From organizing the long-running Midwest Championships annual majors, to writing strategy guides and tournament coverage as senior editor for Tips & Tricks Magazine, to designing game controllers at NubyTech and Pelican, to working on Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe at Midway, Jason “DreamTR” Wilson has done it all in the game industry. He now co-owns and operates his own arcade with some 125 cabinets on display.
Maj: Let’s start with a little background on what you’re doing right now with Game Galaxy Arcade. How did it start, what’s your day to day role, and how has it been faring in this slow economy?
DreamTR: When I moved to Tennessee I had always wanted to find a place for a game store, but a friend of mine and I had some revenue share from some arcade games I had on location. We went to the Hickory Hollow Mall to buy some stuff from the old Tilt/Time-Out location, but everything was removed.
I contacted the mall office and the rent was decent enough for us to take a chance at getting a location, but at the time we only owned 30-35 games combined, so we had a lot of work ahead of us to obtain more games. We opened in November 2008. I am the co-owner of the arcade and the game room is steady, not great, but not terrible either. Because I am a collector, this actually allows me to maintain storage as well as allowing everyone to enjoy these games once again.
