Benny's Arcade Life
The ongoing saga of a retro-gamer building his home arcade dream.
Please refresh the pages often, as they won't always do it for you!
The History of Arcades: Lincoln, Nebraska
I wanted to create a page dedicated to my hometown arcades. Despite Nebraska having a fairly avid historical society, based mainly in Lincoln, there's not much there for documentation in regards to amusements businesses, etc.
What I have here is a result of personal research on the subject, which includes the dates of openings & closings of several major arcades in the Lincoln area. Unfortunately, I currently don't have any photographs of the arcades back when they were in operation. I did however, take some shots of the buildings where the arcades did reside.
I'm forever in the process of trying to accquire more info and pics on the subject, and will update this page as often as I can.
The Major Players:
There were about six major arcades within Lincoln from the mid-70s through the early 90s. They are as follows:
The Red Baron
Game Gal-Ry
Pinball Pete's
WC Franks
Sluggo's (2 locations)
WC Franks actually did have a second location, but it was more of a sports-type bar / resturant with several games lined up on one wall, and not a dedicated arcade.
The Red Baron
The first arcade that I can figure out was the The Red Baron. It was located by the elevators in the Gateway Mall. It was the first mall / shopping center in town. I remember for the longest time, begging my mother to let me play a game in the arcade, but my parents were pretty protective of me back in the day, and they were afraid of bullies bothering me, and the cigarette smoke that always was associated with the arcades. One day (I think it was 1979), mom finally caved to my desire to play a game. The Red Baron was a fairly big arcade, but at that time it was mostly full of pinball machines.
At that stage in my life, I wasn't attracted to the silver ball. I wanted to play Space Invaders. It's the first arcade game I ever played. I loved it so much that I now own a real one.
Records show that the Red Baron ducked out of the scene after 1983.