| rev:text
| - I've been a gamer my whole life. I grew up and watched the rise of the arcade era as it reached its peak and watched the days of the arcade all but crumble as gaming consoles became the wave of the future.
I made my first visit to the Pinball HOF this past week as I was in Vegas for vacation. What a great place to bring back a lot of old memories of blowing through hundreds of quarters on pinball machines and arcade games like Spy Hunter and Elevator Action.
When I first read about the Pinball HOF on their website I really love what they're about. It is a non-profit facility that uses all money spent on the games to help maintain and restore them and any additional profits are donated to the Salvation Army. When I was a kid, I could care less where my quarters ended up. Now that I'm older and (hopefully) wiser, I love knowing that all of the money spent was going towards charity work, in addition to my own entertainment.
The Pinball HOF offered so many playable machines, some that I remember growing up, some that were way before my time and some newer tables that I got to try for the first time.
I won't knit-pick too much on the facility as it is all for a good cause and they are doing something positive with the funds. But I will have to say that they need to update their website a little. A couple of things that had me excited when I read the site but ended in slight disappointment when I arrived was - I quote "The machines here all *work*, and they deliver what they promise - fun. The club members make sure of this."
Okay, this is 80% true. There were at least 20% of the machines that were either not working or weren't even plugged in. There were still plenty of machines that were working, but there were a few machines that I was really looking foward to playing again that weren't even operating, which was a bit of a let down.
Another quote from the site " we change the rubber rings more often than we have to. We replace light bulbs the minute they burn out." Again, not really the case from what I saw. In addition to the machines that weren't working at all, there are plenty that I played that had bulbs burned out and could have used a little more TLC.
One more quote " All older pinballs are set to 25 cents per play, and newer 1990s models are set to 50 cents per play."
Not really true either. I noticed several of the games that were pre 1990s that were all 50 cents per play and many 1990+ models (almost all actually) that were really 75 cents per play. The only 25 cent games I noticed were machines that were really old (maybe pre 1980 machines) and video arcade games.
Again, this is a charitable operation, so I'm not going to moan over a few quarters difference or hold it against them too much on these details. If I have to pay 75 cents per game, then so be it, it is for charity, right? And also to keep these machines alive so that younger generations can experience these classic games as well. However, I'm just pointing these things out to create a more realistic expectation for future visitors. The website paints a different picture than what you see when you arrive is what I'm trying to say.
One other small thing is that the photos on the website show a very well lit arcade with tons of bright lighting. When you get there, it is very dark, almost darker than I remember the old arcades being. It does have that old arcade kind of feel, which is good for nostalgia I guess, but I found it sometimes too dark to really see the detail of all of the machines and even made it difficult at times to follow the ball on some of the tables that didn't have all of the lights working. Maybe they're trying to save on the electric bill? I dunno, but just an observation of how the website might need an update.
Still, all of the gripes I'm pointing out are minor issues. Overall, there are a ton of working tables and old coin operated games that do work great and often left me impressed that some of the older machines worked as well as they did. They even have some very obscure coin operated games that I had never seen before and they were fun to try out.
Again, generally a very positive experience and so many great games to try for the first time, or to play again for old time sake. So happy I got to check it out and I can't wait to go again.
I just hope they get Pinbot and Black Hole and Black Knight working again as I was really looking forward to playing those, but they weren't working unfortunately. Maybe next time.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)