# Doc Mack - Pinball Expo 2018 - Pinball News

**Source:** Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2018)  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2018-10-21  
**Duration:** 39m 58s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68g58mH8x0c

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## Analysis

Doc Mack presents the history and philosophy of Galloping Ghost Arcade at Pinball Expo 2018, detailing its growth from 140 machines in 2010 to 667 machines as the world's largest arcade. He discusses the free-play model's impact on player psychology, efforts to preserve and celebrate classic arcade game creators, and announces expansion plans including a dedicated pinball building with 25-40 machines opening soon.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Galloping Ghost Arcade is currently the largest arcade in the world with 667 machines — _We're the largest arcade in the world now, which has been a lot of growth over the last few years._
- [HIGH] Galloping Ghost has helped approximately 27 arcades open since 2010 and is in talks with about 175 other arcades interested in opening — _Currently, we've helped about 27 arcades open since we opened. and right now we're talking with about 175 other arcades worldwide that are interested in opening an arcade._
- [HIGH] Galloping Ghost pulls about 80,000 people annually and was profitable after eight months of opening — _Now we pull about 80,000 people a year to the arcade... We were profitable after about eight months._
- [HIGH] Specter Files, an unfinished 1984 laserdisc game by Brian Cullen, has been completed and released at Galloping Ghost — _We have Specter Files, The Deathstalkers, unfinished game from 1984 that's now been completed. and we've had it on the arcade floor. We put it out last Halloween and the response to it has just been tremendous_
- [HIGH] Galloping Ghost operates a Monday Mystery program unveiling a new game every Monday at 5 p.m. for nearly three years — _We do a new game every Monday at 5 p.m. We've done that for going on three years now. It's always a surprise._
- [HIGH] Galloping Ghost is expanding into a fourth building with capacity for approximately 200-220 additional games — _We just knocked down the wall into our fourth building... we should have room for about 200 and around 220 more games in that new building_
- [HIGH] Galloping Ghost owns at least 200 machines that are exclusive to their arcade according to Orcade.com tracker — _there's an arcade tracker called Orcade.com... there's definitely a lot of unique games there... I would say at least 200 machines that we're the only arcade that has them worldwide_
- [HIGH] A player broke a world record in 2011 on an arcade game that stood since 1984; by 2016, nine Galloping Ghost regulars had eclipsed that 1984 record — _one player broke a world record that stood since 1984. But when all of them went back to it in 2016, like nine of our guys had elipsed what was the world record in 84._

### Notable Quotes

> "We're the largest arcade in the world now, which has been a lot of growth over the last few years."
> — **Doc Mack**, ~0:45
> _Core positioning statement of Galloping Ghost's market dominance_

> "It is honestly so far from that. It is just a tremendous amount of work. For me, it's seven days a week, and I wouldn't change a minute of it."
> — **Doc Mack**, ~3:30
> _Personal commitment philosophy to arcade operations_

> "I remember talking with Larry DeMar, and the first time he had come in, and he was like, oh, you seem really passionate about this, but I just don't see this working. I don't think that people are going to keep coming here. And it was a crushing thing."
> — **Doc Mack**, ~4:45
> _Industry skepticism about arcade viability pre-opening; early validation concern_

> "The free play model... changes the psychology of it in the fact that you can play anything. And if you don't like it, you walk away and you've not lost anything."
> — **Doc Mack**, ~16:30
> _Core business model differentiation that enabled Galloping Ghost's success_

> "One of the most satisfying things for me is to promote the industry people and finally make them household names after all these years for their creations"
> — **Doc Mack**, ~8:15
> _Mission statement around creator recognition and arcade preservation_

> "The pins get played nonstop. One will go down, and then it just kind of collapses on itself."
> — **Doc Mack**, ~25:00
> _Explains rationale for dedicated pinball building expansion_

