Have they cleaned that Rollergames, yet?

Does this mystery location have an address?

Edit: Never mind. Looks like I found it:

http://hqbeercade.com/

950 W. Wolfram
Chicago, IL 60657

773-665-5660

I also edited the thread title to make it more obvious.

I didn't know this place existed, I will have to make it out there soon! Thanks for the update.

I was there on Thursday for the grand opening, it was really cool except for the fact that they dont serve food, and the lack of pin etiquette, which is expected at a public location like this.

I don't play too often at places where I feel I have this issue. I'm just curious, what kinds of tings do you experience?

Does that area have parking options for people from the suburbs? I hate catching a train.

The park n ride lot at either Forest Park, River Road or Cumberland(former location of Bally Manufacturing Corporation headquarters from 1983 to 1995) offers the best options. Fastest way in, safe, reasonable parking fee. No luck if you live in a South suburb though. Maybe take the Tri-State extortionway and get to the Forest Park station.

Should I take that as a "no"?

There is some metered parking. Not sure what LAZ charges per hour over there, but I'm sure it's unreasonable like everywhere else in the city. Leasing the meters for 100 years to LAZ is probably one of the dumbest things this city has done in quite some time.

Most of the side streets are permit after 6pm in Lakeview, but if you get there before that I'd look on the side streets for a spot.

I went on Thursday and with a little patience, found a spot out front.

The more I think about it, it really wasnt that bad except having to wait behind someone if you wanted to play, in which case some people would just start up another game knowing there was someone behind them waiting. However, there were a lot of polite people there too. I was super pumped about the American Gladiators and old WWF replays that were on the tv's.

This would make the wait better for sure! Nice!

Good news is with those lines is that hopefully they will be there to stay

Like people spilling drinks or food on them? Or did they just get that much use.

Any specifics on the damage?

Why are the games free to play?

Do you get any sort of compensation for placing your machines out in public for people to beat up?

I am assuming he sold the pins to them. Thus, he has no piece of the action.

Damn, I really hope they all hold up, it is amazing to have that line up on FREE PLAY. But its gonna take a lot of work to keep them up and running, nothing worse than a beat down pinball. I'll probably visit this place every time I'm in Chicago.

With all those machines on free play, they are either going to have to have someone on staff who is capable of fixing them, or their repair bills are going to be insane.

We swung by there early on Saturday. The venue is really awesome and I love the decor (posters, murals, everything). The pin collection is also a real nice lineup. However, the about half of the games had some serious issues.

I do hope they have someone taking care of their collection on a regular basis. There's so much potential. I just don't get how having every game on free play will be sustainable.

Exactly, fifteen games with each one probably seeing hundreds of plays a day equals a great deal of maintenance. Just keeping them clean will be a daily or every other day task. I hope they have some sort of workshop area where they can shop the games out.

It is a shame that the licensing requires these games to be on free play. Without any coin drop to offset the repairs and maintenance, things will get expensive fast. Does the owner have any coin op experience at all?

Even with your help they will really need someone on staff to fix the games. If that guy is Bill, then he is going to have to come up to speed fast.

If anybody wants to go, I'll be there Friday night. Its about a 10 minute walk from my apartment.

17 machine on free play.. wow, I can't wait to see these machines pop up on CL after they've been abused. pins can easily get 300 plays on them at an expo (which requires an entrance fee), by mostly players and collectors. Put a bunch of drunk college kids from dupage in there, spilling beer and slamming the machine day after day, those things don't have a chance of surviving. If they were smart they'd do some sort of wrist band deal that's tied to beer (but pins are free, perhaps a pitcher drink minimum) to avoid licensing while making sure alcohol gets sold. No way they are going to come out ahead no matter how much profit is embedded into the alcohol.

Ooof...

Considering the money they forked over for their games, it sounds like you may want to run! We're all pinball people here and we understand (to nearly the furthest extent) that once you buy a pin, you own it and it's yours to maintain. We also understand how fickle these 20 year old games can be. This is part of the reason pinball has become a very expensive hobby as opposed to a business. I'm gonna guess that these guys, as businessmen with zero coin op experience looking to capitalize on a current trend, are gonna start to get pretty frustrated with this whole thing and go the way of Emporium and just go all Stern.

Unless you signed a commitment when you sold all of these to them, I fear you may be making the mistake of setting the bar high as far what they expect you to do as the seller. I did this once ("Just give me a call if you have any problems...") and really regretted it.

Unfortunately, the brand new games can be pretty fickle, too. Any location with pins, new or not, getting this much play needs a tech on-site.

I was just there last night and their new selection is pretty awesome. I mainly played Star Trek, Monster Bash, and Medieval Madness but they have a ton of good machines that play pretty well. Drinks are expensive though - city prices...