The game was born in Chicago in the 1930s, where wood from Wisconsin was plentiful for the construction of table-top machines into which a player inserted a penny to launch a ball that bounced off pins before falling into pockets for scoring. But if a Jan or a Dean dies, there goes the act.”Īrnold is searching, of course, for a modern version of his younger self – a kid who fell in love with the pinball machine as a symbol of cultural rebellion. “You’ve got to ask yourself ‘Is this a Beach Boys operation or a Jan and Dean operation? If a Beach Boy dies, you can just hand somebody a surfboard and a pair of shorts and you go on. Passionate and curmudgeonly, this self-proclaimed Director of Things and Stuff wonders if his replacement will ever be found. People play on machines at the pinball hall of fame in Las Vegas. One day, at his cavernous warehouse where the lights are kept off (players prefer darkness to become one with the multicolored light show of their machines), Arnold stands under a workshop light – like a pinball Geppetto – laboring over a 1973 game called Triple X that operated on cogs and gears.Ī T-shirt hangs on the wall at the hall of fame says: “I may seem quiet and reserved, but if you mess with me while I am (the word “fixing” is taped over “playing”) pinball, I will break out a level of crazy that will make your nightmares seem like a happy place.”

He’s looking for a protege with the skills to take over his arcade empire in an era where the 1970s and 80s electronic circuitry that are the guts of most machines have become as difficult to get as the treasure in a pinball pharaoh’s tomb. Still, he faces a daunting challenge: these days, the old-timers have all retired or died off, leaving few wizards who can manage the machines’ precise workings.Īrnold knows he may be among the last of a pinball breed. Unlike that kid in the 1960s rock anthem by The Who, Arnold isn’t deaf, dumb or blind. The proceeds from the machines are donated to the Salvation Army. Staffed by volunteers, it’s a buzzing, ringing, tilting, mostly electronic wonderland where ageing pinball aficionados and their kids deposit up to four quarters to play 200 machines that Arnold has refurbished himself, including the prized Williams’ Black Gold, Bally’s Pinball Circus and Recreativos Franco’s Impacto. Now 60, a wispy bespectacled man with a graying ponytail, Arnold is among the planet’s most prolific pinball collectors, with more than 1,000 machines, many of which are rare.įor years he has run the not-for-profit Pinball Hall of Fame in a 9,000-square-foot industrial palace just a few miles east of the Las Vegas Strip, this city’s better-known realm of high-rollers and bad breaks.

“So I decided to sail off on that pirate ship,” he said, “and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

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