We passed this along to the man himself, and here's what our Stiffs & Georges blogger had to say on the subject.
Yes, it does, 52 machines’ worth of vintage pinball action, all collected, restored and maintained by Pinball Hall of Fame owner Tim Arnold. They are located in what used to be a Riviera video-game arcade, an attraction of which current CEO Andy Choy was not enamored.
Unlike most casino CEOs, Choy can often be spotted out on the town, either checking upon the competition or searching for potential amenities. One night, this led him to the Pinball Hall of Fame, on East Tropicana Avenue, back in early 2011. He went up to Arnold and introduced himself. The pinball authority was somewhat skeptical. A casino boss in his modest museum? Yeah, right. "So I thought, 'I’ll play along with the gag.'" What Arnold discovered was that Choy "knew things [about the Riviera] that only the head guy would know."
The fact that pinball isn’t the most remunerative use of casino floor space -- but that Choy wanted it anyway -- impressed Arnold. Choy, in turn, was taken with Arnold’s modesty. "He doesn’t want any press for it," he told Desert Companion magazine. "He just does what he does." The two men defined their goal as being "to present pinball to the public." To that end, the games enjoy prominent placement on the Las Vegas Boulevard side of the Riviera.
If any casino is an appropriate place for pinball it is the Riv, which opened in 1955, during the game’s heyday. The casino’s premier ownership group David, Louis and Meyer, all of whom got their seed money from Genco, a pinball-game manufacturing company back in their native Chicago. Perhaps by the time you read this, Arnold will have installed a Genco machine at the Riviera – an oversight he is quick to acknowledge.
He and Choy agreed on a few ground rules: Violent video games were out, as were dance ones … and Chuck-E-Cheese-y machines that reward players with tickets were utterly forbidden. As Arnold puts it, "That just teaches your kids to gamble." The Hall of Fame and Riviera split the pinball coinage evenly. Once Arnold takes maintenance costs of out his share, roughly 40% of that half (or 20 cents on the dollar) is donated to charity. Whether the Pinball Hall of Fame’s must-see status for tourists and foothold at the Riviera leads to imitation along the Strip remains to be seen. But if one casino succeeds with an amenity, all others follow.
For more on the Riviera’s ongoing reinvention, read History in the (re)making.
