A uniformed police officer races through the ruins of the Washington, DC on a snowmobile simulator. A teenager dukes it out with his friend in a fighting game. A middle-aged man in a suit groans at the end of his pinball game.
Dennis’ Place For Games is a bustling video arcade in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, home to a surprisingly close-knit community of gamers. Since 1978, Dennis’, directly adjacent to the CTA Red Line’s Belmont El stop, has been a neighborhood fixture. It’s a place where an adolescent on his way home from school can take arms against a corporate lawyer in a heated game of Mortal Kombat. A place where the Midwest’s best duel it out with joysticks and buttons.
“Most of the customers: I know them,” says founder and owner Dennis Georges. “They say ‘Hello, hi Dennis.'”
“My dream was to be American”
The story of Dennis’ Place For Games is the story of its owner. Growing up in Greece, Georges wanted nothing more than to be American. “My dream was to be American,” he explains. “I love to be American.” After joining the Greek navy as a high school graduate, Georges rose to the ranks of Lieutenant Commander before resigning from the service. In 1962, Georges took the first step towards realizing his dream, and immigrated to the United States.
Before going into the arcade industry, Georges trained to be a fourth degree black belt under the legendary Mas Oyama in Japan, in addition to working as a professional boxer — even making an appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
In 1975, Georges opened his first arcade. It closed its doors in 1979, but that same year Georges opened two more locations: the Belmont location and one on Clark Street in Rogers Park.
While the Clark Street location caters mostly to younger children — Disney songs are sometimes played through the arcade’s sound system — the Belmont branch is home to more serious, and usually older, crowd. It is here that the best of the best come to make a name for themselves.
“The Best Are Here”
“Worthless,” Gabriel Limonez says as he points to a character he has selected in the game Marvel vs Capcom 2 that resembles a small yellow Lego man. “You wanna know why I chose him?”
Limonez proceeds to press a complex series of buttons on the console, causing the screen to erupt in a frenzy of high-powered moves and flashing lights before finally stopping with the words “54 hit combo” resting on the screen. A satisfied grin eclipses Limonez’s face.
Limonez, 21, is part-owner of the Crosstown Catering company. Well-spoken and personable, there is little about Limonez’s rugged, tattooed exterior to suggest his true passion. Limonez, who has been patronizing Dennis’ since he was eight years old, spends anywhere from $10 to 50 a day at Dennis’.
“Dennis’ is probably the number one arcade in Chicago,” Limonez, who won 23rd place in a Midwest Marvel vs Capcom tournament, explains. “The best are here. On a scale of one to ten, I’d give (the level of competition) a ten.” Limonez claims to be “probably the fourth best in Chicago” at his game of choice.
Competition is one reason that Dennis’ is able to stay marketable, even as newer and more advanced home video game systems become available. Although he owns a Dreamcast, Playstation 2, and Apple G-4 home computer, Limonez still frequents Dennis’ on a daily basis.
Paul Wright, 25 and a resident of Chicago’s South Side, agrees. “No use in seeing someone who’s only played the game twice and beating them,” Wright explains. “I could bring a whole bunch of school children and beat them senseless and that is not fun.”
For Wright, playing video games is all about enjoying himself. “To me, it’s not about winning or losing: It’s about having fun.” Wright enjoys the games he plays at Dennis’, the level of competition, and the friendliness of the arcade’s patrons.
This, Wright says, is an advantage Dennis’ has over other area arcades. He recounts one particular incident in which the regulars from another area arcade came to Dennis’. After Wright beat one of their players in a game, the player turned to him and sneered, “You know you got lucky.”
“They’re really rude and foul,” Wright explains of the other arcade’s patrons. “For lack of a better word, (they are) assholes.”
Competition Has No Age Limit
Georges walks past the diverse crowd, through a series of doors, into one of the arcade’s back rooms. Here, in the kind of setting one would expect to find in the security post of a Vegas casino, 10 video monitors survey every inch of the arcade’s cramped interior. One monitor shows a group of a half-dozen kids huddled around one machine. Georges points at the monitor and explains that it is a new game: Tekken 4.
While fresh titles like this one draw the long lines, Dennis’ maintains a number of older video games.
“We keep some old games because we have older people. Older people love older games,” Georges said. Sitting side-by-side with such newer entries as Tekken 4, Dennis’ has vintage consoles such as an original Ms. Pacman.
“Here, you find 40, 50 year old people, 60 year old people” Georges explains. “I ask ‘you are a lawyer, why are you here?’ They say to take their frustration out.”
