Recently, Katie traveled to Asbury Park, New Jersey and found herself at the Silver Ball Retro Arcade & Museum, right on the boardwalk. I’ve been to Silver Ball too, and I can tell you – the place is an amazing bit of fun, especially for all of us who remember actual arcades in the 80s and enjoy old school nachos.
From Silver Ball Museum, photography by Joseph Murphy
In between rolling skee-balls and attempting Donkey Kong, Katie spotted a Hobbit pinball machine. Later, that got us wondering. Exactly how many pinball machines HAVE derived from literature? As it turns out, quite a few!
From Elite Home Gamerooms
If there’s a Hobbit pinball game, there has to be a Lord of the Rings game as well. In fact, there are many book-to-screen pinball machines. Harry Potter, Dracula, Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Jaws, Starship Troopers, Game of Thrones, an abundance of 007, and even graphic novel The Walking Dead. The Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory pinball game features graphics from the 1971 film (you were the greatest Gene Wilder), an Oompa-Loompa figurine, and an interactive Wonkavator!
From Lermods
Digging a little deeper, Katie and I turned up some more unexpected literary-themed machines. Like The Three Musketeers from 1949…
From Pinrepair
And this super saucy Peter Pan from 1955…
From Finside
Though technically not a book, this 1987 Dungeons & Dragons pinball game included graphics gleaned directly from the cover of the 1983 Player’s Manual. Which is awesome.
From Reddit
The Close Encounters of the Third Kind pinball game was based on the 1977 film. But there was a Close Encounters book! It was a novelization of the film published in tandem with the theatrical release. We believe this makes it eligible for the pinball literacy list. Plus, spaceships are cool.
While this next machine might not represent a specific book or literary character, it gets 100+ bonus points for being an amalgamation of several novels. May we present Verne’s World pinball from 1996 (with a depiction of the author, quill in hand!):
We found only one picture book turned pinball (unless you count this or this):
From Joystix Games
But the grand finale, voted hands-down winner of “Least Expected Literary Pinball” is this 2023 Godfather 50-year anniversary collectors edition, complete with a sculpted bust of Don Vito Corleone in his signature tux:
From Reddit
Which pinball game would YOU like to play?
It’s been a long journey, but Katie and Finley finally completed their quest!
The company also mails postcards when you reach certain milestones, and they physically plant a tree for every 20% that you walk. For Katie and Finley, that translated to 25 trees! The medal set also included the One Ring. It fits inside the Shire medal and the Mordor medal. But Katie very prudently cast it into the fires of Mordor, thus saving Middle Earth forever. Go Katie!
In case you are wondering where Katie is warming her little hobbit feet, it’s by the massive fireplace in the Yankee Doodle Tap Room. It’s located inside the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey. It was the perfect location for a restful fireside tankard.
With it’s stone, brick, wood floors, and ceiling beams, The Tap Room really does look like it could belong in the Shire. We just need a house band and a few dozen jolly hobbits.
The Tap Room has plenty of Princeton University touches as well, from a photo wall of famous alumni, to a carved tiger guarding an exit door.
But the most famous feature of the Tap Room is “Yankee Doodle,” an original Norman Rockwell painting that hangs over the bar. One of his largest canvases, it was commissioned in the mid 1930s by Edgar Palmer. Rockwell painted in right onto the wall of the Tap Room. Today, it’s carefully protected by glass.
Congratulations to Katie and Finley on their fantastic achievement! And, if you’re still in hobbit party mode, why not check out