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Thinking Big - The Visionaries - Pinball Expo 2024 - Rob Berk, Doc Mack, Dave Lawton, Mike Jacobson

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2024)·video·52m 10s·analyzed·Oct 18, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Four arcade visionaries share how passion and persistence built iconic pinball/arcade venues.

Summary

Pinball Expo 2024 panel features four arcade/pinball visionaries—Rob Burke (Pastimes Arcade), Dave Lawton (Fun Spot Arcade), Mike Jacobson (Bad Penny Pinball), and Doc Mack (Galloping Ghost Arcade)—sharing their origin stories and business philosophies. Each speaker describes how passion-driven collecting and operator ambitions evolved into iconic venues, with emphasis on community building, machine maintenance, and perseverance despite industry skepticism. The panel illustrates different pathways to arcade/pinball prominence: legacy collection-to-expo (Burke), family business evolution (Lawton), startup venue from collector enthusiasm (Jacobson), and arcade revival from gaming passion (Mack).

Key Claims

  • Rob Burke's Pastimes Arcade collection grew through strategic coupon ads in money-saver books, yielding high volume of sales calls and favorable pricing.

    high confidence · Rob Burke directly describes his coupon advertising strategy as novel at the time and effective in generating phone calls and deals.

  • Fun Spot Arcade has held the Guinness World Record as the largest arcade in the world since 2008.

    high confidence · Video segment and Dave Lawton confirmation: 'in 2008, Guinness World Records took note and officially named Fun Spot the largest arcade in the world, a record it continues to hold today.'

  • Galloping Ghost Arcade opened on August 13, 2010 with 130 machines and achieved profitability within eight months.

    high confidence · Doc Mack states: 'the arcade opened august 13 2010' and 'We were profitable after about eight months with the arcade.'

  • Doc Mack's Galloping Ghost has maintained a Monday Mystery Game tradition for nine consecutive years without missing a single Monday.

    high confidence · Doc Mack: 'in 2015, we started doing the Monday Mystery Game where we would add a new arcade game every Monday. Without fail, in nine years, we haven't missed a Monday.'

  • Bad Penny Pinball expanded from 26 machines at opening (July 2023) to 58 machines with room for four more.

    high confidence · Mike Jacobson: 'We've been open since July of 2023. We started out with 26 pinball machines and now we're up to 58.'

  • Legendary designer Larry DeMar told Doc Mack that opening a free-play arcade focused on video games and pinball was 'insane' and a 'failed business.'

    high confidence · Doc Mack recounts: 'industry people, including well-known people like Larry DeMar, were like, you're out of your mind... This is Larry DeMar who's made so many iconic video games. It was the knife in the chest.'

  • Galloping Ghost Reproductions was launched after Doc Mack acquired a printing company to support arcade artwork restoration and distribution.

    high confidence · Doc Mack: 'we were spending so much money on artwork we decided to buy the printing company next door to us and we opened up galloping ghost reproductions.'

Notable Quotes

  • “A visionary is someone who sees an opportunity when others don't. They don't just take chances on their dreams, they create them.”

    Panel Moderator@ 0:52 — Sets the thematic framework for the entire panel discussion on what defines a visionary in arcade/pinball business.

  • “I guess the vision I had as I kept growing and growing was to never stop. So it's really, it's a passion, whether it be me or Doc or anyone here on the panel, that it's a passion that got out of control.”

    Rob Burke@ 4:58 — Core philosophy uniting all panelists: passion-driven growth without predetermined endpoint.

  • “He was a very frugal man and a hardworking individual. He didn't sit behind a desk with his feet up smoking a cigar or something like you might think of a successful businessman's icon, but he really worked hard to build Fun Spot up.”

    Dave Lawton@ 15:17 — Characterizes the hands-on, operational ethos of the founder that continues to define Fun Spot.

  • “I love doing this stuff. I love having people play these games. I go for a lot of the rare titles and stuff that you can't find anyplace else. I just want to bring pinball joy to everybody who wants to come out and play it.”

    Mike Jacobson@ 22:50 — Articulates the core motivation for newer generation operator: community joy and rare game curation.

  • “industry people, including well-known people like Larry DeMar, were like, you're out of your mind. Nobody wants to play arcade games. Nobody wants to play pinball... That was so hard to hear. But I didn't think it was true.”

    Doc Mack@ 27:26 — Demonstrates how industry veterans' skepticism became motivation rather than obstacle; key turning point in Galloping Ghost origin.

Entities

Rob BurkepersonDoc MackpersonDave LawtonpersonMike JacobsonpersonBob LawtonpersonPastimes Arcadecompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Doc Mack established Galloping Ghost Reproductions printing company after discovering high arcade artwork spending; now serves broader restoration collector market.

    high · Doc Mack: 'we were spending so much money on artwork we decided to buy the printing company next door to us and we opened up galloping ghost reproductions.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Doc Mack expanded Galloping Ghost from 130 machines (opening) to 1000+ by opportunistically acquiring adjacent buildings as neighboring businesses closed.

    high · Doc Mack: 'Fortunately, the building that we got was five buildings long, although there was other businesses in those spots. So a business would go under, and we'd take over that spot and expand the arcade.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Galloping Ghost Arcade achieved profitability within 8 months of opening despite industry-wide skepticism from established designers like Larry DeMar, validating free-play arcade business model.

