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Did anyone else think pinball was crap when they were a kid?

huggers

huggers

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Picture the scene. It's 1992, maybe 93. The arcade scene is absolutely buzzing with new releases, mostly from Japan. Street Fighter has become a religion for many of us kids. Side scrollers like Final Fight and Turtles are eating all our coins. Mortal Kombat has just arrived with all its digitised gore and brilliance. Virtua Racing introduces us to polygons, Virtua Fighter and Tekken aren't that far away.... It's a great time to be a gamer and the tech is moving fast. We've long left behind what we saw as antiquated games like Ms. Pac, Bombjack, Star Wars arcade etc. Over in a quieter corner of the arcade are a handful of pins. You chuck a precious twenty pence coin into a pinball machine because it looks different. The screen looks old, the game plays weirdly. A few double flips later and you've drained 3 balls. **** all that. Back to Street Fighter, woah check it out you can now play as the bosses...! Fast forward 30 years and you're busy dropping thousands on said games and you rarely play videos anymore. Pinball rules all. Anyone else have a similar ish experience?
 
I used to play outrun.

However when my own coins had run-out my stepfather would only give me money if I played pinball with him. I always looked at it as a grown-ups game but his enthusiasm rubbed off very quickly.

Probably the only reason I own a pinball now was the fact that I loved the ritual of grabbing some doughnuts, getting some change and heading to the 'big boys' section of the arcade.
 
........Don’t, whatever you do, Andy. find yourself in a room with me, Rich @RuyLopez , and Greg @robotgreg , talking on this subject!. You will exit the building 3 stone lighter and with a 12” beard (30cm to nippers like you.😉) And we would of only just covered the basics............But one things for sure we would all agree “Pinball rules!” Well said @huggers
🤣
 
I should add, this is almost certainly an age thing. I know some of you elder statesman were fixing EMs at nursey etc
 
Gonzo said:
I used to play outrun.

However when my own coins had run-out my stepfather would only give me money if I played pinball with him. I always looked at it as a grown-ups game but his enthusiasm rubbed off very quickly.

Probably the only reason I own a pinball now was the fact that I loved the ritual of grabbing some doughnuts, getting some change and heading to the 'big boys' section of the arcade.
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Outrun was class. Sega blue skies. Stunning game. They had a stand up at one of my regular arcades, very cool game, looked great at the time. Amazing tunes as well.

I guess we saw pinball as dated and without an older parent or relative to drag us in it just got left by the wayside. Judging by the direction Williams went with Pinball 2000 and their demise I guess our attitude to it all must have been quite widespread.
 
No is my answer too. I started playing pinball regularly in the early 1980s and i was never attracted to the video games when they started surfacing. It was only when the ps1 and n64 started appearing that I started paying attention to the video games, and only really because by then pinball had disappeared from most pubs and arcades. Long lives pinball.
 
huggers said:
Outrun was class. Sega blue skies. Stunning game. They had a stand up at one of my regular arcades, very cool game, looked great at the time. Amazing tunes as well.

I guess we saw pinball as dated and without an older parent or relative to drag us in it just got left by the wayside. Judging by the direction Williams went with Pinball 2000 and their demise I guess our attitude to it all must have been quite widespread.
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Outrun was me pretending to drive a Ferrari.

Afterburner allowed me to pretend to be a fighter pilot.

My son playing FIfa on Xbox is him pretending to be a footballer.

All good fun of course but not the real thing.

Pinball is the real deal. Proper steel balls, hand eye coordination, reflexes and a real game. You're connected to the machine and every game is different and a completely analogue and genuinely interactive experience.

You're right though.... without my old man I may never have put my 10p in the machine.
 
