Dauber

I first heard of this place in 2011 when a former GRE student of mine posted on Facebook that he was going there to watch Steve Wiebe make another Donkey Kong world record attempt. (My ex-student writes a Nintendo blog.) I saw this post when I got home. Where was I while Wiebe was attempting (unsuccessfully) to set a world record? Literally blocks away shopping at Microcenter.

Anyway...Logan Hardware -- located at 2410 W. Fullerton in the Logan Square neighborhood - is NOT a hardware store -- I THOUGHT it was at the time! Instead, it's a used record/CD/DVD/semi-recent video game store. And they also have a retro '80s arcade, with the games set on free play. The admission fee: none, but you have to buy something in the record store. To me, this was a no-brainer -- I love indy record stores, and I had a huge list of CDs I wanted to get...and Logan Hardware's Yelp ratings are pretty much through the roof....

So I went there this past Saturday...the store is, well...tiny. And with a very weird selection...it's almost as if the admission price of purchasing something in the store was more of a catch than anything else, know what I mean? Like you'd have to force yourself to buy something you didn't really want. Thankfully, I did find a CD that I meant to put on my shopping list but somehow I forgot. It's apparent that not everybody knows the deal with the store, because the woman behind the counter said to every customer post-purchase, "Did you know we have a retro arcade in the back set on free play?"

The arcade itself...despite the raving reviews, it's actually kinda meh. A small room with two aisles wth games on each side of the aisle...a few pinball machines as well...

Off the top of head, I remember:
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong 3 -- I'd NEVER seen that in person before so I was impressed that they had it!
Tempest
Millipede
Berzerk
Black Widow
Asteroids
Crazy Climber (really, how the hell do you avoid being hit by a vase?!)
Frogger
Nibbler
Bubbles (NEVER saw that one outside of Starcade!)
Robotron 2084
Smash TV
Missile Command
Mario Brothers
Joust
Gauntlet
Gauntlet II
Gyruss
Punch-Out!
Track & Field
Stargate -- but not set to auto-play. I would have flagged down a worker but I didn't want to play it that badly
Food Fight (didn't realize that game has an analog controller -- I'm so used to the 7800 version!)

They also have a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet, but it had a really bizarre maze with seemingly incomplete, distorted graphics. I shut the machine off and restarted it and it turned out to be a multicade. Mainly variations of Ms. Pac-Man with another menu for Pengo and about a dozen games I've never heard of. But no matter what game/variation you picked, you'd get just ONE life plus a bonus life if you earned it.

Their web site implies that they also have Donkey Kong Jr., Popeye, and Burgertime, but I saw none of them; either they were rotated out or being repaired.

I applaud their efforts, but I was overall not impressed. But I loved how I saw two or three families there -- older Gen-Xers with their little kids, showing off the games they played when they were kids. They were all having a blast...

My advice if you're going there: 1) don't expect much in terms of games, and 2) don't go shopping there if you're looking for something specific; if you're the kind to just browse and buy something that looks interesting, you'll have better luck.

Wow...I was thrilled to accidentally find out that there's "Pinball Dreams HD" for the Mac now. It's the same Pinball Dreams that we all know and love from Amiga, although the graphics are enhanced a bit, and you can have alternate camera views as well. I spent the $5 on it, and wow, it's really cool! Except for the graphic enhancements, just as I remembered!

What other classic titles are out there for the Mac now that I'm missing out on?? I already know about Namco's OSX version of Pac-Man (which, as far as I can tell, is pretty much an emulation)....

I seem to remember that back in the '80s when I was watching Star-Cade, there was a bizarre screen on the "Name of the Game" board (those of you who've never seen the show, it was one of those lightning-round kind of things where they'd show you some screen action from a video game and you had to identify it, and they gave you two choices -- for example, "Is this game Turbo or Pole Position?") that looked like an Asteroids game, but it certainly didn't look like the black-and-white vector-based Asteroids that I knew. I thought maybe it was Asteroids Deluxe, but lo and behold, Asteroids Deluxe wasn't one of the options. The correct answer WAS Asteroids but it looked NOTHING like the Asteroids I'd played in the arcades.

My brother was watching with me, and he said DEFINITELY Asteroids but the trick was it was the cocktail table version.

Izzat true??? The table version looked different from the stand-up version???

Give it a shot....it's weird...

If so, what do you use??

I tried using SDLMESS, but man, there's ZERO documentation for it and I haven't been able to figure out how to get it working....

I did use MacMESS before and it worked amazingly well for me, but of course it was PowerPC-coded, which OSX no longer supports. Really don't want to dual-boot the iMac just for emulation...