The Casa Bonita Pinball Story

What’s the value of nostalgia? How much would you pay to be able to recreate an important moment or relive a feeling from your life?

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For most pinball enthusiasts, these nostalgic moments can be sampled for $15,000 or less (sometimes a lot less, if you’re a location player), in the form of a brand new, top-of-the-line modern pinball machine. For some, it’s about re-creating arcade-filled moments of their youth. For others, it’s about owning a playable machine that draws a dotted line to a fondly remembered piece of media from their formative years. 

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For Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of cultural touchstones like South Park and The Book of Mormon, the price of nostalgia is $40 million, plus the cost to produce five custom-re-themed pinball machines. 

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The Casa Bonita pinball machine, which hit enthusiast circles a few weeks ago, was developed by Gameroom Pinball’s Brian Soares (Happy Gilmore, The Hangover) in conjunction with a team from Park County, the parent company for many of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s business ventures. It’s a retheme that uses Stern’s Whoa Nellie / Pabst Can Crusher as a donor game to bring to life a Casa Bonita-themed world under glass, complete with custom artwork, topper, sound, callouts, and more. 

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But before diving into the nitty-gritty pinball details, I wanted to step back a bit and discuss the history of Casa Bonita, how it came into the hands of Parker and Stone, and how it led to the development of this game. 

A Mexican Restaurant Disneyland

Initially founded in 1968 by Bill Waugh in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Casa Bonita began as a small chain of themed Mexican restaurants that would eventually become most famous for its location in Lakewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. That location opened in 1974 and was a popular destination for kids and families until its closure in March of 2020 due to a pandemic-driven bankruptcy. 

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It’s in this early time period of Casa Bonita that Trey Parker and Matt Stone would first become exposed to the restaurant, and where that nostalgic seed would get planted. 

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Casa Bonita shows up regularly over the years in Parker and Stone’s creative projects. South Park Studios is named after the restaurant, for starters. Most famously, the restaurant was featured heavily in a 2003 episode of South Park, where Cartman goes to great lengths to join his friend Kyle for a birthday party there. 

In the 2024 documentary, ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, which chronicles the purchase and restoration of the restaurant by the South Park team, there are early clips where Parker often talks about how visiting the restaurant was his favorite thing to do as a kid and how his dream was to one day own Casa Bonita, equating it to being able to “buy Disneyland”. 

Realizing a Nostalgic Vision

When the restaurant's owner filed for bankruptcy in 2020, Stone and Parker were able to swoop in and purchase the establishment. What they once estimated to be a $6 million project ballooned into a $40 million endeavor as problems were uncovered, and seemingly no expense was spared in the rebuild process. 

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The vision was to lean into the aesthetics of Casa Bonita as a “Mexican village at night, lost to the 70s,” as Parker said in the documentary. This is where the custom re-themed pinball machine comes into play. 

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I spoke with Ramiro Cazaux, Art Director for Park County, who led this project and worked closely with Brian and others on its development. He told me the idea originated with another team member, Scott Killian, who was responsible for Merchandising at Park County and was also already interested in pinball.

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“[We were] looking for vehicles from the 1970s where you can promote Casa Bonita,” through merch and other tie-ins. “[Scott said]... let’s do a pinball Casa Bonita, and everyone got excited about it.” Scott would eventually introduce the Park County team to Brian Soares, who was contacted sometime in late 2023. 

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Creating the Game

Ramiro and his team developed several concept sketches for the artwork of the game in 2024, with at least 12 different iterations. They drew inspiration from the aesthetics of 1970s movie posters, comics, and, of course, pinball machines (including Evel Knievel, Space Rider, KISS, and Star Trek).    

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They also developed several 3D models of the game’s topper, which was eventually styled in great detail after Casa Bonita’s famous exterior. 

As Brian Soares told me, “I was actually at the 2024 Pintastic show, displaying my Happy Gilmore game, when the first sketches for this project were sent to me. I was blown away and remember thinking these guys are crazy! But in the end, [Ramiro] modeled every single piece to be a near exact replica of the Casa Bonita facade. Right down to the rod iron railings in the tower and the statue on top! Each piece was then crafted either by 3D printing, water laser cutting, or molding; hand-painted; and then the scale model assembled. It is truly a masterpiece and all the credit to the designer as well as my team of builders.”

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Brian explained to me why he recommended the team use the Whoa Nellie / Can Crusher platform for the project, “It was important that the games look old, but I didn’t want to use truly electromechanical games as I felt like the maintenance demands might be an issue. I had previously used Can Crusher for another project that resides at the LGA Sapphire Lounge and recommended this path as it would look vintage but use more modern technology.” 

Release and Reception

The game made its public debut, appropriately, on International Pinball Day, August 1, 2025, with a special event for Casa Bonita Founders Club members. As of today, three of the five machines are located at Casa Bonita, with one earmarked for Parker and Stone’s personal studio and another for a related office space.  

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Even though there’s a history of South Park IP within the pinball community already (Sega released a South Park pinball machine in 1999 that has a reputation of being a solid location earner among casual players even today), Ramiro seemed surprised at learning about pinball’s very active modern scene. 

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“I didn’t know there was such a vibrant culture, you know, like it’s still going on… I really feel like I tapped into some secret society I didn’t know existed.” 

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The release of the game seems to be going over well with Casa Bonita fans and pinball enthusiasts alike. In pinball, at least, photos have been shared to most of the major community groups, with one group in particular racking up tens of thousands of views, far outside the norm for content shared there. 

The mainline South Park series celebrated its 27th anniversary this year, and it’s become its own multigenerational IP that fits alongside others that pinball has explored in recent years. Those who were along for the early days may feel their own sense of nostalgia in the connection this game has to that period, driving some of the interest in this project. Combined with the cultural spotlight driven by the release of several viral new episodes, you have the recipe for a pinball moment. 

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In the end, Parker and Stone didn’t just rescue a restaurant or commission a quirky pinball machine; they bottled a piece of childhood and made it a permanent piece of interactive entertainment. For most of us in the pinball community, nostalgia comes in the form of an expensive toy in a home arcade. For them, it was a $40 million restoration venture capped with one-of-a-kind curios like the Casa Bonita pinball machine. While drastically different in scale, it’s the same impulse that drives us; that priceless urge to relive the moments that made us.

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About the Casa Bonita Pinball Machine

• Year: 2025
• Donor games:
  
  • Stern Whoa Nellie / Pabst Can Crusher
• Credits:
  
  • Game Production
    
    • Brian Soares, Gameroom Pinball
  • Park County Art Department Crew
    
    • Adrien Beard...............Creative Supervisor
    • Ramiro Cazaux...........Art Director
    • Jacob Glaser...............Art Director
    • Julia Blattman ..............Color and Illustrations
    • Sam Booker.................Concepts and Illustrations
    • Kelsey Haley............... Illustrations
    • David Brown............... Department Coordinator
    • Kenny Stevenson....... Asset Manager
    • Anna Wolff.................. Marketing
    • Scott Killian................. Merchandising
  • Park County / Casa Bonita  Audio Crew
    
    • Todd Benson
    • Jack Hamlin
    • Christopher Bruno
    • Misha Brea