    high · Doc Mack: 'We were profitable after about eight months with the arcade' and industry reaction: 'Nobody wants to play arcade games. Nobody wants to play pinball.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Fun Spot's Pinball Outpost integrates Stern Army tournaments and New England Pinball League weekly play; positioned as community restoration of previously neglected collection.

    high · Dave Lawton: 'We're part of the Stern Army, and we also host New England Pinball League weekly tournaments during their seasons.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball player community demands for maintenance/perfection create operational pressure on operators; Doc Mack acknowledges pinball requires higher technical/aesthetic standards than video games.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.156

0:00
I'm so excited to be able to be a part of it. Okay, so today we have a panel of four visionaries that are going to be sharing some of their stories and insights on exactly what that means. So this is Thinking Big, the visionaries. And we have Rob Burke with Pastime Arcades. We have Doc Mack with Galloping Ghost. Next we have Dave Lawton with Fun Spot Arcade and we also have Mike Jacobson with Bad Penny Pinball. So one thing I kind of wanted to define when I was preparing for this as moderator was what exactly does it mean to be a visionary in the field of pinball? And these were my thoughts. A visionary is someone who sees an opportunity when others don't.
0:57
They don't just take chances on their dreams, they create them. Stepping out of their comfort zone becomes second nature as they see their vision come to life. This morning, we have an amazing lineup of visionaries who thought big and made their visions a reality. I'm going to ask each of our panelists today to share in about five minutes each what being a visionary means to them and a little bit about, you know, their biography and a little bit about them. So without further ado, why don't we start with Rob Burke of Pastimes Arcade.
1:44
Thank you, everybody. So I started playing pinball back in the early to mid-60s and enjoyed it. And the passion just kind of got out of control.
1:57
And then, you know, I saw Roger Sharp's book, and that kind of further fueled my interest in pinball. So I started collecting one and two and then started putting ads in replay magazines and PlayMeter and wanted to buy pinball machines. So I got several phone calls that were interesting. It was almost from a guy in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He had 200 games in his warehouse. So I flew down there and, you know, got pretty excited and decided to make a deal with him. And what's interesting is those games made it back to my business. We have a family business. I stored the games there. Wouldn't you know it, one month later we had a fire in that warehouse that burned about, I don't know, 20 or 30 games. but that was the beginning of it and then I got a phone call from Mark Fellman and he has a business in Omaha Nebraska and he says yeah I got I saw your ad I've got a lot of games I got 400 games for you know that will sell you so I went to see him but his price it was a little bit too high for me you know doc we're used to buying pinballs for 100 bucks each or 150 whatever he wanted 300 I said, man, your price is so high. At the time, $300 was like retail. He said, yeah, but where else can you go and find 400 different titles?

  • Doc Mack has helped just under 40 arcades open worldwide by sharing Galloping Ghost's business model and operational insights.

    high confidence · Doc Mack: 'Currently we've helped just under 40 arcades open worldwide, sharing our business model, sharing all the information, our numbers, showing how to build a community.'

  • “And seeing that line, that enthusiasm for these games, it was just such an unbelievable thing. I had people coming up to me saying oh I can't believe that this is going to be here we hope it works.”

    Doc Mack@ 28:51 — Validates Doc Mack's contrarian vision; shows immediate community response overwhelmed skeptics' predictions.

  • “It was all anybody talked about was they've got more games than anybody and are you going for that it's like no we're just we're going to be here tomorrow we're we're doing the next thing it's just open the arcade and see who's here.”

    Doc Mack@ 32:43 — Clarifies that growth was reactive to demand, not aspirational target-setting; contradicts the narrative of deliberate expansion.

  • “pinball you're shooting a pinball around it plastic it's gonna have problems and but we we try we try and it drives us to constant improvement.”

    Doc Mack@ 35:36 — Acknowledges the operational difficulty of maintaining pinball machines and how pinball community demands drive maintenance standards.

    • Galloping Ghost Arcade
    company
    Fun Spot Arcadecompany
    Bad Penny Pinballcompany
    Larry DeMarperson
    Ed Boomperson
    Chicago Pinball Expoevent
    American Classic Arcade Museumcompany
    Galloping Ghost Reproductionscompany
    The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quartersproduct
    Pinball Outpostproduct
    Stern Armyorganization
    New England Pinball Leagueorganization
    Xenonproduct

    high · Doc Mack: 'pinball players you guys pinball players push us so hard because your demand levels are way up there everything has to be perfect every light every flipper everything has to be great.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Doc Mack mentored approximately 40 arcade openings worldwide using Galloping Ghost's free-play business model and operational framework.

    high · Doc Mack: 'Currently we've helped just under 40 arcades open worldwide, sharing our business model, sharing all the information, our numbers.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Fun Spot Arcade's pinball collection faced reputational damage from poor maintenance; community complaints on Pinball Map prompted systematic rehabilitation and Pinball Outpost development.

    high · Dave Lawton: 'I found Pinball Map, which was a great resource for me because I quickly realized by going through the comments that we had a real problem.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Galloping Ghost opening day generated multi-block queue with immediate community enthusiasm, contradicting industry predictions of zero demand.

    high · Doc Mack: 'the arcade opened august 13 2010 and we had a block up the line was up close to two blocks long.'

  • $

    market_signal: Across all four panelists, common theme of 'passion that got out of control' driving business growth—growth was organic/reactive to personal enthusiasm and community demand rather than deliberate strategic planning.

    high · Rob Burke: 'the passion just kind of got out of control'; Doc Mack: 'there was really not really anything planned there was no like let's put a thousand games on an arcade floor.'

