Spent 13 hours in Asbury Park, NJ at the Silverball Museum/Arcade which is now open after 6 long weeks of clean-up from hurricane Sandy. Nice to be back home again!

They came away pretty clean. If the beach facing windows hadn't been blown in, all they would have had was a clean-up issue. All the machines survived, and none were lost, so it is pretty much the same as it was before.

I have this argument all the time! I'll simplify! EM's are definitely going to be boring to players who don't have the required skill-sets to master them. When I was in my teens, you never saw a geek or a nerd playing pinball! Make them complicated to score, but easy to play, and you attract another type of player. I have high score on 4 machines at the Silverball, without scoring Super-Triple-Bonus-Jackpot during the multi-ball phase, after gathering up 57 idols in the Vault of Doom.

Exactly! According to Silverball's website, the inspection that they failed on the 7th, was the inspection of the new fire alarm systems. Can't blame them for that! As of yesterday, there was still plywood over some of the windows, so apparently they couldn't have been coming down that hard on them.

I've been going since July, and that basketball machine was there when I started going. Used to be one of my favorites when I was a pre-teen. And gotta agree, I love that I can park in the lots, and not have to walk 4 blocks like I do during the shore season, to dodge the parking charges.

I spent over 13 hours in the place on Saturday, and I will be there all day on Wednesday, right up until the 9 PM closing time. It is SO good to be back there, especially since I learned something during the 6 weeks they were closed. Since I didn't have my classic selection to choose from, I was forced to get my fix at bowling alleys playing modern machines. You can argue all you want, but if you are a seasoned player with years of experience, all of today's machines S-U-C-K, and offer no real challenge to your player skills!

I was playing TDK, and I made the shot up the right hand ramp, with the right flipper EIGHT times in a row! The ball came down the chute, landed on my flipper, and I just kept popping it right back up there! I don't care HOW deep the game is, and how many different modes it has, this is just plain boring and completely unchallenging! If I could make the same shot on an EM, EIGHT times in a row, I would have saved a fortune in quarters over the years!

Even after playing like a dozen games on RBION, I still had no idea of how the scoring worked, but I figured out how to get to multi-ball mode, and played for well over an hour on the first $1 I put in. I didn't have a lot of time to spend, so I actually walked away from it while I still had 3 credits... But that's OK, I was COMPLETELY bored anyway!