« EVO Roadtrip Day 2 - Brookfield, IL »

EVO Roadtrip is a series of articles detailing the trip of long-time fight fan and upcoming freelance journalist, Vince "W.K." Ingenito.  After a difficult year, both personally and professionally, he decided to pack as much of his stuff into the back of his Jeep as he could and drive across the country from New York to California to make a new life.  On the way, he takes a look at how the fighting game community has grown and spread, both in huge metropolises and small one-light towns. 

The trip reaches it's climax at the 2011 Evolution World Championship in Las Vegas. Check back regularly to get more and more pieces of this unique, personal look at fighting game culture.

Day 2 of my country spanning trip to Las Vegas and Evo 2011 was, in many ways, the true beginning of my journey. Sure, driving from New York to Philadelphia and then Pittsburgh is a pretty substantial amount of travel but due to planned stops for sight-seeing, food and gaming, I never had to really buckle down and go into all out "road trip mode". But my route from Pittsburgh to Chicago was far less meandering. No famous restaurants, no arcade stop-overs just 8+ hours of driving interrupted only by a quick refuel. Day 1 felt like something of a field trip. Day 2 was going to feel like a sojourn. 

And so it did. I had pulled out of the hotel parking lot in Pittsburgh at around a quarter to ten and by the time I was standing in the next hotel parking lot in Chicago it was a quarter to seven. Aside from a delicious breakfast pastry I scored from the Potomac Bakery in Pittsburgh before departing, I had only had water, some nori waffers and a granola bar to eat and I was starting to feel like it. After checking in to my hotel, I literally threw my bags into the room and hopped right back in my Jeep to go find sustenance at a place called The Honkey Tonk BBQ. Their Memphis styled barbecue fare was exactly what I needed after 9 hours of nothing but driving and snacking. 

After a much needed dinner of beef brisket chili and ribs had been washed down with a few glasses of whiskey, I was finally ready to get down to business. After hearing that it had one of the largest cabinet collections in North America, I could hardly wait to get a look at Galloping Ghost Arcade (GGA) in the neighboring town of Brookfield, IL. 

While I did have an awesome experience at University Pinball, I had been surprised by how small it was compared to the arcades I had frequented growing up. The four linked AE cabs were the most impressive setup of their kind that I had ever seen in person but the rest of their collection, while wonderfully kept up, wasn't really my particular cup of boba. Certainly if you love pinball, shooting and racing games, University Pinball has higher quality cabs than say a Tilt or Dave and Busters or any other chain amusement center for that matter. But I was in search of a true arcade Shangri-La where I could relive the halcyon days of the American arcade as remembered from my youth. 

I'm telling you right now, if you crave the same, stop reading this, hop in a plane/train/teleportation device and get to 9415 Ogden Avenue in Brookfield, IL to see what you've been missing. 

Walking in the front door of Galloping Ghost Arcade, the place doesn't so much welcome you as it consumes you. A black tile walkway leads you straight to the concession/merchandise counter. The barriers flanking the walkway are clearly there to ensure people go to the counter first before losing themselves in the wild forest of 80's and 90's arcade cabinets that dominate the rather substantial floor space of GGA. 

Barricaded or not, I sure didn't require restraining. All I could manage to do was stand there, slack-jawed, just inside the entrance as sights and sounds I hadn't experienced in nearly two decades flooded my eyes and ears. 

"Hi, have you come in before?" 

I avert my gaze from the sea of cabinets and back to the counter, where a tallish young man stands, smiling. 

"Uhh, umm, no." I sputtered back. 

"Ok, well it's fifteen dollars and then you just play as much as you like until we close which is usually around 2am." 

My name is Vincent Lorenzo Ingenito and I am 8. I have just been informed that apparently, I am the lucky winner of an unlimited amount of chocolate ice cream which will never make me feel full or make me fat. I can eat as much as I like for the next 5 hours. Then I will die from happiness. The End. 

I couldn't give the nice man my $15 fast enough. Until this moment, the last time I had seen a Shinobi cab like the one now staring me down, I was begging my father for quarters after tearing through the $5 he had already given me (yes, I was terrible at the game, sue me! I was 9. Jerk.) This was like Dad dropping me off at the arcade with an AMEX black card (which is clearly accepted at arcades) and saying he'd be back by the end of the day. 

But before I submerged myself in all that golden-age goodness, likely never to resurface, I decided to check out what was on the OTHER side of the walkway, a smaller area with a row of homemade cabinets housing all of today's most popular modern fighters. While many home built setups like these tend to look really...well...home built, these jobs were really snazzy looking. Sharp, game relevant artwork and title cards adorned many of them, and all of them featured very solid construction and pitch perfect sticks. 

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, BlazBlue: CS, MvC3 and Tekken 6 were all present and lined up in addition to two really nice looking MK9 cabinets and the (hopefully) soon to be smash hit, King of Fighters XIII. Oddly, Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition was mixed in with all the legacy SF games a bit deeper into the arcade proper. This seemed odd at first, but looking at the small group of people huddled around the MK9 machines, it started to make sense. While 6 or 7 people huddled around the two cabinets waiting to get some casuals in, not a soul was at any of the other cabs. 

