Silverball Gardens

Silverball Gardens (also known as Silverball Arcade) was a legendary, multi-level pinball and video game arcade that operated in Berkeley, California from the 1970s through the late 1980s or early 1990s. Located upstairs at 2510 Durant Avenue—just off Telegraph Avenue and near the UC Berkeley campus—it was a definitive cultural hub for generations of students and local teenagers.

The arcade was situated directly above La Val’s Pizza (and near the old Tower Records and Leopold’s Records). To get into the arcade, patrons walked up a steep, narrow staircase that was famously adorned with a custom, striking rock-and-roll “Tommy”-themed mural painted by local artist Dan Fontes.

Archival industry tracking records place the arcade’s debut in 1973. It started out heavily focused on classic electro-mechanical pinball machines. In December 1976, it famously served as the live test site for Space Wars, the world’s very first vector-graphics arcade game created by local developer Larry Rosenthal.

In its early 1970s inception, it was strictly a haven for electromechanical pinball machines like Gottlieb’s Atlantis, Skyjump, and El Dorado. As the golden age of arcades arrived, it transformed into a premier gaming hotspot featuring massive rows of pinball machines alongside early video game classics like Space Wars, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Mappy, and Defender. It even hosted early game design legends who went to school at UC Berkeley and paid their tuition by mastering or building games.

For locals, a typical afternoon or weekend date involved getting a slice of pizza downstairs at La Val’s, buying cheap food at Top Dog, and spending hours upstairs trying to stretch a few quarters or taking advantage of their “$2.50 all-day play” specials.