Pinballz Arcade

I’m on a quest to visit as many retro arcades as I can. We’re lucky to still have Cactus Jacks here in Oklahoma City. Four hours east of me is the Arkadia Retrocade and five hours north of here is the 1984 Arcade. I’ve been to lots of others as well, and the latest notch in my belt is Pinballz Arcade in Austin, Texas.

Unlike most of the retro arcades I’ve visited recently, Pinballz does not charge a cover and the games are set to take tokens. All the arcade games I played were 50 cents. The majority of the pinball machines I played were 75 cents with a few minor exceptions.

Despite its name, Pinballz has a decent selection of arcade games. There are a lot of games to choose from both old and new, from Gauntlet, Q*Bert and Burgertime to newer games like Mario Kart and Batman Arcade Racing. Like all arcades a few of the older games were out of order, but that’s to be expected with machines of this age. In the picture above my daughter is playing Battlezone (which came out 26 years before she was born), after which I killed her at a game of Marble Madness. Good times, good memories.

Also before someone points it out, Pinballz did have two or three multicade (60-in-1) machines, purists be damned. I would be curious to find out what kind of money they bring in as everyone I saw walked past them to play the original machines.

The layout of Pinballz greatly reminded me of the old Bally Le Mans in Crossroads Mall by having multiple levels. There was always something cool about going up and down mini sets of stairs to move into different areas of an arcade. To the right of the front door was the redemption area — an area my kids love and that I typically avoid. Susan found skee-ball machines down there and played a few rounds.

While playing one of the games, Mason somehow won thousands of tickets. Mason says the machine malfunctioned; based on the fact that he recently disassembled his toy remote controlled boat and re-purposed one of the motors for his latest invention (self-tying shoes) I’m not sure I 100% believe his story, but whatever. With his new-found wad of tickets he managed to purchase a whoopee cushion, a set of false teeth, a wind-up set of chompers, some candy, and a switchblade comb (which I know he loves because he opened and closed it 900 times that day).

And finally (no surprise here), Pinballz has pinball! Lots and lots of pinball — 100+ pinball machines to be exact, including the top 25 rated pinball machines! Those of you who know me know that I’m more of an arcade guy than a pinball aficionado, but here’s what I know. Off the top of my head, here are my favorite pinball machines (in alphabetical order): Addams Family, Avatar, Baby Pac-Man, Back to the Future, Cyclone, Earth Shaker, Fun House, Guns N’ Roses, Indiana Jones, KISS, Metallica, Pin-Bot, South Park, Star Wars, TRON, Whirlwind and the Wizard of Oz. And, guess what? Pinballz had every single one of them! They also have Banzai Run (with the vertical pinball action) and Hercules (the table that uses billiard balls for a pinball), two fairly rare machines. Despite the fact that I saw a few arcade machines here and there that were out of order waiting for repairs, I don’t remember seeing any pinball tables there offline or in need of maintenance. All the pinball machines I played were in perfect condition, both mechanically and physically.

Pinballz has a snack bar with a public seating area and another one that was reserved for a party. Susan bought a couple of bottles of water that were reasonably priced. They also had drink holders attached to microphone stands scattered around the arcade that kept people from setting their drinks on top of machines or on the ground where I’m guessing they get kicked over a lot — great idea!

We had a blast at Pinballz and are already planning our next trip south so that we can visit again!

Here is a link to all the pictures Susan and I took while visiting Pinballz.