I try to replicate this everytime I play

I think that's what draws me to machines of a certain era, a certain manufacture - the machines I was coming across and playing when I was young. Visually, audibly, even the feel of the buttons and levers, they imprint on our young impressionable brains.

The game is so tactile and you describe it well. Add in a particular set of chimes or bells, the sound of the score reels resetting, even the feel of the flipper buttons, the plunger. I spent a few minutes this week lining up the plunger of a recently acquired game so there was no friction or interference - just a smooth pull, strike, and a little bounce - just like I remember.

My only complaint about the one playfield protector I have, on Old Chicago. You hear the ball go up the shooter lane, then silence.

I've mentioned this on other threads and people think i'm nuts (oh, you may not have said it, but I know you think it lol).
I understand you can't hear the ball rolling around on METALLICA or some newer machines, but you've just described perfectly what it can take away from an EM or SS game. Those sounds are part of the experience. Just hearing the score reels clicking, the motor switches and relays and solenoids firing - there's a magic to it. For those few minutes I'm back at an arcade with my quarter on the glass waiting for my next chance.

Yup, a perfect moment. Sometimes late at night I'll turn on all
of the machines in one of the game rooms and just marvel
at the artwork and colors.
Steve

I love the image and moment you described. For a lot of us, that’s what pinball is all about. Moments in time.

Beautifully put- but for me the magic moment is at the completion of a full resto when you can take a minute to look at how it is ;from what it was; and, now how it was originally meant to be - providing an enormous level of pride and satisfaction.

Best moments in pinball, turn all my games on and just bask in the glow of it all.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm trying to recreate those moments from my youth - but those moments were invariably in a well lit arcade with a cacophony of bells, chimes, voices, beeps, and boops... elbow to elbow with those around me swearing at their machines.

Yet, like many in the thread above, my perfect moment is the darkened game room lit only by the pins and animated by a handful of 455's in the backglasses. They are the games of my youth, but not the environment.

I can step up to MY machine and know it will run well, and in the rare case it doesn't? That's OK! I've got a repair to do tomorrow! Which is another favorite moment - lifting the playfield, opening the backbox and getting hit with that smell - a mixture of ozone, coil dust, old wood and that general 50 year old funk that wafts out of the innards.

I don’t think think there is anything wrong with recreating moments from your youth. If it makes you happy, just enjoy it and don’t second guess!

Exactly! Funny, I know the smell of all my machines. You could blindfold me and lead me to coin doors. I would know which is which.

I've been to a couple of pinball shows where they either turned off all of the
lights in the room or at least dimmed them.

One was the show Tim Arnold and Herb Silvers put on in Las Vegas
and the other was Pacific Pinball Expo. Both were many years ago
but a lasting memory. Sure miss P-P Expo as it was close and by far
the best pinball event I've even been to. I think there were 6 or 7.
Steve

Introspection and retrospection can be good though... as I think about it, I realize that I'm distilling those moments from my youth into those components that make me happy and filtering out the dissatisfiers (distracting noise, machines with issues, loss of quarters, that guy flipping next to you with a lit cigarette in this hand...)

Sometimes its just the game, other times its the thrill.
Indeed the sounds grab hold of one.

Ill add smell. Playing by the ocean shore....That smell of salt air.
Different in the North East Atlantic.
Or the smell of Cotton Candy and Coppertone.
The summer air.

When I travel to the places of my youth....sometimes the smell opens a flood gate of memories.
Add Pinball, and Music of the day, and I am transported.....

Great Moment for Op, and all of us to share!