> "We've decided to open our own Galloping Ghost pinball building, which will be two blocks east of the actual arcade."
> — **Doc Mack**, ~25:30
> _Official announcement of major pinball expansion initiative_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Doc Mack | person | Founder and operator of Galloping Ghost Arcade; primary speaker discussing arcade operations, philosophy, and pinball expansion |
| Galloping Ghost Arcade | company | World's largest arcade with 667 machines as of 2018; operates Monday Mystery program; expanding into dedicated pinball facility |
| Galloping Ghost Productions | company | Arcade game production company partnered with Galloping Ghost Arcade; also operates Galloping Ghost Reproductions for arcade/pinball artwork preservation and reproduction |
| Brian Cullen | person | Classic arcade game artist who worked on Rampage art, Spy Hunter, Xenophobe, Arch Rivals, Pigskin; created Specter Files (1984, now completed) |
| Jeff Lee | person | Creator of Q-Bert; collaborated with Galloping Ghost on completing Argus and Arena arcade games with new artwork |
| Larry DeMar | person | Legendary arcade game designer; expressed skepticism to Doc Mack about viability of Galloping Ghost Arcade model pre-opening |
| Specter Files, The Deathstalkers | game | 1984 cancelled laserdisc game by Brian Cullen; prototype rediscovered, completed, and released at Galloping Ghost; received on Halloween |
| RC Squared | game | One-of-one arcade prototype donated by Brian Cullen to Galloping Ghost |
| Arena | game | Gottlieb arcade game; completed and restored with new artwork by Jeff Lee through collaboration with Galloping Ghost |
| Argus | game | Arcade game completed and restored with new artwork by Jeff Lee through collaboration with Galloping Ghost |
| Uchiyu Daisuke-san Choco Vader Contactee | game | 2002 Namco puzzle game discovered by Doc Mack; acquired multiple boards and distributed to various arcades; developed niche fanbase |
| Pinball Expo | event | Annual pinball industry event where Doc Mack presented; Galloping Ghost hosting 10-game tournament championship on Saturday with belt prize |
| Orcade.com | company | Arcade tracker database purchased by Galloping Ghost over a year prior to presentation; tracks machine locations worldwide |
| Mortal Kombat | game | Multiple machines at Galloping Ghost; subject of annual 'Shang Tsung's Fight Night' event with original movie actors |
| Level 257 | company | Namco-affiliated arcade in Schaumburg; exec mentioned by Doc Mack in context of Uchiyu game discovery |
| Rob Burke | person | Referenced as present at Pinball Expo; presumed to be running Pinball Expo and involved in tournament organization |
| Williams | company | Classic arcade/pinball manufacturer; Galloping Ghost maintains dedicated 'Williams row' of machines |
| Gottlieb | company | Classic arcade/pinball manufacturer; Arena is example of Gottlieb game in Galloping Ghost collection |
| Castlevania | game | Recent arcade game by Konami at Galloping Ghost as of 2018 |
| Metal Gear Solid | game | Recent arcade game at Galloping Ghost as of 2018 |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Arcade preservation and restoration, Free-play arcade business model, Creator/artist recognition in arcade industry, Galloping Ghost Arcade expansion, Pinball building announcement and strategy
- **Secondary:** Arcade machine acquisition and curation, Monday Mystery game unveiling program, Arcade community building and player engagement

