Pinball's been in my blood since 1971

By AXrelay

March 12, 2014


10 years ago

I first started playing pinball in the 1970’s when I was a kid growing up in La Mesa, California. The main place we played was called Family Fun Center on Fletcher Parkway, and they had miniature golf, batting cages, and a huge arcade (2 arcades if you count the smaller one near the batting cages). In the golden era of pinball, they had close to 100 pinball machines, and this was prior to video games in the arcade (I remember “Pong” and “Tank” coming in the late 70’s). We would ride our bikes to the arcade (and later drive cars when we turned 16) and play pinball 3 or 4 days a week.

The first game I remember being able to win replays on (and then selling the replays to younger kids) was Bally’s Delta Queen. I can still see the line of people waiting to play Bally’s Wizard! when it came out in 1975! The operator must not have kept that play field cleaned and waxed, because within 6 months it was worn down to the wood! We had a choice of so many machines that it really boiled down to the games that we could consistently beat to get replays. For some reason those were mostly Bally games. The Gottlieb games were harder to win (seems like the factory settings for high score replays were higher), as most of the games were “Specials” (classic wedge heads). The Williams games were OK, but they had that weird “pointy art.” We never would play a Chicago Coin game – ever!

Around 1978 I bought my first pinball machine. I was in college, and would still go to the arcade once in a while. The operator was selling off his stock of EM (Electro-Mechanical) pinballs because the solid state games were taking over. I bought a 1976 Gottlieb Volley for $220. It was it pristine condition and only had a few thousand plays on it. It stayed in my room at my parent’s house until 1982 when I was preparing to get married. I was a broke college student, so I sold it for $300 – I regretted it ever since.

I got caught up with life and forgot about pinball until about ten years later when computer pinball started to become available. I started thinking about owning a machine again, and around 2007 I bought a 1972 Gottlieb Grand Slam. I continued to buy EM’s, but always desired to get another Volley! About two years ago, a friend from a pinball league I play in here in Riverside found a Volley in Los Angeles (he knew I was looking for a good one), and after playing it for about 6 months sold it to me for his cost. It is in fantastic shape, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

It feels like pinball has come full circle for me, and I enjoy playing and collecting the EM’s from the 70’s as well as some of the newer solid state games. My wife loves pinball too, and we both enjoy playing pinball at home and in leagues. I guess when pinball gets into your blood it’s there to stay.

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Comments

10 years ago

Nice story Todd!

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