Getting To Know You (The Nostalgia Zone)

[Triple H]

I stumbled across this introduction on the Pinside forum yesterday and enjoyed reading it as it echoed a part of my own experience.
It was written by @Antray84 and I have his permission to reproduce it on this forum as he is too much of an introvert to do so himself.
I think it would be great if other members gave a detailed account of their pinball playing journey as I find it fascinating. So here is the article that was written and I have added a suitable poll to the thread
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From Arcade to Pinball a search for a feeling.​

By Antray84​

My name is Ant (Anthony) I am from the UK and I have always chased that feeling of nostalgia and community. I didn't always realise it, but it is there. Trying to fill a hole of a time past.

After years of untapped nostalgia, In 2018 I suddenly realized I could own my own arcade machine. Fast forward 6 years and I have had and traded a crazy number of machines, chasing that nostalgia and the idea of being part of a nostalgic community. Unfortunately I never really gained any of that. Not truly. The problem was twofold. One was that I was chasing lightning in a bottle. That feeling young Ant had in the summer of 1991 when I would run into an arcade trying to pinpoint exactly where that Turtles theme music was coming from and hoping that no older kids were already playing on the cabinet. They were amazing memories with my brother by my side but I wasn't able recreate them at home in the modern day. Having 4 friends is hard enough, let alone 4 friends that come to my house and want to play an arcade with me and recreate my own personal memories.

The second is that sense of community. That idea that I would meet like-minded people to share stories with. Unfortunately, that has not happened either. I don't blame others for this as I know that a lot of older people have found that community. But the simple thing is that the arcade world is entirely based on something that happened 30 years (and beyond) ago. There are no new arcades being made and no new arcade fans. Eventually, the bubble will burst. And it seems it has. The market is dead and there is nothing new and exciting to get your teeth into. I still love the games and that pang of nostalgia but it's a dying hobby with nothing in the tank to keep it going. Covid was a huge boom period (as it was for pinball) but there is unlikely to be a second wind in the way that pinball has had.

Cut to 2021 and I started to get into pinball. It was the sister of that girl you fancied. You knew of them and they had a connection to something you liked but you didn't really give them much attention. Then suddenly you realise that the sister is actually the cool one after all and you had been chasing the wrong thing. That thing you loved suddenly becomes dull and you can't understand why you liked it in the first place.

That realisation took a while to solidify. I got a V pin and although Arcades were still fun the rewards became less and less. It wasn't until 2024 that I decided to take the plunge and pick up a Mr and Ms PacMan, the cheapest entry point I could find into the hobby. It was the price point of a man who had been chasing the dragon of arcade collecting to the point where disposable income was deceased. It was fun and exciting. It had its problems but I was in the game. I had a stake. I learned I listened I prodded and poked and I thought, this is different. This isn't digital, it exists in the real world. It's physics.

I decided I was going to make a go of this pinball world. I joined a league, something unthinkable for an introvert like myself. I turned up at a random dudes house to play pinball......with strangers!!!!.I got excited as Jaws a NEW game came out. My dream theme!!! I could play it in the flesh at a bar in London and share my score online. This was it.

But as summer became autumn became winter Pac and it's new friend (an EBD) stayed in a garden room away from the main house. Still not quite trusted. Could this actually be the real deal. Was I prepared to leave arcades behind and embrace something new. Space in the house is beyond limited and had always been a safe haven for an arcade. That is until now. I have made the decision to change the house rules. I love arcades and always will, they are a memory of great times past. But they are not a look into the future, and they now simply serve as a way to collect dust. Now I know a pinball machine from the 1980s isn't that forward-thinking, but what it represents is. A chance to discover something new and exciting that has already taken me out of my comfort zone way more than Arcades ever did. It's exciting and it's new. So this weekend the house arcade is going and the house pinball is coming in from the cold. The likelihood is that all the arcades eventually go altogether. Not because they are not fun, but because pinball has given me an excitement that rebuying my childhood never did. A chance to meet friends, learn skills and discover something new. Will I ever afford that Jaws Pin? Unlikely but is something to chase. The arcade community isn't a bad thing, but I don't think it is my thing anymore. So let's go full force into pinball......but also slow as there's a skill shot ahead.

