Last year’s Fall Arcade Road Trip journeyed North. This year, Rob Miller and I migrated South to the Maryland / Washington DC area. The first stop on the trip might be one of the earliest opening arcades in the country, MOM’s Organic Market.
The humongous pinball section of MOM’s is nearly hidden between the bakery and the frozen food section. If you weren’t looking for it, I’m not sure that you would know it was there. It opens at the same time the grocery store does, 9:00 AM. We got there fairly close to then and literally opened up the arcade. And what an arcade it is! There must be over 50 pinball machines and several vids there (I’m not counting them lol).
There’s a number of arcades out there that have lots of games, but numbers aren’t important if they don’t play well. So how were the pins at MOM’s? AMAZING. The gentleman who runs the arcade, Doug, was there working on the games, making sure that everything was in tip top condition. Some of the pins, like the Gottlieb 300 were literally collectors quality. I mean absolutely pristine. The Taxi has a brand new playfield in it. The games looked nice and played great. All of the pins were only $0.50/play. Yes there was a couple of pins down, but very, very few. And when a game did go down (because that’s what pins do lol) the venue had a convenient QR Code that you could scan, an e-mail address and a website that you could use to report the issue. Very slick.
Here’s a list of the pinball machines, courtesy of Pinball Map:
300 (Gottlieb, 1975)
AC/DC (Pro) (Stern, 2012)
The Addams Family (Bally, 1992)
Aerosmith (Pro) (Stern, 2017)
Argosy (Williams, 1977)
Attack From Mars (Remake LE) (Chicago Gaming, 2017)
Batman 66 (Premium) (Stern, 2016)
Centaur (Bally, 1981)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (Bally, 1992)
Dialed In! (LE) (Jersey Jack, 2017)
Dr. Dude (Bally, 1990)
Eight Ball Deluxe (Bally, 1981)
Flash (Williams, 1979)
Flash Gordon (Bally, 1980)
Game of Thrones (Premium) (Stern, 2015)
Genie (Gottlieb, 1979)
Ghostbusters (Premium) (Stern, 2016)
Grand Prix (Williams, 1976)
Guardians of the Galaxy (Pro) (Stern, 2017)
High Speed (Williams, 1986)
The Hobbit (LE) (Jersey Jack, 2016)
Houdini: Master of Mystery (American, 2017)
Independence Day (Sega, 1996)
Little Chief (Williams, 1975)
Lord of the Rings (Stern, 2003)
Medieval Madness (Remake) (Chicago Gaming, 2015)
Metallica (Premium) (Stern, 2013)
The Munsters (Pro) (Stern, 2019)
Pirates of the Caribbean (Jersey Jack, 2018)
Scared Stiff (Bally, 1996)
The Simpsons Pinball Party (Stern, 2003)
Star Trek (Pro) (Stern, 2013)
Supersonic (Bally, 1979)
Taxi (Williams, 1988)
Total Nuclear Annihilation (Spooky, 2017)
Twilight Zone (Bally, 1993)
The Wizard of Oz (75th Anniversary) (Jersey Jack, 2013)
World Cup Soccer (Bally, 1994)
Rob and I stayed at MOM’s literally from open until around 4:00 PM. People were like, “You’re still here?!” Lol. We took a break once for a tasty lunch and once to get coffee. The grocery store itself is very nice, think Trader Joe’s but better.
Overall I can’t speak highly enough about the experience we had at MOM’s. If you’re into arcades and are near there it is a MUST visit.
Here is the maximum number of pictures that Facebook will allow me to share. There’s tons more. Make sure to follow the Knapp Arcade Instsgram account @knapparcade for many more.
I’m beat, so that’s all for now. Tomorrow I will talk about Stop 2, Crabtowne 🦀. Good night everyone.
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