Best place for pinball in Portland, Oregon?

[shutyertrap]

I'm gonna be traveling up to Portland for a film shoot from July 12-21. The weekend will be mine to do whatever, so you know I wanna check out the pinball scene (which I hear is awesome there)! I don't care about how awesome the bar (since I don't drink) or music is, I just want a large variety of well maintained machines that aren't overcharging per play. Who's got the recommendations? Perhaps you live there and want to give this BlahCade host a proper tour? It'll be my first time there, so what else should I check out? Hopefully production is providing me with a rental car, or should I rent a bike?

 

[MontanaFrank]

Howdy [MENTION=134]shutyertrap[/MENTION]

I'm not in that great of health at the moment or I would enjoy giving you a tour of pinball in the city. I would download the Pinball Map app which is probably in the IOS store and pick Portland. Following is a list of a few places, I think, that are good for pinball.

Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade: http://groundkontrol.com/ -- They have 17 machines
Punch Bowl Social http://www.punchbowlsocial.com/location/portland -- They have 6

Both of those are in the downtown area. My favorite place, which is in the SE part of Portland is called the C-Bar. It is home of the Portland Rose City Pinball League and have an excellent selection of machines, IMHO. One of my favorites is the SeaWitch machine they have there. (EDIT: That machine may not be there. I have conflicting machine lists on different websites) Web Address: http://cbarportland.com/

I hope you enjoy your trip up here to Portland. Just don't think of moving up here, we have enough people. Just Kidding -

 

[Jeff Strong]

I knew when I saw the thread title that our man frank would hook you up! Hope you get to feeling better, my friend.

 

[MontanaFrank]

Thanks Jeff, I am sure I'll be feeling better soon. I don't post here often anymore, but check the forum everyday. I have to keep an eye on a few of you, especially that Mr. Heretic man. Gotta make sure he's keeping the forum in check.

S-Y-T and anyone else interested in Portland, OR pinball, here is a link that will get you all the pinball machines in the Portland area: https://pinballmap.com/portland?utf8=✓&by_city_id=Portland&by_at_least_n_machines_city= (It take a few seconds to load.)

It's a long list and I think most would call this city one of the pinball nirvana's in the USA.

 

[Heretic]

Lol you guys keep me sane feel better our frankie.

Holly....I hear they have good smoke, early midlife crisis!

 

[shutyertrap]

Holy crap, that list! Throw a quarter and you'll hit a machine.

 

[wolfson]

good to here from you Frank , hope you have a speedy recovery !!!

 

[MontanaFrank]

Lol you guys keep me sane feel better our frankie.

Holly....I hear they have good smoke, early midlife crisis!

There's just about as many pinball machines in the Portland area as there are green cross stores. The only thing I haven't heard of is a pinball machine in green cross store. I am sure that will happen soon.

Thanks Mr. Heretic, I will feel better soon.

 

[MontanaFrank]

Holy crap, that list! Throw a quarter and you'll hit a machine.

I think of Portland as the "Big Rock Candy Mountain" of pinball.

 

[MontanaFrank]

good to here from you Frank , hope you have a speedy recovery !!!

I'll give it my best Wolfson. Thanks for the well wishes.

 

[thejake01]

GROUND KONTROL
http://groundkontrol.com/
no direct link but look it up here: https://pinballmap.com/portland
first floor is vids, 2nd floor is pins, full bar, lots of fun!

wife and i went a few years back and were there for the 4th, we went to this place twice in the 5 days we were there!


"The Tardis Room" Doctor Who bar is fun too if you're into that kind of thing.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-tardis-room-portland


Billy Ray's Neighborhood Dive
this place was cool too, played punk music, but they had mm, afm, and mb on the 2nd floor. super fun

 

[CycOd3liC]

Ground Kontrol, absolutely.

 

[AnimeDude892]

Ground Kontrol, Blackbird Pizza, QuarterWorld, C-Bar, and Pinball Outreach Project.

 

[shutyertrap]

Thanks guys. My hotel is apparently right near downtown, so hopefully some of these places are close walking distance (no rental car). Wednesday thru Sunday are pretty much mine, other than camera prep, so I should have lots of time to check out the scene.

