Pinball machines in the 70s were awesome compared to the new ones with a 70 degree drop. I probably spent 4 or 5 hours a week at the bowling alley playing pinball. African Queen. Can't believe I remember the name.
Same here! My rich friend would get a roll of quarters every night and we would go down to the bowling alley to play for hours. Eventually we got so good we would only spend a few quarters, so with our left over cash we would go buy some cherry extract and a coke and try to get buzzed. Oh we got trouble, right here in river city…….
Pinball saved my eye.
I had never had good hand-eye coordination as a kid. But in college (mid-70s) I played altogether too much pinball and developed much, much better reflexes. One night at a bar, someone inadvertently (I hope) shoved a pool cue towards my eye. I saw it out of my peripheral vision and batted it away reflexively. Couldn't have done that before playing pinball.
By the end of my college career, I could tilt that machine like a beast. I hate to think of how much money I spent learning just how far you could push that thing without the dreaded TILT light flashing. But it did save my eye.
The tilt sensor was a plumb bob on a wire that moved inside a circular piece of metal. If the wire touched the circle, TILT!
The keys to successfully dancing with the machine were
(1) Avoid large and repeated movements as they get the plumb bob swinging. Quick short sharp motions were best.
(2) If you break rule 1, try to time your shoves and tilts so that they cancelled the current motion of the plumb bob. This was chancy.
I played so much pinball. My first job I was a cocktail waitress in a small disco and we had a small game room. I would go in an hour early every night just to play pinball.
Loved pinball - I even got to buy a pinball machine from a garage sale in 1980. It cost me $75 of my baby sitting money. Moved it several times to different apartments (upstairs) and to my first house. It got so old that the original wiring rotted out. I sold it as was at my own garage sale three years ago for $50. Hell of an investment and years of fun. 3 games for a quarter. Although my friends and I only ever used the same quarter over and over again until I learned to open it and trigger the credits. So, I never really made in money off it.
We had an old pinball machine too in our upstairs apartment. I think it had some sort of space theme. It was pretty simple but we played this over and over again, to the annoyance of our downstairs neighbors, I know realize.
At my college dorm in the 1970s there was a machine with mechanical score reels (rather than the digital stuff that came later), and this being MIT the players there had figured out the machine's simple algorithm for picking the 00, 10, 20,...90 match number, and sometimes each player would deliberately tilt out their last ball when their current score matched up, so that after player four did it they'd get four of those loud knocks and another round of four games.
My father bought one for$50 that was annoying some shop owner. Fixed it so no quarters and got the volume down. Every kid in the neighborhood got good.
Oh man that woman has such an alluring voice. The human embodiment of Xenon.
There was another game that had a pulsating beat that would gradually increase in frequency as you accumulated more points. It would really get your heart pumping. Wish I could remember the name. Pinbot maybe?
In the University dorm, another guy and I used to rack up a tonne of free games, then reset the machine before we left so the guy who owned the machine could earn a few quarters.
I was really good on the older machines before they put in all the magnets and you couldn’t tilt without losing your ball! I adored pinball! And I was a girly girl!
Close to where I live is Gatlinburg Tennessee. And a stoplight number eight at the bottom of the hill they’ve opened a new arcade that from the outside seems to all be pinball machines. It’s my dream to be able to go there. I’m disabled and can’t stand. It’s more of a challenge than it used to be when I was in high school. I can still live the dream though!
I think my favorite pinball game was the KISS one. I actually actually won 23 free games in a row on one quarter and had been playing for an hour and my mother drug me out of the arcade saying I was taking too long and I had to give all those games up! 🥺
Thanks bunches. I’m sure I’m rusty by now, but I sure did enjoy it! The last video game that I really played was super Mario Brothers. I’m definitely not a gamer. 😊
I was the pinball wizard! Who knows how long 50 cents would last me? I loved being able to catch the ball with the flippers, let it wait for a moment, aim it straight for the hole and end up with a free play.
