Your old high score has been sitting unchallenged for far too long.
Time to see if your hands still remember what to do.
This place turns nostalgia into something you can actually play. Pinball machines light up row after row, while classic arcade games wait nearby to expose exactly how rusty your reflexes have become.
And there are a lot of them.
More than 600 games fill the floor, including over 400 pinball machines. Good luck making “just one game” survive the first aisle.
The arcade opened in 2023 inside a former grocery store, which may be the funniest possible upgrade for an old shopping trip.
Ohio gets a full-on playable time machine out of the deal.
Go find the machine you remember.
Then lose twenty minutes to the one you have never seen before.
Your thumbs may complain, but your inner twelve-year-old absolutely will not.
Six Hundred Games Fill The Floor
Six hundred games is the kind of number that changes how you plan a visit. Past Times Arcade does not ask you to choose between one pinball row and a handful of video cabinets. The floor brings both together on a much larger scale.
The current collection includes more than 400 pinball machines and more than 200 classic arcade games. Some machines rotate off the floor for maintenance, so the exact lineup can change even when the overall scale stays impressive.
That variety makes a little planning useful. If there is a game you have been hoping to revisit, start there. Once the must-play list is handled, wandering becomes half the fun.
The soundscape changes from aisle to aisle. Pinball flippers snap, bumpers fire, cabinets chirp, and digital soundtracks overlap in ways that make a quiet room seem almost impossible.
Trying to sample everything in order would turn the visit into homework. A better approach is to follow whatever catches your eye. One machine may pull you in with artwork, another with a familiar title, and another because you have absolutely no idea what it does.
With this many choices, curiosity is a more useful guide than a checklist.
Pinball History Reaches Back To The 1930s
The pinball side of the collection stretches across nearly a century of design. Past Times includes machines dating to the 1930s alongside much newer releases, so the differences between eras are easy to see without leaving the building.
Older games can look surprisingly spare next to modern tables. Artwork, scoring systems, playfields, controls, lights, ramps, and sound all became more elaborate as the decades moved forward.
That progression gives the room an educational side without turning it into a museum where everything sits behind glass. The games are there to be played.
Start with an older table and pay attention to how much the machine asks you to do. Then move forward a few decades. The contrast can be dramatic.
A newer table may introduce multiple ramps, layered objectives, elaborate displays, and a busier soundscape.
The collection grew from owner Rob Berk’s long involvement with pinball. Berk founded Pinball Expo in 1985, creating an annual convention centered on the game, its designers, collectors, and history.
That background helps explain why the pinball section is so deep. Instead of representing one decade or one style, it gives players a chance to move through many generations of the game in a single visit.
Classic Arcade Games Bring Back The Joystick Years
Pinball may have the numerical edge, but the video-game side still has more than 200 classic arcade games to explore.
That is enough room for the visit to change direction completely. One stretch can be spent learning the timing of an old pinball table, and the next can be devoted to a joystick, buttons, and a glowing screen.
The classic arcade section is especially useful when a group arrives with different gaming histories. Someone may be looking for the cabinet they played years ago, while a younger visitor may be meeting that style of game for the first time.
Graphics on older cabinets can be simple, but the games rarely waste time getting difficult. That makes them perfect for quick challenges. Pick one cabinet, take turns, and see how long everyone lasts before handing the controls over.
The collection also makes room for games that may be less familiar than the biggest arcade names. That is where the free-play setup becomes useful because experimenting does not cost another token or another round of quarters.
A strange cabinet can earn a chance purely because it looks interesting. Sometimes five minutes is enough. Sometimes it quietly steals the next half hour.
Free Play Changes The Way You Explore
Admission at Past Times Arcade includes unlimited play during the visit, and the games are set to free play. There is no need to feed coins into each machine or keep track of credits as you move around.
That changes the rhythm immediately.
A rough first round does not have to be the end. Hit start again and try a different approach. If a machine makes no sense after a few minutes, move on without feeling as though you wasted money learning it.
Free play is also helpful with older games that may be unfamiliar. A machine from decades ago might not explain itself as clearly as a modern game, so a second attempt can be part of figuring it out.
The setup rewards curiosity more than efficiency. Try the odd-looking cabinet. Test the pinball table with artwork you have never seen.
Revisit the childhood favorite that used to consume every spare quarter.
Past Times asks players to let someone else have a turn when another person is waiting, so the best pace is simple: play, look around, and keep moving when a line begins to form.
Comfortable shoes are a sensible choice. With hundreds of machines spread across the floor, your feet may notice the size of the collection before your hands do.
A Former Grocery Store Became An Arcade
The building had a very different job before rows of games took over. In 2020, Rob Berk purchased a vacant family-owned grocery store in Girard and began remodeling it as a home for his collection.
The doors opened to the public on June 1, 2023.
A former grocery store makes practical sense for an arcade of this size. The open floor gives hundreds of machines room to sit in organized rows while still leaving space for visitors to move between them.
The reuse also adds a little local character. Instead of a purpose-built entertainment complex, the arcade occupies a building that already had a history in the community.
Past Times adds educational material around the machines as well, including banners, toppers, and floor graphics. Those details give context to a collection that spans decades and help turn a row of games into something more than a lineup of flashing cabinets.
The building may have changed jobs, but the basic idea of people moving through aisles remains surprisingly appropriate.
Only now, instead of deciding what belongs in the grocery cart, the harder choice is deciding which machine deserves the next ten minutes.
Current Hours Make Weekend Planning Easy
Past Times Arcade currently operates four days a week. It is closed Monday through Wednesday, then opens Thursday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
That schedule gives each day a slightly different use. Thursday works for a shorter evening session. Friday stretches later.
Saturday provides the longest window, while Sunday offers a full daytime visit with an earlier finish.
The arcade is located at 419 N State St, Girard, OH 44420.
Choosing the day can be as important as choosing the games. If the goal is to explore widely, Saturday gives you the biggest block of time. If you already know which machines you want to play, a shorter Thursday visit may be enough.
The admission model is built around all-day play during regular hours, so there is no need to race from machine to machine simply to squeeze value out of the visit.
Check the clock occasionally anyway. Six hundred games have a way of making “one more round” sound perfectly reasonable several times in a row.
The Best Plan Leaves Room For Surprises
Past Times Arcade opened with the goal of putting a large private collection back into active use, and that idea still shapes the experience.
These machines are not here only to be admired. They are here to be played, compared, figured out, and occasionally blamed when a promising game ends too quickly.
A first visit does not need an ambitious itinerary. Pick one pinball era you want to explore, add a few classic arcade cabinets, and leave enough time for whatever catches your attention along the way.
Groups can make their own mini competitions. Choose one game everyone can play, keep the challenge friendly, and then switch genres before anyone starts taking the scoreboard too seriously.
Solo visitors have an equally easy formula. Follow the rows, stop when something looks interesting, and let unfamiliar machines interrupt the plan.
That freedom is what makes a collection this large manageable. You do not have to see all 600 games to understand the scale of the place.
By the time the visit ends, the most memorable machine may not be the one you came looking for. It may be a table from decades ago, a cabinet you had never heard of, or the game that convinced everyone to stay for just one more round.