The Budapest Pinball Museum (Flippermuzeum) is one of the largest interactive pinball and arcade-game museums in Europe, occupying a basement space at Radnoti Miklos utca 18 in the Ujlipotvaros district of the Pest side of the Hungarian capital. The museum holds a collection of around 140 working pinball machines and antique coin-operated games spanning more than a century of arcade history, and is distinguished by the fact that every machine in the collection is set to free play, so that visitors can play unlimited games for the price of a single admission ticket. The museum was founded in 2014 by the Hungarian collector Balazs Palfi, who had assembled one of the largest private collections of pinball and arcade machines in central Europe over several decades. The collection ranges from the earliest pre-flipper bagatelle and pin games of the 1880s and 1920s - including rare wooden-cabinet machines from the dawn of the coin-operated amusement industry - through the golden age of electromechanical pinball in the 1950s and 1960s, the solid-state era of the 1970s and 1980s, and on to the elaborate licensed and digital machines of the modern period. The collection is organised in a roughly chronological layout that allows visitors to trace the technological and cultural evolution of the pinball machine across its entire history. The earliest galleries hold the historic bagatelle games and the pre-war machines, displayed as much for their historical significance as for play, while the main halls hold the rows of fully playable electromechanical and electronic machines, all set to free play. The collection includes a number of extremely rare machines, including early examples that survive in only a handful of working examples worldwide. The museum is a particular favourite with families and with nostalgic adult visitors, and the unlimited free-play format means that visitors typically spend two to three hours working through the collection. The museum is open Wednesday to Sunday afternoons and evenings, with a bar serving drinks and snacks, and the single admission ticket covers unlimited play on every machine for the full duration of the visit. The museum also hosts regular competitive pinball tournaments and private events.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Radnoti Miklos utca 18, Budapest, Hungary

Website: https://www.flippermuzeum.hu

Opening Date: 01/01/2014