Origins and Opening Night

The history of Galloping Ghost Arcade begins the way so many great gaming stories begin, with one person’s obsession carried further than anyone else thought possible. In the mid nineteen nineties, Doc Mack was not yet the steward of the largest arcade in the United States, he was just a young Chicago native trying to make a new fighting game. That project, Dark Presence, a digitized martial arts epic in the style of Mortal Kombat, required not only technical skill but an entire infrastructure…  actors, cameras, editing, distribution, and most importantly, a place to show it.

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he dream of the game planted the seed of the arcade, because by the late 2000s, coin-ops had all but vanished from malls and street corners. If you wanted to play a new arcade title, or even see one, there was nowhere left to go. Mack’s conclusion was radical in its simplicity: if the world no longer made room for arcade games, then he would create that room himself (Arcade Heroes, 2008).

The result was Galloping Ghost Arcade, which opened its doors on August 13, 2010, in Brookfield, Illinois, a quiet suburb just west of Chicago. There is a poetic symmetry in the date itself, a Friday the 13th — as if the venture were almost daring fate to test it. By that summer, most Americans thought arcades were relics of the 1980s and early 1990s, remembered through the soft glow of Pac-Man stickers or the tinny roar of a mall food court. But when people stepped through the doors of the Ghost for the first time, they were not just stepping into a museum, they were entering something alive. About one hundred thirty cabinets were ready that first night, some common, some rare, all waiting in neat rows. The smell of old circuitry mixed with fresh paint. The speakers crackled with overlapping attract mode themes. People stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers and realized they could stay until midnight without worrying about quarters running out (Wikipedia).

That admission model was itself a rebuke to the decline of the arcade. No tokens, no swiping cards that bled your balance one credit at a time. Instead, you paid a simple door fee and every cabinet inside was on free play. This small design choice carried enormous cultural weight. It meant that children could try obscure fighting games without begging their parents for “just one more dollar.” It meant that grown-ups who had not touched an arcade stick in twenty years could rediscover muscle memory without anxiety. It meant that strangers could stand together at Gauntlet Legends or NBA Jam and keep playing until closing without keeping track of coins. One writer later described the Ghost as less like a traditional arcade and more like “a library of glowing machines,” a place where curiosity was rewarded instead of punished by the quarter slot (WIRED, 2020).

Opening night had all the nervous electricity of a concert. Local papers remember Doc nearly grinding a tooth down from anxiety before the ribbon was cut, only to watch the line wrap around the block hours later (Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, 2024). People drove in from across the Midwest just to see if the rumors were true, that an honest-to-God arcade had returned in the age of Xbox and iPhone. Inside, laughter and shouts mingled with the thunk of buttons and the high-pitched whir of CRTs. For veterans, it was a time machine. For newcomers, it was a discovery. Nobody knew yet that the collection would eventually swell past one thousand machines, or that Brookfield would become a pilgrimage site for gamers worldwide. But everyone who walked out that night sensed something different had been born. The Galloping Ghost was not just preserving the past, it was rewriting what an arcade could mean in the twenty-first century.

Doc Mack: The Ghostlord of Brookfield

Every great arcade has its heartbeat, and for Galloping Ghost that pulse belongs to Doc Mack. Long before anyone called him the “Ghostlord,” he was just a Chicago kid whose earliest memory of magic came in the form of glowing vector graphics. He was only about four years old when he first stepped up to an Asteroids machine in a roadside restaurant on a family trip. For most children, the moment might have passed in a blur of flashing lights. For Mack, it was an initiation. The cabinet was not just entertainment, it was a doorway into a language of play, color, and imagination that he would carry for the rest of his life. Those early encounters shaped him more deeply than school ever did, and they whispered to him that this was a world worth preserving.

School, in fact, proved to be a mismatch. Mack was introverted, uncomfortable in large social settings, and ultimately left high school during his freshman year to continue with homeschooling. He took retail jobs to get by, but his attention was already turned elsewhere. Interviews paint a portrait of a teenager who was not particularly social, but endlessly creative, already sketching out characters and moves for his dream game. To imagine him then is to picture a boy surrounded not by classmates but by ideas, arcade games that had come before, sketches of what might come next, and a restless desire to bring something new into the world. It was not a conventional education, but it was a rigorous one in its own way: machines, art, and vision replacing textbooks and group projects (classicarcadegaming.com).

