I don't know if I was insulted when operators were asking me for a $10 dollar entry fee, but I had one heck of a laugh yesterday.

I'm sure other pinsiders have other interesting stories of pinball train-wrecks on route/location.

While I went to drop my dad off at the eye doctor, I hit up the nearby Golfland (miniature golf establishment) to play a game of Junkyard. These jokers raised the price to dollar play, but I love pinball, and I wanted to do my part to keep the pinball money flowing in the arcade.

Golfland yesterday was doing a promotion where arcade-goers pay a $10 dollar fee to play without limit. I quickly passed by watching participants of the promo play the pins, before taking the $10 dollar dip. My god. Games are still in inexcusable shape. Glad to see my daily complaints are going unnoticed! They should pay me $10 to play the following train-wrecks.

Junkyard (Williams). Translite backbox lights and GI aren't working. Constantly playing in the dark (arcade go-er was asking me which game this was...not a good thing). Wrecking ball magnet doesn't work. Limp left flipper makes the video mode almost impossible to get (which is basically Junkyard, in a nutshell). Good luck scoring anything on this mess. Tilt wasn't set up right either, and table wasn't leveled right. The game seemed to drag on forever.

The Simpsons Pinball Party (Stern). Slingshots barely function. Ball is not "wild" in this slow bore. Upper-right flipper does not work at all, making game basically unplayable IMO. Wouldn't make a difference if flipper works, since mini-playfield mini-flippers look like a tiny Gnome in metal shoes was using them as trampolines (totally scratched up with almost no rubber left). People were leaving this game during play. Sigh.

Monopoly (Stern). Flippers weren't getting enough power. Not going to help when this game is ramp/orbit heavy. Unplayable mess. Nuff' said.

Pirates of the Carribean (Stern). Seemed to work ok. Playfield was really dirty. Ball was moving waaaaaaay too slow. I've played clean HUO Pirates games, and the game is pretty darn fast. Still...a better condition Pirates compared to the other Golfland Pirates where the ship ball lock wasn't working (machine was constantly checking for missing balls).

Autumnfade, would this pool/category of people include those that bring their machines to pinball shows that clearly don't even work to begin with. I ran into a few of these at California Extreme. I assume these type of people expect for pinheads putting the show together to fix their machines for free (or do it out of love, on their own free time). Sigh.