TB pinball enthusiasts?

[EXCAV8]

If only I had back all the quarters I dropped in this machine as a kid, I'd be able to buy another Rick. This was the very first multi-ball machine!

There was absolutely nothing special about this machine whatsoever, and yet I kept plugging it with quarters, never winning a free game. I sucked at it. I still hate it to this day.

This is the machine I probably played the most. Haunted house! The first multiball / dual playing field machine! I loved this game, and was good at it. Unfortunately Gottlieb must have thought nobody was ever going to break a 999,999 so they only had six digits for the score. They were wrong of course, and I turned over the score beyond that at least a few times on just one quarter. Good times!

 

[onestone]

Used to skip school (a lot...) to play pinball in a smokey coffee-shop in the late '70s. Now i know there ain't nothing like the real thing, but are there any decent pc pinball games you would recommend?

 

[JimK]

I was going to mention Xenon, Gorgar ("Me, hurt"), & Joker Poker.
Another cool one that freaked me out the 1st time was Black Out. The thought the game had shut down.

The old analog ones were my favourites-
Alladin's Castle
Bow and Arrow
Space Command (I think)
Big Brave
Me & my two older buddies could play all night. Those 2 were fabulous, I just rode on their coat tails.

Mid-'60s, the corner Soda Shop had a Pinball machine.
1 play for a dime
2 plays for 15-cents
3 plays for a quarter

 

[equill]

Early pins had no flippers, so when Gottlieb came out with those (after the war) we called them "flippers."

Aha! That helps why it's call "flipper" over on this continent. Thanks for the clue!

 

[equill]

Used to skip school (a lot...) to play pinball in a smokey coffee-shop in the late '70s. Now i know there ain't nothing like the real thing, but are there any decent pc pinball games you would recommend?

Try Pinball Arcade | Real Pinball - I play that on my phone.
Funny thing: we had the PC version on a table at the office, for a while. It was like a half-sized version of a physical pin-ball machine, which made it all the more frustrating that it just doesn't respond the same. YMMV, but I'm happier with it on my phone, probably because it doesn't tantalise me.

That said, if everything lines up right, I'm about to wind up with a house I can actually put a pinball machine in, so you'd better believe I'll be shopping for a table or two. I actually had the opportunity about 20 years back, with a table I wanted for sale... and nowhere to put the thing.

Machine Bride of Pin-bot was my poison, back in the day. Still love it. Spent way too much time and money on the Addams Family at university, too.
Via Pinball Arcade, I've discovered Black Knight, and my new favourite: Centaur. But Medieval Madness is always great for those times I want a game but don't quite have the brain-space to properly focus.

 

[equill]

Related note: you know you picked the right partner when they take you on a mystery trip a couple of cities over, for your birthday... to spend the day in the pinball museum.

On that subject, if you're ever in reach of Rotterdam, this has to be on your itinerary. They're not kidding about the "museum" part, but most of the machines are playable.

 

[muggsy]

My aunt and uncle used to have this machine in their house, I loved to play whenever we visited. I think my cousin (their son) has it now.

 

[dickseacup]

I can't believe nobody has posted the GOAT:

(not mine, but I'd love to own one)

 

[Windowliquor]

I was always a big fan of the T2, Addams Family and Guns n Roses machines. I’d love to own on of those! There’s a place in suburban Baltimore called Crabtowne USA(three guesses what their specialty is) that has a a separate game room with 30 or so vintage working pinball machines and 60+ old school arcade machines. Now I’ve g0t the Jones! Thanks COVID....

 

[39-Bassist]

My favorite (and I shouldn't have sold it, ugh) was a 60's Home run derby.
Pitcher had ball come from middle of plate with the bat and ramps for HR, triple, double, single and of course out.
LOVE and miss that game.
(also up top it had the runners advancing around the bases.So cool)
My other favorite was
Williams F-14 TOMCAT Pinball Machine

 

[Timmy Liam]

I had a Rocky and Bullwinkle machine, my favorite, regret selling it.
Also had a family guy machine which was the only machine I’ve seen make people laugh,

traded it for an AC/DC machine.

 

[DDXdesign]

Man, the mentions of not only the older games but the prices have made me FULLY realize what I hadn't initially - that it's been literally 20 years or so since I started collecting. Hell, it's been over 5 since I stopped!

5 grand for a No Fear? crazy talk! That game was $1200 for a perfect one in, say, 2003. I know that sounds like a grumpy old man talking, but I cannot fathom that 2003 was as long ago as it really was, I guess.

