I've loved pinball for years, but just recently got heavily into the hobby after getting a few of my own machines. Reading through the Pinball Compendium books, I kept seeing games that I had never heard of. Over the last few months I've had lot of fun (and taken a few road trips) tracking down games that I've wanted to play. A buddy of mine suggested that we start keeping a record of all of the games we had played. We put together a list of games and created a book online, had them printed, and just got them today. Has anyone else done something like this? Are there any commercially made checklists out there? Anyway, I thought I would share.

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Initially we stuck with pins after 1970 because we based it off of the machines listed in the Pinball Compendium books from those decades on. Being new to pinball we didn't think we'd have the chance to play many machines from before '70, but after going to the York show I realized that that was definitely not the case.

At some point we will do a second run and add in more games from prior decades. For now we have 20 or so blank pages at the end of the book for write ins.

Flynnibus I'm finding that you are absolutely right about Central PA. Over the last few months I've been to Malvern's Pinball Gallery, Penn Skate in Allentown, the York show, and a ton of smaller venues with a few games here and there.

My wife is planning a birthday trip for next weekend. We somehow wrangled an overnight sitter. She's planned a 5 stop trip through Maryland to play pinball from noon - 2 AM. I'll probably get carpal tunnel and a few dvt's, but it will be worth it. Should check off a number of new games as well!

Hop-PAC that is a great idea as well. We should have used that as a source when we came up with our game list.

Alright here's the itinerary per my wife - We're starting out at the Victory Lounge (Pasadena, MD). They have 6 games, 2 of which I haven't had a chance to play yet (Batman 66, South Park). Next up, Crabtowne, USA (Glen Burnie, MD) which is about 13 minutes away from stop #1. They have 20+ games (Looking specifically to play Popeye Saves the Earth, The Simpsons, Star Wars '92, and Twister). Then it's about 30 minutes to Holy Frijoles! (Baltimore, MD) - 10 games including Guns N' Roses, Harlem Globetrotters On Tour, Lord of the Rings, and World Cup Soccer. Stop #4 is the Save Point Arcade (Westminster, MD) - 14 plus pins including Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure, Sorcerer, Space Invaders, and Starship Troopers. Then it's back over the border to the Timeline Arcade in Hanover, PA. 21 pins including Gilligan's Island, Monopoly, Meteor, Tales from the Crypt, and The Who's Tommy.

I haven't heard of the Silverball Museum - thanks for the tip man. I'm going to add it to the list of upcoming trips.

Great suggestion - we love it there and have been out twice. Pincrossing is another spot close by from the pinball gallery with a number of games that they keep in mint condition. We recently went to Penn Skate in Allentown as well (really cool rare games there like BMX).

The Silverball Museum (thanks poppapin), and the Pinball Parlour are two big collections in the area that are still on our list.

Ok it's been a few months but I wanted to follow up about the Pinball Parlour in Earlington.

My wife and kids were out of town recently so I decided to head out here to check it out, and man what a let down! The list of pins on their website is amazing A ton of popular games, and almost everything I would want in an arcade if I could choose the greatest hits of pinball: Cirqus Voltaire, Scared Stiff, Theater of Magic, Medieval Madness, Indiana Jones the Pinball Adventure, Star Trek The Next Generation, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Mars Attacks, Monster Bash, all of the Pinball 2000 games (except for Wizard Blocks), etc. They even have some fairly rare games like BMX, Blackwater 100, and Banzai Run.

Here's the crusher - almost none of these machines worked. Dirty, broken, and anything but maintained. The majority of the games I listed above weren't working. The ones that did had major issues with them like a sticking or weak flipper, drop targets that were totally stuck in place, ramps that would dump a ball directly into the outlane, missing mods, etc. The UFO from mars attacks was completely gone, and the DMD for a lot of the games were either not working or only partially visible. The Cirqus Voltaire was functional, but so dark that I couldn't even see the ball, and many of the other games were so dark they were unplayable. I could go on - it was tough / depressing to see all of these awesome games in disrepair.

There were a few standouts that ultimately made the trip worthwhile. Breakshot from Capcom and Diner were both mostly intact and fun games. They also had a huge selection of really cool older EM's. Some them actually worked (which was weird considering the solid states). I spent most of my time on the EM side, but was in and out of there within an hour.

I would definitely not recommend a trip out here, unfortunately. Hopefully someone can take over these pins and get them some rehab!

That's a bummer - I didn't know about Earls! Thanks for the tip, I'll put it on my list and may check it out this weekend. I'm going to head up to the Pinball Gallery for a few hours to check out their new Houdini machine (I've been dying to check that game out!).

Yeah the Pinball Parlour has strange hours (7-10pm) so I was there in the evening. Speaking of - I think the best way to show the current state of affairs at the Pinball Parlour is a picture from their website vs. one I took from my car while waiting for it to open.

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