If you want to meet pinball people and talk about pinball, this is the place to be.
PINBALL ARCADE TUCSON FREE
There's 10-20 machines operating on free play, so you don't have to put in any quarters, which is why there's a fee. It's a $20 fee to register and we provide snacks and beverages. It's a very friendly, non-competitive atmosphere and the serious players can accumulate points towards going to divisional championships at the end of the year, which is usually in Las Vegas. "People will just come down and have a great time playing pinball. "We have tournaments every third Wednesday of each month and it's IFPA-sanctioned," Noble says. In addition to being among the Southwest's largest pinball arcades, shamed only by the enormous Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, D&D hosts private parties and monthly tournaments. It's a part of a lot of people's childhoods and even their adulthoods. We're happy we brought them in because people want to play them. "We have a couple of video game consoles and each of them plays a multitude of great classic games from the '80s. We've got machines from the last four decades, so whether you like the old, electro-mechanical machine or the new, high-tech digital machines, we've got a great variety and everyone can find something they can amuse themselves with. Even people who aren't great players can have a great time here because there's a machine here for everyone. But you don't have to be a highly experienced player to have a good time because if you get on a machine and hit a few jackpots it can be very exciting.
A lot of the have never seen a pinball machine before and they come in here, and here's 30 of them! Video games can be the same every time you play it but pinball is different every single time because it's not programmed-part of it is chance but a lot of it is skill. People bring their families-we love players of all ages and we especially love seeing young people, kids, playing pinball for the first time. We have a good core of regular people who show up almost every day, and then a group of people who show up once a week or once every couple of weeks. Come 7 or 8:00, we're packed it in here with sometimes 40 or 50 people and it gets very loud in here because all the machines are screaming in competition with each other. We'll get a nice crowd when we first open and then there's a little quiet dinner lull. "On a Friday or Saturday," however, "things will be fairly busy. The right kind of lighting can make the whole game a lot more exciting to play."ĭ&D Pinball is open every week from Thursday through Sunday, though Negley and Noble, a former machinist, are usually at the arcade when it's closed "fixing, tuning and cleaning pinball machines," he says. We do some custom modifications, especially in the lighting, LED lighting. We did add some of our own and we've upgraded some of our existing machines as well. "Most of them were already here when we bought the place. "Right now we have about 30 machines," Noble explains. The couple bought D&D several months ago from original owners Jane Decker and Gary Dillahunty, who Noble says hadn't planned on running the business permanently, an act that he and Negley were thrilled to do themselves. "The tourist communities have arcades on the boardwalks and they'll open their garage doors and let people come in and play during the summertime, so we love that we can throw our garage door open and this place has this great, open, friendly, welcoming atmosphere." "It's got a big, open atmosphere like the arcades I used to hang out in on the Jersey Shore," Noble says about the environment he's created with his partner Constance Negley. And judging from his energetic, enthusiastic demeanor, the same could be said for the arcade's co-owner Robert Noble. 7th St., a living, breathing kaleidoscope built into a converted garage. In the flashing lights and celebratory sound effects that make D&D Pinball, located on Seventh Street just east of North Fourth Avenue at 331 E.
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