Games I always wanted to own but either didn't get around to, or were too expensive for me back then!
- Funhouse - 'too creepy' said a couple of the ladies... i'd buy one anyhow, today.
- Roller Coaster Tycoon - maybe not the best game, but I wanted it for all the great ramps/habitrails and it reminded me of the older amusement-park themed stuff like Comet and Hurricane - i'm a sucker for ramps and the like
- Cirqus Voltaire - while I wanted one of these badly, it was over 3 grand on the collector's market and I never ever spent that much money on a machine, except for Medieval Madness and Monster Bash which I had twice each
- Tales of the Arabian Nights - similar prices to CV above, and I couldn't decide whether I loved it or just liked it. I finally got to its wizard mode in Virtual Pinball once, though I never did on the real thing.
- Whirlwind - Just couldn't find one for the right price and condition at the time I guess. EDIT: Earthshaker, too!

 

[Spectrum]

I was never big into pinball. Born too late I guess; around the time I started hanging out in arcades Pac Man and other video games were already king. I would try to play pinball and I absolutely sucked at it. Free games? I didn't even know that was a thing because I never even came close. But I wanted to like them, and some of them had fantastic artwork and cool little raceways for the ball and so on and they were fun to play, even if I was out in few minutes.

I was drawn to the ones with cool sci fi themes. Off the top of my head, there was a machine based on (or riding the coat tails of) Disney's 1979 film The Black Hole. I spent more time staring at it or watching others play then I did playing it. The sleazy ones with playing cards and naked girls, not so much.

 

[Guild B301]

There were a lot of Bally machines in the late 70s & early 80s, including the KISS machine, that were a quarter (.25 a game) But, they would give 5 games instead of 4 - if you used one of those quarter sized $1 coins. (The Susan B. Anthony dollar). I used to trade with everyone I knew - 4 quarters for those dollar coins, because it meant extra pinball games.

 

[equill]

Man, the mentions of not only the older games but the prices have made me FULLY realize what I hadn't initially - that it's been literally 20 years or so since I started collecting. Hell, it's been over 5 since I stopped!

5 grand for a No Fear? crazy talk! That game was $1200 for a perfect one in, say, 2003. I know that sounds like a grumpy old man talking, but I cannot fathom that 2003 was as long ago as it really was, I guess.

I can relate.
Around that time, a collector across the street had a Bride of Pinbot machine that I could have bought for AUD1500, so roughly the same price. I'm not looking forward to finding out what it'll cost now.

 

[equill]

I was never big into pinball. Born too late I guess; around the time I started hanging out in arcades Pac Man and other video games were already king. I would try to play pinball and I absolutely sucked at it. Free games? I didn't even know that was a thing because I never even came close. But I wanted to like them, and some of them had fantastic artwork and cool little raceways for the ball and so on and they were fun to play, even if I was out in few minutes.

I was drawn to the ones with cool sci fi themes. Off the top of my head, there was a machine based on (or riding the coat tails of) Disney's 1979 film The Black Hole. I spent more time staring at it or watching others play then I did playing it. The sleazy ones with playing cards and naked girls, not so much.

View attachment 3893741

Man, that was one epically bad movie. I re-watched it recently, just to check. Then I warned my partner not to try it for a first time.
Sounds like the game was better

 

[DDXdesign]

There were a lot of Bally machines in the late 70s & early 80s, including the KISS machine, that were a quarter (.25 a game) But, they would give 5 games instead of 4 - if you used one of those quarter sized $1 coins. (The Susan B. Anthony dollar). I used to trade with everyone I knew - 4 quarters for those dollar coins, because it meant extra pinball games.

Thats brilliant! I don't think the KISS machine at my local laundromat, circa 1984ish, took dollar coins, but it might have; KISS pinball and the SBA coin both came out in 1979!

That laundromat was great when I had quarters, not so much when I didn't - mom wasn't super forthcoming with the cash. I had to choose carefully between their two arcade machines, GunSmoke and Gladiator, and KISS pinball. GunSmoke was fun, but very hard for my little kid reflexes, and I thought Gladiator was stupid. So KISS won out the vast majority of the time. A few years later, the Jerry's Subs & Pizza in the same shopping center got a whole arcade room with lots of vids and a handful of pins. Heaven!

 

[LostJohnny]

I love pinball, although I'm not great at it. My neighborhood's actually a really good one for pinball; in the local bars we have at least (just going from memory)
- Elvira (probably my favorite local machine)
- AC/DC
- Deadpool (almost too much stuff going on, but a lot of fun)
- Iron Maiden
- Attack From Mars
- Playboy
- Hollywood Heat (this one's pretty hilarious just in how obvious it is that Gottlieb said, "We can't get the license for Miami Vice? Whatever, just make the absolute minimum changes to keep the lawyers off our backs...")

 

[DDXdesign]

I love pinball, although I'm not great at it. My neighborhood's actually a really good one for pinball; in the local bars we have at least (just going from memory)
- Elvira (probably my favorite local machine)

Which one? Scared Stiff or Elvira And The Party Monsters? (the one with the crate or the one with the BBQ theme) Both fun games, and Elvira's got the right kind of cartoony personality for a pinball theme for sure.

 

[DDXdesign]

DOH apparently I made the thread in the wrong subforum and now it's been consumed by an older thread. My apologies, peeps. But hey we're talking about pinball again, that's somethin!