![]() I found myself racing around as if I were at some kind of reunion of old friends.įans of old-school video games can also get their fix at the Silverball: On the floor and playable are the original Pong game (released in 1972), along with Centipede, Pac-Man, Frogger, Asteroids, Galaga, Millipede, Ms. And farther down the way, the Williams Cyclone was a fixture of my time in the Rutgers Student Center basement. The Bally Pinball Wizard was another old pal. I saw Evel Knievel, grinning down at me just as he did when I was 12. For me, though, it was like seeing old touchstones from my life. Many of them are older than I am.įrom a purely technological standpoint, the museum is a fascinating walk through the evolution of the pinball machine – from very simple machines to complicated models. Here you pay one price – varying depending on how long you want to stay – and can take your pick from an overwhelming number of machines. Gone are the days when a quarter bought you a game. Visitors aren’t playing in some darkened mall game room or smoky dive bar: The Silverball is bright and filled with the sounds of dinging bells. Collectors love it because we have games they have never seen – they’re rare – and we let them play them.” He’s got a rare 1932 Ballyhoo machine as well as the recently acquired and very rare Big Bang Bar game. “People have told us it’s the top pinball collection in the world,” Ilvento told me. Some are in storage approximately 200 grace the floor of the museum. Ilvento owns 600 machines – some digital, some electromechanical, some dot-matrix – and all playable. But who can think about food when you’ve got literally hundreds of machines from so many eras and so many companies, all in fine condition, lining the walls? Just inside, the Silverball Cafe offers tomato pies, Nathan’s hot dogs, funnel cakes, soft pretzels, salt water taffy and other eats. Not long after opening, the pair moved the museum onto the boardwalk.įrom the outside, you might be forgiven if you mistake the joint for a seaside restaurant tables with red-and-white-striped umbrellas encircle the outside of the completely windowed building. Founders Robert Ilvento and Steve Zuckerman immediately understood that they needed bigger and better-located digs. Pinball enthusiasts quickly beat a path to the museum’s door. ![]() ![]() Asbury park pinball arcade full#The timing could not have been better: Redevelopment and reinvigoration of the city and its attractions, including the legendary musical outpost the Stone Pony, were in full swing. The Silverball Museum – a pinball fanatic’s dream come true – opened in 2009 in a basement on Cookman Avenue, right off the boardwalk. We practically salivated with excitement when we learned of the Silverball Museum in Asbury Park, on the New Jersey shore. Decades later, that guy (clearly a romantic at heart) searched high and low until he located and bought a refurbished model of the game we played most back then, Data East’s Time Machine, which has pride of place in our family room. ![]() – We didn’t have much money in the late 1980s, but my then-boyfriend and I could always grab a soda and make a few quarters last as we happily competed on, and occasionally tilted, pinball machines together. ![]()
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