- Would you be willing to break the law to play your favorite game?
South Carolina’s capital Columbia has multiple arcades with pinball machines. In some of them (those open to people of all ages) you may run into a stereotypical sight — teenage pinball wizards crowded around machines, shooting for the high score.
And each of them is committing a crime.
Did you know that for decades, it has been illegal in South Carolina for people under the age of 18 to play pinball machines? We really dropped the (pin)ball by not including that on our list of weird bans.
But despite it being an ostensible crime, you can find teens playing pinball in broad daylight. Why?
There simply doesn’t seem to be anyone to enforce the law.
Take, for example, Josh Rainwater, one of the owners of Transmission Arcade in Columbia. Up until 8 p.m., the arcade welcomes visitors of all ages.
Rainwater says there’s no one to stop teens from getting their pinball on at the arcade — least of all him.
“I’m saying to you we are willingly breaking this law. It hasn’t been enforced,” he told ABC15 News.
It’s the same story at the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum. As soon as the museum opens, teenage pinballers gather at the machines.
Jerry Pinkas, the museum’s owner, says he’s well aware that teens engage in illegal fun at his establishment.
“Kids of all ages, actually. I don’t have any problems sleeping honestly,” Pinkas said.
Gambling Concerns
It seems South Carolina’s arcades are in flagrant contempt of the law. But why is underage pinball playing banned in the first place?
The problem appears to be gambling. When early pinball machines appeared in South Carolina some 100 years ago, some people decided to turn it into a form of gambling, placing bets on the player’s performance.
As a result, pinball machines were briefly banned in most states. But as anyone may have noticed, those bans disappeared relatively quickly.
But it was a different story in South Carolina. Although the state did allow pinball machines, a new law came into effect in the 1960s.
Parents were concerned that their children were spending too much money playing pinball. There were also worries that teens would revive pinball’s old gambling ways.
So, the state enacted a law banning underage people from playing pinball. The prohibition stands to this day.
An Outdated Law
But if teenage pinballing is illegal, why isn’t anyone stopping the hoodlums? Basically, no one cares.
One issue with the current law is that the form of pinball it’s concerned with doesn’t really exist anymore. You see, pinball has evolved significantly over the decades.
If you saw an early pinball machine, you might not even recognize the game as pinball. The player would launch a small marble or ball into the machine and hope that it lands in one of the high-scoring baskets on the board.
Although a skilled player could probably land a ball with amazing precision, this early pinball was basically based on luck. But as the years went on, the game started changing.
Machine manufacturers added paddles that allowed the player to hit a missed ball back into the playing field. Fast-forward a bit and you have modern pinball, which is much more skill-based than its early iterations.
Sure, you could still gamble on it. But why would you, when a skilled pinballer is sure to take your money?
‘We’ve Got to Change This’
There may be hope on the horizon for South Carolina’s young, illegal pinball enthusiasts. Last month, the state legislature introduced a bill that would do away with the pinball ban once and for all.
The law was filed by State Representative Todd Rutherford. In a perfect showcase of how obscure the ban is, Rutherford didn’t even know it existed.
He had to hear it from his 8-year-old niece Madeline.
“Madeline pointed out to me in her visit to the Statehouse that people under the age of 18 could not play pinball. When she said that, I was somewhat in disbelief,” Rutherford told The Post and Courier.
He began digging into the state’s laws and what do you know? The little girl was right.
Perhaps hoping that he could legally take his niece to the arcade, Rutherford has now drafted the law that would undo the pinball ban. The State Representative simply sees no reason for it to exist in this day and age.
“A lot of people aren’t enforcing this. I don’t know that anybody’s been arrested for playing pinball, but kids need to know that what they’re doing is within the confines of the law.
“So, we’ve got to change this and we need to do it now,” he said.
However, this isn’t the first time South Carolina has tried to repeal the pinball ban. A similar law failed to pass the state legislature in 2016.
But Rutherford feels good about his law’s chances.
“I can’t see anybody being opposed to it. But you know, stranger things have happened,” said Rutherford.
Not like it really matters to South Carolina’s young pinball fans. They’ve been playing their favorite game for years and they’ll keep doing so — illegally or legally, they don’t care.
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