In Illinois, the Sandburg Mall in Galesburg also hosted an Aladdin’s Castle. The mall opened in 1975 and quickly became a retail and social hub where teens browsed record shops and fed quarters into the arcade. By the late‑2000s the video‑game center had closed. A 2008 business column in the Galesburg Register Mail reported that Judy’s Dance Studio was relocating to Sandburg Mall and would occupy the former Aladdin’s Castle space in Sears Court, with the studio scheduled to open in mid‑ to late July. This clearly shows that the arcade had shut down by 2008.
Despite its closure, the Sandburg Mall arcade remains fondly remembered. A travel blogger who revisited Galesburg in 2018 recalled spending “tons of time playing Ms. Pac Man at Aladdin’s Castle” and described the mall as nearly empty, with buckets catching rainwater and only two stores open. The blogger noted that the once‑vibrant complex was slated for demolition, underscoring how far the mall had fallen since Aladdin’s Castle drew crowds of young gamers. Today, like most mall arcades of the 80s and 90s, the Galesburg arcade survives only in nostalgic accounts from former patrons.