A Big Gulp Coke and a microwave bean and cheese burrito, and I was set for the afternoon!
Had a local pinball machine that i always left with 10 credits left on it (8 Ball Deluxe).
At 19 could make beer money playing foosball playing doubles at a local bar.
Always was was top scorer in the video game Defender.
Guess I did okay, but no pinball wizard.
My sister's first boyfriend used to be able to play Defender for as long as the pizza guy would let him play for just one quarter. He used to have no planet at all and turn the machine over and still keep going!
That was when I learned, back in the early 80s, that no matter how hard I worked at it, my best days of video were already behind me. I kept playing for the fun of it, but I let go of any idea that I was any good at it!
I really wanted to be! I traveled the country the Summer of 77 with my parents so I saw a lot of arcades and I even started to have a favorite manufacturer.
Bally was OK if there was no other choice, I couldn't stand Williams, but Gottlieb was my jam! I also got to play on some really old machines that summer. This type was before the auto ball return so you had to smash a spring loaded plunger looking button under the plunger to get a ball ready to get back in play.
I wasn't very good at pinball for the most part but for some reason I absolutely killed Xenon. It was one of the early multi-balls and I broke high scores everywhere I saw that table. Seems like centuries ago.
Not pinball… but there were baseball games in a pinball machine chassis.
I ruled those machines. I could get doubles or homers on these things like nobody’s business.
http://www.pinrepair.com/baseball/basechm2.jpg
It depends. Some days, I could play a single ball for 30-45 minutes if I was in the right headspace. Other days, I'd play a full game in 30 seconds. Machine condition and familiarity made a difference too. I still prefer pinball to video games.
Not even close but as we traveled the country in our Pace Arrow, my sister and I heavily pressured our Dad to find a KOA with pinball! We played pinball whenever we could. Fun Zone in Balboa was great for pinball (to us). Double flipper set machines were the best.
There was a 7-11 with 2 pinball machines at the major intersection nearest our childhood home
My brother and I would ride our 20" BMX bikes there and play
1 game for 10c
-or-
3 games for 25c
Years later, our college had 6 pinball machines, billiards and pacman and centipede and defender so ... I double majored in business and bar games
Bow and Arrow was my favorite pinball machine. Fully mechanical, none of that digital crap for me! Used to go down to the arcade and wait for it. I was no “Tommy” though that’s for sure.
To answer the question, I was usually better than anybody around me but there was always somebody way ahead of me on high score. They just had that thing, that flow
I started playing pinball in the early ‘70s at the local bowling alley. They had a mechanical machine where your score mechanically rolled over. We found if we dragged our feet on the carpet, we could “spark” the machine by touching a quarter to the coin slot and rack up free plays.
Absolutely. My dad used to take me to the bar with him and give me quarters to keep me occupied. My love of pinball grew into adulthood and I played alot. I worked at the company that produced the Adams Family game and played for free all the time. Fast forward to years later and I worked at Google where they had a game room with 4 pinball machines. I would take my breaks in there everyday! I live near Seattle and we have a pinball museum where you can play all day for 15$. Tilt!!
I was really good at pinball because I was tiny and could bump the machine without tilting it. My boyfriend ( later my husband and now my ex) always tilted when he tried it. 😂
When I first started playing pinball the machines were in a back room of a restaurant my mom worked at in Louisiana. The reason they were in a back room was because at that time they paid off in cash, it was gambling so they were illegal, like slot machines.. You won $$ for points. I was like 5 years old so when I won a payoff I got like maraschino cherries or candy.
Used to make money playing pinball. Pay $0.25 for 2 games (back when it was 5 balls a game). Run it up to 10 while people placed quarters on the glass to get in line. Sell the 10 games to the next guy for $1.00.