  • $

    market_signal: Fun Spot Arcade achieved record financial performance in 2023 post-COVID recovery despite founder Bob Lawton's death in 2021; second-generation Lawton family management stabilized business.

    high · Dave Lawton: '2023 was our best year yet at Fun Spot. Miraculously, we had a tremendous year.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Fun Spot's Xenon pinball machine underwent controversial playfield restoration despite potential scrap value; decision made as symbolic commitment to preservation legacy under new management.

    high · Dave Lawton: 'Xenon... that game had virtually no paint left... it was either junk it or sell it for scrap or put a new play field in it... and we eventually did it.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Bad Penny Pinball leveraging foreclosed building status to incrementally add machines without formal approval; currently at 58 of 62-machine capacity with loose enforcement.

    high · Mike Jacobson: 'The building is under foreclosure... I keep sneaking games in, and there's not really anybody there to tell me no, so that part's been pretty cool.'

    • 3:18
    So I said, well, you got me on that one. So I bought something, but I didn't go as crazy as I could have. But the phone calls came in. I got a call from a guy in Wapaka, Wisconsin, and I bought 10 games from him, $100 a game, which was the going price back then. But the collection kept growing, and then I had the concept of having the Pinball Expo.
    3:41
    So, you know, over the years, I built up so many games, I thought to myself, what am I going to do with all of them? And driving back by one of the local grocery stores that had been empty for several years, I said, well, maybe this could be a place to put the games. And what I'll do is I'll set them all up, and then maybe once a week I'll open the door up and I'll go there and play a couple games. And my wife says, now, isn't that silly? to go through all that work just for yourself to play. So then I said, well, maybe you're right. So let me start putting these games together. And next thing you know, I had 50 together, 100 together. And let me say one more thing that I did that really helped the collection grow. Does anyone here where you guys live in your communities get these coupon money saver books come in the mail? Whether it be for window panes or pizza toppings, anything and everything is in these coupons. So I said, maybe so many people read these things, let me put in the coupon, wanted to buy pinball machines. Well, no one had done that. Well, I did, and I started getting phone calls like crazy.
    4:47
    And typically, you know, I got a lot of good deals, and that helped build up the collection to what I have today through buying these games onesie-twosie. So, you know, we talked about the visionaries. I guess the vision I had as I kept growing and growing was to never stop. So it's really, it's a passion, whether it be me or Doc or anyone here on the panel, that it's a passion that got out of control. And, you know, we don't think about it that way because, you know, we enjoy it so much. I mean, I know Doc reached out to me. I had some contacts in China. He said, there's a video game in China I've been trying to get. I said, no problem. I'll help you. Well, it took a little, about close to a half a year anyways, but he finally got that game. but you know he is just as a wild man as i am the collection he's got you know we both should be locked up because there's something wrong with us but it's been a fun lock up and it's fun to share the hobby with you guys you know and and um not everyone was able to do it but i've been able to do it and been able to share it with you guys over the years but in my case it's the Spanish games and the Italian games and the games that never made it into the U.S. market. It's my passion.
    6:05
    So it's a visionary guy that got out of control. And next up we have Dave. Video file that I would like to start. This is actually a PowerPoint. Fantastic.
    6:28
    I'm sorry, hold on, we're just getting a little technical issue here. I'm sorry we got into the room late so we didn't get a chance to set this up. I'll begin anyway, but there's a video file that I'm kind of going to introduce here that briefly gives a Fun Spot history. I'm here today as the son of the founder of Fun Spot.
    6:51
    Do we have audio on this? Located on the second floor of Tarleson's Arcade, on Lakeside Avenue. In 1952, with just $750 he borrowed from his grandmother, Bob Lawton opened his own mini-golf and arcade in the heart of Weir's Beach on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. The new venture was located on the second floor of Tarleson's Arcade on Lakeside Avenue. Bob's brother John helped him build the original mini-golf course, and the endeavor proved successful enough that the brothers formed a partnership at the beginning of the second season in 1953.
    7:32
    In 1964, realizing they needed room to grow, the brothers moved the attraction to its current location and rebranded the business as Fun Spot.
    7:42
    The mini-golf was moved outdoors, and a year later, in 1965, a pool room and small arcade were added. Also in 1965, Bob called upon his friend, Bob Montana of Archie Comics fame, to create a logo for Fun Spot. That year, Fun Spot's jester was introduced. If you look closely you'll notice he bears a striking resemblance to Archie's famous friend, Jughead. In 1966, the driving range opened. Then in 1971, Fun Spot opened its first themed park, Indian Village. It was an extensive project, with design and construction overseen by Native American consultants.
    8:26
    With Indian Village up and running, in 1976, Bob and the Fun Spot team turned their attention to their next project, a new themed park called Storybook Forest. Storybook was filled with the magical characters we all grew up with, and was a delight to visiting children. When the 1980s arrived, and games like Pac-Man, Asteroids and Space Invaders were taking over arcades, Fun Spot was ready to face the video game craze head-on. The Fun Spot token was introduced, adorned with the now-famous Fun Spot jester. In 2024, Fun Spot still provides an authentic arcade experience by utilizing tokens and tickets. the arcade redeems over 75 million tickets every year, and routinely has over 300,000 tokens on hand.
    9:14
    As the 1980s video game boom accelerated, so did Fun Spots' expansion. During this time, a number of satellite Fun Spots opened, including several in New Hampshire and even one in Port Ritchie, Florida. In 1983, as the number of satellite arcades grew, Bob and the crew introduced Fun Spot's most recognizable team member, Topsnuff. Guess how the lovable dragon got his name? You got it! It's Fun Spot spelled backwards. Also in 1983, Fun Spot introduced birthday parties. This is still a huge draw for the arcade and brings in thousands of guests each year. The late 1980s were a period of rapid expansion for Fun Spot, beginning with our mezzanine in 1986, then our kiddie room in 1987, and finally, our 20-lane bowling center in 1988.
