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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WilliamPorygon" data-source="post: 4264" data-attributes="member: 386">I've had lots of experiences over the years that have piqued my interest in pinball.My earliest recollection of pinball is when I was very young -- only 3 or 4 years old -- I have vague memories of my dad and I playing Baby Pac-Man at an arcade.  Because I was so young I really didn't remember much about it; for years all I could remember was that there was some hybrid video and pinball game that I had played at one time.  Until the Internet age came about and I could actually track down info about it, I wasn't even sure my brain hadn't just made the whole thing up.  Aside from that, most of my exposure to pinball over the years has been in various video game forms.  Throughout my childhood I had birthday parties at Putt-Putt annually, and I sometimes put in a few games on the pins there, but at the time I tended to gravitate more towards Skee-ball and the ticket redemption games.  I'm honestly much better at properly-made video game versions anyway; I'm very timid and on a real machine I tend to be much too shy about nudging even when it's necessary.  But if it's a virtual table that can't really be damaged and doesn't require me to actual physically shake anything, I have no problem doing it.As a video gamer who enjoys pinball games, I've owned quite a few I've liked over the years.  My dad had both Video Pinball and Midnight Magic on the Atari 2600, the former of which I remember best because of an incident where I was in the middle of a really good game when my dad activated the smoke alarm for a family fire drill.  Between pausing not existing on the 2600, having a very high score on the board and being a young, naive kid who didn't really understand how serious it could be if there were in fact a real fire, I kept playing until my parents came and got me.  Then I didn't get to play again for awhile.The next big pinball event for me was when I got the NES version of Pin*Bot.  If I had to pick just one thing that made me a pinball fan, I'd have to go with this.  Honestly, it was pure luck that I got this game -- my dad wanted to buy me a game, I didn't want any game in particular, and between looking at nothing but the titles, wanting to get home as soon as possible, and having never heard of "Pin*Bot" before I asked for Pin*Bot thinking it was a bowling game.  The initial disappointment on finding out it wasn't didn't last too long, though, because it was (by NES standards) an awesome pinball table.  The one thing I really hated was the video gamey stuff that was different from the actual table -- I'd try to deliberately avoid collecting the solar value because I didn't want to deal with the crap like the ghost that eats your ball or the missiles that destroy the flippers.  When Game Genie came out I fell in love with the game all over again because I'd turn on infinite balls and actually have fun getting through all those annoying levels.  Even though I still have some issues with the table design (particularly how easily the balls fly into the outlanes from most shots), it's a table I love mainly due to my experiences from back on the NES.There's been several other pinball video games I've really enjoyed since then, particularly Pokémon Pinball (both the original and Ruby/Sapphire versions) and the Microsoft Pinball Arcade collection.  I used to enjoy 70s/80s machines the best because I felt 90s machines were too complicated, largely because I enjoy the game more if I understand the rules and what I should be aiming for to achieve the goals rather than just shooting the ball around randomly.  When I can see about all the rules and goals in detail ahead of time (which PHOF and Pinball Arcade do very well) I find the 90s tables much more enjoyable and are definitely some of the best pins I've ever played.</blockquote>

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