By 1994, at just 18 years old, he founded Galloping Ghost Productions. The studio’s centerpiece was to be Dark Presence, an original fighting game in the digitized style of Mortal Kombat. Mack poured himself into the project, building sets, recruiting actors, digitizing frames, and pushing hardware to its limits. He was not simply dabbling in design; he was creating a production pipeline from scratch. But as the years stretched on, a problem emerged. Where would a new arcade game even go? By the early 2000s, arcades were closing everywhere. Distribution pipelines were broken, and the only spaces left often kept broken cabinets limping along in pizza parlors and bowling alleys. Mack recalls searching Chicago in 2008 and being unable to find a single Mortal Kombat cabinet in full working condition. For someone who had staked his life on the medium, the absence was infuriating. The lesson was clear: if he wanted a space where arcade games could truly live, he would have to build it himself.

The decision was not taken lightly. Before opening Galloping Ghost Arcade, Mack even launched a campaign called Support Your Local Arcades, offering to repair machines for only the cost of parts, build websites for struggling arcades, and share knowledge freely. He did not simply want his own machines running, he wanted a whole ecosystem to survive. That sense of stewardship, of shouldering responsibility for a culture others had abandoned, would become the guiding principle of the arcade in Brookfield. It was not about nostalgia as kitsch. It was about history, preservation, and keeping the heartbeat alive through direct action.

When he finally began acquiring cabinets, it was not glamorous. The first big batch came from Iowa: 114 machines loaded onto trucks and hauled back to Illinois. Many of them were filthy, covered in dirt and sticky with spilled cola. They needed deep cleaning, replacement parts, new artwork, sometimes full surgery. Mack’s skills as a woodworker, artist, and technician all came into play. With his small skeleton crew, himself and a few loyal helpers like Doug Fox, they gutted, repaired, and rebuilt until each machine could shine again. It was labor-intensive and exhausting, but it also defined the ethos of Galloping Ghost: nothing is unrepairable, no game is too far gone to save (Chi-Scroller interview, 2013).

For someone who described himself as painfully introverted, opening a public arcade was an act of courage. Mack has said that on the night before opening, his nerves were so intense that he ground his teeth until one cracked during a TV interview. He was convinced no one would show up. Instead, a line wrapped around the block on August 13, 2010, and the arcade was profitable within eight months. It was not only a vindication of his dream, it was proof that a hunger for arcades had never gone away. What had disappeared was the infrastructure. Mack had simply rebuilt it, piece by piece, with his own hands and stubborn belief (Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, 2024).

Today, Doc Mack stands not just as an operator but as a preservationist and teacher. He has helped more than 30 arcades open worldwide, sharing knowledge and encouragement with others who want to follow the Ghost’s model. He was inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame, cementing his legacy not just as a collector but as a builder of culture. Yet the most telling detail may be something smaller. In one interview, Mack confessed that he still plays the games himself every day, but often, the moment he notices a flaw, a joystick sticking, a monitor flickering, he stops playing and immediately shifts into repair mode. It captures his identity perfectly: a man who loves these machines so much that even play becomes secondary to care. In every sense, Doc Mack is the Ghostlord, not a distant curator, but the living spirit that keeps Galloping Ghost Arcade alive (Chi-Scroller interview, 2013).

The Free Play Experiment

When Galloping Ghost Arcade opened in Brookfield in 2010, one of the boldest choices Doc Mack made was to remove coins from the experience altogether. Every cabinet was set to free play and admission was a flat fee at the door. This decision was radical at the time. Traditional arcades relied on coin drop income, redemption tickets, or bundled food packages. Galloping Ghost instead functioned almost like a museum of living machines where the price of admission covered all exhibits. The official arcade site still lays out this model clearly, noting that the admission cost covers unlimited play for the day, and that members can purchase longer passes to come back as often as they like (Galloping Ghost Arcade).

The cultural impact of this model is profound. In a conventional arcade, anxiety always lurked in the background. Children worried about asking their parents for another dollar, teenagers rationed their limited coins, and adults hesitated to try unfamiliar titles for fear of wasting money. At Galloping Ghost that pressure disappeared. Players became explorers who sampled dozens of machines in a single night. They could spend an hour on Street Fighter III before drifting over to Galaga without second thoughts. Critics noticed this difference immediately. A feature in WIRED described Galloping Ghost as “less like a pay to play venue and more like a vast playable archive where curiosity was rewarded instead of punished” (WIRED).

Membership programs deepened this sense of belonging. Locals could buy monthly or yearly passes, transforming the arcade from a special outing into a kind of second home. The long hours reinforced this identity. Galloping Ghost stays open until midnight on most nights and extends to two in the morning on weekends, and it has committed to remaining open every single day of the year. That consistency is part of the ritual. As one visitor told the Riverside Brookfield Landmark, the Ghost is a place you can count on, where the lights are always on and the machines are always waiting (Riverside Brookfield Landmark).

