In West Virginia town, pinball moves into data center space

BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. (CN) — Retro gaming music and the sounds of metal pinballs fill the back of an ordinary brick building in this quiet Appalachian town. Multicolored lights are carefully positioned to keep reflections off the glass.This is Pinball Castle, an attraction opened in June by tech entrepreneur Jeff Martin. Currently, it has a little more than 30 pinball machines. Martin is fixing up and preparing to add about another 20.For Martin, pinball marks a big career shift. This arcade shares a building with Morgan Wireless, a local internet service provider he started nearly a decade ago.He also spent 25 years running a small data center with his brother. That business is mostly gone, with pinball machines now occupying most of its old space.“It’s one of those things that’s like 24/7, 365, so you’re always busy,” Martin said of reasons for the pivot. “You’re always doing something.”Martin and his brother began downsizing the data center a few years ago. Their business provides services like racks, cooling, power and internet access for companies with servers.While there’s still a bit of that here, this space is now much more arcade than server farm.“We were like, ‘we’re so tired,’” Martin said. “I was losing interest in it.”Jeff Martin, who comes from a computer background, opened the Pinball Castle in June. (Yann Ranaivo/Courthouse News)Martin got into pinball just a few years ago. His brother, who lives about an hour away in Frederick, Maryland, had found an arcade and asked Martin to come along.“That’s kind of how it started,” Martin said. “We would play in tournaments down there.”“Once you play, it’s very addictive,” he added.Martin started searching the internet for machines so he could play on his own. With a background in computers, there were parallels in terms of the constant tinkering and troubleshooting.“In pinball, you always have machines that are broken,” he said. “You’re always fixing something. I love it. It’s so much fun.”The opening of Pinball Castle comes amid an ongoing pinball resurgence.According to Betson, a global distributor of arcade equipment, there were more than 130,000 players across thousands of competitions last year. That’s a huge increase from 2006, when there were only 500 players in 50 competitions. Getting in on the trend, Pinball Castle hosts tournaments every Wednesday.Arcade manager Mariah Shoemaker is new to pinball. She enjoys a number of things about it, from the challenge of pulling off trick shots to the way it occupies her mind. As an employee, she also likes learning new skills like soldering wires and changing fuses.“Lately, I started trying to wear headphones to listen to music while playing, and it’s helped me a lot,” Shoemaker said. Pinball Castle can get noisy during tournaments. “If I put on the headphones, I shut everybody out and I just focus.”Mariah Shoemaker, manager at the Pinball Castle, plays a few rounds. (Yann Ranaivo/Courthouse News)At the same time, Shoemaker says the social scene is part of the fun.“Pinball isn’t just about playing pinball,” she said. “It’s about the people you meet and the communication and the social aspect of it.”Pinball Castle takes its name from Berkeley Springs Castle, a nearby landmark home built in the 1800s to look like a castle.With fewer than 1,000 residents in Berkeley Springs, this arcade adds another indoor activity for cloudy or rainy days, said Laura Smith with Travel Berkeley Springs, a group that promotes tourism in the region.Pinball is nostalgic for a certain crowd, Smith said. She referenced the song “Pinball Wizard” from The Who’s rock opera “Tommy.”“I’m from the generation when Tommy came out, so I know the nostalgia is great for us,” Smith said. “It’s also opening up a new venue for a new generation.”Most of Pinball Castle’s machines date from the 1980s and are indeed nostalgic. A few are more recent, coming from the mid-1990s to today.Purely for aesthetic/nostalgic reasons, all of them have coin slots, though they’re not in use. Instead, players pay the arcade directly for a hour, a day or an entire month of play.Some machines here are based on popular titles — “Pulp Fiction,” “Godzilla” and “Deadpool” — while others are unique to pinball.The “Godzilla” and “Deadpool” models come with modern features like LCD monitors. The one for “Pulp Fiction," which received design input from director Quentin Tarantino, is intentionally built to play like an older unit, with fewer ramps, Martin said.The Pinball Castle has several games based on popular movies and media franchises. (Yann Ranaivo/Courthouse News)As for the most challenging gameplay at Pinball Castle, that distinction may go to Bally’s fantasy-themed Paragon machine. It has three flippers, Martin noted, including one that doesn’t let players hold the ball in place.Despite founding an internet service provider, Martin is ambivalent about how the internet has affected society.“It’s a terrible thing,” he said. “Everybody’s so glued to their phones” that “they don’t know how to talk to people anymore.”“It’s great, but it makes people lazy,” he added. “I can just pull out my phone and type in the question; I don’t have to have any knowledge.” Playing pinball is an opportunity to get out, socialize and take a break from staring at screens. “It’s not like playing a video game because it has tactical feedback. You can feel things move around.”Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads