Silverball Museum Walkthrough Tour (April 2014)

Here's a brand new walkthrough tour of Asbury Park New Jersey's own, Silverball Museum. Last weekend was the annual Asbury Park Comic Con, (as well as PAX East...but good luck getting into that..) and one of the best parts about it is after the convention is over you can walk right over to the museum and play till two in the morning. For twenty dollars you get an all day pass to play all of the pinball and arcade games they have to offer.

Since last visiting them last April they've added some new games and also some new food including pizza and sandwiches. There's also now a full row of classic 80's arcade games (As well as two ugly Ultracades for some 90's gaming) which is up from the half row they used to have. Some folks would scoff seeing arcade games in a pinball museum but their also offered over at Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas as well.

The layout of the place is a bit different from our last visit. For one they changed the door back to the boardwalk side, so if you see the very first video we shot there, that's now the back door. The games are mostly setup in different eras. Solid State games with Dot Matrix displays are along the wall on the far left when you enter with the arcade games in the middle. The right side has all of the 50's to 70's EM and a few Solid State games. One thing we all found odd is the placement of their Medieval Madness machine. For some reason the game is next too an Ultracade in a row of mostly 70's and early 80's games. I think it's mostly done for advertising, since right behind you as you play is the boardwalk, so I guess they want people to see they offer arcade games as well as newer games, and since Medieval Madness is a high marquee game I guess they figure they'll have it there for more people to see as they walk by.

Overall there's a lot of issues with the games. Like the Pinball Hall of Fame mostly all of the games are set for five ball play, I guess to go along with the style of the older games that offered five. However, some games are still set to three balls and I'm not sure why. (Which they also do at the HoF) We also noticed that they don't update many of the solid state games which early versions have bugs (like we mention with Stern's games) While playing Medieval Madness I was able to start the main castle multiball but the game only gave me two balls. My friend Steven who played after me got the Multiball Madness mode and for some reason that gave him three, when he didn't have enough lit. Hopefully after the summer season is finished they'll go through some of the games and give them some much needed TLC. It's going to be crazy when they summer season starts back up. I'm glad to see that they where really busy, after the terrible hurricane from two years ago it's great to see folks out there showing the place some love.