Are you a budding pinball wizard or are you an oldster like me who prefers the tactile feel of those machines over the bits and bytes of video games? Fortunately for you, there are still some great places to play pinball in the USA. Most of them are tagged as pinball museums, but they’re arcades where you can actually play with the exhibits.
Pinball is not a dead form of entertainment: new machines are still coming out all the time, like that one pictured here that I just spotted in a local brewpub in Tampa Bay. They just don’t do the huge sales numbers they used to back in the days before Pac-man, Asteroids, Centipede, and Donkey Kong started taking their place. (See more about that in Sheila’s post on the National Videogame Museum.)
It wasn’t just changing tastes that led to a decline though. Pinball machines take up more room than most (but not all) video games, plus they are much more complicated machines. In the old days there were roving technicians who spent all day making repairs, traveling from bar to arcade to pool hall. Now, in most of the spots listed in this pinball places article, there’s a full-time person on site keeping the machines rolling. At any of them, at least one machine will probably be out of order at any given time.
If you want to spend hours hitting the flippers and bumping the machine strategically without tilting, here are some of the best places to play pinball in the USA, “pinball museums” where you can hit the flippers until your arms cramp up.
You could put together a whole USA road trip based on this list, so we’ll start in the west and head across the country. You’ll have a few days to rest up though unless you strike gold in a midwestern USA bar: none of these are in the middle of the country except for one outside of Detroit.
Pacific Pinball Museum – Alameda, CA
The Pacific Pinball Museum is an interactive museum with 90 playable pinball machines. Games are presented in chronological order and historical display from the 1940s to today.
This is a non-profit enterprise, so when you pony up $22 for a single, $15 for a student, or $55 for a family of four, you’ll support a fun place for people to gather and not executive bonuses. They also have vintage jukeboxes and curated pop culture/art exhibitions. The Pacific Pinball Museum is open every day except Mondays and major holidays. And hey, there’s a twofer deal on Tuesdays!
See more info here on this Alameda pinball museum.
The Las Vegas Pinball Museum – Las Vegas, NV
In case you weren’t sure what was going on inside that building above in Las Vegas, the sign will definitely clue you in. This is supposedly now the world’s largest pinball machine collection, featuring machines from the 1950s up to the present day. I played a Mandalorian one while I was there, but also played some refreshingly retro machines where 1,500 points earned a free game.
I cashed in $20 worth of quarters at the change machine when I arrived, thinking that I may have to come back to get more later. All the machines were reasonably priced here though and I never even made it through that initial amount. I was playing a lot of the retro machines that were just 25 cents and some I remembered from my high school days.
To my point before about maintenance, there were dozens of machines here in various states of disrepair, some in restoration, some just not working like they were supposed to. This is called a museum because there is a bit of explanation by each machine. It’s hand-written and quite basic though, so I’m not sure collectors are going to be all that satisfied with the signage. Come to this warehouse-sized spot near the Mirage–twice as big as its previous location–and get out of the heat, enjoying one of the best bargains in Sin City.
See more info here on pinball in Las Vegas, NV
Seattle Pinball Museum – Seattle, WA
This pinball museum in Seattle originally opened in late August 2010. Since then, the collection has grown to include games from more than 60 years. You can take a trip through modern pop culture history with Captain Fantastic (1976), Terminator 2 (1991), Guns ‘n Roses (1994), and Toy Story 4 (2022).
Like many, this works on an admission for unlimited play plan, which is $20 for adults, $17 for kids. See more info here at the official website.
Next Level Pinball Museum – Hillsboro, OR
This interactive arcade museum is home to one of the largest arcades in the world with more than 400 games to play. Out of these games, there are 200 pinball machines on the floor that are in constant rotation to keep the collection new and updated for returning visitors. They also sell pinball games.
Pony up a $20 bill and you can play anything and everything on the floor until your flipper fingers give out. Hillsboro is a suburb of Portland and the arcade/museum is open Thursday through Sunday.
