Silverball Retro Arcade is a pinball museum on the Asbury Park boardwalk where almost every machine, some dating back to 1950, is set to free play so you can actually touch the history instead of just looking at it. It’s the kind of place where a grandfather, a parent, and a kid can all play the exact same game and argue about who’s better at it.
What Is the Silverball Retro Arcade?
Tucked into the Third Avenue Pavilion at 1000 Ocean Avenue, Silverball isn’t a museum in the roped-off, look-but-don’t-touch sense. It’s a family-friendly boardwalk pinball museum and vintage arcade showcasing an expansive collection of classic and modern pinball machines alongside arcade video games, Skee-Ball, air hockey and a café with pizza and snacks, with all games set to free play once you’ve paid admission. You buy a time block, hourly, half-day, or all-day, and then you just play until your legs give out.
The collection rotates constantly. At any given time, Silverball highlights about 200 pinball machines pulled from a rotating collection of roughly 600. That’s a staggering amount of pinball history packed into one building a few steps from the sand.
How a Daughter’s Love of Pinball Started It All
The whole thing began as a father’s gesture, not a business plan. Silverball started fifteen years ago when co-founder Robert Ilvento’s daughter was diagnosed with autism. Pinball turned out to be one of the few things that really clicked for her.
Ilvento has described it simply: “She was really drawn to the flippers, the lights, the way the games played, so we started collecting machines.” What started as a personal collection for one kid turned into one of the Jersey Shore’s most recognizable attractions.
Ilvento wasn’t exactly new to building something out of nothing. He’s a West Long Branch native who dropped out of Rutgers and founded Cluck U Chicken in New Brunswick in 1985, long before pinball machines became his second act.
From a Record Store Basement to the Boardwalk
Before Silverball had a boardwalk address, it had a much humbler one. The whole thing traces back to its 2009 opening in the basement below Groovy Graveyard, a record store on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park. It was never meant to be a tourist destination, just a spot to show off a growing collection.
That modesty didn’t last long. When Rob first opened the museum in 2009 at its original location, he had around 30 pinball machines and found that people really liked what he was doing, and it started to become successful. Within a year, the operation had outgrown a record store basement entirely. In 2010, Silverball moved to the boardwalk, where it became popular with tourists and beachgoers.
The timing mattered. Asbury Park was in the middle of climbing back from decades of decline, and Silverball became part of that comeback story rather than just a bystander to it.
What You’ll Actually Find Inside
This is where Silverball earns the word “museum.” Every machine on the floor tells you something about the decade it came from, and the collection spans generations of American pop culture.
The oldest pieces go back further than most visitors expect. Currently featured is a 1950 Gottlieb & Company boxing-themed pinball machine called Knock Out, a rare 1983 Williams Joust two-player table machine, and a rare 1977 Bally Evel Knievel machine of which only 155 were made. Standing next to a machine that rare, built before most of us were born, hits different than reading about it in a textbook.
The theming is half the fun. You can find “Beat Time,” built at the height of 1960s Beatlemania, 1979’s KISS game and 1980’s Ali, and newer tables based on The Sopranos and The Simpsons for younger visitors. There’s even a quirky bit of pinball-collecting history on display. Silverball holds rare add-a-ball machines, made for states that once treated pinball like gambling and banned the versions that paid out free games. That’s a detail you won’t find at your average arcade.
Founder Rob Ilvento sums up why he treats these machines as more than coin-op games. “It’s art that you can interact with,” he says of the arcade’s game machinery. After walking the floor, it’s hard to argue with him.
Is It Really a Museum, or Just an Arcade?
Honestly, it’s both, and that tension is part of the charm. It has the historical plaques and preserved machinery of a museum, but none of the “don’t touch the exhibits” energy. You’re encouraged to slam the flipper buttons on a machine older than your parents.
That approach has earned real recognition beyond just local word of mouth. A USA Today Readers Poll recently named the venue Best Attraction in New Jersey. For a boardwalk arcade competing against roller coasters, aquariums, and casinos, that’s a notable distinction.
The idea resonated enough that it expanded beyond the Jersey Shore. The original Asbury Park location opened in 2009, with a second Silverball Museum opening in Delray Beach, Florida, in 2017. Ilvento now splits time between the two coasts, but Asbury Park remains the flagship.
Planning Your Visit
Silverball sits right on the boardwalk, so it’s easy to fold into a beach day or a stroll past Convention Hall. It’s open daily from noon to midnight, which makes it a solid option whether you’re killing a rainy afternoon or looking for something to do after the sun goes down.
Admission works on a time-based model rather than feeding quarters into each machine. You pick an hourly, half-day, or all-day pass, and every game is on free play for the duration. That setup means you can bounce between a 1950 boxing game and a 1990s digital pinball table without ever digging for change.
Why It’s Worth the Trip
New Jersey has no shortage of unusual roadside stops, but Silverball does something most of them can’t: it lets history talk back. You’re not reading a description of how pinball evolved from wooden bagatelle boards to light-up digital spectacles. You’re standing there flipping the actual machines that made that evolution happen, one era at a time.
It started as one father collecting games for his daughter. It turned into a 600-machine archive of American pop culture sitting a few hundred feet from the Atlantic Ocean. If you’ve ever wanted to play the same exact pinball game your grandfather played on a boardwalk decades ago, this is where you go do it.
NOTE TO THE ADVENTURER: This guide is meant to spark curiosity for what lies beyond the horizon — not to serve as a guarantee. Roads fall into disrepair, buildings are torn down and rebuilt, and properties change hands; 'tis your responsibility to do your own research before setting out. Always heed local and regional law, and always respect ground that isn't your own. Take every entry here as a suggestion, not a decree. This guide's contents were gathered with the aid of artificial intelligence, and like any scout, it will from time to time lead you astray. You assume all risk in following its counsel, and neither this blog nor its author is liable for any loss, injury, or misfortune that results.