    10:09
    When the 1990s hit and the video game boom ended, arcades across the country were closing their doors for good. During these years, Fun Spot worked hard to reinvent itself and offer more diverse attractions. In 1996, we built our 400-seat bingo center and added the DA Long tavern to Fun Spot's bowling lanes. The tavern is named after Bob's grandfather, Denny Long, and the decor celebrates the old weirs in which Bob grew up. In 1998, Fun Spot continued to look toward the future by reviving the past. At the suggestion of Fun Spot's longest-term team member, Gary Vincent, the American Classic Arcade Museum was established. The project was spearheaded by Gary, and quickly became one of the largest collections of pre-1987 arcade games available for the public to play. The museum still holds true to Gary's original vision and is a living attraction, constantly changing and evolving. Once the Classic Arcade Museum was open, Gary launched the International Classic Video Game Tournament, an annual competition that attracted players from around the world. It wasn't long before record scores were being set, including the first ever perfect Pac-Man game, achieved by Billy Mitchell in 1999. In the year 2000, Bob shifted focus from classic games and pursued one of his passions when he opened the Fun Spot Indoor Golf Center. The new attraction offered golf enthusiasts a way to enjoy their favorite pastime during cold winter months. As Fun Spot continued to grow throughout the 2000s, it was suddenly thrust into the limelight with the 2007 release of the surprise hit movie, The King of Kong, A Fistful of Quarters. The film follows gamer Steve Wiebe in his attempts to take the high score record for the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong from Billy Mitchell.
    12:05
    The movie is largely set in the American Classic Arcade Museum at Fun Spot, and overnight it seemed, Fun Spot became a household name. The King of Kong drew enough attention to the arcade that in 2008, Guinness World Records took note and officially named Fun Spot the largest arcade in the world, a record it continues to hold today.
    12:28
    But Fun Spot's not done. We're constantly looking toward the future and expanding our offerings. In 2023, we launched our new and exciting Pinball Outpost. The Outpost was designed to have a retro Star Wars sci-fi feel, and be home to FunSpot's growing collection of pinball games. It features nearly 60 tables, from classic titles like Meteor, to popular new Stern titles like The Mandalorian.
    12:55
    Stern Insider members can take advantage of our Insider games and strive to complete seasonal quests and set record scores Fun Spot Pinball Outpost is also host to monthly tournaments offering plenty of action for pinball enthusiasts. With such a rich history of providing family fun, as we look to the future, you may be asking what's next for the largest arcade in the world. Honestly, we don't know. We'll always do our best to keep growing, evolving, and providing quality family entertainment. And we'll never forget that it all started with just $750 and one man's dream.
    13:37
    Thank you. So just to reintroduce myself, I'm David Lawton, and that's my father up there, the visionary really behind Fun Spot, Bob Lawton. He is a living legend. He's somebody that I aspire to do half of the things that he did during his lifetime career building up Fun Spot. He started in 1952 when he was just 21 years old, and I don't think he had in mind what you have today in Fun Spot, but he built that little mini golf down in the Weirs with his brother, and they started that first year with one goal in mind, and that was to provide a safe place for families to go with their kids or leave their kids to go have fun in a safe atmosphere that was also affordable. We strive to keep that in mind today at Fun Spot as we add new attractions. We try and keep with that formula.
    14:39
    And through the years, I've spent at Fun Spot working with my dad side by side. I've learned a lot. he really was an inspiration still is today fortunately he passed away in 2021 and that changed Fun Spot dramatically he was there virtually every day he spent working at Fun Spot anytime he wanted to meet and chat with my dad about what was the order of the day he could be found in the restaurant sitting on some red benches that he had painted himself. He was a very frugal man and a hardworking individual. He didn't sit behind a desk with his feet up smoking a cigar or something like you might think of a successful businessman's icon, but he really worked hard to build Fun Spot up. And he really is an inspiration to me today as I take over as part of the second generation of Lawton family owners. There's now my sister Sandra as a general manager, my cousin Steve, who is the CFO, and my cousin Randy, his brother, who is the chief of technical services for Fun Spot. So we're all second generation Lawton family. We've got our hands full, we know, moving into perhaps troubled waters, you know, where the entertainment industry has gone through hell and back with the COVID years.
    16:15
    We lost my dad at the end of 2021 when the recovery was starting. We didn't know where we were going to be today. 2023 was our best year yet at Fun Spot. Miraculously, we had a tremendous year. And as the new crew began to find our legs under us and figure out our path forward, we started to look around for different roles and needs. and I'm fitting now into the business as basically an operations manager with a big focus on the arcade. So I came into the arcade area with a fresh set of eyes to see how we're doing and quickly realized that we had a lot of work to do on the floor, and particularly for me and for my wife, Eva, who's here today, we began to enjoy playing pinballs and realized that the collection of pinballs that Fun Spot had built through the 70s and 80s was aging, and a lot of the focus of the current tech department had been on what was really the moneymakers for the business, and that's the redemption and more of the family-oriented business. So the pinballs had fallen by the wayside, and we were quite disappointed in the condition of those. So we began to take it upon ourselves to rehabilitate what we had for pinballs. And as I started to look around as the new operations manager at what was going on around us, I found Pinball Map, which was a great resource for me because I quickly realized by going through the comments that we had a real problem. and I actually used that as a point of leverage to fix the problem by printing out a list of all the comments of the games that had problems, particularly pinballs, on our property, and I handed that to the tech