See more at their website here.
Sparks Pinball Museum – New Baltimore/Chesterfield Township, Michigan
Representing the Midwest with an impressive showing this pinball arcade located between a Salvation Army store and an animal hospital in a suburb of Detroit has 50 machines you can play. Like the Vegas one on this list, they’ve stuck with the “pop some quarters in” method so you won’t feel obligated to play more than a few games if you don’t want to.
This pinball arcade doesn’t try to take you too far back in time: most of what you’ll play are games by Williams and Bally from the 80s and 90s—a time that most would agree was when the most creative pinball machines came out—with others from later than that.
Their website’s games section has some great overviews of what’s on the floor, including some of the best-loved pinball games of all time.
The Strong Museum of Play Pinball Room – Rochester, NY
We wrote about Rochester’s Strong Museum of Play a few years ago. Follow that link to the blog post. This was a big highlight of my visit to that city.
The Strong is an interactive, collections-based museum devoted to the history and exploration of play. It is one of the largest history museums in the United States. Located in the museum is the National Toy Hall of Fame, the National Archives of Game Show History, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and more. Visitors can play on pinball machines in the museum’s Pinball Playfields exhibit as well as a variety of arcade games in the Arcade Games in eGame Revolution exhibit.
ElectroMagnetic Pinball Museum and Restoration – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
This is a museum and interactive arcade that attempts to “foster a love and appreciation for history, science technology, engineering, arts and mathematics through interactive pinball exhibits.” They offer events and programs in the local community to teach the importance of preserving these unique pieces of history and art.
This ElectroMagnetic Pinball Museum may just be the best bargain in the country: $10 for unlimited play! It’s worth the trip up from Providence or on the way west from Cape Cod in Massachusetts. See their website here for hours and info.
Silverball Pinball Museum – Asbury Park, NJ
The home of Bruce Springsteen will take you back in time to when The Boss was just getting famous. You can play for a half hour ($10) or all day ($20) at this pinball heaven stop with a full bar and cafe serving appropriately artery-clogging Jersey Shore food. They claim to have 600 machines in rotation, both pinball machines and arcade games.
There are actually two Silverball pinball museums: one here, one in Delray Beach, Florida. Keep scrolling down for info on that one.
Roanoke Pinball Museum – Roanoke, VA
Roanoke, Virginia is just up the interstate from loads of collages and is near the Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is not a big city, but apparently it has a love of pinball.
The Roanoke Pinball Museum opened in the summer of 2015. They are an interactive museum that is “dedicated to the science, art, and history of pinball.” Machines span a range from the 1930s through today. If there’s a favorite machine from your youth, there’s a good chance they have it here since there are usually 70 places to play pinball in this space: no quarters stacked to claim “next!” needed.
Asheville Pinball Museum – Asheville, NC
There’s a lot to love about Asheville, North Carolina and much of that has to do with enjoying the nearby mountains. If it’s a rainy day, however, you might want to spend it inside playing pinball instead. This pinball museum has 35 games available to play, plus an equal number of video games if your kids gravitate toward those instead. Games range from the 1950s to the present day.
This is one of the country’s best bargains too: $15 gets you unlimited play. I think I probably spent way more than today’s equivalent of $15 to play pinball a few times at bars in my college town, back when that was a whole lot of money to part with. And there were usually only two or three machines to choose from.
See more about the Asheville center here. They also have a sister museum located 30 minutes away in Hendersonville, NC called The Appalachian Pinball Museum.
Gatlinburg Pinball Museum – Gatlinburg, TN
Keeping the mountain theme going, if you’re visiting the most popular national park in the USA, the Smoky Mountains one, you’ll probably at least pass through the tourism town of Gatlinburg, If the cheesy tourist shops get to be too much, head into the local pinball museum to have some fun.
Promoting themselves as the largest collection of pinball machines in the Smokies, this interactive museum’s collection includes mostly Limited Editions games.
