I would highly recommend that you join the Space City Pinball League when the IFPA opens back up. When we were going strong before covid we would have league night at 1820 Lounge on Monday nights, 3 Strike at Game Preserve (woodlands location) on Tuesday nights, one weekend a month at Einsteins in Katy and also started to have tournaments at the new Einsteins location as well as the new Game Preserve location. Plenty of places to play. There are even more locations in Houston than the ones I just listed. Also, if you join and you're not a dick you get invited to the awesome tournaments that are played on private collections at members houses. I can assure you there is plenty of pinball to play in the Houston area. Make friends within the group and you will get enough pinball. I promise we are a friendly bunch and would love to have you and give you the pinball fix you need.

This ^^^

But does that mean you went to both locations? It sure does not suggest that at all. They are 2 separate ones with different game titles at both and different atmospheres.

There is Mr Pixels off 290 at Jones Road with 10 to 12 pins.

Sorry, I know Pinside is often a race to sound the most toxic, but come on. Basically insulting the city and those who try to make it better for pinball people isn't really a great introduction/way to generate "buzz." Yet, as a testament to how good the pinball people here are...they are still trying to help you find more locations. Sorry your beer/food/pinball combo needs aren't being met, of course we would all love more options, but don't say what has been put together here sucks. Gratefully take the advice others have offered.

Sounds like a nice option to have. IMO

While we are still much smaller than the DFW, Houston, and Austin scenes; I have to point out that San Antonio definitely has more than three locations and six machines in it. I’m not sure why PinballMap only shows those three venues when searching for “San Antonio“ in the search bar. Either way, 22 locations and 68 machines (in the COVID-19 age) certainly looks a lot better! It makes me wonder how far off those other cities’ numbers might be.

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It might be the difference between the city proper and the larger metro area.

All the locations above are listed with San Antonio, TX as the city. I think it has to do with pinballmap's "region" feature. But the region is not an editable feature (I'm the admin for San Antonio).

UNREAL!!!!

This might of been a topic 5 years ago, but Houston has seen steady growth since then.

Just in the last year or so 4 new pinball venues have popped up.
Mr. pixels (off jones rd) has like 10, TGP south (nasa) has like 20 or more, einsteins pub and arcade (richmond) has 17, and the newest 82 place (downtown) has 9 or 10. also cidercades is supposedly supposed to open at some point downtown.
The places that don't serve stuff allow byob and outside food, which some people prefer.

Also if you want to make the scene better, buy some pro editions and put them on location. It's not hard if you keep up with them and don't let the issues snowball.

attached, I think this goes outside city limits. don't know how accurate it is though.

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Cidercade Houston is going to be opening very soon. Facebook page just went live. 275+ arcade and pinball. Location in Dallas regularly is stocked with LEs, they rotate through some unique games (Primus comes to mind), and the drinks are excellent.

It's better than a bar environment:you can bring your own. I guarantee everytime I go there I'm drinking the best beer (usually unavailable) in Houston.

Unfortunately the games have been off since March due to Covid. Someday...

I believe Cidercade is opening up an outpost on the Eastside of Houston. The one is Dallas is awesome.

Yeah, it's probably a complete coincidence that dude writes a false thread title, can't find any pinball in a relatively pin-rich area, is given more than a handful of alternatives, rejects them...

and lookie here... a new venue is being announced( hint: we already knew it was coming.)

Again, probably a complete coincidence, but if it is NOT; I can guarantee you these tactics are a fantastic way to dissuade support from H-town in general.

Haha. I was thinking the same when I saw that image of the Brooklyn, NY sign.

So, Cidercade is exactly what you were looking for...even though it doesn't have beer or food? I thought those were two of your prerequisites.

Promises food trucks...but, if you have been to other brewery type places you know those aren't always guaranteed to be there/open.

They announced in 2019, no big news. Drove by where they are supposed to be last week and saw no activity, hope they are able to pull it off soon.

uhhh.....

We used beer can wraps years ago. Back then the popular ones were Pipsi-Cola, Caco-Calo and 7-Op. Logos were difficult to discern even 5 feet away....

Can wraps (resized).PNG

You can change the title to 4th largest city in America sucks for Whataburger. I went to 3 different ones in Houston recently and they were awful. Unless they've all gone downhill, Georgetown and Austin's were much better. Now back to pinball.

So, what is a "Dallas type situation?" Also, check out TGP on a tournament day, there will be plenty of BYOB participants, haha.

Guessing you never went to the pacman fridays at joystixs either, where they open the showroom up. Slightly less old arcade games, but they have more new ones, since Charlie deals with more than just pinball. Been a while since I've been, but he had at least 40-50 pins on the floor.

Just for the record you could of asked nicely and gotten just as many responses, instead of insulting the Houston scene. Unless there was an ulterior motive, because like its been mentioned there are several other places besides EinStein's pub (even though I might be a little bias ).
Anyway, hope cidercades is everything you hoped for.

