EMs are my cup of tea. There are some great early SS titles, but I usually stick to EMs.
My first game was a beaten up old Kings & Queens which cost £100. At the tender age of 14 this was a lot of money. The game looked rough and played even rougher, but who cares I now owned my very own Kings & Queens. After a few tweaks (and shocks) it played well and we had a great summer's pinball out of it. My family wasn't exactly rich. We lived in a council flat in a rough neighbourhood in South East London. Owning your own pinball at 14 either made you lots of friends or many enemies. Envy is a nasty thing. I blame The Who, Tommy and that whole Pinball Wizard scene around in 1975. That's what kicked it off, although I was playing pinball on a Williams Frienship Seven at the age of Three in Kennington SE1 in a club below the flat where my parents lived. Life was less pretentious and much more simpler back then. I also distinctly recall playing a Heat Wave at around four or five. There was also a big pinball scene in Europe at the time. There were some excellent Gottlieb games in Italy around 1973 to 1977. Italy being my parent's country of origin we would always return for an annual summer vacation where I had the good fortune to play every single Italian Gottlieb title that was going.
Back in London the ruling party of pinball had now become Bally, with a coalition Government for a while in around 1974 (oddly enough there was one for real around that time too) between Gottlieb and Bally.
Bally and their operators had control of some of the biggest and brightest arcades in London, as a consequence their games were getting a lot of attention. Wizard!, The Captain, made their marks, then Bally didi it with the early SS games which simply swept away Gottlieb in the UK. How could Gottlieb compete with their simply deficient games against the likes of Mata Hari, Bobby Orr, Six Million Dollar Man, Playboy, Globetrotters etc. The die were cast Gottlieb were on a downer which they'd never recover from.
At the slightly older age of 51 I now own a few good titles. Still based in London in a slightly better area, my love of these old games has now reached limits which I had't ever dreamned of before. The pinball scene for EMs in England is more or less dead. There are a few good souls out there who have a few good games, but in general the complete lack of good games and the fact that operators ran them into the ground in the 60's and 70's means there is little out there. So I decided to buy games from the good ole US of A and some from Canada. I have built up a fair collection, some I keep, some I sell, but generally like all.
KHL
Pinside member
11y 91,950 809 15
Cool, I enjoyed reading this.