Pinball Games

[Grandpa Troll]

I am just curious if anyone has purchased a used pinball game (say games from 80's or 90's) and if so is it pretty hard to find parts if they break or is the service not too bad?

I been thinking of maybe putting one in the garage .

I had a couple in mind I used to play a lot.

I was alos remembering if anyone played the old piball type baseball game where the batting arm hit a steel ball that cam from under the pitchers mound and you could put it in the upper deck for a triple or a HR or whatever


Maybe I should just leave my youth alone but was kind reminiscing is all

Gramps

[duke o' york]

I've always wanted my own pinball table - but I guess I first have to get myself a garage.
I love playing pinball, but am absolutely useless when I first walk up to a table. I need practice and to learn where the big points are to be gained before I can start amassing some huge scores. When I lived in France, I'd take my washing to the launderette once a week, stick it in the washing machine and then play pinball in the bar next-door until everything was clean ande dry.

[snoopy369]

I'm in the same boat as DoY here ... down to the laundering (while I was in college, they had pinball and arcade machines near the laundry). Some great ones ... particularly Twilight Zone

[DrSpike]

Damn, I though this thread was going to be about such classics as Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies.

[Nikolai]

Pinball hardware games? Haven't seen one of those for years now. The last of the species I saw was an old one in the back of the cafee on a hotel near where my grandma lives. Now, that was a time of fun...!

[DrSpike]

You mean the youths of today are not being exposed to pinbally goodness? Surely you jest.

[Nikolai]

No, not pinball as it were. No arcade halls here. I've never been in one of those I think, being born in '86 I was too late... But I've played my part of pinball software games on my computer(s). Anyone ever tried Worms Pinball?

[DrSpike]

Yeah but do you come from rather an unadvanced civ right?

[Nikolai]

Beware, or I send you some comic stirips that will make you riot.

[rah]

Ming has a couple in his basement. An old "Pinball Wizard" and a "Four Square" both from the 70's I believe. A buddy of mine that just passed away had 6 or 7 old ones including a "jumping Jack". Parts can be hard to find but there are some on-line sites and there are actually conventions for that. Fortunately a couple of our friends used to repair then in the old days and still retain those skills.
Sometime the earlier games can me easier to maintain since there were no electronics and a lot of the mechanical parts were pretty standard across a lot of machines by the same manufacturers. A pop bumper is a pop bumper. If you routinely clean the machine, it helps a lot.

[Kinjiru]

A neighbor of my parents has several machines in his "Get away from the harpy" room, as he calls it. He has had a very hard time finding replacement parts, but he also is not at all savvy about the internet, so I would imagine that you will have a much easier time.

Ah the memories... coming home from school, dropping my books off at home and then going over to Mr. James's house to play "8-Ball Deluxe" and "Xenon". Only managed to beat him a handful of times in all those years...

[Spaced Cowboy]

I still remember living in Frankfurt Germany and going to the airport (we lived close and was a good place to just explore) where they had like 3 or 4 rooms in the airport each with at least 10 tables. OMG I was in heaven.

Doesn't every college come with a rec area with at least one pinball machine?

[duke o' york]

Sorry to hear about your buddy rah.

Yeah Spaced, there were two in the student bar when I was at university, and one of the pubs close to the university has one in the main bar still.
It's a rubbishy table, but they've changed it before from an even worse one so there's still hope that the good people at Midway have something good left in the stores.

[Urban Ranger]

I love pinball machines, even though I am rubbish at them even with lots of practices.

Civ, on the other hand, I can beat

[rah]

Ming and I used to enter tournaments. My favorite was one tournament in Carbondale. For the highest scorer on one of the machines "quick draw" The prize was a bong.
Besides dating the event, it shows the type of people that pinball tournaments attracted.