There is nostalgia in remembering the clink of quarters sliding into metal slots, but Galloping Ghost reframes that memory. Here, the nostalgia is balanced by freedom. Visitors can play rare prototypes like Tattoo Assassins without fear of wasting coins, or marathon a high score attempt on Robotron: 2084 without calculating cost. The official arcade Twitch streams highlight this philosophy by showcasing obscure machines every Monday in the “Mystery Game” reveal, reinforcing the idea that discovery is central to the experience (Galloping Ghost Arcade Twitch). More on that in a bit.

By shifting from a transactional model to a communal one, Galloping Ghost did more than preserve the past. It created an environment where games from the seventies through the present can be explored deeply, socially, and without fear of scarcity. In this way, the arcade is not only a monument to history, it is also a living cultural commons, and that transformation began with the simplest of decisions: no coins, only play.

From 130 Games to over 1,000

On its opening night in 2010 Galloping Ghost Arcade welcomed guests with about one hundred thirty cabinets. For those who remember that early floor, the layout was modest compared to the sprawling maze it has become today. Still, it was overwhelming enough to spark awe in people who had not seen such a collection under one roof in decades. Many of those first machines had been salvaged in bulk purchases, cleaned and repaired after years of neglect. Visitors who stepped in were met by glowing marquees and the unmistakable overlapping sound of attract modes. It felt like a rebirth of something everyone thought was gone.

From that seed the arcade began to grow, not with sudden leaps but with the patient rhythm of weekly additions. Cabinets were rescued from warehouses, garages, and shuttered businesses. They were hauled back to Brookfield, restored in the shop, and rolled out one by one. By the mid 2010s the count had already climbed into the hundreds, and by the 2020s it had broken every record, surpassing one thousand machines on the floor. Today Galloping Ghost has more than 1,050 games ranging from the late seventies to modern experiments, a scale that makes it not only the largest arcade in the United States but one of the largest in the world (Eagle 102.3 FM).

The ritual that carries this growth is Monday Mystery Game. Each week a new machine is revealed, sometimes an obscure oddity, sometimes a prototype few people ever knew existed, sometimes a cult favorite restored to working order. Visitors gather around the shrouded cabinet, the cover pulled away with a small flourish, and another game joins the family. The practice is more than just a gimmick. It has become a tradition that gives the arcade its heartbeat, a way to ensure that even regulars who come every week will always find something new. The official site keeps a log of these reveals, and streams capture the moment for those who cannot be there in person (Galloping Ghost Arcade).

To walk through Galloping Ghost today is to feel the layering of all those years of additions. The aisles stretch like corridors in a museum, every turn revealing another surprise. Visitors stumble upon legends such as Primal Rage II or the full motion Sega R360, then find themselves drawn into forgotten curiosities that never had a chance in commercial release. Longtime fans speak about visiting the arcade not just to relive familiar titles but to discover things they never imagined they would play outside of magazine screenshots. The steady rhythm of growth has created a culture of anticipation. People plan visits around Mondays. Collectors bring friends to see the latest unveil. It is a cycle of rebirth that keeps the arcade from ever becoming static.

In a way, the growing collection mirrors the spirit of the arcade itself. It is not just about preservation. It is about surprise, discovery, and the thrill of realizing that somewhere, in a quiet suburb of Chicago, new machines are still being added to the great story of the arcade.

White Whales and Museum Pieces

Every arcade has its standouts, the games that draw whispers when people spot them across a crowded floor. At Galloping Ghost, those machines are not only showpieces, they are symbols of the arcade’s deeper mission. Doc Mack has often said that he views the Ghost as more than a place to play games. It is a living museum where some of the rarest and strangest creations in video game history can be touched, tested, and experienced by anyone who walks through the door.

One of the most famous examples is Primal Rage II. Developed by Atari Games in the mid 1990s, it was intended as the sequel to the dinosaur brawler Primal Rage. The game was nearly complete when it was canceled, and only a handful of prototype boards survived. For years, Primal Rage II was whispered about on forums, the kind of legend that collectors dreamed of but most assumed they would never see. Yet at Galloping Ghost it sits in a full cabinet, humming and ready, the only place in the world where an ordinary visitor can simply walk up and play. Writers from MeTV have singled it out as a crown jewel of the collection, a piece of history made accessible rather than locked away in storage (MeTV).

