Arcades take up a unique place in the history of video games. In the late 1970s and 1980s, a series of hits like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong Unlocks new gameplay mechanics and bright, crisp pixel graphics. The 1990s featured an explosion of fighting games with Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and Virtua fighter plane State-of-the-art graphics and gameplay.
That’s where it used to be, a time when video games advanced, from textured polygonal graphics to peripheral control inputs (including steering wheel, light gun, and dance mat), can only be found in perfectly designed cabinets. , complete with their colorful bezels and marquees. Arcades avoid hardware limitations largely because they have the ability to optimize hardware specifically for playing a single game. Home consoles and computers have yet to catch up.
But as technology has grown, cutting edge has found its way to a new generation of console hardware – most notably in the late 1990s with the introduction of the sixth generation of consoles, including the PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, and PlayStation 2. Sega Dreamcast. After that, online gaming was a hit, further fueling the demise of video games. Today, you’ll still find some electronic cabinets at Dave and Busters and Chuck E. Cheese. Of course real domes are often dark, cramped, and sweaty, accompanied by the smell of overheated electrical circuits. Today, trying to find proves to be a difficult task, but there is hope!
In a quiet suburb outside of Chicago, Galloping Ghost Arcade aims to preserve this unique period of gaming history by collecting an impressive array of cabinets. It makes sense that Galloping Ghost Arcade found its home in Brookfield, Illinois. It sits right in the middle of the burgeoning arcade game scene, filled with classic game enthusiasts. Chicago was once home to video game heavyweights Gottlieb, Bally, Midway, and other popular video game publishers of the ’90s. As of the time of this publication, arcade games offers over 851 games (and keeps increasing!).
Humble beginnings
Galloping Ghost began in 1994 when Doc Mack, the owner and founder, had a chance encounter with Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon. A lifelong player, Mack wants to be a game developer. “[Boon] Mack told me how difficult it would be to get into the industry. “So I went and did my own thing.” It is that do-it-yourself attitude that will prove the essential energy that drives his company. He was only 18 years old when he founded Galloping Ghost with the intention of developing his own fighting game, Dark Presence. Although the title has yet to be released to date, Mack’s company never slows down, contributing to numerous projects, including Galloping Ghost Arcade.
The origin story of video games begins on a video game location tracking website called Aurcade. Mack thought that getting involved in the video game culture in Chicago would be a worthwhile endeavor. “We thought we would contribute a bunch of data, which would help our own production by figuring out where we were going to sell our arcade games.”
Mack scoured bars, restaurants, and other businesses in search of closets. In his search, he made a sobering discovery. “A lot of the machines were unplayable — the buttons and sticks didn’t work, the cathode ray tube screens were all blurry,” says Mack. Most of the cabinets are in disrepair, once prized technology abandoned in the corner of a laundromat or jostled near the restrooms of a family restaurant. However, Mack said, “I wrote down the business model for what would become Galloping Ghost Arcade.”
Mack found an ad on Craigslist selling 114 machines, all of which were stored and forgotten in a warehouse in Dennison, Iowa. “We drove out there, talked to him, and found out he had another warehouse full of games in Tennessee.” Mack added another 87 machines to the Galloping Ghost collection; These cabinets were the basis for the video game’s August 13, 2010 grand opening. “We opened with 130 machines, and since then have been relentlessly expanding into video games.”
One of a kind
Among Mack’s 851 acquisitions (and continuing to grow), there are certainly some rare and unique machines, including prototypes of unreleased titles. Primal Rage is a dinosaur-themed one-on-one fighting game developed by Atari Games in 1994 to compete head-to-head with Mortal Kombat II and other fighting games of the time. Its success prompted Atari Games to quickly jump into the development of a sequel. That game would be Primal Rage II, but it was shelved after Midway bought Atari Games. Midway develops Mortal Kombat, and Primal Rage IIThe cancellation could be a move to remove any competition with the company’s right to pride and joy.
