Duke Martin had his eye on the prize — a can of tuna buried in a sea of ramen packets.
The 10-year-old, dressed in a “Scream” costume, steadily maneuvered the device. Moments earlier, another kid had nabbed the tuna and Duke wanted to achieve the same accomplishment, which would add his photo to the slideshow of winners (and give him bragging rights, of course).
“I got it,” Duke yelled.
As the adults in the room turned to look at him, he held the can of tuna over his head. Without hesitation, his photo was taken to be added to the gallery.
“People don’t usually win the tuna that fast,” Patrick Mueller said.
For four years, Mueller has been running a Halloween-themed arcade out of his home at 2129 Countryside Circle in Naperville. What started as a birthday gift for his eldest daughter’s 7th birthday has turned into a yearly operation known as the Game Over Haunted Arcade.
“It’s just impressive that they do this and they do this all for free and they just open it up,” said neighbor Patrick Cunningham, who takes his kids to the arcade.
“The claw machine is the favorite,” Cunningham said. “I like pinball, but it’s usually pretty booked with kids so most of the time I’m just watching because I don’t want to cut in front of children. But every once in a while it’ll be open and I can get in there and play.”
The Game Over Haunted Arcade started in 2021 when Mueller, 45, said he was trying to find a present for his daughter Ansley, whose birthday is Oct. 16.
“As I was looking to find a gift for her, I found something really unique and fun, and it was the claw machine that’s sitting in the garage,” he said.
The person selling it online said it came from a roller rink that was closing down.
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“I went over there, I looked at it and I thought, ‘This is a really fun gift.’ So I just bought it for her,” Mueller said. “So technically, that’s her claw machine. I wrapped it up and gave it to her and she was super excited.”
Ansley and her friends loved playing with the machine, but Mueller decided he didn’t want to stop there. With Halloween around the corner, he saw an opportunity: Instead of passing out candy to trick-or-treaters, why not have kids try to win the candy out of the claw machine?
“It was a huge hit,” Mueller said. “The kids were just going nuts for it. All the neighborhood kids, once word started getting around, they were all just coming by to try to win candy. So after that I thought, ‘Well, this would be fun if we add like a couple of arcade games,’ and then every year it’s just grown.”
Over time, Mueller started opening up his garage door and hanging up tarps and lights. He put out more games, like pinball and “Pac-Man,” for neighbors to use. A bar originally bought for his basement now sits in his garage so adults can drink beer as they watch their kids play everything from “Rampage” to a Simpsons game.
Even with all the other games Mueller added, the claw machine remains the favorite among the children. Typically, it’s filled with ramen packets since those are easier to grab than candy and it takes less ramen to fill the machine. But there is also another item children can usually find in the machine — a can of tuna.
“I don’t know why or how, but I think it was my wife. She just thought it’d be funny to put a can of tuna in there too, since we’ve got soup in there,” Mueller said. “What we found was these kids were coming up, and they were really just honed in on the tuna. They were going, ‘I want to win the tuna. I want to win the tuna.’”
Last year, Mueller also added a tuna “hall of fame,” where anyone who wins the tuna gets their photo added to a slideshow and displayed for everyone to see.
Putting together the arcade is not easy. Mueller jokingly tells his two daughters every year that this year will be the time he hosts the arcade, but seeing how much his children and other people love it keeps him going.
“There’s people who come here and they say, ‘Oh, we come here every year, and we drive from Algonquin’ or something. It’s crazy,” he said. “There’s a lot of bewilderment from people who are seeing it for the first time as well. So those types of interactions with the community, it’s really satisfying.”
The Game Over Haunted Arcade is open from 4 to 9 p.m. daily through Thursday and 3 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, when it ends for the season.