Rediscovering Pinball!!!

By muttieb

March 04, 2012


12 years ago

I have just recently refound my love of pinball. I grew up in a small town in Northern Minnesota where as a child in the 90's the closest things to an arcade that we had were bars. It was here that I fell in love with arcade games such as galaga and donkey kong (yes this town was not the hub for the latest games.) Along with arcade games at bars were pinball machines, but as a young child I never had the chance to play them much for a couple of reasons.

1) they cost twice as much to play then an arcade game.

2) as a kid pinball never lasted long due to the fact that eye hand coordination sucks at the time

So pinball became something that I always wanted to play but never had the chance. Flash-forward to today where I am making it my mission to build a mame cabinet to fulfill my childhood promise to myself that I would one day own a machine so I would never have to worry about enough quarters again. In the process of researching MAME I came across visual pinball (BLASPHEMY!!!, i know) well after playing a few games a new obsession took over me. I soon learned that visual pinball is fun and all but its nothing like the real thing.

Knowing that I am nowhere near the point of being able to buy a machine for my self, I set out on a search of Duluth bars to find the best (and only) pinball machines in the area. They were few and far between and the ones i did find were in bad shape or in some shady bars. Also playing in a bar means that the hand eye coordination somehow got worse hmmm.... I made do with these until I came across an article online talking about recent pinball additions at a comic books store in Duluth. I can't tell you how excited I was to learn that they had 3 machines to play, and only for a quarter each. I immediately went there and got my fix of pinball in a location that has multiple machines for cheap in a clean environment where the upkeep on the machines is top notch.

So here I am hoping to learn a few things more about pinball and hopefully one day get my own machine!!!

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Comments

12 years ago

Welcome to pinside. Glad you found a place to play and for cheap too but, now that you have the passion, it will only grow and grow until you have your own.

12 years ago

oh you don't have to tell me that, I've been debating selling a kidney....hmmm

12 years ago

You came to the right place. Welcome to Pinside.

12 years ago

It is always nice to combine two passions (Comics and Pinball) in the same location. I was always fond of pizza joints that had pinball.
Comic book store works too... ; )
As long as the machines are working and clean I'd play pretty much anywhere!

11 years ago

Welcome, you will have your own one day.

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