Midway Directory · Kinds of listings
Arcades and game rooms
A room or hall of coin-op, card-swipe or free-play games: pinball, video cabinets, redemption games and skill games, open on its own rather than as part of a fair.
An arcade is a room of coin-op games, pinball, video cabinets and redemption games, open on its own rather than as part of a fair. The modern coin-op pinball machine dates from 1931; Pong, in 1972, made the video arcade. Vancouver’s newest pinball arcade opened in 2026.
What it is
An arcade is the midway’s games tent with a roof and a year-round lease: games of skill played for a score, a ticket or the next ball. Some are run as bars, some as family rooms, some as museums you can play.
History, era by era
- 1700s
- Pinball traces back to bagatelle, an 18th-century French parlour game of shooting balls across a table of pins and holes.1
- 1931
- Coin-operated pinball began in 1931, when American makers covered the board with glass, added a ball return and a coin slot; Gottlieb’s Baffle Ball started the 1930s craze.1
- 1933
- The founder of San Francisco’s Musée Mécanique began collecting coin-operated games in 1933, at age eleven; the family still runs it.2
- 1947
- Flippers arrived on Gottlieb’s Humpty Dumpty in 1947 and turned pinball from a game reformers had banned in places into a game of skill.1
- 1972
- Pong’s first prototype went into Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, in 1972, and launched the video game industry.3
- Today
- Collectors keep arcades going: Vancouver’s VanCity Pinball opened in a building put up in 1932.4
The midway connection
The arcade is the midway’s games of skill, kept indoors. Pinball’s move from chance to skill with the flipper is the same line the midway games joint has always walked.1
Wherever people walk a row of booths, the midway is there in some form: the full kind, with rides, games of skill and food joints, or the quieter kind, with craft tables, home baking and a booth like ours. That walk, with family and friends and something to look at every few steps, is what this directory is about.
One fact worth knowing
- The owner of the bar with the first Pong said it had broken after a few weeks. It had not: the coin box was overflowing.3
Questions people ask
When was pinball invented?
Coin-op pinball dates from 1931; flippers came in 1947.1
Where was the first Pong machine?
In Andy Capp’s Tavern, a bar in Sunnyvale, California, in 1972.3
Sources
- The Strong National Museum of Play: Pinball (World Video Game and Toy Hall of Fame). Read on · reference
- Musée Mécanique: Musée Mécanique. Read on · official
- The Strong National Museum of Play: Pong. Read on · reference
- Daily Hive: Vancouver arcade with pinball. Read on · news
How these listings work
Listings are free and factual; nobody pays to be here. Every line on a listing points to its source, official pages first, and each source shows the day we read it. What we couldn't confirm is listed on the page, not guessed. Each page sits under its city and province or state, next to the fairs nearby.
British Columbia, Canada
Listed in the census (short listings)
- Capital City Classic Arcade Arcades and game rooms
- Circuit Circus Arcades and game rooms
- GRETA Bar YVR Arcades and game rooms
- Industry Arcade Arcades and game rooms
- Pinhalla Pinball Pizzeria Arcades and game rooms
- Quazar's Arcade Arcades and game rooms
- The Rec Room Burnaby Brentwood Arcades and game rooms
- The Rec Room Granville Arcades and game rooms
The Midway Mailbag
New fairs, festivals, midways and attractions as we add them to the directory. About twice a month in fair season, less in winter.
All kinds of listings · Midway Directory
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