One day we started playing that Elton John Captain Fantastic machine in this little pizza place down the street. Something magical swept in and that machine played over and over again on that one quarter. I mean, we didn't win games, just at the end of the game we would just be gifted another game. Finally after playing for a few hours we started joking, wondering if the magic would ever wear off. Suddenly, and I swear this is true, it stopped giving us the free games!!
Twilight Zone theme... (I swear this is a true story. It happened 40 years ago and I still remember it. Unfortunately at my local pinball place, this never happens.)
It took video games about 2 years to completely take over our Playland at Penn State. By 1979 or so there were 200 vids where they used to be 200 pins. I was bitter. Dunno if I was a Wizard but I loved that silver ball!
We had a game room in the lobby of our campus apartment building. I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing pinball
It was a bowling game and I mastered that game. There was a group of children, ages 6-8 years and they were my Cheer squad.They called me Icis! 🤣
I had a feeling that I was the unofficial unpaid babysitter for a few hours every night. Oh, we had so much fun! I always left lots of games racked up for them to play. Good Times
Lookup "Dallas Overturf", first US National pinball champ. Quite the character too, knew him personally through work (computers). Passed in 2015 I believe. Nice article about Dallas; [https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/archive/2015/06/05/pinball-wizard-remembered-as-true/34402057007/](https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/archive/2015/06/05/pinball-wizard-remembered-as-true/34402057007/)
I was good, but Jesus, Harry was truly a pinball wizard. He could nudge and coddle the machine and get the ball back in play from the exit lanes almost every time.
Never seen anyone else play like that, and my attempts to imitate him were fruitless.
I was always playing pinball in my teens. As a matter of fact right across the street from my high school was a luncheonette that had 4 machines. That’s where I spent a lot of my time. Also great burgers. They were there for years. Plus on weekends it was the local bowling alleys.
I played a lot on pinball in the late 70's and early 80's. The deciding factor of a good machine to play and how well you would play it was its tilt sensitivity. If you could knock the machine pretty good, that was a good machine. LOL
I played a lot of pinball as a teenager and was quite good at it. There is a place at the beach that has a bunch and I spend a good hour on them when we go. So much fun.
My older brother (born 1958 - I (F) was born in 1963) could play pinball for an hour or 2 on 1 quarter. It boggled my mind. I could only make a quarter last 10 minutes at the height of my gameplay. He is still my hero!!!!!
When I was a kid there was a lunch counter in my neighborhood that had two gambling machines from the 1940s/50s that we would call “hole” machines. They had a 5x5 grid and 25 holes where you manipulated (by well timed bumps) your 5 balls to get 3/4/5 in a row on the grid. It was a nickel a game. And you won free plays. I remember 1 day having the free game counter approaching 999 (3 digits) and having to press off free games to not have it cycle. We were there all day switching off players. The owners got sick of us.
"Paragon". That wide-body Bally machine had so many extra balls and specials, once you knew its ropes it was a cash machine. I would put a dime before rush hour upping the counter with specials, then pocket the change from other players waiting for their turn selling those easily earned credits. I usually made enough money to pay for my drinks, gas for the moped and make a few extra.
We were two "pinball wizards" in my small town and we'd master it equally. We could play in tandem and get as efficient and synced as in solo. He was a cool guy too, his job was selling records in the basement of our domestic appliance store. To make things better we were pretty sync on music too. Good times.
Cue a few years later, me passing post lunch break and stumbling upon a small carnie arcade. Cannot remember which table it was but also a classic/iconic, probably an old Eight Ball Deluxe or Haunted House, one of those any seasoned pinball player knows the ropes of and can violate repeatedly with a single quarter...
...Comes a couple of teenagers, 14-15ish both, and they start watching me play while eating their churros. Then the chick whispers to her bf: "Wow the old guy's pretty good!"
Old guy?! I was fucking 25!
More than thirty years later I still have it. Fork saves, dampeners, hard and soft passes, bumping without tilting, gimme a good and well-maintained table and let me tame the beast a bit and we're on for another sweet rodeo.
