Pinball Hall of Fame and Museum

Information

At a Glance

What is it?

A collection of classic pinball machines and arcade games that you can actually play.

Where is it?

A few miles east of The Strip.

Is it worth the cost?

Admission is free – you only have to pay to play the games.

What else do I need to know?

Please don’t try to beat my score on the Attack from Mars game. I will find you.

What’s the bottom line?

Retro fun!

Full Review

Las Vegas is a city that invents its own idea of culture. Instead of major museums showing classic works of art that sit on a wall for you to gaze reflectively at, Vegas has museums that show classic works of art with bells and whistles that you can actually play with. Witness the Pinball Hall of Fame Museum.

This 10,000 square-foot barn of a space is home to what is billed as a portion of the largest pinball machine collection in the world. There are hundreds of the games in the room mostly from the 1960’s through the 1990’s, what is considered to be the golden age of pinball per the people with all of them.

Pop culture is a big deal with machines with themes like The Simpsons, Terminator, Indiana Jones, Superman, and Austin Powers among them. Older machines are like a snapshot in time with carnival and sports themes on ’60s era machines and even an Elton John Captain Fantastic machine from 1975.

Unlike most look-but-don’t-touch museums, almost all of the exhibits here are playable – put in your quarters and away you go. Or if you want to learn more about the machines, you can use your smart phone to scan a QR bar code found on most of them and it will launch a browser page with photos, details, and history. Cool!

It’s not all pinball though. They also have classic arcade games from Ms. Pacman to TRON and Space Invaders, most of which are also playable.

There is no admission fee to get into the Hall of Fame but they do take donations and of course you can always feed the machines to help them continue their preservation of these works of art.

Note that the owner has gotten approval to build a new, much bigger home for the museum on The Strip across the street from Mandalay Bay set to open in late 2020.  The current one might close at a moment’s notice as they prepare to move everything so you should probably call ahead to make sure they are still open before you go.