Ah, Xenon. The only decent pin in the small arcade on my college campus. But what a pin!
What’s the best kind of study break? Sex. What’s the second best? Virtual sex. And that’s what Xenon provided.
I finally had the game of games one afternoon. I racked up extra ball after extra ball. Targets falling like flies, hitting the ramps with almost perfect accuracy; it seemed that I could do no wrong.
I had the high score with more than 20 freebies left to go. And then you know what? I got sick of playing! It was taking too long and there was no end in sight. Here I was with the most successful pinball game I had ever played, and I just wished I could get it over with. This was a lot like… sex! Oh, the bitter irony.
But I love pinball. It‘s like the Myth of Sisyphus in the form of an interactive cartoon. Pinball, in other words, is just like life itself. And, like Sisyphus, we must be happy as we play, even though we will inevitably lose, and the game be over. Until the next game…
There’s an old Bally (I think) game called Buckaroo. Straight up the middle, and well guarded by close bumpers, there was a rotating dial with the numbers one through seven, only two of which were open at any given time. If you could get any four numbers in a row (1-2-3-4, 3-4-5-6, etc.), you’d win a game. And, let’s say you has the 1-2-3-5-6-7 lighted, and then you finally managed to nail the 4 – POP! POP! POP! POP!
Gulfstream was very challenging, but playable – just a fun board
Fireball however was a new breed: 3 balls in simultaneous play, a random spinning platform in the center of the open area made it difficult to know what would happen next, when three balls were in play the flippers would snap together to form a single but divided flipper at the bottom of the board – also I believe there was a thrid flipper near the top. This was one HARD and FUN game.
I also liked Lucy Ace for it’s open board and combination runs – you had to control that sucker–lot’s of external board play.
There were others, but these were first in my heart, wallet, and class schedule.
Honorable mention to Bronco It wasn’t great but it was in the basement of the dorm and supported 4 players (our group size)
The Elvira one was the one with Spin the Spider and I used to play it for hours at one of my favourite pubs.
I recently got to play Monster Bash again for the first time in years at the arcade in the Luxor. I wasn’t able to make any of the monsters do cool things like I used to, though.
Recently I played a South Park one, and when I got multiball it seriously spat out like 15 balls! Now that’s multiball!!!
Can’t say I remember much about the actual game, but the look of that Nightmare on Elm Street pinball machine, stranded somewhere in Africa, was priceless.
Well, I’m a relative pinball youngster, I think. However, it’s always the one type of game in an arcade that I’ll be interested in playing. I blame my dad.
My favorite was Medieval Madness, which was set up in the local dollar theater for awhile. I recall going to the theater just to play that game, which was unheard of for me! Then, the bastards that owned it moved it to a pool house/bar. I’ve never seen it again.
Stupid drinking age! I just wanted to play pinball!