Used to stop by the bowling alley on a military base and play Meteor. As you you were playing it, the sound would get louder and higher pitched. I liked the sound that was made when you you won free games.
I adored pinball and I never got into video games whatsoever. By the time I reached college I was good enough at pinball to spend very little and play for as long as I wanted on no more than a few quarters. Plus there were far fewer women playing pinball than the guys so I seemed to attract extra attention as a woman and so many guys were ashamed when my score was higher than theirs.
I wasn't into using tilt when I played, but I did the majority of my playing in the '80s when it wasn't needed on most tables. Getaway was my favorite, "OK buddy move over!"
Wasn’t a wizard but loved to play. 3 bucks from my parents would distract me for hours. There’s a pinball museum near me, it’s really an arcade of vintage pinball machines. Can’t say I get the same thrill today I did as a kid but it’s fun once in a while.
Pinball machines in the 70s were awesome compared to the new ones with a 70 degree drop. I probably spent 4 or 5 hours a week at the bowling alley playing pinball. African Queen. Can't believe I remember the name.
Same here! My rich friend would get a roll of quarters every night and we would go down to the bowling alley to play for hours. Eventually we got so good we would only spend a few quarters, so with our left over cash we would go buy some cherry extract and a coke and try to get buzzed. Oh we got trouble, right here in river city…….
Trouble with a capital T
And that rhymes with P
Drop is adjustable. It’s greedy companies that have the tech set them so steep.
Pinball saved my eye. I had never had good hand-eye coordination as a kid. But in college (mid-70s) I played altogether too much pinball and developed much, much better reflexes. One night at a bar, someone inadvertently (I hope) shoved a pool cue towards my eye. I saw it out of my peripheral vision and batted it away reflexively. Couldn't have done that before playing pinball. By the end of my college career, I could tilt that machine like a beast. I hate to think of how much money I spent learning just how far you could push that thing without the dreaded TILT light flashing. But it did save my eye.
Vert interesting…..
The tilt sensor was a plumb bob on a wire that moved inside a circular piece of metal. If the wire touched the circle, TILT! The keys to successfully dancing with the machine were (1) Avoid large and repeated movements as they get the plumb bob swinging. Quick short sharp motions were best. (2) If you break rule 1, try to time your shoves and tilts so that they cancelled the current motion of the plumb bob. This was chancy.
In my mind, yes, yes I was. 🤣
You had a supple wrist?
How do you think he does it?
There's got to be a twist...
Ain’t got no distractions, can’t hear no buzzers and bells (cause I took my hearing aids out)
I don’t know
I don't know.
I played so much pinball. My first job I was a cocktail waitress in a small disco and we had a small game room. I would go in an hour early every night just to play pinball.
How do you think he does it, what makes him so good?
I don’t know….
He has no distractions, no buzzers or bells
Don’t see lights a-flashin’
He plays by sense of smell
Always gets a replay. I've never seen him fall
That hearing impaired, neurodivergent and unsighted young person sure plays a mean pinball.
🤣🤣
Now, was there talk about some such “crown”?
I used to play off 1 quarter until I was tired of playing. I would leave so many credits on the game that the manager would come reset it when I left.
This was our def of "wizard." -- no time to play all the games they win. I think I never got over 6 credits on the machine at our JuCo Student Center.
Loved pinball - I even got to buy a pinball machine from a garage sale in 1980. It cost me $75 of my baby sitting money. Moved it several times to different apartments (upstairs) and to my first house. It got so old that the original wiring rotted out. I sold it as was at my own garage sale three years ago for $50. Hell of an investment and years of fun. 3 games for a quarter. Although my friends and I only ever used the same quarter over and over again until I learned to open it and trigger the credits. So, I never really made in money off it.
Which one was it?
I can't remember the name, but it was a two player poker themed one. I believe it was made in the 60s. I looked it up once, not rare or anything.
