Arcades, pinball & oddball play in Fort Collins
9 arcades and oddball play spots in Fort Collins, Pinball Jones, Sip n' Flip Arcade & Soda Bar and The Flipside among them. Pinball basements, vintage cabinets, mini golf with a grudge — competitive, cheap and better than dinner for a first date. They spread across Old Town, Fort Collins, Windsor, Downtown Loveland, Lyons and 4 more areas, so two or three can make a whole afternoon. Every entry is hand-vetted against real sources — not scraped off a top-ten list or averaged out of crowd ratings.
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Pinball Jones
Tucked into a basement off Old Town Square since 2011, Pinball Jones packs in 38 pinball machines, billed as the largest pinball selection in Fort Collins, spanning 1970s classics to modern titles like Wizard of Oz, Medieval Madness, and Twilight Zone. The downstairs room also fits 18 arcade games (skeeball, air hockey, shooters), pool tables, and a small bar with about a dozen rotating local craft drafts. Games run on quarters, so an hour or two won't empty your wallet.
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Sip n' Flip Arcade & Soda Bar
A community-run retro arcade where the twist is the bar: instead of leaning on beer, Sip n' Flip serves "dirty soda" — fountain soda jacked up with syrups and flavors — alongside draft beer and wine. The floor is quarter-operated and pinball-forward, with 17 pinball machines plus classic cabinets like Donkey Kong, air hockey, and driving games. It runs weekly pinball leagues and tournaments, and it's all-ages.
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The Flipside
The Flipside is the grown-up end of the spectrum: a clean, upscale arcade bar in downtown Loveland with a curated lineup of roughly 19 pinball machines plus classic cabinets, skeeball, and air hockey. Unlike most barcades, it backs the games with a real cocktail program — around 90 spirits and liqueurs alongside craft beer on tap. Mondays are unlimited free-play, with a $15 door cover that drops to $10 after 9:30.
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Lyons Classic Pinball
Worth the drive: Lyons Classic Pinball is Colorado's largest pinball arcade, with 70-plus meticulously maintained machines spanning seven decades, from chiming electromechanicals to this year's newest releases. It's quarter-free — you pay a flat Day Pass and play everything as much as you want — in an alcohol-free, all-ages room that hosts tournaments and leagues. It's been running for well over 15 years and draws pinball pilgrims from across the Front Range.
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Old Town Putt
Inside The Exchange food hall, Old Town Putt is a nine-hole indoor mini-golf course wrapped around a full craft cocktail bar, with frozen drinks and beers from nearby Fort Collins breweries. A side arcade room holds Skeeball, pinball, a basketball hoop and what it bills as Colorado's first interactive steel-tip dart system, plus patio ping-pong outside. Every evening from 7pm it flips to adults-only, turning the putting greens into a laid-back grown-up hangout.
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CooperSmith's Poolside
A beloved Old Town pool hall that ran as CooperSmith's Poolside from 1993 until 2022, then sat dark for years before reopening in spring 2026 as CooperSmith's Billiards. The revived space keeps shuffleboard and darts in the main room, a quirky game called Skeech on the south side, and board games on the north side, with CooperSmith's own scratch-made pizza still coming out of the kitchen. It's a rare brewpub-adjacent room built around long-table bar games rather than screens.
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The Haunted Game Cafe
A long-running board-game cafe and hobby shop on South College where you can reserve a table and play, with a deep wall of board games, RPGs, and trading-card stock for Magic, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. It runs frequent events including Magic the Gathering nights, RPG sessions, and paint-and-hobby workshops, plus cafe drinks and food. It leans more genuine gamer den than polished cafe.
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Fort Collins Escape Room
One of Northern Colorado's established escape-room operators, running multiple themed rooms with elaborate built sets. Their flagship Raven's Quest is a steampunk story where Dr. Raven's experimental power source threatens to destroy the steampunk world, alongside sci-fi (Mission to Planet X) and medieval (Kingdom of the Dragon) rooms. The props and environments are purpose-built rather than off-the-shelf puzzle boxes.
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The Emporium
A community-minded game bar with a setting the owners liken to the film Dazed and Confused. The floor packs in pool tables, a foosball table, a wall of electronic dart boards, pinball and other arcade games, plus mega Jenga and cornhole, and it runs themed nights and specialty drinks. It's the kind of unpretentious local hangout built for staying a while and bouncing between games.
Arcades, pinball & oddball play in Fort Collins — FAQ
Where can I play pinball in Fort Collins?
Pinball Jones (Old Town, Fort Collins), Sip n' Flip Arcade & Soda Bar (Windsor), The Flipside (Downtown Loveland) and Lyons Classic Pinball (Lyons). Plus 2 more in the list below. Each listing has the address and what it costs to play.
Which arcades, pinball & oddball play in Fort Collins are the strangest?
Ranked by how strange they actually are: Old Town Putt, Lyons Classic Pinball and The Haunted Game Cafe. Old Town Putt — Inside The Exchange food hall, Old Town Putt is a nine-hole indoor mini-golf course wrapped around a full craft cocktail bar, with frozen drinks and beers from nearby Fort Collins breweries.
Where in Fort Collins are they?
Across Old Town, Fort Collins, Windsor, Downtown Loveland, Lyons and Downtown / The Exchange, Fort Collins and 3 more. Each listing gives the neighborhood and address so you can cluster a couple into one outing.
Is this a good weird date in Fort Collins?
That's what the list is built for. Every entry has a specific move rather than a vague recommendation — at Old Town Putt, for instance: Grab a frozen cocktail, play the nine-hole course, then keep the rivalry going on interactive darts and patio ping-pong during adults-only evening hours.
How were these arcades, pinball & oddball play chosen?
An agentic research system digs for the genuinely obscure — the spots even locals miss — and every one is verified against real sources before it makes the list. We deliberately skip the landmarks already on every Fort Collins guide.