in the day and didn't catch on. Fun to play these "expensive" games I never could afford as a kid.
I mostly stuck with what I was good at back in the day; Galaga, Centipede, Tempest, Pac Man, Asteroids, Tron, Robotron. I sucked at Defender when I was younger, and still sucked at it 40 years later. The all play made it fun to not really worry about dropping too many quarters in games I wasn't good at. They also had the Venture game that I remember being great at that I was bad at now. It was a cool experience to relive my youth and share that part of my life with my kids. I think they thought (rightfully so) that most of the games paled in graphics and screen quality to new games, but I think they got the communal part of arcades that was so fun. A place to meet, play games with each other and hang out.
After I got home I looked up another arcade that just opened closer to my home in Lisle, IL that has 100 classic games that has good reviews, so hoping this is a new trend.
Here is long, long video showing a tour of the place with the Galloping Ghost owner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyVgyaV16xM
https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/games-list/
This place has to be one of the better retro arcades in the country. They seem to hold national high score events and draw people from all over the world.
My oldest fell in love with Millipede and parked herself there for 3 hours. My youngest was a bit more adventurous and tried almost everything. She gravitated toward the shooters and martial arts games. They even had a Sega Holosseum, a game I'd never seen in the wild before. It was a holographic fighter game made by Sega in 1992. Huge cabinet with a concave stage where the holograms were projected. It was pretty cool. Here is a video that doesn't really do the play justice. It looked like a 3-D object, kinda like the Star Wars chess board.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3O1ojAGtPw
I talked to the guy there who said these games were really expensive to play back in the day and didn't catch on. Fun to play these "expensive" games I never could afford as a kid.
I mostly stuck with what I was good at back in the day; Galaga, Centipede, Tempest, Pac Man, Asteroids, Tron, Robotron. I sucked at Defender when I was younger, and still sucked at it 40 years later. The all play made it fun to not really worry about dropping too many quarters in games I wasn't good at. They also had the Venture game that I remember being great at that I was bad at now. It was a cool experience to relive my youth and share that part of my life with my kids. I think they thought (rightfully so) that most of the games paled in graphics and screen quality to new games, but I think they got the communal part of arcades that was so fun. A place to meet, play games with each other and hang out.
After I got home I looked up another arcade that just opened closer to my home in Lisle, IL that has 100 classic games that has good reviews, so hoping this is a new trend.
Here is long, long video showing a tour of the place with the Galloping Ghost owner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyVgyaV16xM
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