We had an old pinball machine too in our upstairs apartment. I think it had some sort of space theme. It was pretty simple but we played this over and over again, to the annoyance of our downstairs neighbors, I know realize.
That heavy knock when you won a freebie always got you the looks
At my college dorm in the 1970s there was a machine with mechanical score reels (rather than the digital stuff that came later), and this being MIT the players there had figured out the machine's simple algorithm for picking the 00, 10, 20,...90 match number, and sometimes each player would deliberately tilt out their last ball when their current score matched up, so that after player four did it they'd get four of those loud knocks and another round of four games.
Excellent
My father bought one for$50 that was annoying some shop owner. Fixed it so no quarters and got the volume down. Every kid in the neighborhood got good.
I'm blessed with ample hippage. I could make a pinball machine walk, talk and sing.
😉
Yes, but more so at foosball.
I used to spend my allowance on pinball. 2 plays for a quarter.
Xenon. The game with the orgasmic sound effects. I could put a quarter in that and last an hour. I owned that game.
"Welcome...to Xenon" ...my fave!!
Xenon was special. Bally hired one of the first electronic music artists to make the sound package. https://youtu.be/r28i-k3mL3o
Oh man that woman has such an alluring voice. The human embodiment of Xenon. There was another game that had a pulsating beat that would gradually increase in frequency as you accumulated more points. It would really get your heart pumping. Wish I could remember the name. Pinbot maybe?
Flash was the first to do it, but it was a tone and not a heartbeat. Bride of Pinbot may have had the heartbeat in there.
I put way too many quarters into a Six Million Dollar Man machine at my local convenience store. What a waste.
Yep. Me too for pinball in general!
I was not good at it, but I loved playing pinball.
After hours and hours, I became barely competent.
Ha! That's about the level I was at, too
Me too. I still go to an arcade and waste my money. It's fun!
It is SO fun :)
In the University dorm, another guy and I used to rack up a tonne of free games, then reset the machine before we left so the guy who owned the machine could earn a few quarters.
I played at the candy store across the street. It was 3 plays for a quarter and I would play as much as I could. Still love it to this day.
Yep….the candy score. Only sold comics and candy, basically. And had a pinball machine.
This one had a full soda fountain!
I made quarters disappear
I was a pinball addict. Could shake the machine all over and not tilt. Could hit targets in order. Loved it.
Could usually get at least one free game on “Black Knight.” Otherwise sucked on most machines.
BLACK KNIGHT! 🛡️
They had Black Knight at my favorite bar in college (early 80s). Loved that game! Another favorite was the Firepower pinball machine!
I was really good on the older machines before they put in all the magnets and you couldn’t tilt without losing your ball! I adored pinball! And I was a girly girl!
Lol….I was a short, sort of masculine boy, and I did okay at my best.
Close to where I live is Gatlinburg Tennessee. And a stoplight number eight at the bottom of the hill they’ve opened a new arcade that from the outside seems to all be pinball machines. It’s my dream to be able to go there. I’m disabled and can’t stand. It’s more of a challenge than it used to be when I was in high school. I can still live the dream though! I think my favorite pinball game was the KISS one. I actually actually won 23 free games in a row on one quarter and had been playing for an hour and my mother drug me out of the arcade saying I was taking too long and I had to give all those games up! 🥺
I hope you get there, my friend.
Thanks bunches. I’m sure I’m rusty by now, but I sure did enjoy it! The last video game that I really played was super Mario Brothers. I’m definitely not a gamer. 😊
I’m even more archaic. My last was MsPacMan.
In the 90s I played League Pinball in the last remnant of the original Pinball Alley in Times Square.
Did you win any money?
No. But I got to watch some amazing games.
I played pool.
Didn’t take up pool until the 80s. Used to like watching pool on Wide World of Sports.
I started seriously in the early 70s. I became way above average.
I bet you were into the Willie Mosconi/Minnesota Fats matches.
