Over spring break, I visited the Roanoke Pinball Museum and the Roanoke Starcade, a video game museum. In this article, I will discuss my experience and review each museum to help readers determine if they would enjoy visiting these museums themselves.

For some background, I’m from Roanoke. Since the Pinball Museum opened several years ago, I heard rumblings about how good it was, especially if one enjoys pinball. It was something that I had a low-level intention to do for a while. However, I didn’t consider myself much of a pinball enthusiast until I experienced a pinball awakening at MAGfest earlier this year. At MAGfest, I toyed around with about 30 free play pinball machines. Months after MAGfest, I still had a hankering for more pinball. So, I decided to see if Roanoke’s Pinball Museum lived up to the hype.

I began by buying my tickets. There was a bundle for tickets to both museums for $20. Individual tickets for the Pinball Museum and Starcade are $13.50 and $12, respectively. The bundle granted me all-day access to both museums. Both museums had nearly all of their machines and games set to free play, so the tickets were all I had to pay for. The ticket booth was where I learned about the Starcade. My original intention was to only visit the pinball museum. Still, once I heard about a video game museum, I wanted to explore that too, and I’m glad I did. 

After buying the tickets, I made my way to the Pinball Museum. All the machines were set to free play, so the ticket to get in was all I had to pay for. The museum had around 50 pinball machines lit up, begging to be played. The museum is more than just a place to play a lot of pinball; it also can build appreciation for how pinball has changed over the years and for the amount of gameplay innovation between different machines. The museum had machines from as old as the 1930s to as recent as 2022.

The contrast between the older and the newer machines was fascinating. Some older models required me to manually push the balls onto the board and also made a satisfying mechanical “Ding!” every time my score increased. The newer models countered the older machines’ charm with excess; the new models had bright lights, displays, music, and sometimes even a story that played out during the game. The licensed machines were the best at highlighting these qualities. The Doctor Who machine was the loudest in the museum, and I could hear its Daleks screaming from the other side of the room. They also had machines from other popular franchises and bands, such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Metallica, the Beatles, etc. 

I spent a while bouncing around from one machine to the next, spending just enough time on the machine to get a feel for it. After channel surfing, I found several machines I kept returning to. My favorite was the Lord of the Rings. It played the relaxing Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack and interpreted several pivotal series moments into pinball gameplay. Other outstanding machines included King Pin, Revenge from Mars, and the Doctor Who machine.

Once I got all the enjoyment I could out of the Pinball Museum, I made my way to the Starcade. The journey took me through a labyrinth of hallways guided by stickers on the ground, promising me I was going in the right direction. After I escaped from the backrooms, I was met with neon lights, novelty hand chairs, and a graphic with Shigeru Miyamoto’s smiling face, all of which let me know I was in the right place.

I made my way inside and was taken aback by what I saw. The place looked like an overly-exaggerated arcade in a movie. The Starcade must have put a Chuck E. Cheese interior designer in charge of the museum’s decor. That might sound negative, but I mean that in the best way possible. All the cabinets and their early 2000s bowling alley carpet were illuminated in a soothing yet energizing blend of pink and blue lights. The whole cartoonish ambiance put me in the right mood to have fun.  

I thoroughly enjoyed the arcade aspects of the Starcade. It’s an arcade in the classic sense, not the “we put an iPhone game into an arcade cabinet” type of arcade. The Starcade’s strength is its wide variety of experiences. They had many arcade cabinets with a selection of both older and more modern titles. They had arcade classics such as Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Asteroids. They had a good selection of racing titles such as Crazy Taxi, Cruisin’ USA, and Star Wars Racer. They also had a MAME cabinet, a Playchoice cabinet, and some lightgun games. To round out their arcade experience, they also had non-video game experiences such as skee ball, air hockey, and several basketball shooting games. 

I had an incredible time at the Starcade. However, the museum elements were overshadowed by the arcade elements. These elements competed with one another rather than working symbiotically. In some cases, they were competing with arcade cabinets for floor space. Some games had placards that told some of the game’s history and interesting facts. There were also displays of consoles with fun facts and other information about them. I appreciated that these placards and displays were there; they are what I mean when I discuss the museum elements. Their displays helped provide context for games and allowed me to interact with them more deeply. I would love to see Starcade take these ideas further, i.e., chronological displays showcasing different video games throughout history with important milestones (the bit-era, 3D games, etc.). 

In addition to the consoles in museum displays, the Starcade set up several consoles for people to play. This is another aspect that I would like to see them improve upon. Their current setup would need to be altered to better fit the context of being a video game museum. The playable consoles, the SNES, NES, Genesis, and PS1, were the mini/classic rerelease versions, basically, boxes that emulate the console and have a select library of games. These consoles do not run as well as the originals and are limited in the games they can play. These consoles were also hooked up to modern displays, which made them look muddy. There are better ways to showcase the experience of playing these consoles than this setup. 

Again, the idea is a great one. It’s an incredible way to encourage people to directly interact with pieces of video game history. I can also understand why they used the mini/classic versions of the consoles instead of the actual hardware. These mini consoles are easier to manage and don’t require expensive physical copies of games. It was neat that the Starcade allows people to try out these older consoles, even if it is outside the ideal circumstances. Despite these nitpicks, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I even bought a hat!

I spent a total of 6 hours at these museums. I devoted the first 2 hours to the Pinball Museum and the other 4 hours to the Starcade. From my experience, I found that both museums are great ways to kill an afternoon, and each museum provides a unique experience. If someone wants to play a lot of pinball or learn more about the game, then the Pinball Museum is the perfect place to visit. This was my reason for going, and it scratched that itch. If someone is hoping for a more varied experience, somewhere with a little something for everyone, the Starcade would be an excellent place to have a great time. I went into this museum not knowing what to expect and was pleasantly surprised. I could have easily spent all day in that museum, and I am already thinking about when I could return. I would have to wait for the pinball bug to bite me again before returning to the Pinball Museum.