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So there you have it and I do hope you all add your stories here

 

[Antray84]

Glad it resonated. Community is everything.

 

[Phil Lee]

Loving the Mr Mrs PacMan reference!
Parallel story - liked arcades in the early 70s.. pinball always attracted (it's the physics you know!) but I was into electronics - and seeing computers /computer games start, find their feet and take over - my 1st foray was a Taito space invader - huge bugger of a thing. Dead inside (it not me) so I MAMEd it, found some cocktail cabs - Asteroids etc.. but then, having scratched that itch, it suddenly hit me.
Wtf was I pushing pixels around for - I'd always preferred the silver ball - even to the point of slightly supplementing my student grant in the Student union selling replays.. so I bit the silver bullet and now my house is full of the blooming things.
Bizarrely the Mr Mrs Pac is most recent - as the crossover theme did something for me - but Centaur and it's spiritual siblings are here to stay long term..
My old 2p worth.. the cost, as I remember of the Harlem Globetrotters that was my first introduction..

 

[Triple H]

Is anybody else willing to share their story?

 

[cooldan]

possibly later while drunk

 

[cooldan]

ah fuc_k it, no time like the present:
i used to play in pubs and in my university bar back in the late 80s. Then while travelling round Australia i repeated and regained the love, playing TZ and getting my first ever wizard mode in Airlie Beach in 1995 - i was forever 'Lost in The Zone'. Then i lived abroad some more in the late 90s, and again always sought out the pinball arcadesand machines in shopping malls etc; they used to be everywhere.

Jump forward to 2009, i'm stuck in a crap failing marriage and decide to buy one. I buy a STTNG and pay waaaaay too much for it, but i love the damn thing. Very soon afterwards I contact Stan Simpson somehow (@bartron) and he gets me to come along to my first ever league meeting - at Dawn Raison's place as part of the London & SE League. While there, i meet for the first time @Matt Vince @johnwhitfield, Martin Ayub, Mike Parkins, a few others. The rest is history, it's not a hobby you turn away from - i did, from 2017-2024, but i missed the people and ended up coming back with a vengeance. I currently own 11 and have 3 in my living room, but over 80 have passed through my hands over the years (50 or so different titles) and i have no intention of stopping.

 

[Jib]

I never really played pinball as a kid, I'd play a very occasional split flipper with my mum if she was paying but there was better value to be had pooling my money with one of my brothers and playing a tag team on WWF Wrestlefest.

In 2021 I herniated 2 discs in my back, so badly I temporarily couldn't move my legs and had to get an ambulance to hospital. What could have caused such a bad injury? I was taking my trousers off

Anyway, I couldn't get out of bed without help for a while. I couldn't sit, I couldn't manage the stairs etc... I was bored but also found it hard to concentrate on much due to the medication. I don't remember how but I found virtual pinball on ipad and spent a fair bit of time playing that. After a while of repeatedly playing mostly MM I looked more into virtual pinball and by coincidence a virtual machine came up on a local facebook group, hubby saw the ad, sent it to me and he ended up going to see it. The seller had a van and agreed to deliver it the next week, it was an old Roadshow cab and much bigger than I expected!

That virtual machine kept my sanity during recovery. I would go play for a little bit and then go back and lie down and research how to load new tables and upgrade the system. As I got better I started doing some physical upgrades as well as software and playing. It kept my brain active learning something new but also gave me something new to enjoy and look forward to.

A few months later we moved house and had more space, there was a bedroom I could use for an arcade and I planned to have my vpin and eventually 2 real machines. That was all there was space for.... we all know how that goes. Garage conversion came next which brought more space but also meant not having to get machines up and down stairs so I was able to move machines in and out more easily and I've definitely taken advantage of that

I sometimes wonder if hubby regrets sending me that facebook ad but I can't imagine not having pinball as a hobby now. I really don't look forward to the day I can't play anymore... All the more reason to play more now

 

[thejefu]

I remember putting atleast 10 50p pieces a sitting into a STTNG at the Malt Shovel pub where my parents would take me and my brother on a weekend. At home we used to take it in turns to play Amiga/Dos games like Pinball Illusions/Dreams. Going out on my own as a teenager I'd sink hours into an Adams Family at the cinema complex where it was the only machine. Sometime in the 90s pinball just went away like it had never happened. They ceased being wherever I was.

