A Trip to Galloping Ghost

ArcadeTechGW

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Donor 5 years: 2012, 2022-2025
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The day didn't start off well. The original plan:

Get up, pack, and go to Galloping Ghost for the day. They opened at 11:00 am. Then when I and my wife were exhausted, go to the hotel, check in, change to more appropriate clothes for a white tablecloth dinner, and go to Fogo de Chao for dinner.

When I got up in the morning, my right leg was uncomfortable when walking. I have been reffing soccer all year, and worked on a very "humpity-bumpity" soccer field for a high school game. My wife suggested Ortho Illinois so instead of leaving for Galloping Ghost, we went to Ortho Illinois. One set of 4 x-rays and one physical exam later, I got a prescription and compression sleeves and an ankle restraint to let my leg get better. I was diagnosed with Synovitis, where the tendon on the front of the tibia is inflamed, so the prescription will reduce the inflammation, and the restraint will reduce the aggravation.

Great, we grabbed lunch locally, headed home and started on our way. At around 2:30 pm.

That gave us time to get checked in at the hotel (long line, 15 minutes to check in), change, and walk across the street to the restaurant.

We had a great dinner, and went back to the room. I pointed out to my wife (who was thinking let's go Thursday) that GG was open until 11 pm so we made the drive and basically closed the place out when it was closing.

Crowd wise, it was quiet. I'd say there were 20 people in the place total on a Wednesday night (key tip - Go Wednesday night!) so we could play almost every game we wanted whenever we wanted.

As requested, I played a few games of Cosmic Chasm. It was interesting, but I think I need to try it again in the future, and maybe read the instructions.

Interesting stuff:
They have a COCKPIT Sinistar in the far northwest corner, as well as a standup version.

I played the cockpit Sinistar.

The Cinematronics line still doesn't have a Tail Gunner, and half of it was dead, two of four games were online.

The controls of Asteroids were better than the last time I was there - the buttons still need to be replaced, but it worked.

I ran up high scores on Dig Dug (first for me, I never made the HS table before), Asteroids, Red Barron, Battlezone, and Quantum.

I played Space Gun, which was a lot of fun.

To get my $25 out, I played one of the new Aliens games, which had a massive screen and a rifle that reminded me of the Pulse Rifles from Alien 2. I probably played $10 of that game alone, working through the levels.

I also found their Macross / some other game, which was never working during my previous visits was actually working, so I played Macross for quite a while. It has screen shots from Macross 84 Summer in it, and you can grab floating "bonuses" to change between Flight, Gerwalk and Battroid modes. I probably spent too much time playing that.

I also set a nice score on their Omega Race cockpit, which didn't fault out at the end like it did last time I was there.

In general, I'd say there was a 30 to 1 working to non working game count, but I may be low - I didn't do a formal census. Most of the games I saw were working, a few were faulted (screen frozen) but still on.

It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to go back.

I also confirmed they have two of the working Sega 3D games. Hologram and Holossum, and they were both working (which seems to be a miracle from what I have read here). A photo is attached for objective evidence.

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in his defense it's "galloping ghost", not "galloping grandpa", so i think we can excuse the mobility challenges

based on past posts, i'm surprised Mrs GW joined. but it sounds like fun was had by all. glad to hear they made the most of the Ghost

Awesome. I was waiting for you to complain about your leg not working and blame it on the arcade. Your limb to not working ratio, quite high.
 
Geez, I didn't even see Cosmic Chasm last week. Hate that I missed that one. Was Beavis and Butt-head working?

Only high score I set was on Kick, there's some benefit to having owned one for 25-odd years...
 
in his defense it's "galloping ghost", not "galloping grandpa", so i think we can excuse the mobility challenges

based on past posts, i'm surprised Mrs GW joined. but it sounds like fun was had by all. glad to hear they made the most of the Ghost
She doesn't mind playing them. She does pretty good when she puts her mind to it.

She objects to a basement full of games. She's worried what will happen if I leave unexpectedly (get hit by the beer truck) and what she would do with them.
 
Not fun to keep running. So probably not a good game for GG even if they had room
It's interesting to hear that. The one I got running in Omaha was pretty trouble free.

Don't get me wrong - when I went back in December of 2020 I think, it had problems. The entire power supply was dust-locked - every port was full. I had to pull it and clean it out. Some of the screws had fallen out from the continuous stomping the game got, but we took the floor apart, put everything back together, and tightened down the bolts.

I'm glad the CRT was still crisp and clean - I wasn't looking forward to pulling that monster for a re-cap or repair.

And to put that in perspective, I left that DDR game running well in October of 2013 when I transferred back to Illinois after we got Fort Calhoun Station restarted. So 7 years, no discernable maintenance, and still working. That thing sucked quarters down - the only games that pulled more were Mario Carts (2) and Air Hockey.
 
I'm fairly certain that DDR & both Mario Karts are now at Beercade 2. All still operational. Still pretty popular. I just left there a little while ago.

Edit:
If those games used to be at Hollywood Candy then yeah, they're at BC2 now.
 
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