Yeesh, if you’re gonna mention Crabtowne, you might as well mention Volleyball House (Elkridge, MD), an FSPA league location. 14 games in pretty decent shape, including games you rarely see on location (e.g. 4 Million BC, Laser Cue, Airborne, Cleopatra, Baywatch) and popular favorites (e.g. Medieval, High Speed, STTNG). Family friendly, lounge area with TV, decent pizza and other snacks at pretty low prices. And a quick cab ride away if anyone ever has layover time to burn at BWI Airport (though call before heading over, since their hours can be weird).
Here in Portland, Maine we have Arcadia National Bar. They have 14 pins (all 50 cents a play!), bunch of classic arcades, tons of board games and console games. Plus they always have amazing local beers on tap and delicious grilled cheese sandwiches. The pins are generally in really good condition. They have a weekly pingolf league and monthly high score tournaments, plus other events on a regular basis. Plus the owners and bar tenders are really awesome people. If you come to Maine, definitely stop by.
We also have Coast City Comics, which is awesome because it is family friendly, they have roughly 10 machines, including Stern Star Trek and Walking Dead. Condition varies on machines but is a great place to play. Plus comics!
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+1 for Game Galaxy Arcade in NashVegas!
WORD!
Pins N’ Needles, Los Angeles CA. (check for hours) http://www.pinsandneedlesla.com/hi-hours/
Pacific Pinball Museum http://pacificpinball.org/
Mike’s Mini-cade Reno, NV (gestating for the moment till Mike can find a larger, long term home for the games) https://www.facebook.com/MikesMiniCade/?fref=ts
Pinball Outreach Project, Portland, Oregon http://pinballoutreach.org/hq/hours-and-location/
Quarterworld Portland, Oregon http://www.quarterworldarcade.com/
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I loved Crabtowne when I visited it this year. It’s a top ten in my heart.
I came here to say Add-a-ball in Seattle, but it seems pretty well covered already. 
Zanzabar in Louisville, KY is also a pretty killer place – particularly if you enjoy listening to live music, pub trivia, and the occasional drag show while playing. The lineup is a modest 14 machines, but they rotate out pretty regularly, and are meticulously maintained (good luck even catching them with a coin door light out). I may be a bit biased since this is where I developed my pinball addiction.
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Since I don’t think they were mentioned, I’ll add a few of my favorites in case people stumble on this thread before a trip:
Special When Lit: Peter Blakemore runs this place a couple hours west of London. I highly suggest anyone traveling through to look it up and try and make a trip out. Extremely friendly folks, and an awesome mix of many eras of games, with some nice oddities. If you’ve ever wanted to play Spirit and haven’t, they have one.
Sunshine Laundry: Local grounds for me. Extremely high quality machines, and a great place to practice as the machines are set up quite difficult. Many highly, highly sought after titles. I recommend the vending machine for laughs.
Chief Coffee: Just outside of central London in Chiswick. Impeccable coffee and snacks upstairs, beautiful, top tier games downstairs. Go on a weekday morning, and literally have the most relaxing start to your day.
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Couple hours West of London? That place is in Salisbury! You can see Stonehenge too. I meant to make it out there last year, but settled for the Heighway pinball factory instead. Helped that there was the UK Pinball party going on as well.
I’d name three locations in the Kansas City area that have well maintained pins and are the go-to places for the serious players:
403 Club: Mentioned earlier in the thread. It’s a bar with a 10-pin line-up. Skews to modern machines, but typically 2 of them are older (System 11 tends to be as old as it gets, though).
Pizza West: Restaurant with all the pins in their party room. It’s a 7-pin line-up. One pin tends to be a classic (mid-70s to early 80s), and most of the others are 1990-2010, with usually at least one more modern pin.
Knub’s Pub: Bar and grill with all the pins in an alcove near the entrance. It’s also a 7-pin line-up, with a blend similar to Pizza West.
403 is in KCK and Pizza West and Knub’s are in Shawnee. The cool thing about the latter two is both restaurants are in the same strip mall, so you can just walk between the two for a 14-pin experience. All three locations keep the machines in excellent condition.
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Yeah…it’s like 2.5 hours by train…and then a really nice walk! And yes! You can visit stonehenge, which I found out about after I had left 
UK pinball party looked fun, but it didn’t line up with my excuse to travel to the UK for pinball (aka work)
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+1 for Zanzabar in Louisville KY, it’s the standard that I hold all other pinball locations against.
Cactus Jacks: They have a lot of games and a great selection from the newest Sterns (GB TWD KISS GOT) to timeless classics (TX Sector, EBD, RoboWar). They may not have the largest collection but, a lot of the games are tastefully modded and in great shape.
Pacific Pinball Museum: Love the collection. Walk in the front door and there are pins that go back to the 40s through the 70s. The back rooms have a mix of SS, Modern and more EMs. Its a fun place to explore and you get daily admission. Some of the games weren’t playing that well but, I wasn’t discouraged. When I visited I came back for more after a trip across the bay to Free Gold Watch.
Free Gold Watch: Relatively low number of games compared to the previous two and when I visited there were quite a few with issues. However, this place has a great atmosphere and if I were local to the bay area I could see myself hanging out here and playing leagues. Its also close to Haight Ashbury so there are plenty of things to do if you are visiting. The first time I came down I took a break and went to Cha Cha Cha on Haight for dinner. This is the kind of place where if you are a local and the manager is closing up for the night but, wants to stay after hours and play some pinball you’d probably be welcome to join him.