Fast forward to my 30s (2018/19) I was a video game developer and had become thoroughly disenfranchised with video games - making them and playing them. I was trying to get into playing old arcade games with friends online as a form of retro release from the day job, honestly I just didn't want to look at a screen again for a decade. By happenstance we turned to Visual Pinball as the next logical step further back. I was instantly reminded that I had infact loved pinball and genuinely had no idea so many machines existed and were in circulation.

I took myself to Arcade Club in Bury for a few hours, stayed all day playing Elvira and the Party Monsters, came home and found this forum and bought one. It had no legs, half the boards were missing, it's guts were hanging out but just owning it felt like I'd thrown off the shackles of 2 decades of melting my brain.

I've now owned 10 or so, have two in my converted garage and ideally will have 3 or 4 when prices get to where they're going. I play them with my kids (3 and 4) and watch them soaking in the flashing lights and hearing the pops and never tire of their excitement when the balls come flooding out. They also sit and ask questions and watch as I put them back together, repair them and care for them. Like many things from that time period, pinball represents a pinnacle moment in consumerism where things in the physical world could excite us yet we could still aspire to influence them and learn how they work, maybe even build them ourselves. I genuinely think there's something fundamental to keeping ourselves routed in the physical so I always intend to keep pinball machines around to give my kids an outlet to extract dopamine in perhaps one of the last none corruptable consumer goods.

I don't play pins to chase nostalgia. Pinball was never a scene I had access to and being born in 1987 I missed the boat on the best days of pinball and any real recollection to have formed a nostalgic attachment to that period. I am however extremely objective and romantic about the period of the late 80s/early 90s even if I can barely remember them. I've a hunch that it was an objectively better time for human brains, so I'm going to stay there whilst the rest of the world slowly emulates the plot of Wall-E.

 

[Taxiturn]

No involvement at all with pinball until my dad started repairing EMs around 2019/2020 - whenever I went up to visit him I’d play a few games on whatever he was working on, machines like Roto Pool and Spirit of ‘76.

Fast forward to summer 2023 and he’d just fixed up a Gottlieb Royal Guard, he gave me first refusal so I bought it from him. Steep learning curve in terms of figuring out EM repairs but with some guidance I managed to learn a few bits like cleaning up and adjusting Decagon score reels (massive pain!). I went on to buy another EM but I’ve sold them both now after getting them as close as I could to fully working.

At the same time as getting my first machine I started seeking pinball on location, so spent the second half of 2023 playing in the few places around Bristol which have machines. I went to Special When Lit for the first time in November 2023 which was a mindblowing experience as I’d never seen that number or variety of machines in one place before.

In February 2024 I thought I’d “have a go” at a tournament and that then led to another 25 over the course of the year and I’m now in pretty deep.

Similar to thejefu I have no pinball or arcade nostalgia so I’ll call a spade a spade, I have no seminal experiences involving TAF etc etc. I play because it’s fun and challenging, all of my gaming in my youth was on consoles so it’s something quite different and I really enjoy the social aspect.

 

[Sgt GrizZ]

I’m sure somewhere on here in the past I wrote a take on my time in the pinball frontline ….anyway here’s a very brief history

Mid 80s - first pins I recall playing are Haunted House and Centaur

1992 - Obsessed with T2. Gateway drug.

1990s - Hunt and play pins everywhere

2003 - Buy first pin. Tommy. Get into the UK scene , meet some folk .

2004 - Buy another … this then continues to this day .

2005 - 2017 Often take pins to UK shows

2010 - 2014 Involved with / organised South Coast Slam shows

2025 - How the hell do I get out of this chicken sh*t pinball outfit This wars never going to end is it

 

[roadshow16]

I wrote this for a pinball magazine over 20 years ago! In itself the article and way I write feels nostalgic to me. I hadn't even played in a pinball competition then, god I wish I had, I was bloody good back then!

 

[Sgt GrizZ]

I wrote this for a pinball magazine over 20 years ago! In itself the article and way I write feels nostalgic to me. I hadn't even played in a pinball competition then, god I wish I had, I was bloody good back then!

I remember that and still have those magazines of Nicks .
20 years !!

