Earl Bowl Lanes (Telford PA), 4K arcade walkthrough & tour, May 2024

This old school bowling alley straddling Bucks and Montgomery County in Pennsylvania is definitely an artifact from years past. A family owned business in operation since 1958, it's a bit off the beaten path, but they have a lot of lanes and a surprisingly decent selection of arcade games in their own dedicated room. Unfortunately during my visit in May, about a third of the machines were either out of order or in pretty bad shape. I never expected to see a Pump It Up cabinet in a random bowling alley, and would have loved to get a set in, but like many other of the machines, it had an "Out Of Order" sign affixed to the screen. And according to Zenius, a lot of these machines have been out of service for the better part of the past year. It's a shame, because it is a pretty good lineup, but I have to assume this isn't really the big moneymaker for the alley here.
Website:
www.earlbowllan...
Zenius:
zenius-i-vanis...
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[@johnt7372]

So I have a friend who lives very close to this. He has arcade games in his basement and has meetups once a year for the past 15+ years. There used to be a pinball ball place near here called the pinball parlour that had an arcade on the ground floor (captain America, need for speed, Narc and Road Blasters come to mind. Upstairs was all Williams Pinball Machines, I don’t know if he had a connection to Williams/midway or not but it was heavy on those . Sadly it closed about six years ago. The town was called earlington pa if you want to look it up we used to take a break from playing Neo Geo cabs at my friends house and spend a couple hours there. There are still pictures out there if the place

[@S1ckH4ndsRBN]

I saw that Pinball Parlour place online when I was doing some research into arcades in the area! Only saw that it was now closed, but had no idea when it happened. Wonder what happened to all the games that were there...

[@johnt7372]

Do you have a plans to hit up the Retroware arcade in Landsdale PA? They are a game developer too

[@S1ckH4ndsRBN]

@@johnt7372 Absolutely. I haven't been there in a minute but I 100% plan on visiting both the original as well as the new location they opened up near Deptford NJ.

[@nlafavore]

Yes! I would always go to Earl Bowl, then walk over to Pinball Parlour.

[@djargus]

Well, the good thing is they mark which games are out of order so customers don't waste money, the bad thing is so many games out of order. Nice to see a Raiden 2 machine though.

[@S1ckH4ndsRBN]

It would be an awesome little location if all of these games were up and running, but I get the impression that maintenance is more of an afterthought than anything else.

[@nlafavore]

Well, NBA Fastbreak was turned on, but the DMD was out so there's really no point in playing it unless you don't care what your score is. ;)

[@toddheyer122]

Its close to my house . Can usually play for an hour on a few bucks

[@S1ckH4ndsRBN]

Yeah, I stopped in here before heading out to Dorney Park for the day, and ended up spending more time than I thought. Even though a few of the machines were down, the pins that I played on had decent replay scores so I got a lot of value out of like $5.

[@S.J.C._Entertainment]

I want to stand on the roof.

[@S1ckH4ndsRBN]

I'm not sure if insurance will cover if you fall through a loose panel. Do not recommend. 😅

[@S.J.C._Entertainment]

@@S1ckH4ndsRBN maybe I could sue them and they’d give me some pinball machines 🤔