The first thing you notice is the sound. Not one sound, really, but a whole upstairs racket of flippers snapping, buttons clicking, digital lasers firing, and somebody nearby realizing they are not as good at Galaga as they remembered.
Billy’s Midway Arcade in Hawthorne is not hiding in the middle of nowhere, but it does make you work just a little to find it. The arcade sits on the second floor at 312 Lafayette Avenue, above The Celtic Corner pub, with the entrance tucked along the Diamond Bridge Avenue side near the parking garage.
Once you get upstairs, the setup is wonderfully simple. You pay for time, the games are set to free play, and suddenly the old arcade panic of running out of quarters disappears.
It feels less like a polished entertainment center and more like someone rescued the best parts of a 1980s Saturday and put them back within reach.
The Upstairs Hawthorne Arcade That Feels Like a Secret
The fun starts before you even touch a joystick, because Billy’s Midway has that great North Jersey “wait, it’s up there?” energy. This is not a giant neon building off the highway or a mall arcade wedged between chain stores.
It is upstairs in downtown Hawthorne, above The Celtic Corner, on a block where you could easily be thinking about dinner, a drink, or a movie before realizing there is an entire retro arcade just one flight up.
The entrance on the Diamond Bridge Avenue side gives the whole place a slightly hidden feel, the kind of local detail you learn from a friend who has already been there and wants to sound casual while giving very specific directions.
That is part of what makes Billy’s Midway work so well. It is in the middle of real town life, not separated from it.
Hawthorne has enough restaurants and small downtown stops nearby that the arcade can be part of a normal afternoon or evening instead of a full production. Once inside, though, the outside world drops away fast.
The room is packed with machines that are clearly there to be played, not admired from a safe distance. You hear air hockey pucks smacking the rails, pinball machines popping off little mechanical celebrations, and arcade cabinets making the same strange heroic noises they made decades ago.
It feels collected rather than curated, which is a compliment. Billy’s Midway has the personality of a passion project, right down to the feeling that every machine has a reason for being there.
Pay Once and Leave the Quarters at Home
Here is the part that makes people relax almost immediately: the games are on free play. Instead of feeding quarters into a cabinet, swiping a card, or checking how many credits are left before your kid starts another round, you pay based on how long you stay.
Current admission is $10 for a half hour, $15 for one hour, $20 for an hour and a half, $25 for two hours, and $30 for an all-day pass. That all-day pass is the one that makes retro arcade people start doing mental math, because it means you can stop treating each game like a tiny financial decision.
Want to try Donkey Kong again after a bad first board? Go ahead.
Want to jump from pinball to NBA Jam to air hockey and then back to pinball because you suddenly believe you have figured something out? That is the whole point.
Timed admission also changes the mood of the place. In a traditional arcade, there is always a little pressure attached to losing quickly, especially on games that were designed to humble you in under two minutes.
At Billy’s Midway, losing is just part of the rhythm. You laugh, reset, and try again without digging for another coin.
Most of the arcade follows that model, though a couple of prize-style exceptions exist, including a crane game and a small gumball-style pinball machine. The main experience, though, is exactly what makes the place stand out.
You pay once, stop counting, and let yourself play like you did when time felt cheaper than quarters.
A Wall to Wall Time Capsule of Retro Games
The collection is the reason Billy’s Midway feels different from a place that simply tosses the word “retro” onto a sign. These are classic arcade and pinball machines spanning from 1933 through 2012, which gives the room a much wider personality than a basic greatest-hits lineup.
You still get the big names, of course. Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Asteroids, Centipede, Defender, Joust, Robotron 2084, Space Invaders, and TRON all fit right into the kind of arcade memory many adults still carry around.
But the fun is in the range. There are fighting games like Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Marvel vs. Capcom, and X-Men vs. Street Fighter.
There are beat-’em-ups and crowd-pleasers like The Simpsons, Double Dragon, WWF WrestleFest, and NBA Jam.
There are games that feel tied to specific places in New Jersey memory, too, like the bowling alley, the boardwalk arcade, the pizza shop corner, or the movie theater lobby where one cabinet somehow became the center of the universe.
The driving games bring their own energy because those cabinets are not easily replaced by a console at home. Hard Drivin’, Cruis’n USA, and the linked San Francisco Rush 2049 machines have that loud, slightly ridiculous, elbows-out fun that works best when someone is standing next to you talking trash.
