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I played a lot of Off Road, Defender, Battlezone, Astro Blaster, Galaga in the Golden age. I know a few people who collect and refurb pinball machines, but I was never coordinated enough to play those so I have no favorite, but I appreciate the art and mechanism as I may a fine watch or automobile.

The game "Cowboy Pinball" had contestants standing in the middle of the ring, trying to grab a hundred dollar bill from between a bull's horns. The first bull that entered the ring with the contestants Saturday night was relatively calm, but the second bull bucked and charged, tossing people into the air. Contestants did sign waivers before entering the competition.

WASHINGTON - Stoppers. Bells. Flippers. And the occasional tilt. That's what you'll find with the more than 900 classic pinball machines at the National Pinball Museum in Georgetown. However, this summer, the last pinball will drop, and the museum will close its doors. David Silverman opened the museum six months ago in the Shops at Georgetown Park mall. Last Thursday, he got a letter from the new mall owners, Vornado Realty. "In that letter it basically says we're taking your lease ... and we're throwing you out in 60 days," Silverman says. Silverman signed a lease that allows mall owners...

News hit yesterday that Stern Pinball, Inc. has laid many of its line workers and several designers. No official press release from Stern yet, but the internet groups are a buzzing with comments from various sources talking about the devastating news. Does this signal the end of Pinball as we know it? Sadly, with a good chunk of Stern's revenue coming from private collectors and the economy doing a headstand right now, it's probably a safe guess that Stern might be a casualty of these trying times. Word is that Stern has been stockpiling machines for a few months now,...

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...

In a cosmic game of pinball, black holes fling high-energy protons into space, where they zigzag around at near light-speeds before smashing into low-energy protons, finds a new study. Then the collisions send bursts of gamma rays flying out from the center of our galaxy, which explains for the first time the mechanism for the high-energy jets first spotted in 2004. This proton-slinging could explain more than this cataclysmic light show deep in our galaxy. The scientists suggest other black holes in the universe could rely on the pinball mechanism to produce enormous jets of light. “Our galaxy's central supermassive...

TOKYO (Reuters) - A senior Japanese local government official resigned Friday after admitting to playing pinball instead of helping to deal with a powerful earthquake (news - web sites) in the area, Kyodo news agency said. Takashi Chiba, the deputy governor of Akita Prefecture in northern Japan, was enjoying a game of "pachinko," a popular pinball-like game, when a strong earthquake struck at about 6:30 p.m. Monday, the agency said. The quake injured about 100 people, damaged buildings, roads and railways and could be felt as far away as Tokyo, about 450 km (280 miles) to the south. A chauffeur-driven...

I had it, I lost it. I miss it, I was addicted to it.Any help would be, um...er.. Helpful?