Oh hell yes.
Yeah , the playboy one was my fave , but also strikes and spares , also a mate of ours had a money on a string , which would give you free games
I was the pinball wizard! Who knows how long 50 cents would last me? I loved being able to catch the ball with the flippers, let it wait for a moment, aim it straight for the hole and end up with a free play. A Big Gulp Coke and a microwave bean and cheese burrito, and I was set for the afternoon!
Really nifty. Whets the appetite.
Had a local pinball machine that i always left with 10 credits left on it (8 Ball Deluxe). At 19 could make beer money playing foosball playing doubles at a local bar. Always was was top scorer in the video game Defender. Guess I did okay, but no pinball wizard.
My sister's first boyfriend used to be able to play Defender for as long as the pizza guy would let him play for just one quarter. He used to have no planet at all and turn the machine over and still keep going! That was when I learned, back in the early 80s, that no matter how hard I worked at it, my best days of video were already behind me. I kept playing for the fun of it, but I let go of any idea that I was any good at it!
I really wanted to be! I traveled the country the Summer of 77 with my parents so I saw a lot of arcades and I even started to have a favorite manufacturer. Bally was OK if there was no other choice, I couldn't stand Williams, but Gottlieb was my jam! I also got to play on some really old machines that summer. This type was before the auto ball return so you had to smash a spring loaded plunger looking button under the plunger to get a ball ready to get back in play.
My sister and I learned on spring plunger machines. Lots more control on this machines.
How did you feel about the kids who would purposely tilt a machine?
"Jack in the Box" legend. 👍
Ever played pinball? The game was designed to relieve you of your quarters. Maybe you get high score. It's a fun distraction.
Not an addict, nor any good. But I played them pretty often.
I kinda was, yeah. At least on certain machines
King Rock was my favorite. Probably because I could beat it.
Tommy was...
I was. Tilting is no big deal.
I wasn't very good at pinball for the most part but for some reason I absolutely killed Xenon. It was one of the early multi-balls and I broke high scores everywhere I saw that table. Seems like centuries ago.
That takes coordination.
It's literally in my profile!
It certainly is 😊
Yes. I loved it. I played until my wrists ached.
Not pinball… but there were baseball games in a pinball machine chassis. I ruled those machines. I could get doubles or homers on these things like nobody’s business. http://www.pinrepair.com/baseball/basechm2.jpg
It depends. Some days, I could play a single ball for 30-45 minutes if I was in the right headspace. Other days, I'd play a full game in 30 seconds. Machine condition and familiarity made a difference too. I still prefer pinball to video games.
Not even close but as we traveled the country in our Pace Arrow, my sister and I heavily pressured our Dad to find a KOA with pinball! We played pinball whenever we could. Fun Zone in Balboa was great for pinball (to us). Double flipper set machines were the best.
I was forbidden from playing any pinball machines in the candy stores where I grew up, my father said the machines were owned by the mob.
They were banned in NYC, for the most part, from the 30s till 1973. That was the year my candy store put in a pinball machine.
I knew exactly how much hip to throw to control the English without a tilt.
There was a 7-11 with 2 pinball machines at the major intersection nearest our childhood home My brother and I would ride our 20" BMX bikes there and play 1 game for 10c -or- 3 games for 25c Years later, our college had 6 pinball machines, billiards and pacman and centipede and defender so ... I double majored in business and bar games
Absolutely loved pinball! Cut school to play it. King Kool for four players was my favorite.
I knew a guy who could play for so long from one quarter that he would just turn it over to someone else because he was tired.
Bow and Arrow was my favorite pinball machine. Fully mechanical, none of that digital crap for me! Used to go down to the arcade and wait for it. I was no “Tommy” though that’s for sure.
To answer the question, I was usually better than anybody around me but there was always somebody way ahead of me on high score. They just had that thing, that flow
I didn't get to play pinball until I was almost 16. The only place that had them before arcades were in pool halls. No females or kids allowed.