department. And we've had a long, long road, but the pinballs today, we're turning around those negative opinions of Fun Spot's pinball collection, And the overriding theme, I think, we are trying to revamp where we're at in that market and developed the pinball outpost. So the Pinball Outpost is a section of our main floor that we now have monthly tournaments in. We're part of the Stern Army, and we also host New England Pinball League weekly tournaments during their seasons. So we've, I think, turned around a lot of the problems that we had, and going forward we're obviously looking to expand that collection. and we've had some great successes and it's not without a little bit of trepidation that we do some of the things that we did with the games. For instance, one of, I guess, really the touchstone moment for what we were going to do with our collection was when Xenon was one of those comments about Xenon, which we'd owned since it was born, basically. that game had virtually no paint left on the on the play field it was it was stripped of just by sheer force of weight of all the play that it had endured through the 80s so it was either junk it or sell it for scrap or put a new play field in it and that was the question and one of the first questions that that new team that we have now as the second generation owners was put to. What are we going to do? And I pushed for it, and we eventually did it. We put in a new play field in that game. Pennywise, I don't know, it was a huge, huge mistake maybe by some would say, you know, if you were looking at it from a purely business standpoint. But I love the fact that it's still the same xenon cabinet that we put on the property in the 80s, and we have in-house today. We have some real gems in the collection that are available to play, but Xenon particularly was one of the ones that was kind of a touchstone moment where we all decided that this is what we're going to do. We're going to make sure that we honor the legacy of what we have here because we're not just a collection, we're a collection of games that were purchased new and have lived through the 80s, and we want to make sure that we keep that collection up. So I'm a proud member of the new management team of the Lawton family going forward, and we're certainly reaching out and embracing pinball going forward, and I'm really happy to be invited here today. Wonderful. Thank you, Dave.
    21:02
    Thank you for sharing that history. Mike Jacobson is up next with Bad Penny Pinball. My name is Mike Jacobson. I'm from St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm co-owner of Bad Penny Pinball. We've been open since July of 2023. We started out with 26 pinball machines and now we're up to 58 and I have room for four more in the building. The building is under foreclosure and it's a big empty building. It used to be like a market type building with multiple different vendors in it, but ever since the previous owners let it slide, they didn't make it through the pandemic, but the bank owns it now, and we've been working with them to try to get more games in there. I keep sneaking games in, and there's not really anybody there to tell me no, so that part's been pretty cool. I started playing pinball about six years ago.
    21:59
    I started out with tournaments. I went to all the tournaments, local tournaments, and then I started going to pinball expos and stuff like that. I got my first pinball machine right before the pandemic. It was a Doctor Who, and I played that for a bit, and then I took it all apart, and then it was all, I had a one-bedroom apartment, and everything was spread around my living room. My girlfriend at the time didn't really like it. We'd try to have dinner, and I'd have to clear off the table of all the parts and stuff and redo it. But that's how I learned how to fix these things. I had electrical knowledge before that, but once I lifted up the play field, I was like, yeah, I know what all this stuff is. and then from there it just kind of spiraled out of control. I bought them one or two at a time from Facebook and now I have over 100 machines in storage and on the floor and I love doing this stuff. I love having people play these games. I go for a lot of the rare titles and stuff that you can't find anyplace else. I just want to bring pinball joy to everybody who wants to come out and play it.
    22:59
    Wonderful. Thank you, Mike. Awesome to spread that pinball joy. Next up we have Doc Mack with Galloping Ghost. Thank you. So my story really started as a child. I started playing arcade games at about five years old and was just enamored with them. video games really brought me and my dad and brother closer together and for me it was just something it was a consistent uh i always knew i wanted to work in the video game scene and around 1994 we opened up galapagos productions after a chance encounter with ed boom from Mortal Kombat fame and the voice of the rooting from Funhaus. And he was telling me how difficult it is to get into the video game scene and the gaming, game design and game development. And that really pushed me down the road. It's like, okay, if I can't get into this company, I'm going to have to open up something on my own. So we started work on a game called Dark Presence. and that, growing up for me, I was very socially awkward, very antisocial. I actually dropped out of high school because I didn't like being around people. I had no connection to them and just was very socially awkward.
    24:39
    So with the production company opening up, I quickly found out that it was going to be very difficult to make a video game by myself. I started learning everything I could. I got into graphic design. I got into music, learned to play basically every instrument out there, learned the electronic side of it, artwork. We decided to film our characters because I couldn't draw well enough, so we were going to digitize it like Mortal Kombat.
    25:08
    Studying martial arts my whole life, I was going to do all the fight choreography, and it still had the programming element. and how do we put this all together? So I started to assemble a team, and that kind of got me talking to people and like-minded people.
    25:25
    And along the way, some of those people are still with us to this day. As the game design grew and grew, it was taking the longest time to get the game finished.
    25:40
