Hey there, just joined the Caster's Club with Fish Tales as my first ever pin.

Bought from Freddy's Pinball Paradise (great guys, btw, can't wait to visit them once they reopen).

I used to play FT at a local pizza place as a kid until they closed down, so I find the machine very nostalgic, and I think it's a great first pin. Totally brutal though... I have it set to 5.8 degrees, medium difficulty, standard flippers and it keeps kicking my ass over and over again, my average is around 10-50M per game, with 128M being my top score so far.

Had it delivered to my office with very narrow doors, so I had to take off the backbox. Spent 2 hours labeling each wire and making a checklist of connectors, while constantly worrying not to get any rain, as we couldn't bring the machine inside.

Disconnected and labeled. Spent almost a full roll of electrical tape

I gotta say I underestimated how heavy the pin could be. Even without the backbox and glass we had to carry it together with 3 friends. All the way up to the 4th floor with extremely narrow staircase. But we finally made it. Then it took me another 2 hours to reconnect everything and it started up on the first try without any errors. Not bad for a first timer!

FT happily standing in the office, waiting for me to play a couple of rounds every hour or so

Pinball is pretty much non-existent where I live. Half of the people don't even know what pinball is (regardless of age), and when I try to explain it, they think about foosball. The guy selling his collection on classifieds said he was able to source 5 pins in 8 years locally. So having a personal pin that I can play at any time I want feels very special. Now looking for my second pin!