 

[Heretic]

Hollywood does Portland, I fully expect food porn too

 

[shutyertrap]

First day I got to Portland, I checked out Ground Kontrol as it was a short 12 minute walk from my hotel. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't really impressed. It seemed like a bar that happened to have video games and pinball machines. By that I mean stuff was stuck in any corner it would fit. I did get to finally play The Hobbit (not impressed), Pabst Can Crusher (if all EMs played and sounded like this, they'd be way more fun), and Kiss (had good games on it, but kinda meh overall). Prices were 75 cents for Stern games, 50 cents for WMS/Bally. Tables played fine, more or less what you would hope to find out of routed machines, as opposed to how you usually find them. Was there for only an hour, spending 5 bucks in total.

Looking around on the pinballmap.com sight, I really wanted to play some machines I haven't gotten a real chance at yet. That's when I spotted Quarterworld. It was almost 4 miles from my hotel, but the fact they had Dialed In meant I had to go. Oh, they also have 30 machines on hand. I rented a bike from a kiosk, Biketown (Nike has these set up all over the town and I like the idea behind it a lot), and set to cycling to this place. All I can say is it was soooo worth it!

Quarterworld is more of an arcade that happens to have a bar in it. I did have to pay a cover charge of 1 dollar (goes up to $3 in the evening), but as soon as I stepped foot in, I knew this is what I had hoped Ground Kontrol would have been. It was dark, there was funky electro 80's style music playing, and a quick walk down a hall full of retro arcade games let to a large open room that looked like the arcades of my youth. Best yet, 2 walls lined with pinball. I really wanted to hop on Dialed In right away, but there was someone already playing. I took a quick look at all the machines on hand, decided to throw the 50 cents already in my pocket into Centaur. Pricing on machines was exactly the same as GK. I proceeded to play Centaur on that initial 50 cents for the next 90 minutes. Replay was only 500,000 and it was set to 5 balls. I was getting at least one replay per game, sometimes 2. I was having fun though, as the rubber was really fresh, and Centaur has the same feel of my Eight Ball Deluxe. Yeah, I want one big time. I was especially getting a thrill saving balls from the outline by nudging them through the gates. Works almost better than in TPA. Getting double queen's chamber however was simply impossible after the first drop target, as the captured ball never reacted like it does from that shot in TPA. Eventually I walked away from the game with 2 credits still on the machine.

I played Batman 66 finally, only to realize that it is more or less The Dark Knight. I like the goofiness of it better though. Then I played Dialed In with my headphones plugged in. I didn't connect my phone to the game (honestly not sure even how to do that), but no matter as I had a blast on it. It's pure Lawlor, with enough tricks and gimmicks to essentially be a next gen TZ. My only gripe, it scores a woefully small amount of points like the other two JJP pins. I don't need to score billions, but finishing a game in the 100 thousands is completely unsatisfying. That literally is my only complaint. I'm no fan of WoZ, found Hobbit kinda dull, but this thing was right up my alley.

I had one game on Ghostbusters Pro. Found a free game on Game Show, which was fully LED'd out and was a strobing nightmare to play in such a dark room. I mean, it was brutal in these conditions, the ball disappearing from sight all the time. I debated throwing my remaining 50 cents into X-files, instead opted for Flinstones. Ya know what? I actually had a good time on that. It's kinda ugly, but the shot combos are rather fun.

With no more quarters, I checked on Centaur. It still had my 2 credits on it. So, more games were played. I walked away from it with 4 credits! As I did that, on the machine next to me was someone who worked at Quarterworld. I commented that I was impressed by how well maintained the machines were, and she got a huge smile and said that was all her! Said she checks different machines daily for blown bulbs, broken items, improper settings. Rubber is changed regularly, and machines are cleaned as often as she has time for. No wonder I was loving this place! I mentioned how easily I was destroying Centaur, and she said she keeps it that way because it's one of her favorites and she wants people to play it.

By this point I'd been there a little over 3 hours and needed to hop back on the bike to get back to the hotel. But first, I had to witness the Tesla Coil show. They have a giant one set up, and they play live keyboard music that it reacts to. It was kinda rad, louder than hell (they provide free ear plugs as it is about 90 decibels loud, or monster truck loud), and perfectly at home in an arcade. As I started to leave, I noticed yet another room off the main room. Poked my head in, and there were 10 more pinball machines I'd completely missed! Oh well, they were all machines I'd played before.

I doubt I'm gonna get a chance to visit any other pinball sites this trip, but I feel I've already visited the best.