    We would start going to arcades, and we saw how so many of them were closing. This is probably 2004, 2005. And we started to formulate a business model for what would become the Galvin Ghost Arcade. And it was really based on seeing these arcades close and it was like why are they closing It lack of maintenance People aren caring for these machines anymore And we went back into our filming studio After working on the game for 10 years, we decided we would need to refilm the game. So we went back into our filming studio, filmed for about four years, seven days a week, came out of the studio, and got into the post-production. and while in post-production we still kept seeing it every time we would see an arcade we would go into one and nothing would work and they'd be talking about closing their doors so in 2010 just on a whim we're like you know if we're going to be releasing arcade games we need to kind of try to bring that back and that was really the goal everything just lined up it was went unbelievably smooth. We had, when on Craigslist, we found 114 machines for sale for $5,000, which we didn't know what we were getting. It was just, okay, here's, we're going to do this. It was, I called the guy, Steve Campbell, who we rented our filming studio from, and he was like, Yeah, I've got a building you can go into. It's like, okay, we'll try this. So we started talking to people in the industry, and everybody's like, you're out of your mind. Nobody wants to play arcade games. Nobody wants to play pinball. It's redemption. How much redemption are you going to have? I'm like, we're not going to have any redemption. I don't want to play redemption. I play video games and pinball machines. And industry people, including well-known people like Larry DeMar, were like, you seem very passionate about this, but you're insane. This is out of the box. This is a failed business. And this is Larry DeMar who's made so many iconic video games. It was the knife in the chest. It was like, you're telling me this isn't going to work? That was so hard to hear.
    28:08
    But I didn't think it was true. and in hearing that just like with hearing from ed about how the difficulties it was that's gonna fuel me to make this succeed i'm i'm gonna do it i want to find out for myself and the arcade opened august 13 2010 and we had a block up the line was up close to two blocks long It was something the guy coming through, one of the first people through the doors, he made a custom Galloping Ghost t-shirt that said, Happiness is the Galloping Ghost Arcade. And we opened with 130 machines.
    28:51
    And seeing that line, that enthusiasm for these games, it was just such an unbelievable thing. I had people coming up to me. we did a 48 hour launch event people saying oh I can't believe that this is going to be here we hope it works and what an amazing thing every day we would open up and we would see people with their parents with their kids showing them games that they played back in the 80s and 90s and it was such an unbelievable thing and it just seeing that it led all of us on the staff to want it to keep growing. So we kept adding and growing and more and more games. And there was so many games that I wanted to play, stuff that would pop up online on Craigslist or just through collectors. And it was like, oh, I want to play that. And there was such a selfish side to it of like, the whole arcade was basically like, well much like rob it's like i'm gonna make something so i can go play my games it's gonna be cool if anybody shows up that's cool too but that wasn't the the idea on it was it was just kind of like i'm gonna do these things um we decided to do events where we had industry people coming out uh back then talking to the industry people the industry people were like nobody wants to see us actors from the mortal combat games and uh people who worked on cubert and brian colin who worked on rampage they were like our games are sold nobody wants to play these games and it's like no no no you have this huge fan base and generally i just want to hear your stories but we'll do these big events and it was so amazing to see so many people come out and have that like-minded interest in it. And it kept growing and growing and growing. We were profitable after about eight months with the arcade. And we kept adding things left and right. New machines quickly were up to 200 machines. And then 300 machines. And then 400 machines. We had to keep expanding. Fortunately, the building that we got was five buildings long, although there was other businesses in those spots. So a business would go under, and we'd take over that spot and expand the arcade.
    31:27
    Really, it just kept – the demand for it kept making it grow. We started going on – in 2015, we started doing the Monday Mystery Game where we would add a new arcade game every Monday. Without fail, in nine years, we haven't missed a Monday. So anytime a player comes back to the arcade, there's going to be something new there.
    31:53
    The things that we learned along the way was maintenance was going to be key. And it is so important we still run everything with original CRT monitors.
    32:04
    We kept growing on every aspect of it, starting with the production company, then go into the arcade we were spending so much money on artwork we decided to buy the printing company next door to us and we opened up galloping ghost reproductions then we started scanning in all the artwork that we had and then making that available to other collectors to restore their arcade games and it just kept growing and there was really not really anything planned there was no like let's put a thousand games on an arcade floor when we opened fun spot it was all anybody talked about was they've got more games than anybody and are you going for that it's like no we're just we're going to be here tomorrow we're we're doing the next thing it's just open the arcade and see who's here see who comes out to play and make sure everything's running right So it was just this constant, there was no set goal. And it quickly kept adding step by step.
    33:09
    We started to get invited out to shows. And there was a show in New Jersey we were doing. We're like, okay, we're going to show off our Dark Presence game there.
    33:18
    The show started from people approaching us on how to open arcades. because we had come up with the free play formula and it seemed to be working. So currently we've helped just under 40 arcades open worldwide, sharing our business model, sharing all the information, our numbers, showing how to build a community, how to work with social media, how to buy and sell games. I know Rob has called me so many times like, would you pay this much for this? Oh, yeah, that's a great deal. Rob is finding some amazing deals out there. You're in this year.
    33:58
    But that's the thing. It's never really a set direction. When we did this show, this was a gentleman that we were helping him open his arcade, told him to run a convention first so he could see what the industry in his area was like. He grew the show, sold his show, and then used that to buy an arcade and open an actual venue. And it worked very much according to the plan that we gave him.
    34:24
