Pinball Wizard, seriously.

Lies, all lies. I promised you design or food. This post is about neither.

This weekend, I went on a great adventure. The drive wasn't long. The company was grand and the place was effing amazing. I'm talking about an arcade called Pinball Wizard.

I'm not a big gamer. When growing up, we visited the mini golf courses more than the arcades. The beaches I visited didn't have board walks. The most I was exposed to video games were our NESes and the Pac Man my uncle has in his basement*.

*Which is, in a word, awesome.

Despite being something of a novice, I had a wickedly good time. There are so many pinball machines! Some of the new one associated with movies, TV shows, games and other copyrighted content. There are also a lot of great, original ones. Most play for only 2 tokens. Lord of the Rings gave me lots of pity balls.* Dr Dude at my tokens, so I decided not to give him a second shot and Bad Cats had lots of kitty screeching good fun. Twilight Zone and Red and Ted's Road Show were two of my favorite pinball machines. I can't wait to try more, especially some of the really old ones once they're up and running.

*Not a euphemism.

On top of pinball, there are a crap ton of other arcade games. I had my hand at Centipede, Dig Dug and Burger Time. There's Asteroid and lots of the classic fighting games. Many of the games here are, apparently, pretty rare. One that I was intrigued by was Baby Pac Man. It's this weird mash up between Pac Man and pinball. Weird, but fun. Have you ever heard of Exterminator? I know I hadn't. The best word for it is bizarre. But it's totally worth the token for the experience.

They only opened this past week. The date was Wednesday, January 12 to be exact. The timing was unfortunate, to say the least. During the storm, there was a power surge that knocked out a chuck on their games. Even with some of the games down, there was plenty of fun to be had. Plus, the staff was fixing machines all night long. You could tell they know their games and absolutely love what they do. It warmed my nerdy little heart.

If you're near Pelham, NH, this is definitely worth a trip. It's really fun, completely affordable and an over all great place. If nothing else, if you're like me, the song Pinball Wizard will be stuck in your head for a few days. That, in my book, is a good thing. My friend Russ is going to put up a great post about it. He's way more knowledgable than I am and talked to the owner for a bit, so probably got the real scoop.

Matt found two rogue tokens in his pocket. I guess we'll just have to go back.