 

[AnimeDude892]

First day I got to Portland, I checked out Ground Kontrol as it was a short 12 minute walk from my hotel. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't really impressed. It seemed like a bar that happened to have video games and pinball machines. By that I mean stuff was stuck in any corner it would fit. I did get to finally play The Hobbit (not impressed), Pabst Can Crusher (if all EMs played and sounded like this, they'd be way more fun), and Kiss (had good games on it, but kinda meh overall). Prices were 75 cents for Stern games, 50 cents for WMS/Bally. Tables played fine, more or less what you would hope to find out of routed machines, as opposed to how you usually find them. Was there for only an hour, spending 5 bucks in total.

Looking around on the pinballmap.com sight, I really wanted to play some machines I haven't gotten a real chance at yet. That's when I spotted Quarterworld. It was almost 4 miles from my hotel, but the fact they had Dialed In meant I had to go. Oh, they also have 30 machines on hand. I rented a bike from a kiosk, Biketown (Nike has these set up all over the town and I like the idea behind it a lot), and set to cycling to this place. All I can say is it was soooo worth it!

Quarterworld is more of an arcade that happens to have a bar in it. I did have to pay a cover charge of 1 dollar (goes up to $3 in the evening), but as soon as I stepped foot in, I knew this is what I had hoped Ground Kontrol would have been. It was dark, there was funky electro 80's style music playing, and a quick walk down a hall full of retro arcade games let to a large open room that looked like the arcades of my youth. Best yet, 2 walls lined with pinball. I really wanted to hop on Dialed In right away, but there was someone already playing. I took a quick look at all the machines on hand, decided to throw the 50 cents already in my pocket into Centaur. Pricing on machines was exactly the same as GK. I proceeded to play Centaur on that initial 50 cents for the next 90 minutes. Replay was only 500,000 and it was set to 5 balls. I was getting at least one replay per game, sometimes 2. I was having fun though, as the rubber was really fresh, and Centaur has the same feel of my Eight Ball Deluxe. Yeah, I want one big time. I was especially getting a thrill saving balls from the outline by nudging them through the gates. Works almost better than in TPA. Getting double queen's chamber however was simply impossible after the first drop target, as the captured ball never reacted like it does from that shot in TPA. Eventually I walked away from the game with 2 credits still on the machine.

I played Batman 66 finally, only to realize that it is more or less The Dark Knight. I like the goofiness of it better though. Then I played Dialed In with my headphones plugged in. I didn't connect my phone to the game (honestly not sure even how to do that), but no matter as I had a blast on it. It's pure Lawlor, with enough tricks and gimmicks to essentially be a next gen TZ. My only gripe, it scores a woefully small amount of points like the other two JJP pins. I don't need to score billions, but finishing a game in the 100 thousands is completely unsatisfying. That literally is my only complaint. I'm no fan of WoZ, found Hobbit kinda dull, but this thing was right up my alley.

I had one game on Ghostbusters Pro. Found a free game on Game Show, which was fully LED'd out and was a strobing nightmare to play in such a dark room. I mean, it was brutal in these conditions, the ball disappearing from sight all the time. I debated throwing my remaining 50 cents into X-files, instead opted for Flinstones. Ya know what? I actually had a good time on that. It's kinda ugly, but the shot combos are rather fun.

With no more quarters, I checked on Centaur. It still had my 2 credits on it. So, more games were played. I walked away from it with 4 credits! As I did that, on the machine next to me was someone who worked at Quarterworld. I commented that I was impressed by how well maintained the machines were, and she got a huge smile and said that was all her! Said she checks different machines daily for blown bulbs, broken items, improper settings. Rubber is changed regularly, and machines are cleaned as often as she has time for. No wonder I was loving this place! I mentioned how easily I was destroying Centaur, and she said she keeps it that way because it's one of her favorites and she wants people to play it.

By this point I'd been there a little over 3 hours and needed to hop back on the bike to get back to the hotel. But first, I had to witness the Tesla Coil show. They have a giant one set up, and they play live keyboard music that it reacts to. It was kinda rad, louder than hell (they provide free ear plugs as it is about 90 decibels loud, or monster truck loud), and perfectly at home in an arcade. As I started to leave, I noticed yet another room off the main room. Poked my head in, and there were 10 more pinball machines I'd completely missed! Oh well, they were all machines I'd played before.

I doubt I'm gonna get a chance to visit any other pinball sites this trip, but I feel I've already visited the best.

Don't forget to visit C-Bar. That's a popular one.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Nice write-up, SYT! Not sure if you've played X-files before, but if not, don't worry: you didn't miss much.