This kind of thing happens of course. Different communities latch on to different games for a multitude of different reasons. It was just surprising to see the FGC's red-headed stepchild getting all the love. Meanwhile MvC3 is present, but getting ignored, kind of like that hot chick who's too psycho for anyone to want to deal with anymore and Street Fighter, usually the class president, gets asked to stand in the corner. Curious, I decide to approach the MK9 cab for a closer look. 

I was quickly reminded that even when it's a game I don't care for, I love watching people play fighting games. The ebb and flow of a good match is part of it and that's something you can get from watching streams and YouTube vids. But being there, in the presence of the competitors, hearing the button slaps, watching their expressions, seeing the urgency, intensity, finesse and dexterity of their hands across the sticks and buttons and feeling the energy between them and the small crowd of spectators  is very powerful for me. I believe that, in it's purest form, it becomes about mastering oneself to master the mind of another. This mixture of inner and outer conflict results in a level of mental engagement that is totally unique, both in and outside of the gaming world. It's one of the best reasons for arcades to exist. 

Oh that, and because playing games face to face with friends is just a damn good time. 

Here is a little footage that I think illustrates a lot of these points nicely. It isn't the highest level play, nor is it the most intense example of what I am speaking about but all the subtle details that make playing and watching fighting games in person something special are here: 

 The rest of my evening at GGA is something of a blur. Maybe it was all the whiskey or maybe it was the warm, fuzzy glow of nostalgia that creeps into your belly once you start walking the endless rows of classic arcade cabinets. One thing that really stuck out, was that even though I messed around on 20 or more different cabinets, I never had to contend with a broken button or a bum stick. Upon talking to the gentleman at the counter again, I discovered why: they take maintenance extremely seriously at GGA. 

The owner of the place, who was referred to by patrons and employees alike as "The Professor" (repeated attempts at getting an actual name were thwarted, not even kidding) was fully trained in cabinet maintenance and he subsequently trained 2 other employees as well. According to the man at the counter they replace the sticks on the most popular games every 6 weeks, whether they are broken or not, to keep them in perfect working order. Even now as I was playing at 1 in the morning, a maintenance man was working on an NBA Jam cabinet in the corner. Further inspection of the facility revealed a large workshop in the back where tons of cabinets sat, in various stages of assembly, with parts and tools strewn everywhere. This is an approach I wish more arcades would take but sadly, few can afford to. 

Before I left, I decided to take another stroll through GGA's extensive old fighting game section. As I did, I found many fond memories returning, not so much about the games themselves as the times in my life they marked and the relationships I formed while playing them. 

Killer Instinct wasn't a great game per se, but I will never forget meeting my first real girlfriend at an ice skating rink I used to frequent to play it. That same girl would later stand by me in arcades and brag to her friends about how good she thought I was at Mortal Kombat 3. Not a small thing to a guy who, to that point in his life, had never felt terribly brag-worthy. 

Around that same time I met a boy from my neighborhood who liked fighting games too. We were really into Marvel Super Heroes at the time. We would walk a couple of miles to our local arcade instead of spending money on a taxi or a bus so we could have that many more quarters to play with when we got there. We spent a whole summer doing that together. He ended up being the best man at my wedding and to this day, one of my very dearest friends. It all started with Maximum Spiders, Weapon X's and Magnetic Shockwaves. 

As I finished my trip down memory lane, it was approaching 2 am and the other arcade I had hoped to visit was certainly closed. After leaving GGA behind, I decided to at least locate it and maybe check it out in the morning before hitting the road to St. Louis. The name of the place was Black Hole Arcade Pizzeria and from the pics on the web, it looked a lot like the arcade I haunted when I was a kid, which was why I wanted to see it. 

Upon reaching the address I was having trouble finding it. I figured, "It's late, I'm still a bit tipsy, I'm probably just missing it." It took three trips around the block for the cold reality to sink in. Like so many other arcades in our country, Black Hole was no more. At some point, kids like the kid I used to be dragged their Dads there and met girlfriends there and made friends there, but the realities of the modern gaming scene and the economy proved too harsh to weather. For every story like Galloping Ghost or University Pinball there are ten Blackholes, Arcade Infinities and Chinatown Fairs. I knew all of this of course. Blame it on the whiskey, or on my long day, or even on the memories of my childhood arcade, but I found myself just a little choked up as I drove back to my hotel. 

These places we still have are truly magical, but if we don't support them, they can only last for so long. If you take anything away from my story, let it be this: if you love games and you love the way gaming can bring people together, find a local arcade, spend some time and money there and tell ten of your friends to do the same. The day we stop doing that is the day the magic dies.

Next up: Day 3 - Springfield, MO

 Vince "W.K." Ingenito has been loving and playing games of all kinds longer than he has been chewing solid food.  He currently lives in San Francisco while writing his blog, More Than "Just" A Game.