Liberty Lake, WA
This all started with me spending time in the Mpls/St. Paul airport arcade (bikable from my house!) when I was about 10 years old, seeking the odd dime or quarter left in the change trough and immediately trying my luck at one of the pinball machines or the baseball simulator. I never got good enough to play for long there, but the die was cast.
Over the years, I spent time playing the odd machine at bowling alleys, including Aces and Kings, which I never figured out at all (actually, I probably couldn't keep a ball up long enough to figure anything out!).
Eventually, a friend of mine and I started spending time playing Atlantis and could reliably work our way to specials and roll the credits up, sometimes all the way to 15. That was where I learned to play--not so much by bump-passing or anything too sophisticated, but really just shot-making and making drain and outlane saves.
College brought me a stint on a brand-new Paragon during my senior year finals week that was brief but glorious (I still miss that game), but there was little else in the way of pinball for years after.
The video revolution found me badly lacking in the skills necessary to succeed at games like Joust or Galaga, let alone the more sophisticated games. And they seemed to have driven pinball out of existence wherever I looked.
It really wasn't until I discovered the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas that I really got back to playing again. This was about 10 years ago when I was in my late 40s. Until that time, every encounter with the new super-fast ramp-rich machines was daunting to me (not to mention the 50- or 75-cent price per game!).
One of the people that I spent time with at the PHoF was Gary Dillahunty, who, along with his wife (my sister-in-law) Jane, has now opened a place in Tucson, D&D Pinball. I was lucky enough to help Gary move about a dozen machines that he purchased with my brother's help in the Boise area from Boise down to Tucson prior to them setting up their shop. Needless to say, I thoroughly "tested" lots of their pins :-).
Being a web developer, I built and maintained their website, and I've even been down to help them run the business for a weekend. What a blast! Look it up if you're ever down there, though the shop is now under new ownership.
I've been playing a bit locally here (Spokane WA area), but unlike Seattle or Portland, there aren't any places with more than 4 machines! So I started trolling the CL ads and finally got lucky and found the World Cup Soccer machine that struck my fancy. I'm trying not to play TOO much in order to keep the game relatively fresh, but I am enjoying fixing the small issues that have come up. Once I sorted out the goal trough/striker optos problem, I was off to the races!
UPDATE 11-May-2021
Some time has passed, changing a few details from my story: D & D Pinball is now under different ownership (too much time for my fully-employed brother- and sister-in-law!). I'm no longer working as a web developer. And, delightfully, Spokane now has some arcade/pinball bar options for playing a wide variety of machines!
