Ryan Michael Wisniewski
There’s something magical about these machines that can’t be found in an app.
To get to Geeks Mania, you walk down a hall past offices in a mixed-use mall on Madison’s west side. Just as you’re thinking, “Could this really be the right place?” a prototypical nerd passes by with a clutch of comics and a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.
Reassured you are on the right track, you enter and are greeted with vintage Daredevil, Green Lantern and Howard the Duck comics; collectible figures of Captain America as well as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas; a gorgeous array of chronologically arranged stills from the first six Star Wars movies (I felt an instant kinship with the proprietors when I saw that the latest installment had been snubbed); dice for Dungeons and Dragons (12 pack: $3); nearly 20 pinball machines; and, of course, the arcade games.
Galaga. Ms. Pac-Man. Area 51. X-Men. The Simpsons. Donkey Kong, with the original controls. Some games have been entirely rebuilt with heavy-duty replacement parts (kid favorites like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles take a lot of abuse) — sometimes transforming them, as when someone decided to make Ninja Turtle Michelangelo’s controls orange rather than yellow.
Ryan Michael Wisniewski
Repairs are performed on site, many by co-owner Kyle Bailey. When I first met Bailey he was deep inside a pinball machine with a Q-tip, cleaning the gears and levers. “Ah, the Addams Family, an all-time classic,” I said. “Raul Julia and Angelica Huston recorded original audio for this game.”
I’m a gaming geek from the days of old. I played Space Invaders when it first came out (monochromatic, with a strip of translucent tape over the bottom to change the color on that part of the screen) along with Asteroids Deluxe, Pac-Man and Tempest. I spent countless hours (and quarters) in the arcades that used to be common before the Atari 2600 ushered in home gaming consoles.
Walking into the video game room, I experienced a rush of memories and sensations. I hadn’t played Heavy Barrel for at least 30 years, but my hands remembered how to defeat the enemies on each screen.
Ryan Michael Wisniewski
Along with the collectibles room, the pinball room and the video game rooms, there’s a large area in the back with rows of tables and chairs for trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! This doubles as a space to watch classic sci-fi movies on a giant screen. Sometimes gamers bring in consoles like Nintendo and set up large-scale tournaments. The Mad Town Smack Down group will converge and hold gaming session that can go 10 hours, with numbers ranging from 95 to 125 persons.
Co-owner John Karalis says Geeks Mania officially launched June 26, though the storefront has been operating since February of this year. “It’s going really well,” he says. “There’s a huge gamer community in Madison and they all talk — word got around right away.”
Along with my nostalgia-driven cohort and younger gamers, there are little kids, too. They know there’s something magical about these machines that can’t be found in an iPhone app, something tangible and visceral about the interface of big plastic buttons and joysticks. Considering the success of Geeks Mania right out of the gate, maybe the future is retro.
Geeks Mania 6502 Odana Rd., 608-316-1644, geeksmania.com, 10 am-9 pm daily