Harbor Town Pub/Waterfront bar and grill/High Dive: Three locations within reasonable driving distance of each other in SD. The op at HTP and Waterfront is putting a lot of effort into maintaining these games. There are only 5 games at each location but, the games at HTP and Waterfront are some of the best maintained and best playing games I’ve seen on location. High Dive, last I heard, was still operated by the man himself, KME. When I visited the games were playing great although, I just missed the LOTR coils on Met 
The only draw back was the jukebox which was set to play more 90s top 40 hits than I could endure. Still all three locations were a lot of fun.
Pinballz Arcade: This is Austin’s claim to pinball location fame. Its worth a visit just for the shear number of pins at this location. In the early days of pinballz, there were between 80-100 games on the floor. Since then the business model has had to adapt to be more sustainable and the redemption games have slowly taken some of the pinball real estate. Now they have three locations in the Austin area and the original location still has 60-70 games. The only draw back to all of the expansion is an increased number of games without a proportional increase in the number of techs. Games are dirty, played to death and not working. Even though, because there are so many games you’ll always find something to play and new titles arrive often. The original Pinballz has a byob policy as well so you can bring your brew, hang out with your friends and play some pinball if you can find a working game
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I read somewhere that Sunshine games don’t award replays. Is that true? They better be in damb good shape if they don’t award replays. Do the games award EB’s? Do they charge by the hour?
Atlas Obscura recently posted an article naming the 37 best pin locations here in the states.
Lots of places mentioned here included. It’s all subjective of course, but three locations in Seattle and no Shorty’s? Only one location in Portland? AO must be based on the right coast.
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Why mention them in this thread then?
2nd sentence: “Its worth a visit just for the shear number of pins at this location.”
Even if there are 1/3 that have some feature that’s not working well, there are still 40-50 playable ones.
That’s still a noteworthy location to play pinball in my book.
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It depends on the game, but for most this is true. Some will award replays, at thresholds that will feel high for those very used to arcade level replay goals. Many, if not all, award extra balls. Most “replay” awards = extra ball. They do not charge by the hour. .75/play across the board, with the exception of Big Bang Bar, which is 1.00. They are in damn good shape, and Peter is often around to fix things as they arise.
[quote=“williams, post:1, topic:419, full:true”]This is the stuff that jumps out. There’s around 80 pins total and the owner is super responsive to fixing anything that needs adjusting. Oddly, the fighting games are probably the place’s biggest draw. Just suggesting you put this place on your list if you’re ever in the area. I’m interested to hear other locations that are worth visiting.
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What’s so odd about fighting games being a big draw for an arcade? They are just as active at keeping the arcade scene alive as the pinball people. There are arcades propped up solely by fighting game players, like Japan Arcade and Granada Hills Arcade (though they’ve both moved elsewhere). As a matter of fact, the most dedicated fighting game players will prefer arcade over console. As the machines are designed from the ground up to play only the fighting game, the game will have the most responsive controls. Fighting game controls are also designed with arcade in mind (and as a result, most of the top players for fighting games, if they have to play console, will use arcade pad replicas placed on their laps instead of a normal game controller, known as “fight sticks”).
The presence of fighting game players is always a good sign because it means the arcade keeps up with the latest releases. They will dedicate themselves to whichever location keeps their games the most fully updated.
It really depends, I’d say. Coming from a place where every major location for arcade machines is 100% standing, I am used to the idea that you go in, play, and get out when you’re done. From what I’ve heard about Seattle (and I’ve heard a lot considering I listen to the SKill Shot Pincast), the environment and culture is way different, and with it expectations on what a place ought to be like. It seems pinball in Seattle is something more of a socialization tool and where events are held. Not around here, where pinball is more of a solitary activity. Each player is in their own bubble. But that’s not a bad thing, as it means pinball is a means for people to have some alone time and not be disturbed. I am an introvert, so I am more comfortable when I am by myself.
Say, how do you get all these things like Jenga lying around unsupervised without anyone stealing anything? I mean, I saw so much shoplifting at my last retail job that I’ve become afraid to leave out loose things in public without monitoring them.
Ah, that explains the lack of anything bar-related I saw in the photo. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. One of my local favorite places is Neon Retro Arcade in Pasadena, CA. No liquor license, and no plans for one, but they don’t need it. Plenty of bars within walking distance, and they don’t mind if you carry beer in.)
Would that mean Cactus Jack’s is a kid-friendly place? I feel like there ought to be more kid-friendly locations. The aforementioned Neon Retro Arcade is partially aimed at families, and you do get a lot families coming in.
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What @Snailman said. When you go to PAPA or Pinburgh and skip playing a bunch of games because you’ve already played them at your hometown arcade, that’s a pretty sweet arcade!
Considering the price of real estate in that area, .75 a game is awesome. No replay or EB on some games would still be tough to swallow, but as long as the don’t charge by the hour, I would support this location. Bonus points for good maintenance.
Ambiance plays a big part for me. Second only to machine condition. If the Santa Cruz boardwalk had even halfway decent maintenance, it would be an epic location. Currently not even close to being called a ‘best location’, but I still recommend folks stop by at least once if the have the opportunity. Can’t beat pinball on they beach.
Maybe honorable mention would be a better way to mention a location here that isn’t the ‘best’.