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Gonzo said:
Pinball is the real dead. Proper steel balls, hand eye coordination, reflexes and a real game. You're connected to the machine and every game is different and a completely analogue and genuinely interactive experience.
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Exactly this. Me and @Dave Playman have chatted in depth about it. Both coming from heavy video gaming 90's backgrounds and transitioning to pinball. You cannot beat the combination of analogue and digital, physical mechs and the true randomness of each game. Such a purity about it all.
 
kevlar said:
I'm a bit gutted really, pinball machines were invisible to me until 2012 when playing pinball arcade made me seek out real machines. It was always video games for me, I don't remember giving pinballs a 2nd glance.
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Very much the same Kev. Shame I didn't cotton on sooner really!
 
For me it was the latish 50’s and there was an EM in the cafe in the village. It was also the terminus/turn around for buses into Leicester so the driver and conductor would play the pinball with a snotty nosed 10/11 yr old watching.
Occasionally they’d leave a credit on for me to play a game whilst my mother finished her frothy coffee. Happy days indeed.
 
Played pinball in local chippys etc before space invaders hit then it was all about video games or computers/consoles etc. Couldn’t get enough of them. Played the odd pin.
Bought my first pins in the late nineties along with arcade cabs but it wasn’t until a couple or so years ago that I got obsessed with pinballs and not really played video games since!
Pinball can seriously start to take over your life, there is nothing like it. Hardly turn my MAME cab or PS4 on anymore except for my grandchildren.
 
I think the first Pinball I played was like a Tarzan theme in the 70`s then Gorgar & Space Invaders as I was only about 8/9/10 I didn't show much interest. As soon as High Speed in 86 came out I was 17 I got hooked maybe it had something to do with Multiball. I then spent hours in the arcade playing Back to the Future & Funhouse when they arrived.

Hence why I own a Getaway and Funhouse, I would love to get High Speed & Back to the Future also :)

........ Mind you I did spend a hell of a lot of time on DigDug as I could clock it to 999999 where the game stopped in congratulations, the arcade owner certain was making any money when i played it.
 
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I'm in the same boat.

90's was all about video games - and fruit machines once i had a Saturday job and you could actually make decent money on them - but i would still play Addams Family, Pinbot, Dr Dude & Funhouse when i saw them in the dark corner of the arcade and fancied a change of pace (i saw them as slower).

I will publicly admit to playing Street Fighter 2 & Tee'd Off here, but never, ever again. ONLY because i enjoyed the video game and Caddyshack.

They were always a bit dirty, bulbs out and frankly a little bit hard to understand initially. TAF and Funhouse were fairly easy to get multiple balls going, but others would just leave me baffled. Twilight Zone was my 1st home machine just so i could finally have a go at working it out, because it made zero ****ing sense in 1994. Powerball? WTF?
 
As @huggers mentioned, heavy video games background. Late to that game though so; Operation Wolf, TMHT, Simpson’s, Super Hang-On, and other similar late 80’s early 90’s JAMMA affairs for me.

The only pinball I remember playing on holiday as a kid was Addams Family. Purely theme driven choice I’m sure!

Collected console video games for over 15yrs, started selling them off 5yrs ago to buy dedicated video arcade games (mostly from the US), then last year @huggers lined me up with a Getaway that was for sale.....thought I would give it a shot....and the rest is history!

13 arcade cabs bought and sold (now down to just two) and replaced them with pinball instead😄
 
Video games all the way for me also...
ZX-81, TI-994A, VIC 20, ZX Spectrum 48k, C64, Amiga, PCs then onto consoles

Used to bunk of school in the mid 80s to play Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac Man in the local chippy.
We had a massive arcade in Largs (Scottish) West coast that had pretty much every arcade machine known to man including pins.
I remember when Star Wars came out, the one you sat in to blow up the death star with the vector graphics - fcuk me it was awesome. I used to knock the tilt machines with the 10 pences to keep playing it lol......
The pins though, they had them but i never really played them. Always wanted to play a real pin, played loads of software ones so my first ever play for real was a GOTG in Virgin then a bought IMDN in 2018..... now i'm skint.
 
In the 70s and 80s I used to attempt to play it in arcades. Especially machines like Kiss and Firepower.

Thing is I was worse than I am now (and that is saying something). 20p did not last long.
 
