Retro Game SuperHyper

This one has been on my “arcades to visit” list (yes I do actually have a list) for years, but it’s taken me until now to make the trip. I’m a 3-hour drive from Chicago, and Logan Arcade doesn’t open til 6pm on weekdays and 3pm on weekends, so it doesn’t really work out to just take a day trip. It had to be an occasion when I happened to be staying in Chicago overnight, with no other specific evening events to attend to, which is a pretty rare planetary alignment.

That actually happened, though, when I took a day off just to hang with my buddy who lives in the Windy City, and we managed to incorporate Logan into our plans which otherwise involved shithousing various overly-engorged meat-centric sandwiches and consuming copious amounts of alcohol.

Logan Arcade is located in the Logan Square area, kinda close to Bucktown, or maybe it’s West Town…look I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand the Chicago neighborhoods, okay?

We rolled into Logan Arcade on this snowy Friday evening around 6:30pm, with a few cocktails and shots of Malört already in us. Actually, though Logan offers a full bar, we opted not to drink here, as it was kind of a stopgap between happy hour and our next sammich slaughtering. The arcade is housed in what was once an old hardware store, with the cool original vintage signage left intact.

Inside, there’s a front room with the bar, a smaller central room with four rows of games, and then the spacious back area.

On this night, they were getting ready to livestream a tournament on the new Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine. (Correcttion: It was an official Stern Pinball launch party for D&D!) Super cool that they do that, but later on I will tell you about a tiny hitch that caused.

The first unavoidable thing we saw was the monster-sized new Godzilla Kaiju Wars VR machine from Raw Thrills. I really wanted to play it, but I felt a little too self-conscious about climbing into that thing and putting on a headset, especially as the place started to fill up with a Friday night crowd.

Walking around, I took in the overall game selection, which was solid. The front room had what are probably the most popular games — your Centipede, your Donkey Kong, your Ms. Pac, et. al., as well as a row of pinball machines of various eras, which I would soon find out was just the introduction to Logan’s strong selection of tables.

In the middle room were one row of pins and three rows of vids, with more classics like Frogger, Q*bert, Dig Dug, Robotron, BurgerTime…hey, they have a Nibbler! And a nice Space Harrier too.

As the space opens up into the back room, one wall is almost completely lined with pins, while the rest of the space is occupied with larger-sized video cabinets like Jurassic Park, Pac-Man Battle Royale, Killer Queen, Mario Kart 2, a six-player X-Men, and the highly desirable environmental Discs of Tron.

The back corner is home to five Japanese candy cabs, four of which were set up in two head-to-head 2P configurations of Sega Astro City units running Street Fighter III and Vampire Savior, and one Blast City cab which was playing Alien Storm at the time.

The walls are covered in lightboxes showcasing arcade marquees and pinball backglasses, as well as a monitor showing the action from the fighting cabs.

There was an Elevator Action marquee on one wall, but sadly that was the only hint of my favorite arcade game there, no EA machine on the floor.

Games run on quarters, obtainable from a couple of vintage change machines.

As we wandered and played, the thing that really stands out about the games at Logan is how well-maintained they are. Many of their online reviews mention this, but I definitely noticed that not only are the cabinets in great shape cosmetically, but every CRT monitor on every machine was bright and crisp, as though they had all had fresh cap kits installed that afternoon before they opened. It was actually really impressive to see an arcade with zero games out of order and all looking great. And most of them are turned up loud, bringing that chaotic arcade vibe we all know and love.

Except Dig Dug. Dig Dug had no sound.

I played a bit of everything. I love me some Space Harrier, but I often play it at home so it’s rare that I get to play it with the arcade flight stick control.

I kept going back to the Robotron 2084 machine, and had one really great game in which I’m pretty sure I got my new PB. 170k is peanuts to good players, but it was a nice run for me, and enough to put me at the top of the board for that moment.

I rolled up to one of the Vampire Savior cabs, ready to take a run at my favorite fighting game. When I put in a couple credits and hit start, those ominous words, HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER popped up — shit, I didn’t realize there was someone on the opposite cab, and I just interrupted their game. Oh well, we’ll just have some fun, right?

Dude. Look. I’m pretty good at the Darkstalkers games, I’ve practiced a lot, I even own the arcade PCBs of three of them. But it’s been a while. So whoever my mystery opponent was basically crammed me in the corner and made me his bitch for four rounds straight. I maybe got a couple good shots and one combo in, but I was clearly outclassed this night. All you can do is laugh, right? I took my lumps and moved on, promising myself to get back into practice before I tried THAT again.

As I made my way to the front again, I stopped to play the newish yet retro-flavored Pulp Fiction pinball by Chicago Gaming Company, which I saw at Midwest Gaming Classic when it came out, but have never tried. (Remember, as much as I like pinball, I absolutely suck at it.) I was surprised at its old-school style, with its attractive yet uncomplicated playfield. Pinball these days has too much going on, all these missions and objectives and shit, when all I’m trying to do is not drain, and generally failing at that. And although PF has a few of those challenges, it’s a fun game just to swat some balls around.

I decided to get back up front and visit my old friend Donkey Kong, but wait — the pinball livestream setup was in front of the row where DK and Ms Pac live.

So if you’re looking to play those games, I guess don’t go on livestream night. It’s okay though, instead I played the lovely little cabaret Centipede machine near the entrance.

That just about wrapped up our night, as we were getting hungry (I think the bar serves food too, but we had plans) and the place was really filling up and starting to get chaotic. That being said, though, I’m always happy to see a busy arcade.

Sometimes with these barcades, you don’t know if their priority is the bar or the ‘cade. I’ve been to enough of them where it’s clearly the former and not the latter, and the gaming is treated as an afterthought. Not so at Logan, where the monitors are bright and the fighting game competition is fierce. The only issue I had was their hours, making it a little tough for a non-local or a non-nightowl to make a trip to visit. But once they’re open, it’s a solid spot for some real gaming.