Another cabinet that stops people in their tracks is Tattoo Assassins. Created in the 1990s by former Data East staff, it was a wild attempt to cash in on the fighting game boom sparked by Mortal Kombat. Full of outrageous finishing moves and digitized actors, it was shelved before release. At most arcades this game is a myth, preserved only through emulation and magazine scans. At Galloping Ghost, the prototype is right there on the floor. The fact that you can actually test its bizarre mechanics speaks to the Ghost’s ethos, that even failed experiments are worth keeping alive because they tell the full story of the medium.

Then there is the Sega R360, Sega’s full motion simulator from 1990 that looks more like an amusement park ride than a traditional arcade cabinet. Designed to rotate players a full 360 degrees while they piloted flight games like G-LOC Air Battle, it was infamous for its engineering complexity, its cost, and its constant need for upkeep. Very few were ever operated outside of Japan, and most that did arrive in North America ended up abandoned. Galloping Ghost made headlines when one appeared on its floor, with forum footage circulating among collectors showing the machine running in Brookfield (Arcade-Museum Forums). As of this writing it is unclear whether the R360 is open to the general public for regular play or if it remains a showcase piece used sparingly. Either way, its very presence is remarkable, proof that the Ghost is willing to take on the burden of preserving one of Sega’s most ambitious and unwieldy creations.

These machines: prototypes, canceled projects, engineering marvels… are what transform the Ghost from a simple arcade into a cultural archive. They are the “white whales” that collectors and fans spend years chasing, often with no success. Yet here they sit, waiting for anyone with a day pass to walk up and press start. For longtime gamers, there is a kind of awe in that accessibility. For younger players, there is discovery, the chance to touch something that exists nowhere else. Galloping Ghost has made a habit of turning rumor into reality, and it is that habit which ensures its place not only in the present of arcade culture but in the history books that will one day be written about it.

The Fix-It Culture

Walking through the corridors behind the glass-fronts and flashing screens of Galloping Ghost is like entering the backstage of an opera for machines. The arcade is not fragile only in its nostalgia; many of its machines are old, parts are scarce, and wear shows every time someone slams a joystick or a CRT monitor ages out. In a December 2023 profile by WTTW News, Doc Mack admitted that one of the biggest ongoing challenges is repair work. He said he still loves fixing machines himself; he has a master technician, Doug Fox, who has decades of experience, and together they face board failures, monitor issues, joystick breakdowns and structural wear. WTTW Chicago News

Each morning the workshop hums to life early. Machines from the floor that couldn’t survive the night, control panels busted, buttons sent into misalignment, wood tops scraped, are carried back, opened up, diagnosed. If boards are failing, sometimes donor machines are cannibalized. If plastics or wood are broken, the in-house wood shop and graphic-arts team re-fabricate parts, match art, remake marquees, touch up side artwork. Mack has said that much of this work can’t be outsourced because the expertise is so specialized and because many original parts no longer exist in any form.

Often machines die quietly: a monitor that dims, a sound channel that cuts in and out, wiring that frays. Sometimes they die dramatically: an arcade fight carried too far, someone hitting a panel so hard a joystick cross-shifts. In interviews Mack has described days when ten machines go down at once. Some days the fix is quick; other days a cabinet will sit in the workshop for weeks while parts are hunted, boards cleaned, controls rebuilt. SXU Student Media. 

Maintenance is more than emergency repair. It is part of the identity of the Ghost. In WTTW’s storytelling, the physical space, the smell of cabinet wax and solder, the glow of CRTs powering on, these are not incidental. They are part of what brings people back. Visitors often remark that they hear the hum of machines before they see the lights, that a dim screen warming up is as thrilling as a marquee lit. The tactile feel of working joysticks, the slight resistance, the crisp sound of buttons registering, that’s cared for here. The patience in making sure art is authentic, that cabinet sides are correctly painted, not just slapped with decals, adds to the sense this is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, but preserving craftsmanship.

Mack told the Eagle 102.3 that expansion (including additional space) is needed not only for showing more machines but for housing the work of fixing them. Storage, parts fabrication, print work, woodwork, electronics, these are all happening on site or very close by. Eagle 102.3

What stands out most is that the Ghost does not hide its repair work. It is visible, part of the performance. The announcements of when a rare prototype has been restored, or when a beloved machine that had been broken for months returns to the floor, are shared widely. The community knows when a board has been resoldered, when capacitors replaced, when new wiring is fitted. It’s not just that they fix things: they celebrate the fixes. It adds to the sense of ongoing renewal: that every time a machine is “out of order” is a chance to bring it back better.