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.92) — Doc Mack expresses passionate enthusiasm for arcade preservation, creator recognition, and community building. Optimistic about arcade resurgence and pinball expansion. Minor note of frustration about pinball maintenance challenges, but framed constructively as rationale for expansion.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Pinball machines at Galloping Ghost experiencing high utilization stress; machines breaking down in cascade failure due to constant play, forcing reduction from 9 to 4 machines and necessitating separate dedicated facility (confidence: high) — The pins get played nonstop. One will go down, and then it just kind of collapses on itself... About two months ago, we were down having four pins on the arcade floor.
- **[business_signal]** Galloping Ghost declines second location expansion despite requests from California/New York markets; prioritizes maintaining focus on original location and helping other operators open arcades instead (confidence: high) — They definitely wouldn't... I don't feel this one's done yet. So until then, we'll probably stay where we are. And then again, continue to help all these other arcades open.
- **[business_signal]** Galloping Ghost operates unique arcade game discovery/curation model; purchased Orcade.com tracker database to identify and acquire exclusive machines; owns at least 200 machines unavailable elsewhere (confidence: high) — there's an arcade tracker called Orcade.com and we purchased them about, going a little over a year ago now. We've got about four, well I would say at least 200 machines that we're the only arcade that has them worldwide
- **[business_signal]** Galloping Ghost expanding main arcade to fourth building with 200-220 additional machine capacity; plans for potential second floor and additional expansions (confidence: high) — We just knocked down the wall into our fourth building... we should have room for about 200 and around 220 more games in that new building. So we be creeping up on a thousand probably won make it with this expansion but there is two more there technically four more expansions that we can do in that building.
- **[business_signal]** Galloping Ghost Arcade expanding from shared arcade space to dedicated pinball building with 25-40 machines in separate location, indicating specialized market segment growth and operational separation strategy (confidence: high) — We've decided to open our own Galloping Ghost pinball building, which will be two blocks east of the actual arcade... We probably open with about 25 to 30 machines. That building can, we hope to have around 40 fairly quickly.
- **[community_signal]** Galloping Ghost hosting 10-game pinball tournament at Pinball Expo 2018 with championship belt and prizes; integrating into existing Pinball Expo event infrastructure (confidence: high) — we're running on Saturday the Pinball Expo Tournament Championship, where it's going to be starting at 10 a.m. and going until 6, and the winner will be receiving this belt
- **[community_signal]** Galloping Ghost leveraging Monday Mystery game reveal program (ongoing 3+ years) as community engagement and repeat visitation driver; live streamed on Twitch and Facebook (confidence: high) — We do a new game every Monday at 5 p.m. We've done that for going on three years now. It's always a surprise. We have a live stream on Twitch and our Facebook channel.
- **[community_signal]** Galloping Ghost has created Galloping Ghost Reproductions subsidiary focused on meticulous preservation of arcade/pinball artwork through color-accurate scanning and restoration, enabling recreation of damaged boards (confidence: high) — We recently opened up Galloping Ghost Reproductions, which focuses on reproducing arcade and pinball artwork. So we meticulously scan everything and get all the exact color values and make sure that the game is as preserved as possible.
- **[design_philosophy]** Galloping Ghost employs intentional game layout strategy to drive player discovery; deliberately separates similar games and uses staff engagement to guide players toward rare/lesser-known titles rather than optimizing for convenience (confidence: high) — we don't really have BurgerTime and SuperBurgerTime side by side. And the reason is so we can go talk to people and be like, you see somebody playing BurgerTime... and then you get to take a walk with them and pass other games and point them out
- **[market_signal]** Arcade industry resurgence and operator interest: Galloping Ghost has helped 27 arcades open and is in conversations with 175 additional arcades interested in opening, indicating sustained industry growth post-2010 (confidence: high) — Currently, we've helped about 27 arcades open since we opened. and right now we're talking with about 175 other arcades worldwide that are interested in opening an arcade.
- **[technology_signal]** Modern arcade games increasingly server-dependent and license-controlled; games disappear when publishers end server support, limiting preservation viability for newer titles (confidence: high) — The games in Japan right now have become a little problematic because so many of them are server-based. And if you can't connect to the server, you don't get to play the game... when the company doesn't want you to have it anymore, they pull it back and it's just gone

