Born in mid '70, I haven't been a pinball enthsiast during my childhood, when I was totally into video games: from Galaga and Pac-man to the C-64 and Amiga games. Sure, I also played some pinball machines here and there, but the main focus was on videogames. Actually few years ealier my dad got an EM pinball machine, and for some time we enjoyed playing it at night togheter: it was fun! But as I mentioned the new technologies of videogames attracted me more, and the connection with pinball machines remained quite limited, although I certainly felt some fascination from those big machines. During my late teens I started giving pinball more interest, putting some more coins in them (while I abandoned videogames). But by the early twenties, that was it: games rooms disappeared, and pinball machines in general were withdrawn from the wild. Soon I forgot about their existence for a long, long time.
Fast forward 20 years: one day I am surfing the Internet and suddenly something comes up related to pinball machines. Pinball machines? What? ...oh, I remember!! I kept reading, quite excited... After some weeks I realized that it was still possible to play these fascinating machines, and that many people owned modern games and some even had collections. Weren't those big toys supposed to be super expensive? Some, for sure. But I saw some affordable ones, too. What about transportation? Isn't it just for professional operators? It looked like many people were taking them in and out of their homes all the time. It was enough learning just some simple concepts . Why not give it a try?
Bought BSD as my first machine (the only pinball machine I remember Playing several times twenty years earlier) and.... the addiction started!
Wow... BSD as a first machine! Probably the thoughest! This is why I am a pinball wizard :-DDD (just kidding!).
Overall, I like several aspects of this hobby, but the main are the gameplay itself - so much joy and fun - and also the feeling of magic and time travelling that those beautiful machines bring about.