Scores, Tournaments, and the Stream

If the glow of the cabinets gives Galloping Ghost its atmosphere, the scoreboard gives it its heartbeat. Lining the walls near the entrance, the high score board is more than a piece of wood and marker ink. It is a living document of competition. Every time a visitor sets a new record it goes up in plain view, a reminder that every run matters. For decades, high scores were scraps of paper taped to monitors or forgotten initials in EEPROMs. At the Ghost they are public, celebrated, and constantly challenged. The arcade also partners with groups like Aurcade, an independent score-tracking service, to log verified results that go beyond the building itself (Aurcade scoreboard for Galloping Ghost). Visitors have described the feeling of seeing their name written on the board alongside legends as one of the most powerful draws of the space. It is not just about play. It is about leaving a trace that becomes part of the arcade’s history.

The spirit of competition carries into organized events. The most famous of these is the T20 Tournament, a multi-day high score gauntlet where players from across the country descend on Brookfield to test themselves against twenty titles chosen for difficulty and variety. Unlike single-game tournaments, the T20 demands endurance, adaptability, and a wide knowledge of arcade history. Coverage from outlets such as GemuBaka has praised the T20 as “one of the more interesting – and challenging – competitions around.” GemuBaka. In addition to the T20, the arcade hosts Developer Days, where original creators of classic titles come to meet fans and share stories, and themed events such as Sega Week, where entire rows of cabinets are spotlighted in celebration of a publisher’s legacy.

Then there is the digital presence. Galloping Ghost was quick to understand that its influence could extend beyond Brookfield. The arcade streams regularly on Twitch, with the Monday Mystery Game reveal becoming a kind of ritual broadcast. Every week fans around the world tune in to see the shrouded cabinet, to guess what might be unveiled, and to share in the moment when the marquee lights up for the first time (Galloping Ghost Twitch channel). These streams often lead to broader conversations about the history of the revealed title, preservation stories, or technical breakdowns of how the machine was restored. The arcade’s YouTube channel also archives these moments, allowing even those who cannot make the pilgrimage to Illinois to feel part of the family,

For many, this blending of the old and the new is the secret to Galloping Ghost’s endurance. In the eighties, arcades were local hubs, bound to a single mall or bowling alley. Today, Galloping Ghost is still fiercely local, a storefront in a Chicago suburb. Yet it is also global, its scoreboard linked to international records, its tournaments drawing players from across the country, its streams watched worldwide. That combination makes it one of the rare places where the culture of the arcade has not only been preserved but reimagined for the present. To walk in is to feel the nostalgia of chasing high scores on glowing CRTs. To log in online is to feel the thrill of being part of a living community that stretches far beyond Brookfield.

Across the street from the main arcade sits Galloping Ghost Pinball, which opened in 2019 as a dedicated sanctuary for silverball fans. With more than fifty machines ranging from electromechanical classics of the 1970s to modern Stern releases, the venue mirrors the philosophy of the main arcade: one admission covers unlimited play, and every machine is kept in working condition. Local press noted that this expansion was partly born from necessity, pinball required a quieter, more focused environment than the already packed main halls could provide. Visitors describe it as both complement and counterpoint: where the main arcade is a riot of sound and glowing CRTs, the pinball hall is tactile, mechanical, and rhythmic, a place where the timeless clang of bumpers and the snap of flippers stand as another testament to the Ghost’s mission of keeping every branch of arcade history alive.

Galloping Ghost – A Living Legacy

When you walk in at Galloping Ghost Arcade, the past is all around you, not only in the games themselves but in the glow of marquees, the hum of warming CRTs, and the familiar resistance of an old joystick in your hand. The space does not simply display arcade history, it lets you inhabit it. More than 900 machines sit under one roof, all set to free play every day of the year (Oak Park and Beyond). For many visitors that first chime of a start button, or the sight of two strangers leaning over Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, feels like coming home. It is nostalgia not as memory but as present reality, and it lives here.

The wonder of the Ghost is not only in the familiar titles but in the discoveries. The arcade is filled with rare prototypes, short-run cabinets, and games thought lost to time. The tradition of Monday Mystery Game ensures that every week the collection grows, unveiling something new with the excitement of a curtain pull. This rhythm prevents the space from feeling like a static museum. Instead it breathes with surprise, joy, and the sense that something magical might appear at any moment.

Galloping Ghost matters because it restores the true purpose of the arcade: to bring people together, to share discovery, to cheer when a score falls or a game comes back to life after repair. It is not only an archive of machines, it is a gathering of people, and its future is written in every laugh, every button press, and every memory made in its halls.