5.04.2007
TO AID THE SUPPLENESS OF WRISTS
Ronco need not apply.
Anyone who has spent time around me (or endured it, as the case may be), probably knows that I have a thing for arcade games. If you were to suggest that it was in fact more of an obsession, I would be hard pressed to come up with an articulate counter to that proposition. My age certainly has some bearing on the development of that obsession, as arcades truly hit the big time right around the time I started getting a reasonable allowance, and the limited autonomy to do something with it. My father has to shoulder some of the blame as well, as he and I were not the stereotypical Father-Son combo, pitching baseballs in the backyard or tinkering in the garage with cars or power tools. Instead many a Saturday afternoon of my childhood found me in taverns where my father would shoot the bull with friends or business associates, and I would enjoy the culinary joy that is the "Bar Burger", and usually score a few stacks of quarters to plunk into whatever video game or pinball machine happened to be there at the time. I can still remember the Gorgar Pinball, at the Castle Tavern, glowing an ominous red from the illuminated backglass. Or the confounding buttons only control scheme of the Rip Off video game right next to it. There were countless others through the years, but 1979-80 was around the time that the arcade bug hit me full on, and those two games hold a lot of weight in my memories as the starting point of a long wonderful relationship with coin operated entertainment.
The 80's definitely saw my focus draw in on video games, but there were always a few pin through the years that would catch my attention, if only for a short spell, or until the next big video title made it to the local arcade. I flirted with pinballs through the 80's but the vids always were my true loves. With the crash of the arcade industry as a whole in the late 80's, and the rise of home consoles like NES, Genesis, and Playstations, arcades became more and more sad places to visit, and it was usually a chance encounter with an old classic in a laundromat or convenience store that would most often have me dropping quarters again.
Then something interesting happened. Pinball got more interesting to me than ever before. Maybe it was the realization that video games ultimately became an act of pattern recognition and memorization (You think Pac-Man would have taught me that already), or that pinball machines started taking advantage of advances in technology, and design, but at some point Pinball became much more fascinating than video games to me. I might still play more video games, but Pinball was something special. Games like The Addams Family, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Road Show, and many others were just too damn clever, and given some practice, much more fun than the latest Street Fighter, or Mortal Kombat, or whatever knock off of those two games you might happen to run into. Not only that, people who had no interest in vids, could at least be coerced into joining you in a game of pinball. I think the sheer physicality of playing pinball might have something to do with it. You feel infinitely more connected to the game play of most pinballs, than you do with most vids.
Fortunately for me, I was again in the right place at the right time. the 90's saw the last gasp of pinball as a commonplace form of entertainment, and the Student Union at Duquesne University, as well as the Bee Hive coffee shop in the South Side of Pittsburgh, both had a nice lengthy run of good pins in good condition - something that in my experience is very rare. Even the dive bar I frequented, had a string of good pinball machines. It was meant to be I guess. Pinball was a cheap form of entertainment, that at least held out the hope of a return on investment in the form of the free game - for beating a predetermined score, or even the famous "match" which was something like the pinball equivalent to "The first one is free", sucking you in for another game. The hours of sending shiny steel balls around an inclined plane of wood, dotted with lights targets and obstacles, are ones I will never regret spending.
With all that said, it should not shock you in the least to see the following:
Yup. My very own pinball machine. Sitting right behind me as I type this. One of my favorite pins of all time. One I can still recall playing with friends, and my future wife in that dank Student Union Games area. If it were not such a noisy contraption, I would almost certainly be playing it right now, but some people need to sleep, so as to get up earlier than me tomorrow, so it sits idle for now, awaiting my inevitable assault on mars to recommence tomorrow.
So should you ever find yourself in the neighborhood, and feel a need to play some pinball, please do stop by. I've got it set on free play.
go and tell me all about it
Anyone who has spent time around me (or endured it, as the case may be), probably knows that I have a thing for arcade games. If you were to suggest that it was in fact more of an obsession, I would be hard pressed to come up with an articulate counter to that proposition. My age certainly has some bearing on the development of that obsession, as arcades truly hit the big time right around the time I started getting a reasonable allowance, and the limited autonomy to do something with it. My father has to shoulder some of the blame as well, as he and I were not the stereotypical Father-Son combo, pitching baseballs in the backyard or tinkering in the garage with cars or power tools. Instead many a Saturday afternoon of my childhood found me in taverns where my father would shoot the bull with friends or business associates, and I would enjoy the culinary joy that is the "Bar Burger", and usually score a few stacks of quarters to plunk into whatever video game or pinball machine happened to be there at the time. I can still remember the Gorgar Pinball, at the Castle Tavern, glowing an ominous red from the illuminated backglass. Or the confounding buttons only control scheme of the Rip Off video game right next to it. There were countless others through the years, but 1979-80 was around the time that the arcade bug hit me full on, and those two games hold a lot of weight in my memories as the starting point of a long wonderful relationship with coin operated entertainment.
The 80's definitely saw my focus draw in on video games, but there were always a few pin through the years that would catch my attention, if only for a short spell, or until the next big video title made it to the local arcade. I flirted with pinballs through the 80's but the vids always were my true loves. With the crash of the arcade industry as a whole in the late 80's, and the rise of home consoles like NES, Genesis, and Playstations, arcades became more and more sad places to visit, and it was usually a chance encounter with an old classic in a laundromat or convenience store that would most often have me dropping quarters again.
Then something interesting happened. Pinball got more interesting to me than ever before. Maybe it was the realization that video games ultimately became an act of pattern recognition and memorization (You think Pac-Man would have taught me that already), or that pinball machines started taking advantage of advances in technology, and design, but at some point Pinball became much more fascinating than video games to me. I might still play more video games, but Pinball was something special. Games like The Addams Family, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Road Show, and many others were just too damn clever, and given some practice, much more fun than the latest Street Fighter, or Mortal Kombat, or whatever knock off of those two games you might happen to run into. Not only that, people who had no interest in vids, could at least be coerced into joining you in a game of pinball. I think the sheer physicality of playing pinball might have something to do with it. You feel infinitely more connected to the game play of most pinballs, than you do with most vids.
Fortunately for me, I was again in the right place at the right time. the 90's saw the last gasp of pinball as a commonplace form of entertainment, and the Student Union at Duquesne University, as well as the Bee Hive coffee shop in the South Side of Pittsburgh, both had a nice lengthy run of good pins in good condition - something that in my experience is very rare. Even the dive bar I frequented, had a string of good pinball machines. It was meant to be I guess. Pinball was a cheap form of entertainment, that at least held out the hope of a return on investment in the form of the free game - for beating a predetermined score, or even the famous "match" which was something like the pinball equivalent to "The first one is free", sucking you in for another game. The hours of sending shiny steel balls around an inclined plane of wood, dotted with lights targets and obstacles, are ones I will never regret spending.
With all that said, it should not shock you in the least to see the following:
Yup. My very own pinball machine. Sitting right behind me as I type this. One of my favorite pins of all time. One I can still recall playing with friends, and my future wife in that dank Student Union Games area. If it were not such a noisy contraption, I would almost certainly be playing it right now, but some people need to sleep, so as to get up earlier than me tomorrow, so it sits idle for now, awaiting my inevitable assault on mars to recommence tomorrow.So should you ever find yourself in the neighborhood, and feel a need to play some pinball, please do stop by. I've got it set on free play.
go and tell me all about it
