Our local K-mart had some great machines until they closed due to chapter 11 a few months back. Bummer, because not only was I having a blast, but my wife really got into Funhouse (awesome, with a talking dummy head on the layout) and Circus Voltaire. I could never play enough to reclaim my peak. . .
In college (late 70s) they had some machines in the basement of the dorm, and some of us would go down every night after dinner. Centigrade 37, Faces (which of course we called feces) and Mars Trek. The ultimate came one weekend when we went down after dinner and kept winning free games on Mars Trek. When the closed down we were still working on our original dime with 15 free games racked up. The four of us made a pact to see if wee could play all saturday for free. We had to eat in shifts, but we did it. Once you get a machine wired, it really flows. I got 5 free games on my first ball one game. Did we eventually get bored?
I blame my father for getting me hooked. One of the earliest I recall playing was a Strikes and Spares machine. I currently own a 1994 Star Trek: the Next Generation, which I love, but it has an optos that needs to be cleaned or replaced on one of the guns and I am ashamedly too mechanically declined to figure such things out.
Assuming I ever get my basement finished, I look forward to adding a few that I loved, but not many others seem to do (so I can hopefully get them cheaper) like Gilligan’s Island and Dr. Dude. Of course Addam’s Family and Indiana Jones are also must haves, as is Twilight Zone and Medieval Madness… sigh.
It broke my heart to see Williams/Bally get out of the pinball making business, they were the last, though Stern came back from the grave in grandiose style.
Much to the chagrin of my travelling companions, I delayed a Indiana to New York road trip by nearly 2 hours because I COULD NOT LOSE on a Batman game at an Ohio rest stop. I think they finally shoved me out from in front of it or something.
Love the game and always gravitate to it first at arcades. One of my favorites was one called Tornado. It had a huge fan in it that would kick on when you activated the “tornado” round, lol. There was also a Harley one that started up like a cycle when you put your tokens in that was cool.
Unfortunately, now that I have the money for something like that, I seriously don’t have the room. Our place is bursting with junk already.
Pinbot is a good one, but I’ve got a soft spot for “Bride of Pinbot” too. She speaks to you as you activate her “parts” in this really sultry, come-fuck-me-now cyber-voice, “Oooh, I can see…” Cracks me up every time.
There’s another good one called either Cyclone or Twister with one of those spinning plates that can trap the ball and shoot it off in some bizarre direction, but I haven’t seen one in quite a while. I got hooked back in HS because the Big Boy we hung out at for ridiculous amounts of time had a Terminator machine in their game room that would give free credits if you smacked the machine just right. Free pinball. Is there anything more beautiful in this world?
In addition to JohnT’s suggestion about slapping the machine, learn to catch the ball on a flipper in the up position. Then, you can let the flipper down, and as the ball rolls, aim and shoot it at a target. A little practice will tell you how the ball comes off the flipper and where it will go when it rolls from the trap position. On some machines, you can even use this technique to shoot “backhanded”–that is, at a target behind the flipper–if you do it quickly enough.
It really is a game of skill, but as with all skills, you’ve got to develop them through practice.
LlamaPoet, I’m unsure what an “optos” is, but I learned a lot about my game just by opening it up and seeing the inside. It looks a little like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab in there, but it all makes perfect sense after a while. And you don’t need to be an electronics genius to see loose or missing connections on a part (say, a bumper) that is giving you trouble, or a bit of dirt preventing an armature from moving in a relay.
Of course, for safety’s sake, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the insides, make sure that the machine is unplugged when you open it up. There are a couple of transformers that convert the wall AC power into DC power, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you might touch something that will give you a strong shock.
Or, you could just call a repair person. You can reach them through the operators listed under “Amusements” in the Yellow Pages. I’ve had to call one a few times when a problem had me stumped, and it was well worth the cost.
I didn’t know that Williams/Bally stopped making pinball machines
I’ld rather play pinball than video games any day!
I remember liking Eight ball and I think there was an enhanced Eight ball called super Eight ball or something like that.
Hmmmm … maybe I should suggest to my hubby that once he completes finishing the basement, we could get a pinball game (this might just be the motivator he needs!)
Another Pinbot addict here. There used to be one at the community college I went to, right next to the Centipede game.
I spent hours there.
Belladonna, the game was Cyclone. Remember “Ride the Ferris Wheel!” with the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Reagan on the roller-coaster?
BUT, my all-time favorite has to be F-14 Tomcat. What a truly great game. The sound of the jet engines starting up when the five-ball multiball started always sent an adrenaline jolt right down my spine. I loved that game but haven’t seen one in probably ten years.
I played Addams Family obsessively. But I can’t say that I’m particularly good at pinball.