 

[Triple H]

I find the reasons for nostalgia really interesting, perhaps worthy of a dedicated topic? But in the absence of time travel and being able to be 21 again, having things that remind us of those times are the next best thing.

A good idea @kev a

This is why I started this thread in the hope that it would bring people's recollections to the fore

 

[Triple H]

I’m sure somewhere on here in the past I wrote a take on my time in the pinball frontline ….anyway here’s a very brief history

I'm loving the timeline format that you used there Sarge

 

[kev a]

My experience is similar to Ant's above, never into Pinball as a kid, by the time I was old enough to frequent pubs they had all but disappeared.
I'm sure I must have come across them at some point, and having enjoyed playing Space Cadet on the PC I'm unsure why I wouldn't have tried the real thing, its a bit of a blank, think I must have grouped them in with Fruit machines, they were something for 'adults'

My journey to Pinball was via the arcade scene, when a friend of mine stumbled upon a Sega Rally upright when donating something to a local youth club, arranged to collect it but moved house shortly after and gave it to me, on the understanding I would try and get it working.

A few machines followed and with there being a massive crossover with arcade/pinball collectors I slowly got exposed, learned a bit more and tried out pinball games on the iPad and Xbox.

My first Pinball was supposed to be the only one, to provide a little bit of variety to the collection, of course we all know what happens once you buy one.

Some point last year I reached the point where I could no longer squeeze anymore in at home, so arranged to keep one at work, now have a small but dedicated group of people who play regularly, so hopefully helping out in sharing the pinball hobby with some people who wouldn't otherwise be exposed.

 

[SteadyP]

Looking back, my pinball journey started in a dimly lit arcade in Seahouses. I must’ve been about ten, and BSD’s backglass alone was enough to send me scurrying in the opposite direction. Instead, I found comfort in the bright, cartoonish worlds of WWF WrestleFest, The Simpsons, TMNT—games that didn’t demand much beyond button-mashing and let me ride a quick wave of excitement. But if anything truly had my attention, it was SF2. As for pinball? I barely gave it a thought. I played T2 a bit, probably double-flipping like a maniac, but it never felt like something I could really get into—not when there were so many other distractions.
The next time I encountered a pinball machine was a Family Guy on holiday in Florida. I liked the show, so I gave it a go, but it felt more like a novelty than anything else. The ball bounced around randomly, things happened, but I had no clue what I was actually supposed to do. It was fun, but fleeting—nothing that stuck. Then came Tron. I’d started going to a snooker club in Newcastle with some mates, and between games of pool, I’d wander about. Tucked away near a spot-the-difference machine was this glowing, futuristic-looking pinball machine. Someone had left a credit on it—maybe a replay they didn’t realise they’d won—so I pressed start and gave it a shot. For the first time, something clicked. I loved the feeling of making shots, even if by accident. Chasing my own score was addictive, and hitting the third flipper blew my mind. Suddenly, I thought, “Wait—I might actually be good at this?” That was it. I was hooked. From then on, I started hunting for pinball in Newcastle. I found a Star Wars, then a Spider-Man, and each game deepened the obsession. Then lockdown hit, cutting off my access to pinball entirely. I started lurking on forums, devouring YouTube videos and podcasts, and before I knew it, I was buying my first machine—a WPT. I loved it. From there, things snowballed: I went to NERG twice, then Pinfest, then made the pilgrimage to Arcade Monsters in Orlando and Freddie’s Pinball Paradise near Frankfurt. I even dragged my two best mates into the hobby, along with my dad, who’s now reliving his own misspent youth. My daughters caught the bug too. They liked WPT, but it was the newer Sterns and JJPs that really grabbed them. It made me rethink my setup—if I was going to have a £2k toy in the house, it might as well be something the whole family enjoys. So WPT went, and Spider-Man took its place. Now my eldest is creeping dangerously close to my high score—kids absorb everything like a sponge. The dream? More machines. But first, I need a bigger pin shack. If I could pick my next game, it’d be something with plenty of shot variety—The Shadow or RBION are high on the list. I’ve lost all interest in video games, apart from the odd nostalgia trip on my modded SNES Mini. For now, I’m grateful I can still find a few great games around the North East. Just hoping IMDN doesn’t disappear from my local anytime soon—what a game.

