Las Vegas Attractions
Pinball Hall of Fame
- Critic's rating
- LAT
Tim Quintana hunches over a pinball machine and stares down Spider-Man's archenemies: Kingpin, Lizard and Scorpion. He pulls the plunger and a silver ball shoots onto the playfield, a maze of brightly lit bumpers and targets.
Quintana seeks out the games of his youth -- like The Amazing Spider-Man -- among the 200 machines belonging to a pinhead named Tim Arnold. People come to his arcade to relive childhood afternoons. His Hall of Fame has also become a memorial for a pastime upstaged by Xboxes, PlayStations and Wiis.
Arnold's arcade is a throwback, with Mike and Ike candy machines, mismatched carpet, change machines rescued from Dumpsters, and posters for mid-'90s games such as Congo, whose slogan is: "Hippos, Snakes and Killer Apes. (And that's just the first ball)." The Hall of Fame is open daily for at least 12 hours, and Arnold is there much of the time. There's no phone: He fears pinball fanatics would take up his days with stories.
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