Arcades, pinball & oddball play in New Orleans
9 arcades and oddball play spots in New Orleans, Abita Mystery House (UCM Museum), Emporium Arcade Bar and Mystic Krewe Pinball Parlor among them. Pinball basements, vintage cabinets, mini golf with a grudge — competitive, cheap and better than dinner for a first date. They spread across Abita Springs, Marigny, Mid-City, Uptown 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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Abita Mystery House (UCM Museum)
Artist John Preble built this folk-art warren around a vintage gas station and filled it with more than 50,000 found and recycled objects. You wind past push-button animated dioramas of Southern life, old arcade machines, the glass-and-pottery-encrusted House of Shards, and homemade chimeras like Darrel the dogigator and Buford the bassigator. Everything is built from junk and presented with deadpan humor rather than spectacle.
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Emporium Arcade Bar
An adults-only barcade set inside an old industrial garage on St. Claude, with the exterior wrapped in local graffiti murals. The floor mixes pool tables, skee-ball, foosball, hoops, and a wall of classic video cabinets with modern pinball tables like Simpsons Pinball Party, The Mandalorian, and Godzilla. There's a full bar leaning on local craft beer and a cocktail program, so you can keep a drink in hand between games.
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Mystic Krewe Pinball Parlor
Tucked inside the Broad Theater, this is the public arm of the Mystic Krewe pinball collective and is billed as the largest single array of vintage pinball machines in a public space in the New Orleans area. You don't need a movie ticket to walk in and play, the lineup leans toward modern hits like Jurassic Park and Iron Maiden, and theater food and drinks are right there. All ages.
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Rendezvous Tavern
A longtime Magazine Street neighborhood bar (open since 1969) that has a dedicated pinball room alongside pool, darts, and video poker. The pinball lineup currently runs four machines including Guns N' Roses, The Mandalorian, Rush, and Jaws. With 80-plus beers, ciders and seltzers, late hours, and rotating food pop-ups, it's a games-and-drinks spot rather than a polished arcade.
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Old Town Slidell Soda Shop
An old-fashioned soda shop in Slidell's historic Olde Towne district with a genuine arcade tucked inside, mixing new and old machines. The pinball collection includes Godzilla, Star Wars, and Stranger Things, and there's an 18-hole mini-golf course next door (the only one in St. Tammany Parish). A garden area under giant oaks with string lights, fountains, and a small gazebo rounds out the visit, plus ice cream, floats, and all-American food.
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Escape My Room
Built inside a former funeral home two blocks from the National WWII Museum, this escape room spins an elaborate, ongoing saga about the fictional Delaporte family and their hidden hand in New Orleans history. The rooms are densely set-dressed with antiques and theatrical props rather than padlocks-on-plywood, and the studio has run since 2015. Tickets are online-only with no walk-ins, and every group is private.
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Clue Carré
Billed as New Orleans' first live escape game, Clue Carré leans hard into local folklore with rooms like The Voodoo Cemetery, where you cross Marie Laveau and her resting place at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, and Revenge on the Bayou, drawn from Manchac Swamp legends. Every booking is private, so your group is never paired with strangers. A second location operates in Metairie.
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Pickle N Pins
Co-founded by former Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Darren Balsamo, this sprawling Metairie game hall combines duckpin bowling, shuffleboard, axe throwing, pickleball, padel, and a darts variant called Krazy Darts under one roof with food and drinks. It runs late on weekends, until 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday. The mix of lawn-game and pin-game options makes it an easy spot to bounce between activities.
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City Putt
The city's only dedicated mini-golf complex sits inside New Orleans City Park with two 18-hole courses. One course themes its holes around Louisiana towns and cultural landmarks, the other around iconic New Orleans streets and sights. It is a 10-minute drive from the French Quarter and shares the park with the Besthoff sculpture garden and 200-year-old live oak groves.
Arcades, pinball & oddball play in New Orleans — FAQ
Where can I play pinball in New Orleans?
Emporium Arcade Bar (Marigny), Mystic Krewe Pinball Parlor (Mid-City), Rendezvous Tavern (Uptown) and Old Town Slidell Soda Shop (Slidell). Each listing has the address and what it costs to play.
Which arcades, pinball & oddball play in New Orleans are the strangest?
Ranked by how strange they actually are: Emporium Arcade Bar, Escape My Room and Clue Carré. Emporium Arcade Bar — An adults-only barcade set inside an old industrial garage on St.
Where in New Orleans are they?
Across Abita Springs, Marigny, Mid-City, Uptown and Slidell 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 New Orleans?
That's what the list is built for. Every entry has a specific move rather than a vague recommendation — at Emporium Arcade Bar, for instance: Buy a stack of tokens, claim a pinball table and a skee-ball lane, and play a best-of-three for who buys the next round.
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 New Orleans guide.