Galloping Ghost arcade

For an extremely rare gaming experience…Street Fighter (1987)
“This was one of the 178 games we salvaged from a big field in Tennessee,” says Doc Mack, 34, co-owner of the Galloping Ghost Arcade, the eight-month-old Brookfield spot boasting around 225 classic (and more-recent) video games. “There’s a website that tracks which games are in which arcades, and we’re the only one in the U.S. with the original Street Fighter. We had some guy come out all the way from California just to play this machine.”

Most obvious product of the Reagan era…NARC (1988)
“I love that it says, say no to drugs! You go around shooting drug lords and junkies and they’re dropping bags of cocaine. Each level has its own unique enemy: Level two has Dr. Spike Rush who throws hypodermic needles; level three’s villain is Joe Rockhead who’s jacked up on PCP. [Laughs] I’ve never tried drugs, so NARC might have influenced me in some ways.”

What your daddy used to play…Sea Devil (1970)
“Our oldest game. The cabinet is solid wood and actually has a metal periscope and LED torpedoes. It’s an electro-mechanical [game], so there are a lot of gears and solenoids that are firing off. When you look in the back as it’s being played, things are literally sparking!”

Mack’s biggest flashback…Asteroids (1979)
“Asteroids was the first game that I actually rolled the score over [reset to zero] with the full 99 lives left—a big achievement for me at the time. [Laughs] It was 1981 and I was five years old. My father had made me a bet of $50 that I couldn’t do it. I hit a zone at the thought of getting $50. A lot of it went back into video games.”

See what all the hype’s about…Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (2011)
“Always warm with finger grease.… It wasn’t actually released in the arcades, so we wired a PlayStation up to an LCD monitor and pro arcade joysticks. We had 42 people at one of our last tournaments on it. People drive in from the tri-state area to compete.”

The gift from heaven…Punch-Out!! (1984)
“Some guy was driving down our alleyway and saw me working on an arcade machine. He had this Punch-Out!! machine in his truck. He was like, ‘Do you want to buy this?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely!’ Turns out, the guy lives in Brookfield, and we ended up hiring him as our pinball-machine repair guy.”

Just for laughs…Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters (1989)
“Even the artwork is silly: This bosomy sort of princess who’s shackled and chained up. Then there are these smug-looking heroes, Duke and Jake. It doesn’t see a lot of play, unfortunately.”

Game on at Galloping Ghost (9415 Ogden Ave, Brookfield, 708-485-4700). An all-day pass is $15.