When real estate expert Jerry Pinkas bought a pinball machine to entertain clients’ kids at his office, it was only the start of something much bigger. 

As a teenager in the 1980s, Pinkas spent a lot of time at his local mall and boardwalk arcades playing pinball, and his passion for the game never diminished. Soon, one office pinball game turned into two, and eventually he had so many that he began taking them home. Eventually, Pinkas learned how to repair these mazes of moving parts, from their plungers (those spring-loaded knobs that send the balls flying) to their switches, spinners, and stoppers. Then in 2018, he turned his collection into the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, an interactive display of retro history with one main goal: “to preserve pinball for what it really is: a national treasure of pure American engineering, art, and pop culture.” 

With more than 25 playable games, the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum hosts one of the largest collections of pinball machines open for public play in South Carolina. Inside, it’s like stepping back in time to an arcade era in which brightly lit backboxes and whizzing silver balls were the norm. Still, it’s much less of a dungeon than those arcades of old, and along with games from the 1970s and ‘80s—when the sport was at its zenith—made by legendary pinball manufacturers like Gottlieb, Bally, and Williams, you’ll also find newer machines from the ‘90s and 2000s. 

Try testing your skills against a movie Slimer toy target on the Stern 2016 Ghostbusters pro model machine, or defeating Davy Jones, Captain Jack Sparrow’s nemesis, on the Stern 2006 Pirates of the Caribbean. There are also games based on Indiana Jones, Star Trek, and the Monopoly board game. Each machine has a plaque detailing its date of production, manufacture, and any significant improvements or features, as well as the game’s history. 

The museum itself is completely volunteer-run, and games are rotated in and out periodically for maintenance (and to keep things fresh), so a machine that isn’t there one visit may be on display the next, and vice-versa.