It’s less a business and “much more about giving the games a home and having a place for people to enjoy them,” says Otto’s Arcade and Club owner Mitchell Rohde. | J. Adrian Wylie
Otto’s Arcade & Club, headquarters for Mitch Rohde’s curation of vintage video games, serves several purposes: museum, social club, event space, and public gaming venue.
It’s less a business and “much more about giving the games a home and having a place for people to enjoy them,” says the semiretired entrepreneur, who began collecting and restoring games as a teenager. Rather than stowing them in barns, basements, and storage units, he’s remodeled a vintage building for those who grew up in the eighties and nineties to relive a piece of their childhoods, and so “young folks could experience the games that they never had a chance to experience,” he says.
Related: Cave of Wonder
The name is a nostalgic double play. Evil Otto is a smiley-faced villain in Berzerk, one of some seventy games on-site. Otto is also the surname of the family who ran a cheese and meat shop there from the 1940s to the 1990s, when it became Saline Picture Frame Company.
Building updates include custom steel exterior siding, computer-controlled lighting and signage, smart power plugs, caterer-friendly kitchen space, and a bar offering pop and light snacks. (Private event hosts can bring in stiffer drinks if desired.)
The floor is filled with familiar classics from the Golden Age of video arcades—Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Robotron: 2084, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Defender—along with pioneers Computer Space and Pong and more niche titles, such as Japanese, keyboard-based The Typing of the Dead.
Rohde anticipates opening Otto’s to the public a few weekend days per month. Games are set to “free play,” while admission fees and concessions help cover overhead and support local nonprofits, such as Saline High School’s Science Olympiad team.
He’s already booking birthday parties, corporate events, and the like, even as he tinkers with circuit boards, power supplies, CRT monitors, and other components to bring more game cabinets back to life.
His hobby took off with a teenage job repairing electronics in a roller rink. Since his first auction purchase back then (Battlezone by Atari), he’s bought, sold, and repaired over a hundred games.
He also earned a doctorate from U-M, promptly launching AI consulting company Quantum Signal for industrial and military clients. Its work in mobile robotics and autonomy drew the attention of Ford Motor Company, which bought the business in 2019. It continues at Rohde’s other building two blocks south, the former Union School. He consults and teaches entrepreneurship alongside this conversion of a passion into a community destination.
“People regress from being sixty years old back to, like, twelve, and you see it immediately,” he says, beaming. “They remember the games, and they jump right into it. And you can’t really peel them off the game, because it’s really a time machine.”
He enjoys acquiring and fixing games more than playing them, letting others revisit the bygone era “of when an arcade was something exciting and new and fantastic,” he says. “You can go and lose yourself in the games, not really worry about anything. And I don’t know that there are that many places like that any more. I think that this is something that we sorely miss in a lot of ways.
“The community really appreciates it. They appreciate the investment. They appreciate having more to do around here.”
Otto’s Arcade & Club, 7641 N. Ann Arbor St., Saline. (734) 234–6886. Public hours vary: check Facebook or ottosarcade.com