 

[jonathan]

I was born in 1982. I've got great memories of playing on arcades and pinball machines at the beach and on holidays abroad. Streetfighter 2, Outrun, Afterburner, R Type, Chase HQ, Operation Wolf, Daytona USA were the sounds of my youth. My dad would always play the pinball machines while I was in the arcades.

Fast forward a few years and in 2005/6 ish I put a random bid in on eBay for an Electrocoin jamma cab with Carrier Airwing. Won it for £100 and the seller even delivered it to me for free as he was dropping a pool table off in the area. This got me into arcade machines for a few years and I ended up buying a few candy cabs before I fancied getting a pinball. I ended up getting a Gottlieb grand slam locally for a couple of hundred quid. I enjoyed it, but the bells and chimes didn't really hit the nostalgia for me and I ended up selling it to buy a DMD pin.

I ended up with a Streetfighter 2 pin that I bought for about £500 in 2007/8 ish. It was crap in hindsight but at the time I loved it. I ended up buying a new game every few months, playing it to death and then selling it to try something else. Picked up some right bargains. £350 LW3, £600 WH2O, £900 TAF, £1100 for a fully restored TZ. Bought and sold CV, TOTAN, AFM, MM, IJ, TAFG etc without a seconds thought. I wasn't bothered about hoarding games as there was always another one that would come up for sale within a few months. The market was much less saturated back then. LOTR and TSPP were the pick of the Sterns, but Stern had a lot of crap pins that no one really wanted too. The 90s Bally/WMS games were king.

That all changed with JJP and Woz. You can't underestimate what JJP entering the market did for pinball. Stern were "the world's only pinball manufacturer" and were coasting at that point. WOZ came out fully LED'd, screen in the backbox, multiple mechs, butter cab, huge ruleset. Stern had to up their game and the result is top games like Godzilla, JP etc. being released to try and get Stern the biggest market share. It's great to see multiple companies releasing games like Dutch, CGC, American pinball etc. The downside being that prices have gone mental for NIB games, and people are hoarding most of the top Bally/WMS games which has slowed the 2nd hand market right down. I'm at the point where I've owned most of the games I want to own and I'm quite happy owning a few of the fun cheaper games and spending my money on family holidays instead . I could buy a CFTBL, WH2O, WCS and FT for the cost of a D&D LE and I know which games I would get more enjoyment out of

 

[VeeMonroe]

I had a Tomy Astroshooter pinball growing up. In retrospect, it was terrible to play, but apparently good enough for my sons to eventually break (as they’ve done with all my childhood toys)!! I absolutely loved Astroshooter and I wanted a big version, in my house, when I grew up. I knew people, growing up, who had games rooms, but it was always a pool table whereas I had this vague idea of a massive version of Astroshooter Pinball sat in the corner.


Anyway, this never went anywhere until the pandemic. @MadMonzer were, and are, very much into board and card gaming, and I was always trying out new games. I was always very keen on dexterity games, such as Catacombs, but @MadMonzer was never that keen because he said the flicking experience was pretty rubbish, so we only owned a Crokinole board I’d imported from Canada.



Anyway, I’d bought a game called Super-Skill Pinball, which turned out to be very dull to play, but it got us talking about my Astroshooter pinball and @Madmonzer’s experience playing Lethal Weapon 3 and T2 in service stations in the 90s. I said I’d dreamed, if we had more space, I’d have a board games room with an ‘arcade machine’ in the corner, and we suddenly realised the ‘arcade machine’ was a full-size pinball.

This set us off downloading the Williams app on IPad, and then looking up how much it actually cost to buy a pinball machine. It was too expensive to buy MM, so we started making a list of the games we enjoyed on the Williams app that we could just about afford. Bear in mind, this was during the lockdowns and I’d just had the ‘PiBo Wizard’, so we had spare cash we’d normally spend on a holiday and not much time to play two-player games together due to the new baby (and our older boy, ‘Flipper Beast’, then aged four). Eventually, we found this Fish Tales at retail that Williams Amusements had priced lower than most pins I’d seen (at retail) because it was missing its topper.

