Earliest I remember is in the early 80s being drawn to some random EM by the clicking dials, bells and lights then getting the chance to "play" though for all I remember now it was just me banging on the glass while an adult worked the flippers. All I know is that from then on any time I saw a machine I'd play it until I was dragged away. Memories of other games back then are blurry but the flood back when I play them now. A few games I remember seeking out over and over though... Black Knight, Comet, Cyclone, Pinbot and High Speed.
Early 90s started with most of the arcades and other locations accessible to 11 year old me on a bike drying up so I missed out on a lot of titles for a few years. The only games I remember from then are Hurricane which I was already primed for from comet/cyclone and The Machine which was a hell of a drug at the dawn of puberty.
I made up for it by fleshing out my own ideas for tables on graph paper and even tried making a few of them in the basement using scrapwood and cannibalized toys/appliances with predictable results. I never did give up on making my own but the idea was tabled in late 95/early 96 when AFM came out just as my new driver's license made it accessible and I don't remember much else until college when a convenience store near my dorm got an MM that led to missing a lot of classes.
2000s started with the industry imploding and a badly broken wrist that kept me out for awhile until LOTR dragged me back in. Continued to playcasually for the next several years, stymied by the responsibilities of adulthood and recurring problems with the wrist.
Around 2018 life had settled down and my wrist had healed as much as it was ever going to so I started getting serious again first at locations and then just as 2020 started I decided it was time to revisit the homebrew idea. Picked up a boardless, water-damaged Baywatch with most of the plastics missing or broken but the mechanicals more or less intact, dusted off my old box of crap from radio shack and blew up a lot of transistors refreshing my memory of how they all work. Meanwhile was going to every location I could find for "research" and checking out makerspaces for space/tool access when covid turned the world upside down so I've been forced to learn by trial and error in my cramped 1 car garage using whatever tools I've accumulated over the years.
The going has been slow but after a few random playfields to try things out it's starting to get serious. I hope to have something that is fun to someone other than me in another year. Realistically though it'll probably be longer as the Iron Maiden I picked up to continue my "research" keeps revealing new insights that require hours of careful study which cuts into the time I have to spend in the garage.
