The story so far: I came to Chicago with a friend. He left after one day. I had to improvise transportation. I needed to visit an arcade way to the north of Chicago without much public transportation going that way. Now I wait at a train station for two hours because it’s the easiest way back into town.
Eventually, the train arrived. It’s not the first time I’ve had to wait hours for a train on this blog. I’ll never get over how awful Philadelphia was.
Bar arcades are popping up all over Chicago like every other major city in the country. For the last three arcades on my trip, I figured I’d check some of them out.
The first of the three, which seemed most promising, is known as “Logan Arcade”. When you first walk in, you’re met by the strange juxtaposition of the class-looking bar decorated with the 80s and early 90s robot toys. From this, you’d assume it was an 80s-style barcade trying to emphasize its theme. As it turns out, that’s only sorta the case.
The Logan Arcade had three distinct rooms. The first room was the one with the bar itself, right up in the front. This room seemed to be where they put all the interesting novelty machines that didn’t fit in the other rooms. This, for example, is a classic Supertop countertop Arkanoid machine. And a love tester, for some reason.
The light was at just the wrong angle to get a good shot of this, but this is 1969’s Whirlybird. It’s a purely electronic arcade game from before the era of video games. The goal is to fly this helicopter around and hit the targets as they light up. Here’s an in-depth video I pulled off Youtube if you’re curious about how pre-video arcade games played.
Here’s one I’ve seen a couple of times called Cho Chabudai Gaeshi, or “Super Table Flip” (or, rather, the sequel). Arcades specializing in imports love this game because of how damn weird it is. I don’t see the appeal.
You can also see that the front room also had a couple of standard games like The Simpsons, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Let’s move on to the second room.
This is where Logan’s Arcade starts getting really weird. The middle room is a strange blacklit space with creepy masks lining the walls. This is where a lot of the regular barcade games are housed, like Donkey Kong and such, alongside a bunch of other games with no real rhyme or reason. Crazy Taxi and Mario Kart I’ve seen in these places before, but some of the others are just strange.
Like these two pseudo-retro games. The one on the right is Vecs, a vector-based game meant to evoke the feel of the earliest 3D games. The other one is Lil Bub’s Hell on Earth, which I’m told is a port of a mobile game. I’ve never seen either of these before. Come to think of it, I’ve run into quite a few random “modern retro” games in one arcade, then nowhere else.
If nothing else, Logan’s Arcade has one of the most random lineups of games I’ve ever seen. Beastie Feastie there, for example, is a somewhat obscure “remake” of a game called The Glob. See, the company that initially distributed The Glob was a notoriously shady company with like four different names to dodge lawsuits. The game’s original programmers decided to become independent but couldn’t get back the rights to the name “The Glob” from them. Hence, they just changed the name, made minor tweaks, and re-released the game. This game is so damn obscure that I’d be amazed if any other arcade in the country had it. Like I told Tom in a previous post, a game being “rare” doesn’t always mean it’s actually rare, just that no other arcades care enough to waste floorspace on it. It is a good game, though.
The other game there is Mad Planets, a very fast-paced Astroids clone from 1983. It’s got quite a cult following, from what I gather.
I was excited about playing a full-size Pole Position cab at Garcade, only to find the same machine a couple of days later. That seems to happen to me a lot.
This Ms Pac-man machine has been “converted” into The Lost Castle of Darkmist. And by “converted”, I mean they had to label the new buttons with tape and a marker. The game is like a cross between Ikari Warriors and a vertical shooter like Raiden. This ghetto machine is way more amusing than the game itself.
Is this the first time I’ve run into Marble Madness since starting the blog? Or did one of the Barcades in New York have it? I’m sure Galloping Ghost did, either way.
Last up is the back room, which was by far the biggest of the three. This is their wall of pinball machines with a six-player X-men beside them. Buying arcade marquees to hang on the wall is kind of a pet peeve of mine. It’s only cool when old arcades do it with machines they used to carry.
I’m not sure what the strangest part of Logan’s arcade is: The ancient machines in the front room, the random stuff in the middle room, or the fact that they have modern games in the back room. This wasn’t what I expected from an arcade with a bunch of 80s toys right up in the front. For god’s sake, pick a theme and stick with it.
Here’s the arcade version of Rhythm Heaven. When I saw that this arcade had this and Super Table Flip, I was expecting a lot more weird imports. It turns out that it’s just these two.
Unless you count the Street Fighter 3rd Strike machines housed in Astro City candy cabs, anyway. This arcade feels like it’s just trying to grab as many potential audiences as possible.
Speaking of which, they also had Killer Queen set up. I’ve played a bit of it on and off in the three years since we got it at Up-Down, and it isn’t a bad game by any stretch. It just irks me for the same reason every modern game that uses “retro” graphics does. And games that show people playing itself in the attract mode. It’s like this game was made specifically to piss me off. It is fun when you’re drunk, though.
They were making a big deal out of the release of the Deadpool pinball machine. I haven’t mentioned it on the blog, but they had a pre-release version of this game at the Minnesota State Fair a few weeks earlier. I’m not a pinball guy, so I only played it once and wasn’t impressed.
My final verdict on Logan Arcade is that it’s absolutely a good arcade. Much like Killer Queen, it’s not one I can work up any genuine enthusiasm for. I wanted to like it, but it didn’t mesh well with me. I’ve been to so many arcades, especially barcades, over the years that I tend to factor in the atmosphere more than most people. Logan’s Arcade didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be. Oh well.