I had no experience working on pinball machines, or even playing them, but I had this idea that we’d buy this thing and, if it didn’t work out, I could make a new topper using instructions on Pinside and then resell it at a profit. So, I phoned him, and I remember him being absolutely fascinated that this woman who’d never played a pinball machine before was interested in buying - specifically - a Fish Tales from him and remaking the topper.

Anyway, we got it delivered and it got played to death. Literally, it arrived with a fault (the wrong rubbers), which Pinside helped me fix, and then it broke down consistently, every fortnight, for the next seven months. When it wasn’t breaking down, the Flipper Beast (my older boy) was constantly playing it and he was so excited that, at one point, he bounced straight off his stool, slipped and broke a baby tooth on the casting trigger. He’s still got the gap, aged 8. After a couple of months, we’d found PinballInfo to help us with Fish Tales’ many technical faults and we’d decided we needed a second machine to play for when Fish Tales was waiting for @MadMonzer to fix.

Having realised that we’d overpaid for Fish Tales (prices have risen so much since that now we haven’t), I bought a Lord of the Rings from the forum.

By this point, the lockdowns were easing and our first trip out was to Pinball Republic (Flip Out, as it was then) to play some of the Bally-Williams pins from the app in real life. I still remember my complete joy walking through the door, and seeing an MM straight in front of me! Shortly afterwards, Funland opened in the Brunswick Centre and I went along to the press opening with @Gary Flowers, and then I went on my own to play JP2.

GZ had just come out, and I remember seeing Colly getting really hyped about the trailer on the forum, and me being very nonplussed. Anyway, I played the first GZ Pro into the UK at Funland and was absolutely blown away. I came back with @MadMonzer and the Flipper Beast, who also absolutely loved it. Flipper Beast was totally obsessed and wouldn’t stop talking about it and, amazingly, at this point, my mum actually bought him one of the first GZ Prems to enter the UK!! Subsequently, I think he played it solidly, morning and night, for two months and, when we entered him into a Best Game comp at PBR, he came 25th out of 50 - mostly adults - specifically on GZ, despite being, I think, five at the time!

After the pandemic, I made a vow to never get stuck in the house again and to play as many different pins as I could. I’ve now played, and reviewed, several hundred at EAG, Pinball Office, Pinfest, Southend pier, Joystiks bar in Prague, and various other locations. We’ve also had a selection of pins in the house, games that I’ve played a lot on location and we both like. The collection has pretty much stabilised by now - we own most of the pins @MadMonzer and I both like. Now the boys are older, we’ve started board gaming again (as a family this time).

Flipper Beast himself goes on, and off, pinball every few months. He’s currently ‘on’ after a few months of not playing at all, with his most-played pin currently being TNA. PiBo Wizard (the baby) has grown up with pinball machines (“PiBo! PiBo!”). He learned to plunge a ball on LoTR, use the flippers on TNA, and can now comfortably get 10 million on JP2 (and pronounce the word “pinball”). His most-played pin is Elton John, but he enjoys watching Stern new release trailers, and wants us to buy a Jaws or a Venom (playing Jaws at Funland hasn’t put him off). PiBo Wizard entered the youth comp at the UK Open last year and Flipper Beast made a confident debut in the main competition. I’m not sure if either boy will continue playing long-term.


PiBo Wizard, my lockdown baby, deep in concentration on Gottlieb's Diamond Lady in the UK Open Juniors event. He was, to my knowledge, the youngest person in the entire comp. Thanks @C&C for taking all the lovely photos.

Eventually, I made a new topper for Fish Tales. I really enjoyed it and am now trying to restore an Alien Poker, but it’s going slowly due to having two young kids.

 

[Pop Bumper Pete]

(A very old write-up I did in 2010)

While I do enjoy playing games from all eras I do have a soft-spot for games from the mid to late 70’s.

So my early pinball was during the end of EM’s (Gottliebs best years) and the start of SS, (new and a WOW factor)

Growing up, my family would take our caravan down to the Bellarine Peninsular for our holidays. Across from the park there was a milk-bar with 4 or 5 games lined up along the wall. I do not remember being allowed to play, but these would be the first games I remember seeing.

