Hey everyone! Was thinking about some fun questions to get some general pinball conversation going, and thought of this prompt. I'm sure it's likely been asked before, so apologies if you've answered this already in the past, but perhaps some recent releases might change your 2010s/2020s answers!
If you could only choose one game from each decade (60s, 70s, 80s, etc.) up to now, what games would you choose to make your personal best lineup? Thinking about this myself it's difficult to choose just one from the more recent decades with so many great games coming out, and tough for me to choose older games at all since I just don't have a lot of playtime on most 60s and 70s games. So, take my older picks with a grain of salt . I think my picks would have to be the following:
60s: Spin-A-Card - Ok, I'll be honest, I haven't played many games from the 60s. For this pick I browsed the EM top 100 and found one that looked like fun. This one seems to have a nice theme and some sort of cool objective with the card inserts on the playfield. Also traditional inlane/outlanes which a lot of games from the time don't have.
70s: Jacks Open - Love the simple yet challenging goal of completing card hands. Very addictive!
80s: High Speed - I enjoy the upper ramp on this game, I'm always a sucker for games with upper flipper shots. The simple objective of getting multiball and grabbing jackpots is fun and challenging.
90s: White Water - Ok, some of you may be surprised by this one since I didn't choose other favorites like MM, AFM, TOTAN, TOM, CFTBL, etc. but something about white water is just so fun to me. I think it's definitely the upper playfield shots and the awesome ramps, because as I said, I'm a sucker for a good upper flipper shot. Picking off the lights to advance rafts is fun and getting the vacation jackpot is a good challenge!
2000s: The Simpsons Pinball Party - This was a tough choice, and I almost wanted to pick Spiderman or LOTR instead, But I decided to go for TSPP for the deep and challenging ruleset, along with the more preferable theme compared to LOTR for me personally.
2010s: Wizard of Oz - This was definitely the hardest choice because there have been so many fantastic games recently with all of Jersey Jack's games, Stern JP, DP, GB, IM, and more I could barely choose. I finally decided that WOZ would probably have to be it since it is my highest rated game, but my taste has shifted more toward good shooters and WOZ can have some clunk at times, so this could change from day to day honestly. All the games listed above would be great candidates as well to me.
2020s: Avengers: Infinity Quest (Premium) - Ok, so there haven't been that any games this decade yet of course so I would have to say out of what's available, I'd have to go with AIQ. TMNT and GNR are great choices, and Godzilla is looking like it could be a contender as well but I have not had the pleasure of playing it yet so I cannot say for sure. I will stick with AIQ for now, but GZ with fleshed out code would likely take it's place.
Honorable mention: Radical! - I wanted to include it but since it snuck into the 90s and not 80s I couldn't choose it over the classic Bally/Williams DMD games, but I do adore this game.
And with that, I'd love to hear your answers and why you chose them!!