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## Transcript

 Thanks, Rob. Thanks, everybody, for being here today. It's been really awesome being a part of Pinball Expo. The pinball side of it is something that we've tried since the when we opened, we tried it, and it was very difficult for us. And we've mostly focused on the video game side. We opened the arcade back in 2010, August 13th. And it's been, since we opened, we opened with 140 machines. And now we've grown to have currently 667 machines. We're the largest arcade in the world now, which has been a lot of growth over the last few years. Back in 2010, when we opened, pretty much the only time you heard about arcades were when they were closing. And what really inspired us to open the arcade was we would go to other venues and look at their arcade machines. And so many of them were in just disrepair. And back initially, we opened with Galloping Ghost Productions, which had focused on making video games, and the thought was to make games for the arcade. And it really forced us to look at the arcade industry in a very different way than I think most places were looking at it. I think a lot of the arcades at the time were very complacent and just kind of doing their thing, opening, having their machines on. Most of the places that we went to, their machines were just in bad disrepair. Even offering to fix them, nobody really wanted them fixed. And it was really unfortunate as myself, I lived in arcades growing up. There were so many great games and it was, every trip to the arcade was memorable and special. And looking back on it now, it was all stuff that I took in and used it to make what would eventually become the Galloping Ghost Arcade. Ghost Arcade. Since in the last few years and even early on, there was a tremendous interest in people seeing what we were doing and it quickly turned into almost like a resurgence of the arcade scene. Like it had always been there, but there's a lot of people, even after the first year, we started to see people who were like, wow, that's really cool. You're doing it at a large scale level with 140 machines. And maybe I could open an arcade too. And that's been one of the big things that's been so satisfying about opening the arcade is helping other arcades open. Currently, we've helped about 27 arcades open since we opened. and right now we're talking with about 175 other arcades worldwide that are interested in opening an arcade. And, well, when we opened, it was just kind of a, as we went along, like we were making a lot of this stuff up, and fortunately we made a lot of smart and right decisions that has allowed us to keep growing and become what we are. It's been so tremendous to see players travel in from all over the world. Australia, Japan, China, Germany. Like, to get people to travel to come play arcade games is just, it's an unbelievable feeling. It's something that we never went into it expecting that to be a part of it. of it, but it's definitely been one of the most satisfying things to see. We've had, just to be able to watch from all aspects that we have, like we do so many events at the arcade and so many of them involve industry people. I remember the first time we had the the actors from Mortal Kombat to the arcade, and the first time we had Jeff Lee to the arcade, the creator of Q-Bert. And that, letting players see the industry people and help generate a deeper interest in not just the games themselves, but the people that worked on them. And the way that people have reacted to it has just been unbelievable, which is one of the main reasons why we love going to shows like this, is that you get to meet so many tremendous people that are just as passionate as can be about arcade gaming and pinball, and it's just such an amazing community. Making it all work, of the places that we've helped open, we've seen so many open and close, and even with giving our insight, some people just think it's going to be an easy walk in the park, just put some arcade machines, some pinball machines on the floor. invite people in and that's it. And it is honestly so far from that. It is just a tremendous amount of work. For me, it's seven days a week, and I wouldn't change a minute of it. I love being at the arcade. I love fixing machines, bringing them back to life. So it's just an absolutely tremendous feeling to be able to take a game that people have never, in most cases, a lot of them, people have never even seen or heard of before and present them in a way that everybody, they do. They travel from all over to come and enjoy them. So one of the things we definitely wanted to put out there is that we've had entire panels like this where we talk about how to open an arcade, what you do behind it, and the marketing of it, and what games you should be looking for. And it's definitely not what most people think it is. Most people think you go right for the classics and the staples and the stuff everybody knows. And those are the stuff, there's so many different ways to look at it. And there really is no right or wrong way, but you do kind of see some key things that work better than others. For us, we had a little bit of everything and it really was geared towards the hardcore player. So many arcades look at it and they decide, oh, I want to be a place for kids and they go with redemption games and a mix of video games and redemption or they want to go with an older crowd and have alcohol. And for us, we always looked at it as the casual player and the hardcore player. and the casual player, there's an abundance of them. They're everywhere. Everybody will play video games, but we wanted to go after people that would travel, the people that were just so in love with these games that they would jump on a plane and fly from halfway around the world. And talking with so many people that actually operated arcades and the people who designed these games and everything, It was such