Pinball museum sets machines to free play, launches you back through a bygone era
Updated Jan 09, 2019; Posted Feb 23, 2016
Seattle Pinball Museum sets machines to free play
Gallery: Seattle Pinball Museum sets machines to free play
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I remember staring up at it in wonder - this big, hulking machine of plywood and plastic, flashing lights promising danger, action and fun. Arnold Schwarzenegger's eyes stared out at me, unblinking, unfeeling, but ready for action.
I was about 11, and spending a few weeks one summer bumming around my dad's office building in the weekday afternoons. Inexplicably, his company had installed a pinball machine - "Last Action Hero," based on the 1993 Schwarzenegger action/fantasy film - near the break room, a machine that I quickly and quietly took over.
This machine had it all. Chutes, magnets, a six-ball multi-ball mode, even a big yellow crane that locked your balls and swung across the playing field. My eyes lit up with every target, my heart pounded as the ball flew off the flippers and tore through this fantastical wonderland.
But this was the late '90s; my pinball obsession was doomed to be brief. As arcades went out of fashion, replaced by a surge in home video game consoles, pinball went with them, relegating the machines to the backs of dive bars, a rare few arcades and, appropriately, pinball museums.
The biggest pinball museums are in Banning, California and Las Vegas, but the closest to Oregon is the Pacific Northwest's own Seattle Pinball Museum.
The museum, located near the Living Computer Museum, has a collection of more than 50 machines, from 1960s classics to modern machines any Gen Xer or Millennial would surely remember. All the machines in the museum are set to free play, made available to visitors with a $13 to $18 admission.
It's a great opportunity to get your pinball fix, but it's also a fascinating walk through one strange and specific angle of popular culture. Pinball machines evolve in the museum from cowboys and dance halls to rock bands and action movies.
One glaring constant? Sadly, the objectification of women. These machines were built for pubescent boys, their manufacturers seem to say, filling them with art of large-breasted women, muscle-bound heroes and monsters ("Last Action Hero," I'm disheartened but unsurprised to learn, is no different).
But if the machines were an attempt to lure young men, their efforts haven't exactly panned out. On a chilly Friday afternoon, the museum was populated primarily by middle-aged women - some with male companions - all of whom played with a casual intensity that revealed years spent in arcades and restaurants working flippers; a bygone era now found in a museum.
My own pinball memories went unfulfilled at the Seattle Pinball Museum, as "Last Action Hero" was nowhere to be found. But, as I learned, it was just one of several generations of fun machines.
Go to the museum for memories, but stay to make new ones with all the pinball machines you never played.
The Seattle Pinball Museum is open from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, and noon to 10 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The museum is closed on Tuesday. One-entry admission is $13 for adults and $10 for kids, multiple entry admission is $18 for adults and $15 for kids.