• What's included: Over 36 pinball machines, classic consoles like Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and N64, as well as some of the all-time favorites: Pac-Man, Frogger, Ms. Pacman, Space Invaders, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and many other classics from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.
• Not valid on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Anatomy of a Pinball Machine: How the Game Gets Rolling

No arcade trip is complete without a game of pinball. Read on to learn about the components you’ll need to keep an eye on in order to rack up a high score.

As John Lennon once sang, “Imagine you’re a pinball—it’s easy if you try.” A 2.8-ounce orb of solid steel, you hold your breath as the player pulls back on a spring-loaded plunger. Suddenly, you’re shot up through the launch line and onto the play field. And then you’re falling, as gravity sends you at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour down the sloping play field toward a drain that threatens to swallow you whole.

Your tiny metal brain reverberates with pinging bells and a frantic flipping sound coming from the bottom of the play field, where a pair of levers flap in the hopes of knocking you away from the drain. Out of nowhere, you feel plastic to your right—a pop bumper. Touching this round knob sends an electronic message that brings a disc down on your head via a magnetic-coil mechanism. You’re caught for a fraction of a second before the two discs close together, spitting you out.

You sail away, crossing over a few stationary targets as you go. Beneath the play field, electrical switches embedded in these targets register the pressure and send a message to award you points for each target hit, which adds to the score blinking from the backglass. Behind all this lies the controller board, which is connected to the targets and obstacles on the play field with almost half a mile of wiring.

Now you’re headed for a kicker, a roughly boomerang-shaped lever that twitches and propels you away as you hit it—straight into a hole. Deflated, you assume the game is over—until you’re suddenly thrown back up into the air. You’ve actually fallen inside a saucer, another coil-based device that pops the ball back onto the play field.

Though you’re still in play, the player was aiming for a ramp—a sloping obstacle that’s often worth a lot of points—when you hit the saucer. Enraged over his mistake, the player lifts the machine up and slams it back down. But located beneath the play field is the tilt sensor, a metal ring with a cone-shaped pendulum bob dangling in it. Abusing the machine causes the bob to hit the metal ring, which closes a circuit telling the machine to take away a turn or even end the game. Oh, well. There’s always another day and another quarter.