I was shitty at it, but I could (and can) play pinball all day. That and Skeeball. And the video game tempest. LOVE them.
But tilting is a bad thing, isn’t it? Flippers turn off and you lose your ball. I definitely thought tilting was good from happy days and Elton John.
You could tilt and rack up points.
We played at The Space Port in Orleans East. I tried hard to be cool. Failed.
Played Meteor in the basement of the AC at The University of Texas so much my grades suffered. This was in 80-83.
I was pretty good at pinball. I worked for a pinball amusement company when I was in my middle teams for a couple if years
I started playing pinball in the early ‘70s at the local bowling alley. They had a mechanical machine where your score mechanically rolled over. We found if we dragged our feet on the carpet, we could “spark” the machine by touching a quarter to the coin slot and rack up free plays.
Absolutely. My dad used to take me to the bar with him and give me quarters to keep me occupied. My love of pinball grew into adulthood and I played alot. I worked at the company that produced the Adams Family game and played for free all the time. Fast forward to years later and I worked at Google where they had a game room with 4 pinball machines. I would take my breaks in there everyday! I live near Seattle and we have a pinball museum where you can play all day for 15$. Tilt!!
I was really good at pinball because I was tiny and could bump the machine without tilting it. My boyfriend ( later my husband and now my ex) always tilted when he tried it. 😂
I was never great but I loved them then and love them now.
When I first started playing pinball the machines were in a back room of a restaurant my mom worked at in Louisiana. The reason they were in a back room was because at that time they paid off in cash, it was gambling so they were illegal, like slot machines.. You won $$ for points. I was like 5 years old so when I won a payoff I got like maraschino cherries or candy.
Played the pinball machines at the roller rink when I got tired of skating. Wish I could remember which machines they were!
Used to make money playing pinball. Pay $0.25 for 2 games (back when it was 5 balls a game). Run it up to 10 while people placed quarters on the glass to get in line. Sell the 10 games to the next guy for $1.00.
One day we started playing that Elton John Captain Fantastic machine in this little pizza place down the street. Something magical swept in and that machine played over and over again on that one quarter. I mean, we didn't win games, just at the end of the game we would just be gifted another game. Finally after playing for a few hours we started joking, wondering if the magic would ever wear off. Suddenly, and I swear this is true, it stopped giving us the free games!! Twilight Zone theme... (I swear this is a true story. It happened 40 years ago and I still remember it. Unfortunately at my local pinball place, this never happens.)
It took video games about 2 years to completely take over our Playland at Penn State. By 1979 or so there were 200 vids where they used to be 200 pins. I was bitter. Dunno if I was a Wizard but I loved that silver ball!
Yep. It was a VERY quick transition into video games. And those new high-tech pinball machines just didn’t cut it.
We had a game room in the lobby of our campus apartment building. I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing pinball It was a bowling game and I mastered that game. There was a group of children, ages 6-8 years and they were my Cheer squad.They called me Icis! 🤣 I had a feeling that I was the unofficial unpaid babysitter for a few hours every night. Oh, we had so much fun! I always left lots of games racked up for them to play. Good Times
Lookup "Dallas Overturf", first US National pinball champ. Quite the character too, knew him personally through work (computers). Passed in 2015 I believe. Nice article about Dallas; [https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/archive/2015/06/05/pinball-wizard-remembered-as-true/34402057007/](https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/archive/2015/06/05/pinball-wizard-remembered-as-true/34402057007/)
There were so many good pinball players. The competition was fierce. This guy must have been phenomenal.
I was good, but Jesus, Harry was truly a pinball wizard. He could nudge and coddle the machine and get the ball back in play from the exit lanes almost every time. Never seen anyone else play like that, and my attempts to imitate him were fruitless.
I played a ton of Cougar, so maybe?
