How did your love for pinball begin?

[Jeff Strong]

So how did you first get into this great hobby we call pinball?

For me, it all started when my parents bought an old EM called Alpine Club by Williams:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=63

The machine was from 1965, so it was already 20 years old by the time I first played it in the 80's....and the table layout may look simple by today's standards, but it had enough targets and shots to draw me in and I quickly fell in love with it. Man, I tell ya, I used to sit in front of that thing for hours at a time. It had the neat little mountain climber on the back glass that would climb higher as you completed a specific goal, and the art itself is great.

I still prefer older machines to this day because I like the challenge of having fewer targets. Sometimes on the newer tables, you can just knock the ball around randomly and hit stuff everytime, but on the older machines, you had to really aim and plan your shots if you wanted those high scores.

Anyway, my parents eventually sold the machine after a few years, but I've been hooked ever since.

When I was 17, I was in a car accident and I broke 2 vertebrae in my upper back. Unfortunately, I became paralyzed from the chest down, but the good news is that God must have been looking out for me because my arms still work great, so I can still enjoy pinball (and my other great love: playing guitar). It is a bit tricky to play real pinball in a wheelchair though, as you can imagine...and this is one of the big reasons I love The Pinball Arcade. It removes the accessibility barriers so that I can play in comfort on my iPad.

I'm really looking forward to the PC version too because I have my xarcade tankstick set up on a table that allows me to pull right up to it because it's open underneath. On a real pinball machine, I can't get as close as I would like to in my wheelchair because my knees hit the front, plus the view isnt that great frothreat angle, and the reflections get in the way as well......so The Pinball Arcade is and will be so much more convenient for me

 

[PiN WiZ]

Plain and simple...the first time I set foot into an arcade at the age of 8, I was immediately drawn to Xenon and the rest is history.

 

[lazmama]

Both my parents worked at the mall - I spent a lot of time at Aladdin's Castle after school, early 1980s. Must have been around 7-8 years old. I remember that I was always drawn to the pinball machines more than the video games. I remember standing on step stools to be able to see the playing field.

Really honed my skills as a preteen when visiting my grandparents. They had an EM machine: Spanish Eyes (1972 Williams). My brothers and I spent hours and hours on that machine.

A love that will last a lifetime no doubt. So grateful to Farsight for their historical (digital) preservation of these classic games - and hoping for a resurgence in pinball popularity so that more games are developed and the hobby survives.

 

[Mike]

The bowling alley near my house had Eight Ball Deluxe and Pin*Bot when I was in my teens. 46 years old and I still love those tables!

 

[Jeff Strong]

Thanks for sharing, guys. I like hearing those old pinball stories, and it's cool to know which machines sparked your love for the silver ball.

 

[ND3G]

Farsight's Williams Collection actually got me into pinball. I played Pinball a couple of times as a kid but at the time I was far more interested in video games. I remember seeing Black Hole when I was younger and thinking that it looked amazing but Gauntlet, Rampage, and 1942 is where all my money went.

I was also seriously into table hockey, which is not unlike pinball in a lot of ways, plus it was free.

 

[Extrema22]

I think it was when I started playing Epic Pinball for DOS (1993). I played for hours (mostly on the Android table) and almost 20 years later I still play a few games every now and then! Of course nothing beats the real thing (I got to experience that several years later) but I've always been a huge video pinball fan (also due to the lack of pinball machines near me). Been playing ever since, I'll buy a machine some day, some day!

 

[bossyman15]

Like NG3D I was more interested in video games than pinball. I became more serious about pinball when I went to California Extreme and Pacific Pinball Expo. I'm now more interested in pinball than video games. Yes even on my android phone!

 

[AstroStrat89]

Spent 5 years of my life at a Pizza place, met my wife there and many Pinball machines too. Black Knight 2000, Fun House, Addams Family, Whirl Wind, among others. My all time Favorite is Taxi.

I can't neglect the time I spent with David's Midnight Magic and Pinball Construction set on the Apple II.

I'm no skilled player, but I am addicted.

 

[CycOd3liC]

I remember playing Terminator 2 and Funhouse in 1991 at the Boardwalk in El Cajon, CA. I may have played before that, but those are 2 tables I remember. I grew up with a Commodore 64, so I remember David's Midnight Magic and PCS as well.

 

[Bowflex]

I was 7 (and a half or so, closer to 8) when a friend of mine was having a birthday party at the Space Station Arcade in Royal Oak, MI. Not my first time to an arcade by any means but I tended not to do the pinball games as I probably wasn't tall enough to really be able to see the entire playfield. The table was Space Shuttle. It was instantly my new favorite thing to do at the arcade and it was the perfect game in many ways. Good, fun design. Achievements came pretty easily so it gave instant gratification. Plus I was into NASA and all that kind of stuff so an ideal theme for me. I've had a great relationship with pinball ever since!