Move on a couple of year to when I was 10. There was two places to play pinball for me, the local arcade (that was about 1km from home) and the local fish and chip shop across the road.
The arcade is the first place I remember playing pinball, Space Odyssey and Grand Prix (Both Williams games) were the first games I played. While they also had an EM shooter, Breakout and a few early B/W driving games it was the pinball that got me through the door.
One of the driving games could be started by rubbing your shoes on the carpet and touching the start button (Static electricity), that got be booted out the door

The fish and chip shop was better, thought they only had room for one game, the game was changed over every month.
The op who serviced the shop ran mostly Gottlieb games (but I think he tried a few Zac EM’s there) I remember playing Mustang and Centigrade 37 there.
And then came the Sinbad, and the game changed. Those big beautiful blue displays. While they were limited by how many solenoids they could use, I believe the layouts of the early Gottiebs was better than the early Ballys from that time. Gottlieb sys1’s I totally love the look of them (just a pity about their reliability)

Come to 1982, I am 16. There is an advert in the paper, the arcade (above) has pinball machines for sale
Going in there is about 6 machines on offer
$100 buys you a single player Gottlieb Wedgehead
$120 buys you a two player Gottlieb
We take home ‘Sure Shot’ a single player Gottlieb (1976)
Over the next few years I would toughly take this machine apart and put it together again, always amazed at how they had originally made thing work with motors and relay banks
While the game is not on working order, I still have it and will never sell it (being my first pinball machine)

Between the ages of 18 and 21 I buy a few more games
The Empire Strikes Back, machine stopped working, (this is before the internet) too heavy to haul back to Melbourne, thrown in dumpster
Haunted House, had it 6 months, returned it get fixed twice, on the third time I sold it
(I have now realized why I have a bad back )
Star Trek (Bally) Still working, has only ever needed contacts cleaned
Playboy (Bally), Works, but need a good cleaning/replacing of connectors
Black Knight, needs a bit of work

At 21, life intervenes, and pinball takes a back seat

Fast forward now to 2003/04 (not to sure about timing )

I see a note about an Auction of pinball machines in Melbourne (A Bumper Action auction)
Cool, I wonder how much games are selling for, I wonder what will be on offer. I decide to go.
I turn up early to get a good look at what is on offer, the place is already crowded, but you can still get to play the games on offer
In one corner they have some beautifully restored 60s games, not my style, but nice none the less
Mostly up on offer is DMDs, I wait for the Auction to begin.
It takes a few lots to go under the hammer before the first pinball is up, it sells for $4000, the next one for a little more
I think getting back into the hobby is going to be a little more expensive than I had thought

I still would like to get back into pinball, so I start using the internet to find dealers in Melbourne
I find a few places but they do not have any games listed or prices
Then I discover a guy in Centre road, large list of games available, $500 less if I want it unshopped (but working)
I find one that looks interesting, an unshopped Creature from the Black Lagoon
It takes them half an hour to fix a small fault and the machine is up and running. We load it into the van and I bring it home

Yay

Problem, I live in an old miners cottage, a modern pinball with its backbox folded up fits through my front door with only half a centimeter to spare. But the internal doors are a different matter, it only fits through one, the main bedroom, and I now have a stinking, old, dirty pinball in my bed room
But that is OK as I am single guy, but the smell of old Italian cigarettes is too strong for me and it takes a couple of cleaning sessions to get rid of the smell
I soon get it clean and running nice, hey, I now like these newer games
Shed in 2004

https://imgur.com/a/BWyQpX6

Come to June 2010, I now have 26 games in my collection, most though are in storage, waiting for the day I stop buying more games and start looking for a larger house
It would be nice to have them all working and together

My collection is from a range of eras; EM’s, first generation solid state, second generation, alpha-numeric, DMDs and now three Stern’s I have bought NIB!

Do I have a favorite?
No, my games have different levels of appeal to me
Some days I want to play a long and challenging game, there are other times I want a quick ‘Bash the Ball Around’
There are other games I play as they are guaranteed to put a smile on my face (White Water)
And there are times I just turn them on to sit quietly behind me as I work on the PC, just blinking away

I am Pop Bumper Pete, and I like pinball

 

[Alan Syson]

I remember that and still have those magazines of Nicks .
20 years !!

I’m still waiting for edition 4. Remember the deal was pay for 4 up front so he knew the numbers required. Only produced 3.