Arcade Galactic – Now 16 Years In Business!

June 8th, 2024 marks two great anniversaries – the release of Columbia Pictures’ Ghostbusters back in 1984, and its the 16th year since opening our doors. Growing up, Ghostbusters was one of my favorite movies, although I did not realize that the dates collided when we had opened – it was just a timing coincidence!

Anyways, thank YOU, the customers, for getting us from a location where the management at the time was just trying to get rid of us (outside of the mall, next to nobody), to being known as “the arcade at the mall” where we’ve been bringing the fun at our present spot since 2017.

-Major milestones Over 16 Years-

• Opened June 8th, 2008 on the outside of the Valley Fair Mall near Red Robin. We had around 25 arcade games, 2 pinball machines, an air hockey table, and a PC LAN center with 6 machines. We were one of the only locations in the world to feature the never-released game, The Act: An Interactive Comedy – which we still have today!
• Summer 2009 – We moved into the mall, down the hallway that used to connect to Mervyn’s, across from Ryan’s Jewelry. The PC LAN had already been expanded to 8 systems, but the space was rather cramped so we couldn’t expand our selection much.
• 2011 – We were the only location in the Western multi-state area to bring in Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition; We also were one of the only locations in the world to bring in an English version of Dariusburst Another Chronicle by Taito.
• 2012 – Due to major reconstruction at the Valley Fair Mall, our location was again demolished, but we were able to move to a new spot that was in the main corridor of the mall. That spot was originally 3x the size of the game area we had open to the public, but construction a couple of years later put in a building that reduced that significantly, so we never expanded within the space. Major games we grabbed while in that location: Jurassic Park Arcade, Star Wars Battle Pod, Fast & Furious: Super Cars, Star Trek Pinball, Transformers: Human Alliance, Dance Dance Revolution, Batman, and Cruis’n Blast. We did close the PC LAN at this point due to lack of interest.
• 2014 – Furnished part of the arcade space at the then-named Salt Lake Comic Con/FanX. We appeared there for several years, often times being the only arcade entertainment in the space. We did so up until 2019.
• 2017 – Moved to what is our present location; a space that used to be Kay Bee Toy Stores when the owner of Arcade Galactic was a kid. This gave us much more space to work with, allowing us to greatly expand our game selection to over 60 games. We’ve added these titles while there: Maximum Tune 5DX+, The Walking Dead, House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, Luigi’s Mansion Arcade, Step ManiaX, Minecraft Dungeons Arcade, 3x exA-Arcadia systems, NBA Hoops basketball, 4x NIRIN racers, and our biggest selection of pinball machines ever, currently with The Addams Family, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Mandalorian, Terminator 3, and more.
• Summer 2017 – Hosted a special COSMOTRONS event, held by the developer of the game who did a nationwide tour. We did purchase the game but eventually sold it off to another Utah operator.
• 2019 – Began hosting some locally organized pinball tournaments, thanks to SLAP and others. This was our best year ever.
• 2020 – We were forced to change our name from Game Grid Arcade to something else, even though we had registered the name long before a different company who had nothing to do with video games did. To avoid a lawsuit we could have won but couldn’t afford (especially during 2020), we changed our name to ARCADE GALACTIC.
• October 2020 – Opened up our second location at the Newgate Mall in Ogden. We took some games from West Valley up there, while at the time there were some great deals on equipment that allowed us to offer some unique things up there, such as the aforementioned House of the Dead and Luigi games. Unfortunately business never managed to perform better than in West Valley and due to some other life circumstances, we closed this on the last day of 2022.
• Summer 2022 – Got our hands on two prototype/early arcade games, purchased from the original creator of said titles: Toobin’ (1988) and Hydra (1990) by Atari Games. The Toobin has a serial number of 2; Hydra was “Proto #3” and looks different than the production version. That said, Hydra is exceedingly rare, with only 200 of those cabinets ever being produced. Both games were signed by the game designer, Dennis Harper
• Winter 2023 – Furnished the arcade space for Beehive Meals‘ Christmas Party
• Summer 2024 – Began beta testing two locally designed games, Asteroids Recharged and Avian Knights.

Thank you again for your support! We’ll see you at the arcade!