I also liked T2 and the Twilight Zone, with one NON-silver ball.
I also played some Theater of Magic. I was pretty good at getting the skill shots, but often would have the ball then roll directly between the flippers while the machine was still saying in its cheesy voice “Amazing skill!!” #% sarcastic machine!
Embarassingly enough, what got me to like pinball more was the “pity balls” where it’d give you a free ball if you lost one without scoring anything on it. Yeah, I suck. Never won a free game except by the “match” value.
BTW, another pinball skill (like I should be giving anyone advice) is to stagger the flipper presses. For instance, if the ball is coming towards the very tip of the left flipper, if you hit both flippers at the same time the ball will glance off the tip of the left flipper, go behind the right one, and you lose the ball. If you press the left one and then immediately after press the right one, the ball will bounce off the end of the left flipper and be driven back into play by the right one. Obvious, but it took me a long time to figure it out.
Also, if the ball is bouncing around on the edge between “lose the ball” and “the ball goes to the flipper” if it looks like it’s tending towards the bad side, you can nudge the table away from you, thus getting the ball to bounce around a little more and perhaps go down the path you want. Err, I hope that description makes sense.
No votes yet for Creature from the Black Lagoon? It recreates the experience of going to a drive-in movie during the Fifties, right down to sing-along-able pop tunes (“Summertime Blues”) and an actual “movie” triggered during multiball play.
My first real addiction with pinball came about with the Evel Knievel machine. We had one in a neighborhood store that would give you a free game if you tapped it just right, directly in the center of the embossed diamond shape on the front door! It must have had a weak switch that made contact, because we played the hell out of that machine, and never put a dime in…
My favorite had to be Jurassic Park* - the best part of the game was when a ball was trapped - it stopped on a magnet in the center of the board and a Tyrannosaurus Rex bent down and ate it - while the speakers featured Wayne Knight’s voice yelling “No! NO! NOOO! AAAAIIIIGHGHHHAaaaaaaghhhk!” Such fun.
Spoons;
My cousin in Reno has his own Gottlieb “Royal Flush” It was made in the '50’s. Still has mechano-electric relays, (110 v) for bumpers, (gotta really smack’m to get a response), score comes around on trolley carrying metal tags with painted numbers. Tilt mech. is a thin rod with weight at one end, gimble in center; if table is struck, weight moves, other end of rod hits contact, ( my cousin stiffened up the gimble a bit so you can smack the table a little harder).
Everytime I go to his place I give up any pretense of social etiquette and glue myself to the table.
Another favourite multi-ball game was Fireball II. That was the one you could win enough free games to sell to get drunk. Of course this is when a 12-ounce stein of Molson Export was 70 cents…
I love pinball. I’ll always play a good pinball table over a video game any day.
I also love Black Knight. I’ve got a friend whose hobby is collecting and refurbishing pinball tables. Right now he’s got two Black Knight’s, one Harlem Globetrotters, Black Hole (very cool backwards bit below the regular playing surface), and one or two others.
“The Game Room” was an arcade in my home town. It had about 20 pool tables and nearly as many pin ball machines. Bride of pin bot, F14 tomcat, Cyclone, and Xeynon were all lined along one wall. Ohhh so many hours of my youth were spent there. Later in life a bar by the name of “Nasty Habits” was a favorite watering hole. The owner was a pinball freak. 3 machines crammed in a corner and he regularly got a new machine about every 2 months. Game Show, Adams Family, and Dracula are some tables that come to mind. Druing lunch at work we would sneak down the street to the bar, hammer a couple beers and play the silver ball. If during a multiplayer game we matched a game we would play one handed. one player on the right flipper, one on the left. That was always fun. “The Game Room” is now a discount dollar store and “Nasty Habits” closed when the owner became a dealer on a gambling casino boat. Sigh…
At the HI youth hostel in Strasbourg (in 2002), I played a “Tommy” pinball machine that totally rocked. Maybe it was the same one that GMRyujin played. Unfortunately, I only got the replay once.
I hate games. I am not a gamer. Computer, arcade, online, whatever. Games suck.
Pinball, however, is the most fun I ever had on my own (without a date) as a young 'un. And not only was it fun…but I absolutely kicked ass playing it. The only game on this earth I really knew my stuff!!
The rock-opera Tommy took on a personal thing with me because of it. I may have really been lousy at everything else, but I was * The Pinball Wizard*…(sigh) back in my misspent (but hey, it was there) youth.
Still pretty good at it, too. Actually, real good. I love hearing my kids saying, “MOM! Whoa! Where’d you learn that?”
Of course…I also play a mean MEAN air hockey, too.
