It starts you off with multiball, building up time on a clock the longer you keep at least two of those three balls alive. Goin’ Nuts, a prototype that never went into production, flips standard pinball rules on their head. I’ve written about them before, but Pinball Circus and Goin’ Nuts deserve to be mentioned again. Arnold’s collection includes two of the rarest and most unique pinball machines ever made. If you’re a diehard pinball fanatic, you owe it to yourself to visit the Hall of Fame, and not just because of the sheer volume of machines on display. And, as has always been the case, it’s all in the name of charity, with the Hall operating as a non-profit. Whether you prefer the fast-paced, gimmick-laden, multimedia fantasias of today, or the electromechanical simplicity of pinball’s golden era, the Hall of Fame will have dozens of games for you to enjoy. Machines released over the last decade by Stern and Jersey Jack sit just a few rows over from games released in the early ‘60s. Inside the new 25000 square feet building you’ll find hundreds of pinball machines from the last 60 or so years. If you make a pitstop to grab a photo of one of the most famous signs in the world, you’ll be just a half-mile from the Pinball Hall of Fame-or roughly a couple dozen PINBALL sign lengths away.
You’ll find it at 4925 Las Vegas Blvd South, right across the street from Mandalay Bay (whose family-heavy clientele will no doubt love having a massive arcade in walkable distance), and a block or two away from the iconic Las Vegas sign. The new Pinball Hall of Fame, which opened this past April, and is twice as large as the previous location, is near the bottom of the Strip. Arnold had eyed a move to the center of the city’s tourism ecosystem for years, and finally made it happen during the pandemic. It was missing out on a huge chunk of Vegas’s tourist bonanza, though: the many, many people who come to town and don’t ever think of leaving the Strip for even a second. The Pinball Hall of Fame sat in that building on Tropicana Avenue for years, drawing the pinball faithful and explorers looking for Vegas’s “quirkier” offerings. It wasn’t something you could just stumble upon during a trip to Vegas you had to know it existed, you had to really want to go there, and you had to get a car to make that possible. From the outside it looked like it should be a dentist’s office, or a telemarketing call center. The first time I visited the Pinball Hall of Fame (and the second, and the third, and the fourth… I’ve been to this place a lot) it was a few miles off the Strip, in a generic, featureless building surrounded by a strip mall and a storage center, and across the street from a huge, empty lot. It’s not just a huge new sign that’s made Tim Arnold’s Sin City shrine to pinball easier to find. I mean, just look at this photo: you could play a regulation game of basketball on that sign. The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas used to be a little hard to find.
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