a, we were told out of the box, like, oh, this is not going to work, not in today's day and age. And most people were giving us only a few months. I remember talking with Larry DeMar, and the first time he had come in, and he was like, oh, you seem really passionate about this, but I just don't see this working. I don't think that people are going to keep coming here. And it was a crushing thing. Like, Larry had worked on so many amazing games, and it was kind of, to me, that was the one time I was like, wow, would this ever not work? And I was confident that it would because I knew how I couldn't find any place to play arcade games. So I thought there's got to be other people like me that they're going to just love this. They're going to eat it up. And it turned out to be, it worked. We opened, again, back when we opened, we were successful right out of the box. We were profitable after about eight months. Now we pull about 80,000 people a year to the arcade. And with every expansion, it just keeps growing and growing. And, again, it's so much attributed to the passion of the people that love these games. And at the Galloping Ghost Arcade, because we look at it from the hardcore standpoint, and with that, that brings taking players into account and taking what the players' desires and wants and needs are at such a high level, and the industry people and wanting to show off and give the history of it. We've really grown into the position of where we kind of usher people through the journey of arcade gaming. And it's really kind of the total package. And that the one big difference I think between us and so many of the other arcades is that it still like every game is important Every player is important Every developer is important and to showcase that at a high level is what has really made it successful and continue to grow. Within the arcade also I have just a rabid compulsion and should probably go get some psychological help for my collecting addiction, which everybody seems to, I hide it amongst it's a business, but it in itself continuously putting new games on the arcade floor has been such a tremendous draw to get people to come out and see the newest games. And as people have found out about us and decided, so many people within in the community have tried to help us grow. Again, especially industry people. Getting creators to come in and work on projects that people never even got to see. Most recently, with Galloping Ghost Productions, we teamed up with Brian Cullen, who was the guy behind Rampage, and he did the art for Spy Hunter and Xenophobe, Arch Rivals, Pigskin. He worked on all these great games. and he had worked on a game back in 1984 and it was supposed to be a Laserdisc game and it was they had filmed it it was supposed to be a B-horror movie spoof a lot of tongue-in-cheek jokes a lot of puns and they filmed it all and then promptly cancelled his game due to another project that didn't go over so well and they were like this is never going to earn us money so they scrapped the game. We were able to, we had Brian out for an event, and he just started talking about this game called Specter Files. And I just could not believe what I was hearing. He showed me a video online of the trailer that he had made 15 years ago for it with this lost title. And it looked like a really interesting game, and the collector side of me was like, wow, what if it's unfortunate that nobody ever got to play this? So I really kept pushing him and being like, what do you remember about this game? And after 20-some years, it's 1984, so longer than that, he didn't remember much. And one day it was like, after talking about bringing it up four or five times to him, And he's like, you know, I might have the video, the 16mm film still somewhere. And I'm like, well, what if we do this? If you find that, we'll team up with Galpin Ghost Productions and we'll finish this game after 30 plus years. And not really thinking about it, he was like, yeah, sure. And a couple of weeks later, I get a phone call and he's like, you know, I was out in the garage and I actually found that video. And he's like, I don't know if it's tins, it's all these tins of 16mm film. I don't know if it's any good, but we can go have it looked at. And we just progressed with it. And after about eight months, everything lined up. And now we actually have it here. We have Specter Files, The Deathstalkers, unfinished game from 1984 that's now been completed. and we've had it on the arcade floor. We put it out last Halloween and the response to it has just been tremendous and it was a game, back in the day, it never would have earned money and it might have been well received because it's funny. You can see Brian's humor throughout the game but the average game would take 15 minutes to play so it definitely wouldn't have earned and it never would have been greenlit back then. But it's just one of those things that it's a tremendous feeling to be able to bring a game from one of these legendary creators and put it out in front of people and then be able to turn around and show that creator that what they did so long ago still has tremendous value. And that's happened with so many games. Brian has donated RC Squared, which was another one-of-one prototype, an international team laser, also a one-of-one prototype. We've been very fortunate enough to work with Jeff Lee on several games, Argus and Arena, and he helped us complete those games and created new artwork for the cabinets. And it's always been, to me, from the production side, working with Galpin Ghost Productions, these guys are just legends within this industry. And it's been so unfortunate. More people don't recognize them and give them the just-do credit. Back when these games were coming out, they were such a valued commodity that they wouldn't even let their... the developers wouldn't even let them put their names on the game for fear that other teams would