The second largest city in the USA isn't faring much better. All fun has been temporarily outlawed.

I think they are just using words like "temporarily" so if it goes on long enough, people will actually forget what fun was.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/not-again-2-days-after-putting-my-batman-california-shut-down

wait, what were we talking about again?

Look at it as an opportunity. Open up your own Arcade Bar with investors. Youll miss all the loss revenue when the Covid ends. Start now! Of course if you make over 400k that may be a different story with taxes? I don't know the logistics?

COVID has just messed up a lot of things. Houston has a great pin/arcade community. You CAN BYOB at the Game Preserve. There are a few guidelines they ask you to follow but not a big deal. And once things open up a little more I am sure Pacman fever Friday’s will start back up at Joystix. You should be glad he offers that and league nights. He doesn’t have to do it at all.

Also if it weren’t for COVID and you got to know people in the community you would see there are numerous gatherings throughout the year. Some have amazing collections and it’s nice they invite people over from time to time.

We are all frustrated with all the limited things due to COVID but get over it. Give it time and see what happens when things open up.

Whew! I new when I saw the title of this thread that someone was going to get slammed.... ouch

Well I think the OP is being a little harsh giving we are all dealing with COVID it’s hard for anything to thrive right now. Pre COVID we were actually thriving with more places opening.
Game Preserve adding a second location. Einstein’s adding a second location. Cidercade planning to open at some point. Mr. Pixels is fairly new I believe. League night at Joystix was growing pushing 40 plus people regularly. The Houston Arcade Expo changed venues and has grown. There is a VERY active community of collectors/players. Plenty of opportunities to meet and play if you wanted to.

To single out Houston given what we are dealing with globally is pretty unfair. You would be hard pressed to find anywhere location pinball has not been impacted. Plenty of threads discussing it and tons of places have closed. It’s amazing some have survived and a few new ones have opened.

I am glad that Nashville has GT in town. I live out in Mount Juliet and it is only a 25 minute drive for me. Seems like I have been there more weekends than not for the past 7 weeks or so. It gave me the pinball bug and I liked Iron Man so much that I had to have one delivered last week. I was there yesterday and I may have to have an AIQ next, Guardians of the Galaxy, or Deadpool next... another visit may help me make a decision.

My fave kind of beer, cold and yours!

Cidercade is open now. They have 20 pins, including Led Zeppelin LE. One downside tho...cider.

Just an FYI on pinball maps, make sure to check out the suburbs. For example in "Phoenix", three of our biggest arcades don't show up in the default search, and each has 18+ on their own. Might be the same for Houston.

I'm actually surprised how good Minneapolis is. We have SS Billiards, Tilt, BlaineBrook, Up Down, Mortimers, and many others.

[Ignore, same thing was mentioned elsewhere in the thread]

I don't think Houston's map has this issue as the suburbs are all part of the "zones" comprising the Houston area according to Pinball Map. Even Beaumont is part of the Houston map, though there are only three locations each with one machine. All of the major pinball haunts are somewhere on the map.

When I went, there were 9 games, 2 turned off, and 4 of those remaining had serious issues. That left 3 worth playing: D&D, Pin-Bot, and Fish Tales. Even those games were not entirely issue free (far from "tournament ready") but at least they were playable enough that I bounced between those 3 games for most of the time I was there.

How's 82? think there is one there

it's a good time

I was at 82 the other weekend and the pins we played were in really good condition and played well. We were there early, 5-7 PM on Saturday, and it was pretty mello. I’ll definitely go back.

Side note: afterwards had burgers at Rodeo Goat and definitely a great spot.

At one point, Game Preserve had more games at the Woodlands location than we had in all of Dallas' main venues, I'm just saying. The ONLY reason Dallas has jack freaking s--t at this point is entirely due to Cidercade and Free Play deciding that pins were worth their time. Nickelrama is a ghost of it's former self with regard to pinball (and to be honest we kind of shot ourselves in the foot there), and the other place that had been opened up and was more "pinhead oriented" went tits up a good while ago at this point....and even if it hadn't, COVID would've killed that place off.

Houston's had a bigger scene than Dallas for....several years now, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The only place doing anything of volume AND with leagues/tournaments is Free Play Arlington, which...is.....Arlington. If you're a fan of getting pulled over, Arlington is a great town. The cops there will find just about any excuse they can to give you a ticket. Richardson is put in with the pinball league they're running, but the difference in number of games, and quality of titles is pretty staggering, to be honest, from what I've seen.

If you think that Texas is barren, VA is the worst.
The only place I know that has a collection is the Roanoke Pinball Museum
(Where all my credits have come from).

Pinball manufacturers need to invest in the east coast, Chicago has already has Stern.

JJP did not need to move to Chicago.