“We’re not making a lot of money but we’re not losing money,” owner Arnold said. “It’s something that we enjoy, so we keep doing it.”

When Arnold, an East Lansing native, was an 11-year-old middle schooler, he and his brothers enjoyed playing pinball to the point that they decided to save money and pooled their funds to buy their own machine.

Soon, the brothers’ friends began coming to play on the machine.

“We all of a sudden realized we made money,” Arnold said, adding that they used the extra money to buy a candy machine and a soda machine.

“Next thing you know, we had a small neighborhood store in our garage,” Arnold said. “After school, the kids would come over and play with their spare change. It wasn’t unusual to see 20 to 25 … bicycles sitting in my parents’ driveway.”

The city of East Lansing shut the garage arcade down for violating zoning laws and told the brothers to cease and desist within 90 days.

“We never really thought of it as a business,” Arnold said. “As luck would have it, one quarter led to another and we just wanted to continue to grow.”

The brothers decided to open an arcade in Mason, Mich. in 1976. However, the town was too small to support an arcade, Arnold said. The brothers then purchased an existing arcade next to Coral Gables Restaurant on Grand River Avenue.

It was at this arcade that they got the idea to mount a life-size fiberglass elephant on the building, an icon of Pinball Pete’s.

As a way to attract customers to the arcade, they painted the elephant pink and planned to put a papier-mache cowboy named Pete on top of it. Although the cowboy never made it to the logo, the name Pinball Pete’s officially was born.

In the late ’70s, electronic video games were invented and filled many arcades.

“Those seemed to be very profitable and do well for us,” Arnold said. “We took all the money we made and reinvested it into buying more equipment.”

His brothers later decided to leave the arcade business, but Arnold stayed and took charge of Pinball Pete’s directly after high school.

In 1979, Pinball Pete’s arrived at its current location. Arnold said the space used to be divided into rooms that contained specific types of games. However, they tore down the walls to make it a better environment for parties, which have included a bar mitzvah and wedding reception.

The amusement facility currently has 64 arcade games plus air hockey and pool tables. The machines run on quarters and yield tickets for prizes in the basement-level arcade. Pinball Pete’s also has another location in Ann Arbor.

Arnold said the business sees a strong student traffic flow from 8 p.m. to midnight during the week and families typically come in during weekends.

The arcade business has fluctuated over the years, Arnold said, and many arcades shut down because of the economic recession.

“When the economy went south (around) 2008, that was a real shake out time,” Arnold said. “It’s come back a little bit. For us, it’s a matter of survival and pride.”

Arnold said he wants the arcade to be a place for students to have one-on-one interaction — something he believes has been cut short by today’s rapid advancement in technology.

“I’ve had people come up to me and say ‘I met my wife there’ or ‘I got my first kiss there,” Arnold said. “It’s been a lifetime. I know we’re one of the longest surviving businesses in East Lansing. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

Arnold plans to stay with Pinball Pete’s and keep it running as long as possible.