steal their artists or programmers away. So many of the credit, like nobody knew who worked on these games, and that was kind of like this industry secret thing. And the detrimental thing is it kept the artists from ever really getting their just due accolades. And that's one of the most satisfying things for me is to promote the industry people and finally make them household names after all these years for their creations that 30 years ago, all of us here had been playing these games and enjoying them and getting, that's what most of us did. And 30 years later, I see those same people bringing their kids into the arcade and perpetuating the whole cycle. and these games really are timeless and it's great to see the artists and creators finally get the accolades and I hope that that continues and that's definitely some of the favorite and most memorable events for me because obviously as a guy who works from the production side it's always been, why aren't these people known? And it's so instantaneous when we've done these events. And for us, we all know these guys. So it's like, oh, here's Jeff Lee. And people are like, oh, who? He's the artist on Q-Bert. He created Q-Bert. And then John Youssi it, just the smile on those people's faces. It's like, wow. And it's the same thing every time. It's funny. It's like, wow, I spent so much money playing your game. And it's like, it's always been that missing piece. And it's amazing and it's such a great thing, again, with shows like this at Pinball Expo, to have those people here and sharing their stories. And it's just that forgotten side. So when you do see those people here, please make sure that they get the deserved gratitude because they've made the whole industry, both video and pinball side. Actually, I think we would open it up. Are there any questions about anything? Yep. We have about 270 video games in storage right now. That number is, it goes up every week. I was trying to keep it balanced at about having 200 in the vaults. And the goal was to put a game on the floor every Monday. And that should have kept everything right at the 200 and back up for whenever we were able to expand. And that is, we've never been able to really keep up with being at 200. So we do a new game every Monday at 5 p.m. We've done that for going on three years now. It's always a surprise. We don't tell anybody what it's going to be. We have a live stream on Twitch and our Facebook channel, so definitely if you're interested, tune in and join us. We always try to put out something really special and unique. There's players that turn out every week for it, so after the unveiling we get to watch a direct stream video of the actual game and see some great players play some really cool, rare games. We've actually, and one of the big things that we want to announce, is we are expanding right now. We just knocked down the wall into our fourth building. this will be our largest expansion to date over the last few months we've had to pull as we were putting new games on the floor for monday mystery we've had to pull a few off so there's about 30 or 40 machines off the floor right now and those will all be coming back with the expansion we should have room for about 200 and around 220 more games in that new building So we be creeping up on a thousand probably won make it with this expansion but there is two more there technically four more expansions that we can do in that building We'll have the entire block, which we would probably, as we get them, we'll fill it pretty quickly. We've already been in talks about putting on a second floor. And at that point, we should be all right, I would hope. It's definitely getting harder and harder to find games to purchase just because there's so many that we have in storage. And so we should be good for a while and very excited for the new expansion. And if we're going to be making a big event out of that, it'll definitely be... We have a big Mortal Kombat event called Shang Tsung's Fight Night where we have a lot of the actors from the original three Mortal Kombat games coming out. So we definitely want to invite everybody to that. They'll be signing autographs and taking pictures. That's our annual event that we run. It will be in the expansion area, all the signings and everything. And then once that's done, we'll do our readjustment of the arcade floor. We want to make it a little bit more comfortable for everybody. So everything is going to get switched around and make a little bit more space within the aisles and everything. But we have thought about doing second locations before. It would be difficult. For us, we always want to outdo ourselves, and it would be difficult to outdo that collection of games. We've had requests, open one in California, open one in New York. work. That would be cool, but I don't feel this one's done yet. So until then, we'll probably stay where we are. And then again, continue to help all these other arcades open. So, but it is something we think about. They definitely wouldn't. There is, there's probably around 20 one of one games. We've got, there's an arcade tracker called Orcade.com and we purchased them about, going a little over a year ago now. We've got about four, well I would say at least 200 machines that we're the only arcade that has them worldwide that's according to this tracker. And we've tried to be pretty thorough. Obviously, there's arcades that don't list their machines, but there's definitely a lot of unique games there. And that's just been from importing games from Japan and, again, talking to the developers and everything. So it would be hard to replicate, but it, eventually, it might be fun to try. Yeah. Well, in the preservation of them, it's, that in itself is a, we get calls about that all the time. So many of the people want them, like the game's uploaded to MAME, and it's like so everybody can play them everywhere. And a lot of that isn't when we get