Pinball - The Beginning of an Obsession

Before I jumped right in and started describing my latest pinball adventure, I figured I'd present the reasons why I got into pinball and now count it among one of my favorite hobbies.

It all started way back when I was about 7 years old, making it 1973. A close friend of mine had a toy pinball machine in his basement. It was all plastic with legs that barely supported it and the scoring was kind of hit or miss, but it had a real metal ball with come decent bumper action. Batting that ball around with the underpowered flippers was actually amusing in relatively small doses. Improving my score through repeated play kept me coming back for more.

A couple years later I'd have an opportunity to play the real thing. Once a week I would find myself in a local bowling alley waiting for the time when my bowling league would start. To kill this time I'd often wander up to the couple of pinball machines available. If I was lucky enough to have some spare change, I'd undoubtedly drop it in. I was finally playing with real flippers, real bumpers and real chimes. This machine was also sturdy enough that I quickly learned that a little body English could also affect the ball in play. I really enjoyed playing and when I a loud knock let me know I'd won a free game, I really felt a sense of accomplishment.

The next major event that impacted my pinball fascination came in 1979. At age 13, I moved to Hopkins, MN. Much to my delight I lived a block away from a local arcade, S. S.Billiards. This was also around the time I started earning my own money, first through baby sitting, then through caddying and finally in manufacturing. For a teenager, I had a pretty decent amount of disposable income. One place more than any other saw the fruit of my labor, S. S. Billiards. Admittedly, a lot of the draw of the place was the video games that were just hitting the streets. Over the course of the 6 years I lived in Hopkins, I played almost enough Robotron, Moon Patrol, Joust, Donkey Kong Jr, Tempest and Star Wars to buy those machines for the owner. I also found time dump a rather large amount of change into the collection of pinball machines including Black Night, Eight Ball Deluxe and Playboy (pretty hard for a teenage boy to resist that one). Being big into mechanical things, the pinball machines fascinated me. Machines with sampled speech and computerized sounds were icing on the cake.

I grew older and interest turned to different things. After 1984, I left Hopkins behind and moved to Atlanta to go to college. Between school, work and a modest social life, there was little time or interest in pinball. If I ran across a pinball machine from time to time, I might drop a quarter or two but never spent a huge amount of time in arcades.

Fast forward to 1996. I finally had a decent job, bought my first home and was beginning to think about purchasing some items to put in my home. For awhile I had a list of possible purchases and a pinball machine made its way on to this list. However, other items seem to always take priority. I figured things like a food/clothes for my daughter, furniture, a lawnmower, etc. were probably more important than a pinball machine. Plus I had little idea how to acquire a pinball machine. It's not like the local Target was offering one for sale and this was before the world wide web existed so information was somewhat beyond my fingertips. Thoughts of owning pinball machine faded to the back of my mind.

A couple years later and I'm was doing much better financially. That will happen when one's career gets going and you are able to get out from credit card and school loan debt. But first and foremost was a new house. But, the new house came with some huge perks. I now had more rooms to decorate/fill. I was certainly much better at filling than decorating them. I now had a 3 room basement with some grand plans. First, a room was going to be a home theater. In fact, the house was bought with that in mind. Second, I was going to set aside a room for my daughter's art/play area. That left fairly large empty room. What would I do with it? I figured why not a gameroom. Might as well make the whole basement an entertainment area.

One of my favorite arcade games of all time is Robotron. I'd played hours in my youth and never grew tired of it. I'd been playing a XBOX version on my TV for a few weeks but been a bit disappointed when the small sticks couldn't replicate the arcade experience. This being around 2002 with the Internet age in full swing, I discovered M.A.M.E. (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). Here was a program that some severely dedicated individuals had created to document the history of video arcade games. The nice side affect of this documentation was a program that could run on a PC and allow you to play all those classics (and some not so classics). A little more research opened up a community of people building cabinets to look like arcade machines that contained PCs running M.A.M.E. I now had my first plan. I was going to build a M.A.M.E. cabinet so I could finally play Robotron in its full glory and be able to play another 4000 games to boot!

I built this cabinet as quick as possible, bought a PC to run M.A.M.E. and bought a really nice control panel from SlikStik. The end results was something not terribly pretty but highly functional.

While researching M.A.M.E., I made another interesting discovery. There was also a couple programs available, PinMAME and Visual Pinball, along with a great source of information at
the Visual Pinball Forums. Using these tools, the same cabinet that ran my 4000+ arcade games could also be used to simulate hundreds of pinball machines. Perfect!

For awhile I was content to play a pinball emulator on the cabinet. However, there was something missing. Without the real metal ball, without the real electromechanical bumpers, slingshots, up kickers and other devices, the game simply didn't feel the same. I was craving real pinball. It just so happened, I now had plenty of room and enough cash to add one to the gameroom.

WARNING : If you ever find yourself reaching this stage, take a moment to consider the ramifications. Pinball machines are like Lay's Potato Chips. You simply can't own just one. Before you know it ever nook and cranny in your house will be filled with machines. Each and every pinball owner can vouch for existence of this disease. If you do tread down this path, don't say you weren't warned. If find yourself trapped, don't worry. There a plenty of like minded individuals to turn to for therapy. More of these later.

Once I get my mind set on something, I generally operate pretty quick. Although I did spend some time researching about how and where to buy a pinball machine, I wish I would have spent a little more time. Because this was going to be my first purchase I wanted at least some guarantee should it break down shortly after purchase. I wasn't comfortable dealing with an EBay purchase or even someone without a storefront. This led me to a place called Gameroom Gallery just a few miles away from the house. The good thing is I was able to walk in, sample and examine several games before deciding on a purchase.

I knew going in I wanted a fairly recent pinball machine. I like the machines with a lot of features, multiball play and dot matrix displays. This also meant it wouldn't be cheap as these were the machines with the most demand. I knew I also wanted specific features including a spinner, drop targets and pop bumpers. Before arriving at the store, titles I had in mind included Twilight Zone, Star Trek : The Next Generation, The Adams Family and Indiana Jones. All had TV or movie themes which I though would go well next to my home theater. I got to play all of them and quickly ruled out The Adams Family because I found the play boring. Star Trek got ruled out because it really didn't capture my interest and I'm simply not that big of the series.

The store also had a new The Simpson's Pinball Party. Being a huge Simpson's fan and already having several Simpson's collectibles in the basement, this seemed like a perfect fit. The fact that the pinball machine had all the features I was looking for was definitely icing on the cake. More than a couple games played with it and I had another option to consider. Next, Indiana Jones got eliminated because there was simply something awkward about the play I just didn't like. It certainly didn't help that the artwork was pretty faded and the game needed some work. With only Twilight Zone and Simpson's left to consider, it came down to comfort level. I simply felt more comfortable buying a machine that was brand new and needed absolutely no work. I got out the checkbook, made the purchase, had it delivered and the rest is history. Although one tough game to play, I love the challenge and still play it quite frequently.

Up next : Do Pinball Machines Multiply?