Now, I want to make something very clear. Chicago has a LOT of barcades. I couldn’t visit all of them, and a lot didn’t look like they had anything noteworthy, so I had to boil my choices down to three. The second arcade I decided was worth a visit was Replay in Lincoln Park.
As you can see, it’s a very standard-looking barcade. I won’t be writing much about this, but I had to stop in.
One thing I liked about this one is that it didn’t try to advertise itself as an 80s-style arcade. This one was unashamed of the fact that most of its games were from the 90s. I appreciate the honesty.
Look, it’s Root Beer Tapper! I’ve never seen the non-alcoholic version of this game before. That game next to it is Operation Wolf 3, a game I absolutely remember seeing a lot in the 90s, but it completely slipped my memory until now. That gaudy art on the front is something you can’t forget. (gameplay-wise, it’s just a Maximum Force-style digitized shooter, though)
All four Mortal Kombat games in one place. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure what the purpose of having so many variations of the game is since most people will stick to whichever version they like best. At least you can pick which one you want to play.
I’ve honestly never seen Star Trek Voyager outside of the big sit-down machine before.
I see Gauntlet at barcades from time to time, but this is my first time seeing Gauntlet II. It’s just a beefed-up version of the original with more levels and obstacles, so I’m surprised more arcades don’t opt for it over the first.
EDIT: As I’d learn later, this is the more common game. By a longshot.
Oh right. Midway brought Rampage back in the late 90s, didn’t they? Then it came back for the Wii a decade later. Then yet again, with the new movie and arcade game last year. Rampage falls into a weird area where it’s popular enough to get revived every decade but not important enough for anyone to remember it between revivals. I don’t think I’ve seen this reboot in any arcade since 2000.
I’d feel dirty not mentioning that they had an original 1980 Pac-man machine, even if I don’t have anything to say about it.
Although I have a bit of a bias toward 90s arcade games, that’s not why I liked this place. They didn’t have the most amazing selection of games out there. What they did have was cohesive while still being unique enough to give the place its own character. Speaking of character, that isn’t why I wanted to come here…
Replay in Lincoln Park is known for going completely crazy with the decoration whenever they hold an event. Go ahead and skim through their Google Images photos to get a better look at how much they deck the place out. Unfortunately, I came during an off-season and didn’t get to see the place when it was in full gimmick mode.
They did still have Onix hanging out above the Skeeball machines, though.
Even though they gave me a free Pepsi, my praise for this place is entirely unbiased. Probably. While the game selection is a bit small, their choice of games is unique enough for me to give them a pass. Plus, I can’t bring myself to hate a place that tries so hard to work with so little.
But now it’s time for the last arcade of my journey to Chicago. If you’re in Chicago, you’ve got to go downtown to the middle of the city at least once. Otherwise, you can’t say you’ve been to Chicago!
I feel like such a tourist walking around old Chicago taking photos like this. Is this old Chicago? I don’t know.
Oh, Punch Bowl Social. We have one of these in the Twin Cities. I’ve been meaning to visit one day, but the arcade is so tiny that it’s hard to justify the trip. From what I can tell, Chicago’s branch isn’t much better.
No, the Downtown Chicago barcade I chose was Emporium. There were quite a few to pick from, but the vast majority had standard barcade fare with one or two oddities mixed in. This one wasn’t much of a stand-out, but it happened to be in the most convenient location.
There are three or four Emporium barcades around Chicago. I’m not sure which one this is. It feels like more of a pool hall than an arcade to me.
Emporium had a lot of standard games you usually find at these places, but it had a couple more unusual games mixed in, like Power Drift.
Yeah, did you know Madden Football had an arcade version? I’ve been looking for it for a while, to say I’ve seen it. It was out of order, but I didn’t want to play it that badly in the first place.
They also had the original Elevator Action. And Virtua Fighter (unpictured). I ran into both of these later at the local museum, so you can read about them there.
When I was taking pictures of this area, I was hoping there was going to be a lot of weird stuff hidden back here. It turns out it’s just a tiny room leading to the bathrooms with a broken Centipede and a photo booth. Lame.
I hadn’t eaten all day, so I grabbed some mediocre-tasting chips to hold me over until I could find food. It was time to return to the bus station and wait three hours for my bus to arrive.
Remember Chicago Greyhound station‘s arcade? How I said I wanted to check which games were on the multicade? Well, the arcade’s gone now, and there’s a discolored wall in its place. If this were Zelda, it would totally be a bombable wall.
As it turns out, three hours is a long time, so I journeyed out to the closest pizza place I could find. I’d long since given up on getting one of those super-deep Chicago pizzas people always make jokes about, but I was hungry, and this was the only place within walking distance.
HOLY SHIT
Through some miracle of sheer coincidence, the legendary pizza place that makes those three-inch deep Chicago pizzas turned out to be Giordanos, just a five-minute walk from the Greyhound station! This should be proof if there was any doubt that I was born under a lucky star. These pizzas are akin to an actual pie stuffed with cheese, with the sauce being the only topping. It’s not as good as that spiral pizza I had out on the East Coast, but it’s much better than New York pizza.
With that, I could finally call my trip to Chicago a success. For the most part, at least. There were a bunch of other arcades out there I wanted to see, but there was no way to schedule them in because it was only a three (four) day-long trip. I still got to see a lot of amazing things while I was out there: The gigantic 30-year-old theater arcade, the big arcade in Wisconsin full of weird games, a Gameworks that hadn’t gone to hell, the Pac-man thing, the biggest arcade in the world, a Round1, that tiny arcade up north, and some barcades of varying quality. Overall, it was a successful trip despite all that happened. Now, let me do my traditional follow-up post, and I can finally be done writing about this trip once and for all.