Sako-TRG said:
Video games all the way for me also...
ZX-81, TI-994A, VIC 20, ZX Spectrum 48k, C64, Amiga, PCs then onto consoles

Used to bunk of school in the mid 80s to play Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac Man in the local chippy.
We had a massive arcade in Largs (Scottish) West coast that had pretty much every arcade machine known to man including pins.
I remember when Star Wars came out, the one you sat in to blow up the death star with the vector graphics - fcuk me it was awesome. I used to knock the tilt machines with the 10 pences to keep playing it lol......
The pins though, they had them but i never really played them. Always wanted to play a real pin, played loads of software ones so my first ever play for real was a GOTG in Virgin then a bought IMDN in 2018..... now i'm skint.

I use to go to the one in Largs also cullises it was was called I think, the same family owed the small one across the road from it and they owned one in Saltcoats.
They always had the newest games video and pinball I remember there being a row about ten pins as you went in the door on the right hand side.
I think they were one of the first in Europe to have a sit in wec le man's, I still talk to the son as he runs the one in Saltcoats still and keep on trying to talk him into letting me have a rummage about his units haha.
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^^^Largs, what a great location that was too to have an arcade!
Overlooking the water, always felt sunnier in those days :)
 
paddythegreek said:
For me it was the latish 50’s and there was an EM in the cafe in the village. It was also the terminus/turn around for buses into Leicester so the driver and conductor would play the pinball with a snotty nosed 10/11 yr old watching.
Occasionally they’d leave a credit on for me to play a game whilst my mother finished her frothy coffee. Happy days indeed.
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Don’t get me started on E.M’s in “greasy spoons”.
There was this one time when ....................(followed by many a yumping yarn. From late home for tea , leaving behind my school homework and books, and getting me pusher nicked!!........😍)........
 
I always would play pinball as a kid. A local fair used to have three or four as part of the arcade.
I remember playing Bally Star Trek for the first time and being really disappointed that it only had simple electronic tones and not the actual sounds from the TV series.[emoji1]
I also remember cross channel ferries having pinball machines. I suppose it would be like playing Orbitor if it got a bit rough[emoji16]

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk
 
Nope. Avoiding those orange dots that are always in the same place never excited me. Driving games yes and a game on gauntlet with my mates possibly but in 1986 it was still pinball for me.
 
My sister and I would pester our grandfather for money, during the summer holidays, to buy ice creams. We would go off together and she would buy an ice cream; I used my share of the money to play CFTBL and IJ. I then made out that I had already eaten my ice cream by the time we returned back to our grandfather to give him his change.

I think it was 25ptas for 1 credit so my 100ptas would last a fair while; a lot longer than an ice cream would.
 
Never played as a kid, but only went to arcades in Skeggy where we would play penny falls as kids. Got into them whilst at Uni. Student Union bars had them in the late 80s. Favorites then were High Speed and Swords of Fury. Then in early to mid 90s almost every pub had a pinball, so it was always pints and pinball!
 
Was it also in the late 90s that they disappeared from all pubs and clubs? I remember there being a couple in an arcade in the middle of Derby when I first arrived in 97 and then they were gone. And no other pubs or clubs had one. I thought it was the end of pinball then.
 
I was living in Docklands London in the mid to late 90s and there were pinballs in a few pubs, but by then you had to seek out the pubs that actually had a pinball. There was only one in Docklands which was in a large modern pub near Cascades that had a TOTAN so that must have been post 96 and there were various pubs on the outskirts of the City of London (Liverpool St, Farringdon) that had pinball machines, but none right in the City. As you moved out there were more. I moved overseas (to Asia) early in 1998 and there were still pinballs in pubs just before I left. I expect the demise of pinballs in pubs matched the demise of Williams/Bally in general. In the 90s pinballs only lasted 2 or 3 years on-route; by then they were pretty much destroyed by wear, so the operators just removed them once they became unreliable so all gone by 2000. And pubs changed around that time too - moving more to food than drink.
 
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