Question: Which pin do you credit (or hold responsible) for sucking you into pinball?
Klondike. It was just better looking and had more to do than any of the surrounding machines at the time. And Fireball. I knew I had to get a job if I wanted to keep playing that one.
Was a '70's surf themed EM, can't remember the name. It doomed me to a life of being in trouble with the misses for bringing home yet another machine...
Addams Family and Dr Who were at a local Video Safari. I rode my bike there every other day and dumped a ton of money into those pins. Thanks mom!
I went through three distinct eras, leaving and coming back
Initial intro EM era - Wizard! And I thought I was one at the ripe age of 10...Everyday after school I'd get 2 quarters from my mom, and I'd bike two blocks away to the local arcade. Weekends were spent collecting deposit bottles.
Re-into early 80's - Black Knight and High Speed at the local TimeOut arcade at the mall. My Early Teen years. However, I mostly played vids...Donkey Kong and Robotron master
Long lull into 90's...Didn't play really from 85 to 97 with college and new career
DMD era - TOTAN at a local bar on a six month startup out of state. Sadly all but WMS and Stern were out of business, with WMS to close its doors a year later.
Collecting era - 2001 when I ran into a local pinhead who worked at Home Depot while building a home theater in my basement. Started talking pinball (he had bought a container of them), the juices started flowing again, and here we are.
I particular remember Spirit of 76, Strato Flite, and Gulfstream as getting me hooked on pinball..... This was before video games, of course.
Quoted from fattrain:Jurassic Park.
The bug bit me, and bit hard...
+1
First pins I ever played, Jurassic Park and IJ around 93-94. Those things were everywhere. IJ was fairly new as well. Both on my short list of pins to own someday, especially IJ.
Evil Knievel home version at Montgomery Ward's in Bloomington Minnesota, Fall 1977. I had to play this game every time we went to the store.
I remember playing Centaur when I was a kid (taught me a harsh reality of 20 sec games), it was mid-to-late 80s and I was 7 or 8 at the time. I remember beautiful and scary Haunted House and few pins no one mentions any more: Vector and Electra. Because I couldn't get my money's worth in fun time for the price of the coin I mostly looked others play (I was a video game kid). Then it was a long pause and somehow I started again looking for pinballs at fairs (two times per year in my town) at mid 2000s since video games were mostly broken (playing Pang with joystick registering only moving to the right is no fun, I kid you not) and the first I played was Scared Stiff, then Fish Tales and Stargate and Johnny Mnemonic (of which only Scared Stiff and Fish Tales work today). Finally last year I decided to buy my own pinball after discovering Visual Pinball and stumbling upon a semi neglected TOTAN by chance. I bought first thing I found in decent condition and price in the ads: Whitewater. Two months later Fish Tales joined.
Quoted from o-din:Ahhh... good ole Monkey Wards.........
Woolworth's for me...that had the largest EM arcade when i was a kid
My enthusiasm came from pinball video and computer games and from there progressed to the actual kind.
JP here.
My parents hated the idea of me playing arcade games at all, but I had a grandpa who spoiled me. He'd watch me sometimes on Fridays when my mom worked but I was off school, and he had a bowling league. He'd give me $20 to play the arcade games with while he bowled, which for an about 10 year old was a TON of money.
I'd always play the vids because I figured pinball was random, and if you got better at vids you could play longer.
Then, one day, I went to Summerfest with my parents. I could care less about what they wanted to see, so I asked to hang out in the arcade tent and they could get me when they saw whatever it was they wanted to see. They used to set up tents with a bunch of games in them. I LOVED watching pinball, because it wasn't my money being spent, so when I saw someone playing the new JP I went over to respectfully watch.
I was amazed. He kept playing the entire time (probably about 30 minutes) on the same game, and he started talking with me. He told me that you could get skilled, and if you got good skills you could win free games. When my parents came to get me, I knew I couldn't wait to find a machine and get to playing.
JP was especially awesome because I found one on route, and if someone else walked by that you wanted to look cool for, you could always hit the Smart Missile and go into Multiball on ball three. The combination of it NOT making me feel silly, and the fact you could win free games led me down the rabbit hole that I'm still in today
Quoted from goatdan:The combination of it NOT making me feel silly, and the fact you could win free games led me down the rabbit hole that I'm still in today
That sir, is the secret sauce of pinball. Thanks to everyone who posted. Very cool to see how you guys all got infected/inducted.
Quoted from Elfman:High Speed
Yeah, what he said. But, in this order for me:
High Speed>Rollergames>T2>TAF>IJ>Cyclone>Funhouse>AFM>JD>Fast Draw>Fireball
These are the games that had the most influence on my play/skillset and what I want to play.
The tech side and genius design of the games above have had the most influence on me. Using what they had to work with and coming up with something most people would say, "That game just did that so well! But how amazing was it?"
Quoted from teekee:collector paid me big bucks because he just had to have the pinball machine
And a legend began.
wow i started to play pin when i was 12, so many.
as long as there was to buttons, i could go on for hours.
Cyclone. We had a bar across the street from my office at my first real job out of college. Several days a week, "Lunch Hour" consisted of three of us having a couple of beers and playing Cyclone. Those were the days. I remember the disappointment one day when we went over and Cyclone was gone and in its place was a Fire! We played the crap out of that one too!
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