Visited the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas

[More Cowbell]

Just got back from a business trip to Vegas last week. Along with all of the buffets and gambling, I was able to make it over to the Pinball Hall of Fame Museum.
http://www.pinballmuseum.org/

What an awesome place. 142 pins with almost all of them working (those that weren't were actively being worked on by the staff). It definitely isn't your typical museum, much more like a typical 80's arcade since it is just in a strip mall. It was an awesome opportunity to play machines that I have only heard about and get a first hand impression instead of just depending on other people's impressions. I found that there were some machines I thought I would love that I hated (Pirates of the Carribbean and Terminator 2) and some that I had either never heard of or didn't think much of until I played them and loved them (Time Machine and Frank Thomas' Big Hurt). I also like Medievel Madness, LOTR, and TZ a lot but hated Monopoly. They also have a bunch of classic video games as well. I hadn't played Crossbow in years and MAME just doesn't do it justice. Also played some Track and Field on a four player cocktail. The place is about 3 miles off the strip. I took a $20 cab to it but walked back just to save the time and effort of waiting for a cab and paying another $20. Took about an hour to walk. I went back the next night again just to experience it at night. It was cool to see everything lit up in the dark. There was a big pinball tournament going on the next day so there were tons of people from all over getting some practice in on the machines. It was the highlight of my trip to spend 10 hours or so total trying out all of the pins that they had there.

[More Cowbell]

Forgot to mention I also attended the ASI convention (Amusement Showcase International). I played the new Indiana Jones pinball on and off for an hour or so. Great game when you incorporate the theme. It's a lot like the Jurassic Park layout without the upper flipper. I thought it was a lot of fun. Stern also had a bunch of their other machines there too so it was awesome to play these NIB machines for a while. Everything was so shiny and new. The rest of the convention was great too. Lots of pop a shots and redemption machines (the good thing there was that there were buckets of tokens to try everything out, a few tokens in the machine, a few in my bag, times 50). I played Blazing Angels for a while, that was amazing.

[Level42]

What did the games cost to play at that hall of fame ?
Just curious to compare it to Funspot.

[More Cowbell]

The old old games were mostly $.25, the 1980's and 1990's games were mostly $.50, and the 2000's games were mostly $.75 (5 ball games on the new ones). Almost all of them had an option to get 3 plays for $1.00 or 4 plays for $1.50 or the like. Twilight Zone was a bargain at $.50 in my opinion. Plenty of free games were to be had too either by hitting the free game scores (which weren't set extremely high) or by matching (which seemed generous as I matched on probably 10 games or more.)

[RayB]

The place is about 3 miles off the strip. I took a $20 taxi cab to it but walked back just to save the time and effort of waiting for a taxi cab and paying another $20. Took about an hour to walk. I went back the next night again just to experience it at night.

Corrected for you. (Confused me. I thought you delivered a game cabinet to them or something)

[Mauzy]

The place is about 3 miles off the strip. I took a $20 taxi cab to it but walked back just to save the time and effort of waiting for a taxi cab and paying another $20. Took about an hour to walk. I went back the next night again just to experience it at night.

Corrected for you. (Confused me. I thought you delivered a game cabinet to them or something)

I thought the same...


My parents are going to Vegas next month, but they won't take me. Ma doesn't like the idea of me spending a week playing $200 worth of pinball instead of going to school...
Oh well. Atleast I job shadow the local Amusement tech for a day while they're gone...