>> I grew up in North Manchester, Indiana,
a small town back in the '70s and '80s.
Since I was knee-high, I have been playing pinball.
We had probably four arcades,
and a bunch of other places to go play pinball and video games.
♪
I'm not sure what attracted me to it,
but I always had a lot of fun.
♪
1986, I bought my first machine.
It was a little cocktail table pinball,
and it could fit in my apartment,
you know, when I was going to college,
and I still have it.
It's an Allied Leisure 1920s theme.
♪
It's come back strong, pinball has.
It was nearly dead back in 2000,
and, you know, I spent 30 years raising kids.
So from the '80s, '90s and 2000s, early on,
I was raising kids and didn't get to play a lot.
There's a lot of things I think that's bringing on
the popularity.
You've got the old fellas like me
that the kids are now out of the house,
and we can go back and do these fun things
we did when we were kids.
>> There's always a theme that can resonate with you,
like sports themes or like old TV shows.
My personal favorite is Batman '66.
I was always a big fan of the TV show.
>> Right now, they're really hard to find.
It's a supply and demand issue.
Right now, the demand is greatly outnumbering the supply.
If there weren't supply chain issues because of the pandemic,
Stern and all the other pinball manufacturers
would be flying machines out the door right and left.
Right now, used machines are incredibly expensive
compared to when I was buying them back
in the 2010s and early 2020s.
But that's what you get, you know,
when the supply goes down, demand goes up.
♪
We are the largest all pinball arcade in the world.
That means I don't have any video games on the floor
for the public to play or any other type.
It's strictly pinball.
We'll fluctuate between 136 and 144 in the arcade,
depending on what event we have going on.
We've got over 300 pinball machines.
>> And so many machines that you have to really hunt down,
you would think in different locations,
are all under this one roof.
>> And hopefully by the 1st of May we'll expand
and double our size again.
♪
We have people that travel for business,
and they will look up, okay, where do I want to play pinball?
Lots of people from out of state,
and I like inviting people from out of town.
I like it when they show up, because it's --
a lot of us locals wouldn't have the chance normally
to play against them.
And when they show up, it's just awesome.
What I really like about doing the arcade
is all the young kids that are coming in,
these little knee-high kids that are just playing the daylights
out of pinball.
And once they figure out they're really good
and they can beat us old guys,
they'll be getting involved in the tournaments.
We have a tournament every Monday night.
It starts at 7:00.
We average 24, 28 people.
It's been as high as 40.
We always play a four-strike, four player group
on Monday nights.
And rarely on a Monday night
will you play the same machine twice.
It keeps things different.
It keeps things hopping.
You never know who you will play.
So it's pretty good.
♪
>> It's more of a competition where we cheer each other on,
and hey, I learned something new on a table.
I think when you are open to that
and just feeding off each other's energy a little bit,
it's really nice to have that family atmosphere.
>> I think the thing that I love most
is all the memories that it brings back,
growing up with pinball machines and arcades.
You think back to your childhood,
and there's certain things that stick out.
>> This place is a hidden gem here in town,
right here in Fort Wayne
that really not a whole lot of people know about.
I didn't -- I lived here my whole life,
and I had no idea this place even existed.
And I don't know if the regulars
want to kind of keep it that way,
but it's definitely something that we'll keep coming back to.
It's awesome.