the games. We usually leave that up to the source that we get them from. We make sure that everything is preserved. We recently opened up Galloping Ghost Reproductions, which focuses on reproducing arcade and pinball artwork. So we meticulously scan everything and get all the exact color values and make sure that the game is as preserved as possible. Stuff like backing up the ROMs and everything, that's simple enough to do. Depending on the game itself, like the game Arena, an amazing Gottlieb game. While the ROMs are specific, the board is a pretty much standard Gottlieb board. So once the ROMs have been preserved, even if that board was damaged, we could recreate it. So preservation is definitely very important. Not necessarily as much as making it publicly playable, which we have done, but like it's, preservation is key and just because we never know what is going to happen to any of these boards. So it's self-preservation as well as we want to keep them available to everybody to enjoy at the arcade. Thank you. Honestly, no. There's several machines that have not changed their location in eight years. It's, we do occasionally, like with Monday Misters, it's pretty much due to the layout at this point is just wherever this game can go, that's where it's going. we like to group stuff by like we have an amazing Williams row I'm very proud of our Williams row we've got all of our Mortal Kombat games grouped together and there's it's really the layout for us it doesn't matter as much where they are as it allows us to have customer like the player engagement is so important because they know the games that they're looking for. And, like, somebody might be on BurgerTime, and currently we don't have BurgerTime and SuperBurgerTime side by side. And the reason is so we can go talk to people and be like, John Youssi somebody playing BurgerTime, you go up to them and you're like, hey, you've been on this for a bit. Do you know that there's a SuperBurgerTime? And then you get to take a walk with them and pass other games and point them out because there's so many games that most of these people have never played. And one of the big things that I looked at when we were opening is why I played the games that I played. And it was never really about, like, there was the initial draw to a game. Like, Double Dragon, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, I would play them every time. And because I was paying with quarters, that was what made me, if there's a new game, even if I was interested in playing it, I wanted to play stuff that I knew I liked. And that's what the free play model, back when we were opening, there weren't any free play arcades. It was like that was what made it, hey, this is going to change things. This is going to make it so that it's not about dropping the quarter anymore. it changes the psychology of it in the fact that you can play anything. And if you don't like it, you walk away and you've not lost anything. And there's still so many people. I feel so bad. Like the games that we consider casual games, like Drivers and Lycan games, that section, we call it the casual section, and it's where everybody is there. Like everybody's playing. And so going back there and telling people like, oh, you know, this is a one-of-one game. You should come over and check this out. That's been the big secret. It's like when another thing I looked at when I went to an arcade growing up, I never talked to anyone in the decades that I was going. I never talked to an arcade employee. They never had any interaction with me. and it was like wow that's a big shame because there's so many amazing stories behind each one and that's what can change the casual player into a like the hardcore player and we've we've seen it happen so many times especially with uh scoring on games uh John Youssi somebody who's uh just playing a game and they're they're good at it and it's like oh yeah you know you're on on arcade as it it grew it turned into a scoring house as well so it was like wow you're you'd be in eighth place if you submit the score and you explain the whole thing to them and in that they get hooked on it and they like, wow, I bet I can get seven. And you can, the most interesting thing has been taking games that nobody has ever heard of. For example, there's a game, I saw it on auction in Japan and it was and it was called Yuchuyu Daisuko Choco Vader Contactee And it this weird mini puzzle game like just a bunch of small games that you play And it had really interesting artwork kind of like a 50 style to it And it was all about like aliens and just these weird cool mini games. And I was like 10 bucks. I'll try it for 10 bucks. Had it shipped in, played it, and I was like, wow, this is absolutely amazing. It's made in 2002 by Namco. So at that time, the executive vice president of Namco, he was opening up level 257 out in Schaumburg. And I started talking to him about it. And he was like, oh, I've never even heard of that game. I'm like, really? It's really awesome. And he's like, you should have one here at 257. I wouldn't even, I don't have one and I don't know where I would even get one. It would have to be brought in from Japan. So I went back and I'm like, man, I was like, everybody should be playing this game. We ran it in a tournament. There was these people from Canada that just absolutely loved it. And they came back after the tournament just to play this game. And I was like, wow, this is something that, how cool is that, that people are getting in this game. It's been out for 15 years and nobody's ever seen it or heard of it. So I went online and I found the guy had like 10 more boards for $10 each. So I bought them all. And I gave one to Namco. I gave one to this guy from Canada. I gave one to Underground. I gave him all these arcades. And now there's like 10 arcades that have Uchiyu, Daisuke-san, Choco-Vita, Contact-E on it. And it has this weird fan base that