Add in air hockey, Super Chexx Hockey, shuffle bowling, cocktail table games, and deeper cuts for the arcade nerds, and the place starts to feel like a playable museum that wisely refuses to act like one. Nothing is behind glass.
The buttons are waiting.
The Pinball Lineup Is Worth the Trip Alone
Pinball has its own gravitational pull here, and even people who swear they are “more of a video game person” tend to wander over eventually.
Billy’s Midway has a lineup that moves through different eras of the game, from older mechanical pieces to classic electromechanical tables to later machines with familiar movie and pop-culture themes.
That variety matters because pinball is not one thing. A fast table can make you feel like you are reacting one half-second too late to everything.
An older table asks you to slow down and learn its rhythm. A louder, flashier table practically dares you to take it seriously while it throws lights, bells, ramps, and ridiculous sound effects at you.
The names alone give the lineup character: Air Aces, Dealer’s Choice, Future Spa, Gorgar, Comet, Firepower, Captain Fantastic, Meteor, Taxi, The Bally Game Show, and Strikes N’ Spares.
Then you get the recognizable titles like Terminator 2 Judgement Day, Dirty Harry, Hook, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, and Baby Pac-Man, the oddball hybrid that feels like something only arcade history could produce.
The older machines are especially fun because they show just how long people have been finding ways to chase a ball around a slanted board. Mat-Cha-Skor, a bagatelle game from 1933, and Lulu, a 1954 woodrail pinball machine, add real texture to the room.
Since the arcade runs on timed admission, you can actually learn a table instead of feeling punished every time the ball drains too quickly. That one change makes pinball feel more playful and less expensive, which is exactly how it should be.
Why Original Cabinets Make the Nostalgia Hit Harder
The thing you cannot fake is the feel of the machines. A real joystick has weight.
A real arcade button has a snap to it. A cabinet has side art, scratches, angles, and a presence that no phone screen or modern game menu can quite reproduce.
That physical part is a huge reason Billy’s Midway lands the way it does. You are not scrolling through a list of old titles and selecting one from a couch.
You are walking up to a machine, planting your feet, gripping the controls, and hearing the game come alive at full arcade volume. Classic games were built for that experience.
Track and Field makes sense when you are pounding buttons with alarming commitment. Missile Command feels different on a cocktail table.
Hard Drivin’ needs the wheel, the cabinet, and the slightly dramatic feeling that you are operating something more serious than a game about crashing badly. Even Pac-Man and Galaga hit differently when you are standing in front of dedicated cabinets rather than playing a tiny version while waiting in line somewhere.
Billy’s Midway also has a preservation story that gives all of this more heart. The arcade was founded by Billy and Allison Smith, and the collection famously began with a Ms. Pac-Man machine they received as a wedding present.
That origin explains a lot. The room does not feel like a trend someone bought into after retro gaming became cool again.
It feels like a collection built by people who understood the machines before they opened the doors to the public. That care shows in the way the arcade balances nostalgia with actual playability.
These games are not just remembered. They are still working for a living.
The Kind of New Jersey Day Trip That Works for Kids and Adults
A good New Jersey outing has to pass a tricky test: it should be fun without turning into a whole exhausting ordeal. Billy’s Midway clears that bar because it works for different ages in different ways.
Kids get a room full of buttons, lights, racing games, air hockey, and machines they can try without a parent constantly saying, “Hold on, how much is left on the card?”
Adults get the more dangerous gift, which is instant transportation back to arcades, bowling alleys, movie theater lobbies, boardwalk game rooms, and pizza shops where a few quarters could stretch into a surprisingly dramatic afternoon. The hours make it easy to fit into a normal week, too.
Billy’s Midway is typically open Monday through Thursday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Friday from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday from noon to 11 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 10 p.m., with summer and group arrangements sometimes affecting the schedule.
That means it can be an after-dinner stop, a Saturday afternoon plan, or the kind of place you visit for an hour and then realize you should have picked the all-day pass.
The downtown Hawthorne location helps because you can pair it with food nearby without mapping out some giant itinerary. What makes the place stick, though, is simpler than any planning detail.
It keeps the best part of old arcades intact: standing next to someone, choosing a game, getting humbled, laughing harder than expected, and trying again before the moment disappears.