Posted on 04/26/2008 1:17:35 PM PDT by vietvet67
MELROSE PARK, Ill. — Being inside a pinball machine factory sounds exactly as you think it would. Across a 40,000-square-foot warehouse here, a cheery cacophony of flippers flip, bells ding, bumpers bump and balls click in an endless, echoing loop. The quarter never runs out.
But this place, Stern Pinball Inc., is the last of its kind in the world. A range of companies once mass produced pinball machines, especially in the Chicago area, the one-time capital of the business. Now there is only Stern. And even the dinging and flipping here has slowed: Stern, which used to crank out 27,000 pinball machines each year, is down to around 10,000.
To most, the story seems familiar — of a craze that had its moment, of computers that grew sophisticated, of a culture that started staying home for fun, of being replaced by video games. But to pinball people, this is a painful fading, and one that, some insist, might yet be turned around.
“There are a lot of things I look at and scratch my head,” said Tim Arnold, who ran an arcade during a heyday of pinball in the 1970s and recently opened The Pinball Hall of Fame, a nonprofit museum in a Las Vegas strip mall. “Why are people playing games on their cellphones while they write e-mail? I don’t get it.”
“The thing that’s killing pinball,” Mr. Arnold added, “is not that people don’t like it. It’s that there’s nowhere to play it.”
Along the factory line in this suburb west of Chicago, scores of workers pull and twist at colored wires, drill holes in wooden frames, screw in flippers and tiny light bulbs and assorted game characters who will eventually move and spin and taunt you.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sounds great!
But, I can't find it. After you go to "Start" and then "All Programs", is it under "Accessories"?
I had alot of fun . . . and wasted lots of nickels, dimes and quarters . . playing pinball while my parents bowled. Like Wylie Coyote is to the Roadrunner, I’d buy that damn pinball machine that took all my money if I could remember its name and knew where to find it.
Apparently Professor Hill accomplished a lot more than stop the reading of Captain Whizbang ... we also lost the art of 'juking'.
My first job at 14 was in a pinball arcade making change. I keep thinking about grabbin a machine on ebay...
For any pinball fans out there I have to recomend the PinBall Hall of Fame series for all the different video systems. They just released the Williams pinball collection and it is really amazing. From the older machines of the 70’s (Gorgar and Black Knight) to the last games ( Funhouse and Whirlwind). Its so hard to find any pinball table , let alone a real classic like Space Shuttle that this was the best $20 I’ve spent on entertainment in a long time. A must for pinball fans...............
In East TN growing up they had money machines ... you played to win games which could be cashed in for the price of a game per unit scored ... roll of $.05 was 40 coins/$2.00. The machine I remember most was the ‘O.K.’ Gate ... and freind and I ran a machine up to the max one time when the resatrat button which deleted a game with each button punch got stuck and would register a restart or add on without taking a game off of our total! We actually got the money but were never allowed to play that machine again, even after a mechanic fixed it. There are still some of those old machines around but tokeep it repaired would take a whole lot more time than playing it ... everything was wired, tere were no computers back then; I guess the machine functioned like a giant computer of sorts.
Pinball IS dead: machines too big and too expensive, when you compare them to a PS2, Wii, or PC game. Add to that the fact that there is NO place to play them.
The few “game rooms” you can find today are loaded with chip-based video games that are mass produced, rather than the labor-intensive electro-mechanical pinball machines.
As dead as buggy whips.
Fireball and Black Hole. My favorites! Multi-level, multi-ball. Too much fun!
That stabalizes the table and gives you maximum control with your juke.
I'm screwed.
The greasers would lift the machine and place matchbooks under the front legs to decrease the slope of the machine. Sometimes the machine was on to it and would tilt right off the bat.
Pissed the greasers off.
Note to self: Never put on a public forum a commitment to buy a $4,000 pinball machine.
http://www.pinrescue.com/games/golden_bells.html
In XP it’s under games.
I’m trapped in vista. No pinball.
The Bowling alleys always had a room full of them. They could be found at the trampoline/Batter's cage entertainment centers.
Even the Hard Core Pool Halls usually had some, over by the CocaCola machines next to the Manager's desk...
The Bad Boys would take some 3 pound test monofilament fishing line, light up the end with their Zippos and tag the edge of a quarter with the burning end, blow it out and mash it down so it would fit in the coin slot.
One ruffian would shield the area of the coin slot from the managers view while the other slowly fiched the tagged coin slowly down the slot... easing it until that "pop pop pop" started whirling the game meter until it maxed out (usually around 27 games or so).
The Bad Boys deed wasn't finished however! To get maximum play, they would wait for the manager to get busy in some way behind the counter, then, they would place an ashtray under each of the game's fron legs, closes to the flippers...
They could play for hours on just a quarter!
Or so I hear...
Pinball ping!
Another unforseen trickle-down victim of the Indoor Smoking Bans. No one goes to bars anymore.
I grew up playing flipper machines, and the old analog counters were the best! After they went digital, I kinda lost interest. We played on a machine for a whole summer for 25 cents a day. It matched on the same number every time and the owners never caught on.
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