Family Day at Past Times Arcade

Looking for something fun to do as a family on a Sunday, we pointed the car north and drove up from Weirton to Past Times Arcade in Girard, OH, just north of Youngstown. It's a short, easy trip — you're basically following OH-11 up through the eastern Ohio corridor, and you're there in under an hour. Perfect kind of distance for a day trip: far enough to feel like an outing, close enough that you're home by dinner if you want to be.

About Past Times

Past Times is not a typical mall arcade. It's a retro-themed pinball and video arcade at 419 N. State Street in Girard that houses a collection that's been built over more than 50 years — over 400 pinball machines and more than 200 classic arcade games in one building. The range of machines is genuinely impressive: pinball going all the way back to the 1930s, classic '70s and '80s video cabinets, more modern Stern pinball releases, and everything in between.

A few things that make Past Times stand out:

The machines are maintained. This is the thing that separates a serious arcade from a sad arcade. At a lot of places you walk in, drop a token, and half the flippers don't work. At Past Times, the games play the way they're supposed to play, which matters a lot if you actually enjoy pinball as a skill game and not just flashing lights.

The collection has breadth. With 400+ pinball tables you're going to see games you've never seen in person before, including vintage electromechanical machines that most people have only seen in YouTube restoration videos. If you're a pinball nerd, it's basically a museum you can play.

The place also hosts Steel Valley Pinball leagues and tournaments, which means a real community of local players knows this arcade well — another sign that the games are worth playing, not just worth looking at.

There's also an on-site cafe if you want to grab food without leaving, which is a small thing but a nice thing when you've got a kid who's going to suddenly be starving twenty minutes after saying he's not hungry.

What we did

Pretty much what you'd expect: played games. Bounced around between pinball tables and video cabinets, tried machines we'd never seen before, watched Preston discover ones he'd never played, watched Catrina get into the games she recognized. An arcade this size rewards just wandering — you walk past something you didn't notice the first time, and it becomes your favorite table of the day.

Final thoughts

Great trip. Past Times earned its reputation — well-curated, well-maintained, and genuinely fun for a whole family in a way most modern entertainment venues aren't. It's the kind of place you leave already planning the next visit. We'd go back without hesitation.

For anyone else thinking about making the drive from the Weirton / Northern Panhandle area: it's worth it. Check the hours before you go, though — Past Times is closed Monday through Wednesday and has limited hours the rest of the week (Sundays were 11 AM to 7 PM when we went).

Good Sunday. Happy family. Tired kid. Can't ask for much more.