You have just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone

"Time is a one way street except... in the Twilight Zone."

Wow. I cannot say how excited I am. I am soon to be an owner of a marvelous pinball machine, a true work of art from my second favourite pinball designer - Pat Lawlor. The game is, of course, the 1993 Bally Twilight Zone. What a catch. This is such a thrilling time for me since I've really become a Twilight Zone geek in the last couple of weeks. I thought I'd share my story of how I came to be a Twilight Zone fan and actually scraped up a budget that allowed me to buy this masterpiece.

I've heard of the Twilight Zone pinball game just before I bought my first Williams game, Tales of the Arabian Nights. Every big collector seemed to have it and I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about. I looked it up on Google quickly, but really didn't give much thought into it. I let it go and got back to spamming my TOTAN game, which had been a dream-buy for almost 4 years.

My Elvira and the Party Monsters needed a complete workup, so I looked into some tutorials on YouTube just to get the hang of what restoring a pinball game was like. I ran into a video by GeekJoan, who I'd like to thank for pulling me into the Twilight Zone. Joan works at PinballDoktorn, a Swedish company that fixes pins (something like a Swedish TNT Amusements or Gameroom Collectibles). Joan had a 9 part video of him redoing the entire playfield of the Twilight Zone. I watched through it and remembered seeing the game somewhere before. I checked it out again on IPDB, read its history and that really pulled me into it. I read about how the entire Twilight Zone project resulted from the success that Lawlor had in his The Addams Family game. I knew The Addams Family was considered one of the best pinball games of all time, but I also noticed that Twilight Zone ranks #1 on IPDB.

Oddily enough, this happened to coincide with the time I got back into Pinball Arcade. I saw Twilight Zone was there so I purchased it. I was hooked. Even though I didn't know the rules or what the story behind the game was, I was hooked. I spent hours daily playing it. Soon enough I found the original TV series along with the new ones, and I also began watching that. I became a diehard fan.

This was about the same time I managed to scrape up enough money to buy a new pin. I was looking towards The Addams Family (standard edition) or Theatre of Magic. Mind you, I was actually really desperate for Theatre of Magic. I think that it is still the game I enjoy most (go JPop!), but Twilight Zone was everywhere. I'd play the pin, I'd watch the series, I'd read about Serling. Hell, I even watched the movie! Since then I've been hunting down a Twilight Zone pin somewhere in Europe, until I ran into one.

I was a bit afraid that I'd get buyer's remorse because of how infatuated I am with Theatre of Magic, but I definitely do not regret buying Twilight Zone. A wide-body pin will provide a nice little variation to my small, but growing, collection. The crate's going to arrive any day now, so I'm really anxious to set it up and get playing, modding and just enjoying this wonderful piece of pinball history.

I'm pretty sure that I've just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone.