Humble, TX
Quoted from Mr_Tantrum:So as a relative newbie (bought my first pin 3 years ago), here is the best advice I could give you (several others have mentioned it). When I started, I looked at the top 100 in detail, picked about 10 machines that appealed to me most, then read the owners forums and watched every video I could find on the 10. Fortunately, I live in Fort Worth, TX and the Texas Pinball Festival was just a couple of months away and about 45 minutes from my house. I went to TPF with the goal of playing all 10 pins on my list, which I did, and of course I played dozens of other machines. You know what happened? I think I dropped 8 of the pins off my top 10 and replaced them with games I either overlooked or didn't think appealed to me.
While there is value to reading the opinions of others, watching videos, etc., there is nothing that compares to actually playing the games yourself to see what you like.
I went through the same exact thing. I watched videos, read reviews, and played games on Pinball Arcade. Just about all the games I thought I wanted didn't appeal to me nearly as much after I actually played them. Games I had no opinions on and just walked up to and played became my favorite games. Themes can be very deceiving. They can make you think a game is good or bad before you even pull the plunger. Best to play a game many times before you decide to buy. Most new games that you have never played are really fun the first handful of games. Once you get past that and start paying attention to the rules you start to see a game's true colors.