Chattanooga Pinball Museum – Chattanooga, TN
Back when I lived in Nashville for many years, I would tell anyone who listened what a great small city Chattanooga is. We took our daughter there a few times on vacation and the place almost gave me faith that there were some people who actually knew how to govern in Tennesee. Sheila says they make some good craft spirits there too.
The city’s pinball center is another interactive all-you-can-play museum. This space features monthly tournaments open to all ages. If you live in Chattanooga and you’re a pinball wizard, they offer the best deal in the USA: $35 for a month of unlimited play! Otherwise it’s $20 for most people and $16 for kids 10 and under for unlimited play.
Check out their website here.
Replay Amusement Museum – Tarpon Springs, FL
I’m illustrating this one with a selfie because my wife and I have been to this pinball arcade twice, reliving the times we used to pump quarters into machines in the East Village of New York City when we first started dating.
This location bills itself as an interactive museum with over 120 pinball and vintage video games set to “free play.” Twice I’ve learned that the muscles you use for playing pinball aren’t ones you use for much of anything else, so after a while your arms and wrists feel like quitting before the rest of you is ready. Well, that’s what happened with me anyway.
Next time I’ll go on my own and slip a few doors down to the Two Frogs brewpub for a break with a 16-ounce curl or two. This place is right off of the Pinellas Trail, a rails-to-trail project that will take you all the way down to St. Pete, Florida if you’re up for a long bike ride.
See their website here.
Silverball Retro Arcade – Delray Beach, FL
Heading to the other coast of Florida, Delray beach is an inviting town near Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale that is popular with both vacationers and snowbirds looking to escape the cold. Delray Beach’s pinball museum has a full bar with a 7-hour happy hour (my kind of place) and a DJ or live band some weekends.
You can pick your ideal stamina time, with passes for one hour ($15), a half-day ($17.50), or all day ($20). They have 88 pinball machines, ranging from retro to modern, and if there’s a family member not into that they’ve got Skee-ball and video games. See more info here.
The State of Pinball Museums in America
Understand that most of these enterprises are a labor of love founded by an obsessive collector. There are easier ways to make a buck if you wanted to start a business. At least one of these may be closed by the time you read this, but hopefully another pops up to take its place.
The formerly largest pinball museum in the country, which was located off the highway from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, closed in 2021. It had reached a peak of 1,100 machines and ended up auctioning them off. The Olympia Pinball Museum in Washington State also went under during the Covid-19 lockdown period.
There are a few smaller ones around where you can play pinball on a selection of machines, but they’re smaller affairs we didn’t think belonged in this group, such as this one in Cleveland.
In case you’re wondering, the machine you’re mostly likely to see in all these places is the one I’d put in my house if I knew I could get it repaired if needed: The Addams Family pinball game from 1991 is the best-selling machine of all time, with more than 20,000 produced. With voices from the movie actors and an It hand that reaches out and grabs balls, it’s a true piece of entertainment.
If you are in the market for a pinball machine, know that it’s going to cost you as much as a semi-reliable used car with 80K miles on it: generally $5K to $12K–the high end is if it’s collectible. Check GreatAmericanPinball.com to get an idea and the Next Level Pinball Museum in Oregon also sells machines.
We’re sure this is not a comprehensive list of all the pinball museums in America, so if we missed a pinball arcade with a wide selection like these, leave a shout-out in the comments!
If anyone would like to know where they can play pinball close to where they live (or where they are visiting), there is a site that will tell you – https://pinballmap.com .
Thanks J.D. It’s missing some places where I last lived (Tampa Bay) and you have to know the machine or venue to do a search for where you’re headed. It will search close to where you live though if you need a fix. I imagine it is limited by who is inputting the data (or not), like the beer rating sites.
I just spent a few blissful hours at North Coast Pinball, in Nehalem, Oregon. The private tour was worth every penny: Pinball anatomy, playing tips, history. Finally got to see the little plumb bob that gives you those annoying tilts, but makes you strive to up your game.
That’s so cool! Thanks for the heads up.