How I got into Pinball

I grew up with Nintendo, both I and the little gray box came into the world at roughly the same time. The first pinball I can remember playing was Pin*Bot at the local skating rink. Didn't see much pinball around during my youth, other than a stray pin here or there at gas stations during family vacations.

Later on in high school my group of friends would hang out at a LAN PC gaming business. The kind of place where you paid for time on their gaming PCs. Many hours of Rouge Spear and UT99 were racked up. One day they brought a pin into their front arcade area, Whirlwind. I always had to play a game on it, even then with barely any experience in pinball I knew it was cool. I'm mean it had a fan that was interactive with the game.

Fast-forward onto college and I find a Medieval Madness in the campus bowling alley. My first game on that was pure magic. The call-outs, the trolls, the exploding castle, I was blown away. Sadly over the years they let the machine disintegrate, and now it is gone. However my love of pinball was secured.

I always felt like pinball was unobtainable for "regular" people, too expensive and complicated to own. So I looked around on the web for information, stumbled on to VP-Forums and learned about pinball simulation. I figured I could play the games with the actual ROMs and it would be at least better than nothing.

One fateful day in 2009 I happened to think about checking Craigslist for pinball. I stumbled upon an ad for a list of machines having somewhat reasonable prices in Kansas City. I spotted a Jack*Bot listed for a price I could afford and went for it. It was after all just like Pin*Bot. Less than 6 months later I got a double deal for Sorcerer and Royal Flush and the rest is history.