 

[George Klepacz]

Unfortunately, my love for pinball started with the Pinball Hall of Fame: Williams Collection on 360. I say unfortunately because back when I was growing up and frequently going to arcades and bowling alleys to play video games, I rarely played pinball. I stuck with Sinistar, Defender, Pac-Man in the 80's, then Rampage, Mortal Kombat and other 90's stuff. Back then I just thought pinball was a game where you simply tried to keep the ball in play. I didn't realize all of the targets could be hit in certain orders to increase their value, or how to earn mulitpliers, or what multiball was. It wasn't until the Williams Collection that I learned how complex pinball tables actually were. That's what I love about that game and now the Pinball Arcade, the in depth instructions on how to play the table, and the standard and wizard goals that help you to learn the table. Great stuff! It's a shame I'm too late to play the real tables.

 

[Bowflex]

George, if you ever go to Vegas, hit up the Pinball Hall of Fame. It's like heaven on earth. Better than any arcade ever was because it has way more games, mostly pinball. The occasional pizza place or bar might have a machine too so there's always opportunity. There are even a couple apps for mobile phones to locate pinballs.

 

[heberts811]

I remember going to a bowling alley with my Dad when I was 6 or 7 in the mid 60's and seeing 2 pinball machines. One was Wing Ding by Williams and the other one had a music theme with musical notes for counting the balls left to play but I can't remember the name. That was the start of my obsession with pins.

Gary

 

[shutyertrap]

The short answer...I worked in an arcade in 1991 that had Whirlwind, Rollergames, Fire, and Bride of Pinbot in it. 'Nuff said?

Okay, than here's the long answer in a blog entry I recently did that you pinball freaks might just appreciate. http://www.andreafriebus.com/2012/02/13/the-husband-post-6-pinball-wizard/ Take a look and lemme know what you think.

 

[PiN WiZ]

The short answer...I worked in an arcade in 1991 that had Whirlwind, Rollergames, Fire, and Bride of Pinbot in it. 'Nuff said?

Okay, than here's the long answer in a blog entry I recently did that you pinball freaks might just appreciate. http://www.andreafriebus.com/2012/02/13/the-husband-post-6-pinball-wizard/ Take a look and lemme know what you think.

I found it hilarious that you chose your wife's blog to post that wonderful entry in and I found her reply even more hilarious. Your blog entry was a good read and you might want to consider making a thread here on the forums and re-posting it.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I found it hilarious that you chose your wife's blog to post that wonderful entry in and I found her reply even more hilarious. Your blog entry was a good read and you might want to consider making a thread here on the forums and re-posting it.

Haha, thanks pointing that out. I love it!

 

[shutyertrap]

Yeah, my wife wants me contributing to her blog, but then she usually winds up hating what I post!

 

[PinMike8666]

I was a huge fan of arcades as a kid, though I liked video games more. I always gave pinball attention, though. Whenever it was available, I would always play a nearly all the tables and greatly enjoyed it. However my true love for the game began with experiencing Devil Crash on the PC-Engine (TurboGrafx-16) back in 2005; I loved the cross video game-pinball format. In 2007, I became obsessed with Pro Pinball and never looked back until I've heard about the FarSight collections and Pinball FX. Both were inferior to Pro Pinball in terms of physics, but I've greatly enjoyed them nevertheless (especially FarSight's Williams Collection).

I recently went to an arcade called Pinball Wizard Arcade and greatly enjoyed myself, but was really rusty with my playing; arcades I grew up playing back in Louisiana never allowed table nudging, so nudging is still a new experience to me. It's much more difficult than I thought it would be, but I think I'll eventually get better at it.

 

[shutyertrap]

I loved going into arcades in the 80's. Interestingly enough, my parents would never give me quarters, so most of my time was spent just looking over the shoulders of other people playing. Still, I loved the vibe, the noise, that 'smell'. Seeing cabinet art, people lining up by placing their quarter on the machine, having my mind blown the first time I saw Zaxon. Working in an arcade was great fun, cause I got to do all those things and get paid doing it! At that point I still had never owned a console, so getting to be around all those games, sometimes with the keys to get free credits, that was awesome.

I really wish they had of trained me on game repair. Half the games we had were from a distributor, so those we weren't supposed to touch. I just recently found out that Williams used to have a seminar where they'd invite arcade owners to learn how to service pins. That woulda been killer. If I had that kind of knowledge in my back pocket, I'd be willing to track down a beater of a machine to work on.

How's this for a flashback memory...our arcade was right next door to a movie theater. I was working the morning shift on the weekends, and there is this huge line up for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Inside our arcade, Streetfighter II had just arrived, and had a massive crowd of its own. That whole weekend, the arcade was jam packed with kids and there was just this energy. I had to empty out the change machine twice cause it couldn't take any dollars anymore, it was stuffed full! Craziness.