Went to Pacific Pinball Museum yesterday in Alameda with a friend and it was a ton of fun. We got there around 1130 and had to head out by 330, which I thought wouldn't be a problem but we were having so much fun the time really flew by and I think we could have easily spent a few more hours there. 15 bucks for the whole day of machines on free play (except the handful of new Sterns upfront unfortunately, but there was an Iron Man in the museum itself) and well worth it considering how well maintained everything is. Coming from The Addams Family at work, which was a janky Frankenstein monster of parts, it was a joy to play this one. Gorgar and all the 70s and 80s pins are incredibly restored as well, but of course being a DMD fanboy I spent most of my time on TAF, Iron Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Even got to try out stuff I never would otherwise like Robocop and BttF, both of which were surprisingly fun (Robocop especially).
Next stop is Pinball Museum in Vegas in a few months.... Man I want a pin bad. Although playing Metallica in a more lighted and open area w/o mods I wasn't quite as impressed as I was at Arcade Extreme. TAF is such a beast when it comes to fun modes and gameplay (yeah I know the high-score strategy is pretty boring, but I think that's true for most games). I actually enjoyed Iron Man more than Metallica based on my play yesterday but might have to do with the atmosphere -- Iron Man was in the darker room with all the other games whereas Metallica was up at the front of the place right in the direct sun. Really need some level of darkness and noise to cultivate the proper atmosphere imo.
The "pinball museum" element of some of these places is kind of interesting to me. You go through there and really maybe 1% of the customers care. They just want to play fun games from any era (fun does not necessarily just mean DMD or modern btw -- there was a mechanical baseball game that was really popular, as were some of the solid states). But the collection of old machines takes up a huge amount of space.
