A Visit to Galloping Ghost Arcade
This last week I went to Chicago on vacation with my wife. We tend to swap every other year with domestic vs. international vacations (last year it was London/Paris). This was a domestic vacation year and we decided it was time to check out the Windy City. I have traveled several times in the past through Chicago, mostly spending brief quality time at the airport but have never gotten a chance to actually check out the city. We lucked out this time, arriving during some warmer than average fall weather (thanks global warming!). The whole experience translated to a great time with checking out the usual tourist spots including going to Second City which was a bucket list thing for me. We also ate all the Chicago famous food things since our vacations tend to devolve into eating tours. This included taking a literal tour of artisan donut shops.
Having a rigid planned out agenda isn’t really our bag during vacations, we just kind of wing it. This tends to eliminate some stresses that can happen on vacations and also allows us to absorb local vibes or explore things a bit. After hitting a ton of the normal Chicago things we decided to spend most our last day in town at the Galloping Ghost Arcade. Now for those of you who don’t know, Galloping Ghost is a very large classic video game arcade located just outside the city. They claim to be the biggest in the world (885 games mentioned on the website) but I have no way to verify that, I think other arcades around the globe make similar claims.
We prefer to use public transit during vacations. Chicago has an excellent rail and bus system which is easy to navigate. Staying in the loop area of downtown Chicago required up to take the CTA train (with a transfer) along with a very long bus ride to get to Galloping Ghost. Total travel time was about 90 minutes. This route dropped us off right in front of the arcade which was pretty convenient. An Uber would have likely been faster but more expensive. If you are in the area with car there seems to be decent parking in the area.
My first reaction upon arrival was the outside building seemed to be of good size but for some reason I was expecting a larger building. It’s in the Brookfield neighborhood which seems to have some proper food options if one gets hungry. Once I entered the building any fears about space were put to rest since it is rather cavernous inside and they seem to make use of every square inch of the place. I think the space is actually several buildings together which have been opened up to connect with each other, but I could be wrong about this. There is a separate pinball facility and business that sells reproduction arcade parts but we didn’t check any of that out this time.
Galloping Ghost is literally packed with hundreds of arcade games as close together as possible, sometimes claustrophobically so. There is a small counter when you enter where you can pay your entry fee and buy small snacks (mostly candy and soda, no drinks on the machines please). They also have some merch items to remember your visit or give to the sucker who didn’t come. I bought a t-shirt then promptly left it in a bar afterwards, so I guess I am the sucker this time. Your entry fee allows you to play as much as you want all day, you can even leave and come back. We paid 25 bucks to get in per person. There are passes available for longer times including an all year pass which I am guessing is for locals or the truly obsessed.
Galloping Ghost is open 7 days a week and into the late hours for those wanting to maximize their playtime. When we first arrived around 11:30am there weren’t too many people there, but once we left near 5pm it was starting to get a little busy. The crowd was fairly widespread age wise, but seemed to be leaning towards 35-50+ year olds. Games are mostly arranged by manufacturer and genre. Other times it seems they kind of stuck some games wherever they happened to fit. A majority of the titles from the 1979-early 2000’s era. There were only a handful of bronze era games (1972-1978) and some newer games from the last 10-15 years.
There were a number of highlights for me regarding what they had in the arcade to play, a not-exhaustive list included:
Beavis and Butthead Prototype from Atari Games
Marble Madness II Prototype from Atari Games
Death Race by Exidy
Lasso by SNK
A very complete Williams selection including Turkey Shoot, Crater Raider, Splat, and Blaster
A number of Gottlieb prototypes including Arena
Cockpit Starblade by Namco
Dedicated Mikie by Centuri/Konami and a Munch Mobile by SNK/Centuri
Some crazy rare laserdisc games including Cliff Hanger and Sega’s hologram titles
Forgotten Worlds by Capcom
There were also some disappointments, including many non-working games or games that seemed to need some serious help. I can’t really come down too hard on Galloping Ghost for this however, I have a hard enough time keeping my 38 running as it is. which are not on 7 days a week or abused by strangers like these games are. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to keep dozens of vector monitors healthy and happy consistently, or make sure every joystick and button is working at peak on 800+ games. Some notable games that were not working at this visit were:
All the Sega vector games were off (Damn you hard to keep running G08 monitors!)
Dark Planet was not working
Tunnel Hunt had some major PCB issues
Major Havoc dedicated was off
F-Zero seemed to be under some heavy rebuilding and fixing
Discs of Tron was non-working
Sit-down motorized Space Harrier and After Burner were non-moving, perhaps this was intentional for some reason (Space? Liability?)
Anteater and Mikie, two of my fav games, had monitors that looked like they were ready to die
No audio on Gyruss or Spy Hunter seemed like a hate crime since the audio is so great
Lucky there are like a billion other games to choose from and given the stack of monitor chassis on the counter when we walked in, they seem to be trying their hardest to keep everything running. I think it is a fair guess that all the game titles likely have issues so sometimes certain titles are up other times not so much. If I have learned anything collecting over the last 30+ years that although some games are much more reliable than others, these are vintage items that will eventually fail sometimes in spectacular ways. Getting a new PCB for say Pac-Man is easy, a new PCB for a rare title can prove more challenging.
Many JAMMA games had multi-game switchers installed with cabinet marquees showing which games were in which cabinet. This was nice in the area of shoot-em ups which had tons of rare titles to choose from. Some games were not in their original cabinets and possibly using reproduction hardware when needed, so “button counters” be aware. This stuff doesn’t really bother me, this isn’t a museum of items behind glass, these games are still working for a living.
So if you happen to be in the Chicago area and love classic arcade games (and if you don’t love classic arcade games why are you reading my blog?) I would definitely check out Galloping Ghost. The sheer quantity of games overcomes any other small negatives that could pop out. Hopefully they are able to continue to share these gaming wonders with future generations for years to come.