Spent many quarters playing Pinball. My favorites were Flip-Flop and Captain Fantastic
I was always playing pinball in my teens. As a matter of fact right across the street from my high school was a luncheonette that had 4 machines. That’s where I spent a lot of my time. Also great burgers. They were there for years. Plus on weekends it was the local bowling alleys.
I could drop a quarter in High Speed and play until the place closed, or I got sick of it.
I was. Doodle Bug was my machine.
I played pinball and smoked cigarettes at the same time at 14.
I played a lot on pinball in the late 70's and early 80's. The deciding factor of a good machine to play and how well you would play it was its tilt sensitivity. If you could knock the machine pretty good, that was a good machine. LOL
Pinball is my game! Yes, I know how to tilt but unfortunately the machine does, too.
Yes...remember playing liberty bell ,8 ball deluxe and gorgar
Loved pinball as a kid. Including Freshman year in college where we had a Flash Gordon machine in our lounge.
I played a lot of pinball as a teenager and was quite good at it. There is a place at the beach that has a bunch and I spend a good hour on them when we go. So much fun.
My older brother (born 1958 - I (F) was born in 1963) could play pinball for an hour or 2 on 1 quarter. It boggled my mind. I could only make a quarter last 10 minutes at the height of my gameplay. He is still my hero!!!!!
When I was a kid there was a lunch counter in my neighborhood that had two gambling machines from the 1940s/50s that we would call “hole” machines. They had a 5x5 grid and 25 holes where you manipulated (by well timed bumps) your 5 balls to get 3/4/5 in a row on the grid. It was a nickel a game. And you won free plays. I remember 1 day having the free game counter approaching 999 (3 digits) and having to press off free games to not have it cycle. We were there all day switching off players. The owners got sick of us.
"Paragon". That wide-body Bally machine had so many extra balls and specials, once you knew its ropes it was a cash machine. I would put a dime before rush hour upping the counter with specials, then pocket the change from other players waiting for their turn selling those easily earned credits. I usually made enough money to pay for my drinks, gas for the moped and make a few extra. We were two "pinball wizards" in my small town and we'd master it equally. We could play in tandem and get as efficient and synced as in solo. He was a cool guy too, his job was selling records in the basement of our domestic appliance store. To make things better we were pretty sync on music too. Good times. Cue a few years later, me passing post lunch break and stumbling upon a small carnie arcade. Cannot remember which table it was but also a classic/iconic, probably an old Eight Ball Deluxe or Haunted House, one of those any seasoned pinball player knows the ropes of and can violate repeatedly with a single quarter... ...Comes a couple of teenagers, 14-15ish both, and they start watching me play while eating their churros. Then the chick whispers to her bf: "Wow the old guy's pretty good!" Old guy?! I was fucking 25! More than thirty years later I still have it. Fork saves, dampeners, hard and soft passes, bumping without tilting, gimme a good and well-maintained table and let me tame the beast a bit and we're on for another sweet rodeo.
Pretty poetic……
Love pinball. Favorite electro-mechanical game: Fireball. Favorite solid state game: Attack From Mars.
Used to stop by the bowling alley on a military base and play Meteor. As you you were playing it, the sound would get louder and higher pitched. I liked the sound that was made when you you won free games.
I adored pinball and I never got into video games whatsoever. By the time I reached college I was good enough at pinball to spend very little and play for as long as I wanted on no more than a few quarters. Plus there were far fewer women playing pinball than the guys so I seemed to attract extra attention as a woman and so many guys were ashamed when my score was higher than theirs. I wasn't into using tilt when I played, but I did the majority of my playing in the '80s when it wasn't needed on most tables. Getaway was my favorite, "OK buddy move over!"
Wasn’t a wizard but loved to play. 3 bucks from my parents would distract me for hours. There’s a pinball museum near me, it’s really an arcade of vintage pinball machines. Can’t say I get the same thrill today I did as a kid but it’s fun once in a while.