    When we were out there, we brought all the Mortal Kombat actors with us. We brought Brian Cullen, who made Rampage, and Jeff Lee, who made Q-Bert. Brought them out to the show, and we're sitting around in the middle of – it's 2 a.m. in the morning, and we're just talking with the legends of Mortal Kombat and these guys that have made these unbelievably historic games. And it was like, man, it would be great if we could do more.
    34:50
    And the Mortal Kombat guys are like, you're into martial arts, we should open up a martial arts school together. I was like, yeah, if that ever happens, sure. And three months later, the landlord calls me, he's like, hey, we have a building two blocks down from the arcade, do you want it? I said, yeah, I do. What are you doing in there? Gym and martial arts school. With the Mortal Kombat actors. Okay, sure. and so it's just been one thing after the next when we didn't think we were doing pinball well pinball players you guys pinball players push us so hard because your demand levels are way up there everything has to be perfect every light every flipper everything has to be great and i'm a video guy i love pinball but i'm a video guy pinball you're shooting a pinball around it plastic it's gonna have problems and but we we try we try and it drives us to constantly do better we had pulled pinball almost off the floor to the point where it was gone and a handful of things happen landlord calls me again and he's like hey you know we had too many people playing at the arcade just casually playing pinball and video players they don't know that you have to be a little bit more gentle on pinball. So the machines were taking such abuse, only having 11 machines. But it was still there. We wanted to have pinball. Landlord called me again. He's like, you know, you're renting a couple of buildings from us. I got another one. Would you do anything else in there? I was like, yeah, I guess we could open up a full pinball place. If we had it separate, we could have a lot more machines, and we could really grow that. And that became like a whole other element to it.
    36:42
    It was – it's separate, but close enough you can walk to it. So it was just another piece to the puzzle.
    36:51
    Pinballs, there's so many – as everything kept growing and growing, we added a Galloping Ghost Garage, which would then help the pinball business because, like, there's ramps. We have to weld stuff. We have to sandblast stuff. We need to fix things. So we picked up a garage, and everybody on staff has sports cars and motorcycles, so it was a good side benefit for those people. But the vision of it has always just been to keep making people happy and keep growing it and keep adding more and keep trying to outdo what we've done. And it's an amazing thing. We couldn't do it without the dedicated people that we have on staff. There's now eight businesses within Galloping Ghost.
    37:45
    It's 16 people running everything. The tech side for the arcade is two people, three people technically. but for a thousand and nine machines at the arcade and 46 pinball machines at galping goes pinball it's an everyday thing it's we get there at six in the morning and we start fixing stuff because we it's all for for the players if it's not playing right they're not going to have the enjoyment that we all had back in the 80s and 90s when these games were coming out so it's really about it's just kind of a revolving machine of fix everything make people happy and then in return we get to be happy because we get to keep growing so and it's something getting to do a panel like this with people that have done it for so long and Rob congratulations 40 years on pinball Expo
    38:51
    That's where the bar's at. It keeps going. And tomorrow we'll do the same thing. We get at the arcade at 6 in the morning. We go through everything make sure everything up and running And so fortunate for myself everybody on the staff that i get to work with they so amazing tom and jeremiah brandon those guys are just incredible doug fox our tech ken ken walker and adam stone just so amazing to work with the people that i get to work with to talk to the players i get to talk to to talk to the collectors that i get to talked to and the industry people it's just such an amazing thing and the amount of support is just incredible and it really motivates myself and everybody that i get to work with to keep growing and we have the plans that we have we're adding a second and third floor to the arcade we're trying to acquire more buildings to expand the parking lot and it's all just about what what are we going to do tomorrow and it's going to be big. Thank you so much, Doc Mac. Yep, go ahead, Rob. I want to say one quick thing about Doc Mac. You know, seeing these video games and having some people kind of rub off on me, they said, hey, you should start collecting video games. So I started collecting them. And then I didn't know about Doc Mac. I heard about Galloping Ghost. But I decided to do something. There's an expression, one and done. Well, this is one of those one and done shows. But I decided to do a show in Rosemont just for video games. But the reason I'm mentioning this is who did I reach out to? The king of videos, Doc Mac. I didn't know Doc Mac from the neighbor down the road. This guy was a complete stranger. I called him out of the blue. Hey, Doc, I heard about you. I heard you have a lot of video games. I want to do this video show with the holiday and can I borrow some games to try to, you know, make it a nice event? Well, not only did I borrow them, I think he gave me like, let me use like 50 games, if not more. But I guess the point being, this gentleman has got the heart of gold. He didn't know me from Adam and he helped a complete stranger. So I think this is why he's growing the way he's growing. is because people see, like myself and the other people here on the panel, the passion. The passion drives anyone who's successful. And we don't do it for the money or the fame. It's just because we enjoy it so much. So, Doc, my hat off to you. And my dream, my dream is to one day own a pair of Doc Mac black gloves.
    41:45
    Then I know I made it. Thank you. One thing that I'm really hearing on this panel today, and the stories are just so beautiful, is each of you have gone about your vision differently. but your passion has kept the momentum for it and then also seeing how other people respond to that is another driving factor in which keeps you going my family has benefited from each of you doing what you do and has really driven our our joy and happiness in the gaming field and so thank each of for that and for doing what you're doing. It's amazing and beautiful and you bring people together. So thank you for doing that. We are down to the last 10 minutes of this panel and so what I would really love to do is open up the floor for questions. I'm sure there are many, many questions that maybe you came here before with or that popped up during the panel discussion. So please, please feel free to go ahead and ask questions of this amazing panel today. This is more for the folks on the end, Doc and Rob, who I've kind of their collection grows faster than their available space or how do you manage that kind of feeling as who also has space issues with their collection how much are you willing to put more effort on to the space side of things to try to move it around versus you know the main pursuit of getting more stuff one answer I'll say one ready dog you'll like this one it all depends on the bank doc take over the bank lends you the money you'll go forever