people see it and it's It's hidden off in the back corner, but we get people that come in and they're asking for it. And it's like, wow, that's awesome that you can take a game and make it have relevance and presence 15 years after it came out. And put it in front of the people and make it interesting to them and they'll play it. So it's like, getting back to the, I'm sorry for my long roundabout answering the question. And it's like, to us, the location of the games is less important because we want to be taking them where we want to be taking them. There are some times where, again, space, we don't, there's, the space is dictated that we don't have every game where we want it out of it all making sense. But with the expansion, we should be able to reorganize quite a bit and get everything displayed better than it's ever been. So we're very excited for that. It's, we have our regulars, it's been surprising how much they actually enjoy it because they go back looking for the game that they know where it's at and they go and it's like, oh, yeah, I wanted to play this game too. And it's the same thing. They end up asking where it is sometimes, especially with most of the regulars are all there on Monday, and they play whatever the last game was, and they play the new game. So it's astonishing how quickly they want to know where it is, and they'll go to it, and that puts them in a different section. So when they're collectively playing a game, they are playing the games around it too. Like the groups will come and be like, oh yeah, I haven't played this in a long time. With so many games, like our first world record was set in 2011. And it was actually a situation just like that that got some of our regulars back playing it in 2016. And the skill level of the players had increased so much. It went from back in 2011, one player broke a world record that stood since 1984. But when all of them went back to it in 2016, like nine of our guys had elipsed what was the world record in 84. So it, well, it can at times. They walk in and they're like, oh, you moved this. Where is it? it's never that much of an issue. And in most instances, it's a benefit to them. The newer arcade games that are coming out, we've definitely been, like, very... We get games in from Japan, boards at least, very regularly. The games in Japan right now have become a little problematic because so many of them are server-based. And if you can't connect to the server, you don't get to play the game. Most of the time now, the newer stuff is actually you download it to the server, and when the company doesn't want you to have it anymore, they pull it back and it's just gone, which is a very unfortunate thing. Currently, we've got our newest stuff, our newest games, Castlevania, the arcade game, which great game from Konami, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and Left 4 Dead, which came out in 2014. So we do like getting some of the newer stuff. There are great games coming out from like Raw Thrills and Play Mechanics still. Because those are so prevalent at other, like Dave and Buster's and places like that, they don't, we don't really have them in our place yet. Also due to cost. Like the costs are so high. But it doesn't mean that eventually we wouldn't acquire them and have them as part of the arcade floor. Oh, was that John's Arcade? I believe so. We do a walk-around video, and I remember our first walk-around video was about half an hour long, And everybody's like, wow, that's a long walk-around video. Thank you. Our last full walk-around video was about, it was like over two hours. And after this next expansion, it'll probably be a three and a half hour. And I prattle on and on about this stuff. So it's like each cabinet, I remember where I got it. So I love this stuff. And I understand that people fast forward through a lot of it. The future of pinball at Galloping Ghost is, and we have said we were going to be making a big pinball announcement. We had our most headed, about nine pins on the arcade floor at one time, and it was so problematic to keep pinball running. About two months ago, we were down having four pins on the arcade floor. And what would happen is so many people would come and play them. Our busiest Saturday that we've had, we've had 896 people in in a single day. So the pins get played nonstop. One will go down, and then it just kind of collapses on itself. So what we've decided to do is open our own Galloping Ghost pinball building, which will be two blocks east of the actual arcade. We hope to have that. We're going to open in a temporary location to start with and probably open with about 25 to 30 machines. That building can, we hope to have around 40 fairly quickly. But we've been pretty selective with what we've got, and we will be making on Monday, we're going to be showing and making the official announcement of what machines we have already and let everybody know what we're going to be getting as well. So, well, we might not be with the video game side where we are the largest arcade in the world and we might not be that with pinball, but we hope to be running a ton of really cool tournaments. We hope to have a lot of industry people out and do pretty much the same thing that we did with video games with pinball. So we thought this was an excellent place to officially announce it. Also, we've got about 60 arcade machines here, and we will be running on Saturday the Pinball Expo Tournament Championship, where it's going to be starting at 10 a.m. and going until 6, and the winner will be receiving this belt, and we'll have some other cool prizes as well. So I hope everybody who's interested comes and competes in the 10-game tournament. I assume Rob is here as we're running short on time. So thank you, everybody. If anybody has any other questions, thank you. Thank you very much.

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 83078de2-4c55-4cb1-a60b-f15d07e3b673*