![]() Midwest native Tim Arnold was 14 when he invested in those candy dispensers as his first moneymaking venture. Like so many dreams, this one started with a few gumball machines in Michigan back in 1969. But our ego - and the fact that we really wanted to see something spectacular - kind of took over.” “We should have just stayed on Trop and rotated games in and out and let people have a different show every time by doing it that way. “Financially, we shouldn’t have done this,” Arnold says, taking in his new digs. It’s taken Arnold, wife Charlotte and a cast of volunteers decades to get here.Īnd now they and their fellow “pinheads” of the world have their palace, built 25 cents at a time. Now he has just opened the doors on a massive, new $10 million complex across from the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign on Las Vegas Boulevard. “In your mind, everything that’s ever amused you is in there somewhere,” he observes, “but you’ve forgotten about it … until you see that machine.”įor 15 years, the Pinball Hall of Fame has been a portal to the past for tens of thousands of visitors annually, a maze of machines that take your money and give you something ephemeral and lasting at once: a good time in the moment that simultaneously conjures the glow of good times had in years gone by.Ī nonprofit organization, the hall also has donated millions to local charities.Īfter opening his first location in a run-down strip mall next to a discount movie theater on Tropicana Avenue in 2006, Arnold moved down the street to a larger spot three years later. “People will walk down a row of games and they’ll just stop dead. “We have what we call ‘nostalgia lockup,’ ” explains owner Tim Arnold, his wispy gray hair much longer than his patience for such modern distractions as cellphones, which he refuses to own. ![]() That happens sometimes at the Pinball Hall of Fame. Pac-Man or whatever quarter-gobbler it was that sucked the change from your pockets back in the day.Īnd then you just might freeze in your tracks. Cheese or that neighborhood bowling alley, wherever you first started feeding your allowance into Ms. Stroll through - you’ll see it, absorb it - get wormholed back to Chuck E. The voluminous, white-walled room isn’t even half full yet, and already it’s loaded with remembrance. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal) feels like an airplane hangar of memories. In 2021, the Pinball Hall of Fame moved into a 25,000-square-foot location on Las Vegas Boulevard, which is now home to an hundreds of pinball machines and dozens of classic arcade machines, each representing a pivotal piece of the story evolution of this American pastime-all promising fun nights and days of nostalgia for old pinheads and younger newcomers alike.įrom vintage Bally’s, Williams, and Gottlieb games to cutting-edge Stern and Jersey Jack tables, check out the list here prior to your visit.The Pinball Hall of Fame will house around 700 games when fully stocked in the months and years to come. Any excess revenue from the Pinball Hall of Fame also benefits other charities.Īfter years of fantasizing, Tim Arnold brough the Pinball Hall of Fame into existence in 2009 at a warehouse-sized location on Flamingo Road, which housed enough vintage coin-ops and classic video game consoles to get people in the door, but with a focus on pinball machines built between the 1950s through the 1990s-including many of the most beloved tables from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. The Pinball Hall of Fame is a registered non-profit and to this day there remains a candy vending machine area where 25 cents gets you a handful of sweets and serves as a donation to the Salvation Army. In the early ’90s, Tim Arnold moved to Las Vegas and began donating large checks from his businesses to the Salvation Army. Pinball fans owe it all to Tim Arnold, the mastermind behind the operation and an active member of the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club, launched his lifelong passion in Lansing, Michigan, where he and his brother owned a business called Pinball Pete’s. History of the Pinball Museum of Las Vegas Pinheads, rejoice! In addition to the most classic and very latest solid state machines, pack your quarters for plenty of EM tables from every decade-including the pre-flipper days-rare finds, oddball experimental concept tables, and more at the world’s largest collection of pinball machines. ![]() ![]() From old-school electro-mechanical marvels and some of the rarest tables ever made to ‘90s solid-state classics and brand new machines, there’s something for everybody to flip out on here. Situated at the south end of the famed Las Vegas Strip and curated by a troop of lifelong “pinheads,” the Pinball Hall of Fame invites veteran and soon-to-be pinball aficionados to pack their quarters and play. Home to more than 150 coin-operated pinball games, the Pinball Hall of Fame lays claim to the largest known collection of pinball machines on Earth.
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