    44:11
    with Monday we know every week we have to put a new game out where it's going is usually something we worry about on Tuesday we've been very fortunate to being able to get all the the buildings on main thing on the main arcade level but now it's really just about going up and as Rob said it's the expansion that expansion is outrageously expensive we're doing it but it's just a matter of how we're gonna fund it we've got enough time to where we can figure that out and And we've got hundreds of games in the vault still.
    44:56
    So every Monday a new one is still going up. Where they're going to – by the time it's done, we want to have room to have at least 2,500 machines easy. Plus pinball down at the main arcade side. Plus a video game and console center. Plus a museum. there's so many things that with three floors spanning the entire block that we cover, we're going to be able to do pretty much everything. So it's just a matter of time and patience and making everything line up.
    45:33
    They say that once you buy your first pinball machine that they just keep multiplying, you keep getting more. The same thing goes for storage units. The first time you get a storage unit, you know, those keep multiplying too. Pretty soon you got like three or four going. I'd just chime in that we have the American Classic Arcade Museum is pretty much doing what you folks are doing and have been collecting kind of quietly behind the scenes and that's the third floor of Fun Spot is the space where the American Classic Arcade Museum has been caretaking for these video games a lot of which Fun Spot in the late 80s were kind of moving off the floor and into storage and eventually would sell off or get rid of one way or another. But ACAM came about by, as we saw in the video, Gary Vincent's vision there for, you know, some place that we could keep these rarities. So he's been, we're finding out, carefully squirreling these away in storage units around the area and most recently decided to purchase some yellow freight trailers. and now we have a whole host of full yellow freight trailers on the property, and we're working with Gary to try and squeeze more and more equipment onto the floor every day. We're a total of 70,000 square feet of space spread over three levels, and we're always posing the question, you know, do we really have room to buy one more game? And I'm the first one on the team to say, absolutely, don't you worry about it. we'll find a spot for that. The layout of, I've got to say, my dad's vision for the layout of Fun Spot was always to try and keep the space open and a very light and airy feel for the most part in the areas where families would be playing.
    47:31
    That's different than what is ACAM's area. It's ACAM's area on Level 3 is set up with red translucent panels in the ceiling, and it's kind of dark, and it's kind of crowded like you would experience in one of those original 80s arcades. So we have something for everybody at Fun Spot. So it's been a lot of fun to be a part of and I think fun to see the future and look to where we can grow and find new places for some of this rare equipment.
    48:05
    First, I just wanted to say great presentation, Doc. I got to visit the Galpin Ghosts. Probably it was unbelievable. So many games where it's like, oh my god, I can't, I haven't played that in so many years. But, you know, it's so many, and I'm just wondering, kind of what is y'all's white whale, the game that y'all have been looking for forever, but you just can't seem to find?
    48:30
    There's not too many. It's getting much harder to find games that we're really looking for. Predators would be I would say the one that is kind of the unicorn right now unreleased Williams game was four cabinets and I've got two empty cabinets but no board yet so it's aside from that and a few laser disc games from Japan Time Gal, Revenge of the Ninja those are pretty much the top three one day we'll find Dave a brief question for you a lot of us who aren't necessarily in the northeast heard about Fun Spot and discovered Fun Spot through the King of Kong can you briefly talk about how that relationship came about and how filming went on and how they approached you and how that kind of blew up thanks for your question that was largely as a result of the exposure that we got from the early international video game tournament days.
    49:42
    And at that point, I wasn't that involved in the business at the time, honestly. So I don't think that we actually sought out anyone to come and film something here. And when they approached us to come in and do some filming we we didn't know who they were you know where it was really just a matter of you know it seemed like it would be okay we had no idea what was going to be produced or the fact that the the director it was his first project I think at Lionsgate who went on to do I know horrible bosses and and other great movies but his first breakthrough movie was the King of Kong movie and that led us to be thrust into the limelight beyond where I mean typically Fun Spot is pretty well known up and down the East Coast so when I jumped out here and started talking about Fun Spot I've gotten a few well oh how interesting but I think King of Kong really put us on the map and I think that but that was a tremendous thing for Fun Spot and and helped us to grow the name quite a bit. Yeah, Dave, I was there and I can say that it was already established that people were coming in with cameras from earlier years of the tournament just to film the world record attempts or getting past the kill screen. So it was sort of a push beyond that, but it was already known that people were coming to shoot video at those tournaments. Yeah, and I think one of the connections we had with, I think it was Seth Gordon was the director. I always get the name wrong, but it had come to find out that he was a frequent visitor to the Lakes Region area of New Hampshire, and he would come up with his family and stay, I think it was probably about a mile and a half from Fun Spot. And he didn't enjoy going to the beach so much, so he would walk all that way up to Fun Spot to be able to play pinball and video games while his family went to the beach. Wonderful. Well, I hate to say we are at our hour, so to stay on schedule, we better wrap it up. Thank you to each of our panelists today. Big round of applause.