Any foam paneling properly placed on the walls will help deaden the sound. If you are in the basement and have a drop ceiling with tiles, they make -20db drop tiles that would help deaden the vertical sound significantly.

Search around though, foam paneling is essentially the same material as people pull out of cushions with foam inserts. If you're not worried about the looks of it, go to Goodwill and by some old pillows with foam inserts and pull them out. Otherwise, there's cheap options like this: ebay.com link: like

When we built our room, we used the rolled rubber you have in your link. It's heavy as shit but definitely worth it. We did walls only. Make sure to get a solid core door too.

foam (or egg crates) deaden sound, but it doesn't eliminate it. If you have any pins with low frequency bass, it will still resonate through ceilings. If you truly want all the frequencies cancelled out, you need a surface with multiple heights. If you're willing to build your own panels, you could make them fairly cheaply:

Or installed headphone jacks...

http://pinnovators.com/

Our basement game room ceiling is drywall and we had insulation batting installed flush with the joists above the drywall. When we play pinball you cannot even hear it upstairs on the main level of the house so it must be deadening the sound as planned.

Gord

It was over 12 years ago when I finished the ceiling in our game room so I don't know if the stuff is still available or not. It was brown 4x8 sheets, about 3/4" thick (and smelled funky) Those sheets went between the drywall and the joists with extra screws to hold it all up.

It works very well on deadening sound. It was just called 'sound board' from what I can recall.

Can you better describe the smell?

Headphones won't quiet flipper bats and pop bumpers.. And not everyone owns solid state, some still have EM's in their basement

While I'm no expert on soundproofing, I do work in an audio/video facility that's undergone a significant amount of acoustic treatment. The foam panels folks have mentioned as well as the wood diffusion panel in the YouTube video above are not designed to soundproof a room, but rather to control the way sound waves behave within one. They may provide a negligible decrease in transmission through the wall, but you're better off using products (and wall designs) that are for the expressed purpose of isolation rather than treatment.

This site seems to give a good overview of the principles of soundproofing:

http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/soundproofing101/

The mix room at our facility is framed similarly to the "room within a room" design and provides a tremendous amount of isolation. I've never brought a pin into work (hmmm...), but I guarantee you'd have a hard time hearing one through those walls.