Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame PHoF
If you grew-up in the 1960’s and 70’s you will fondly remember the time you spent inside game arcades. Time spent playing the Pinball machines. I know I do. Back then we did not have Xboxes, Gameboys, Cell Phones or the Internet. What we did have is the Arcades. Those places became our hang-outs.
When visiting Las Vegas you have a unique chance to relive some of those memories from your childhood. Located not 10 minutes cab ride from the Las Vegas Strip is the Pinball Hall of Fame. There you will find pinball heaven.
10,000 square feet is dedicated in the new facility to the Pinball Hall of Fame, where the entire family can enjoy non-violent pinball arcade games for small dinero. All machines are available for play, so not only can you see them, you can actually play your old favorites. The pinball machines are all restored to like-new playing condition by people that love pinball and understand how a machine should work. All older pinballs are set to 25 cents per play, and newer 1990s models are set to 50 cents per play. A far better return on fun than any Las Vegas casino environment, and the PHoF actually has windows and a clock in the room! It takes more than slot machines to keep tourists happy, and the Pinball Hall of Fame is trying its best to do just that.
Pinball Hall of Fame
The PHoF is grounded by a quality-for-quality’s-sake, Zen-and-the-art-of-pinball-maintenance philosophy. The machines here all *work*, and they deliver what they promise – fun. The club members make sure of this, often clad in a carpenter’s apron and strung in wire. The Pinball Hall of Fame’s reputation is on the line, and it’s causing a stir among ‘pinheads’ worldwide.
The PHoF is run by Tim Arnold, a veteran arcade operator who made it big in the 1970s and 1980s during the Pacman era. In 1976 Tim and his brother opened ‘Pinball Pete’s’ in Lansing, Michigan, and it quickly became a gamer’s mecca. At the height of their success, the Arnold brothers weren’t counting coins, they were counting shovelfuls of coins. When Arnold sold his part of the business and moved to Las Vegas in 1990, he picked up the phone and started talking to the Salvation Army. Midge Arthur, the administrative assistant of the Las Vega branch of the Salvation Army says, ‘I got a telephone call from Tim about 15 years ago, and he said, ‘If I had money to give, what would you do with it?’ We had a long discussion about our different rehabilitation programs. He was, I think, kind of skeptical of all organizations. He wanted to make sure the money was going to help people.’ Not long after that conversation, Midge Arthur started receiving checks for thousands of dollars from the man she says is, ‘one of my strangest, out-of-the-ordinary donors we have ever had.’
Filed under Cool Things to do in Las Vegas by steve
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