Playing Black Knight in our hometown mall arcade, 1981...!

A person needing help with a game posted on RGP and I responded.

Realized it gave me the chance to make my little corner of pinball better.

LTG : )

First time I got multiball on F14 Tomcat, when the tri-color beacons spool up and light up the whole damn arcade.

Just awesome.

Later,
EV

After having a few arcades over 2-3 years, my first pin was a nib Stern Spider-Man. I knew the first day. This was it!

That was October 2010.

Playing Eight ball Deluxe at the local pizza shop .

Skipping history in college in 1978 to play Sinbad in the bowling alley. Played for years before , but that game really hooked me.

Played an old EM when a friend got one for her birthday. First time playing pinball. It was 1981. I was 12.

A few games into TOTAN at a local arcade, I realized that it's not just flipping around, this game is actually trying to tell me a story. And that all these tales I'm trying to complete are leading to some grand finale. It blew my mind that pinball could be so complex and engaging.

I later discovered that not all games (in fact, very few games) worked like this, but it got me excited to play every game I could find and learn as much as I could about pinball.

2 moments when I was just a kid:

Playing whirlwind for the first time and hearing “FEEL THE POWER OF THE WIND” in a booming voice. I thought that was so cool, and all I wanted to know was what would happen if I hit that flashing left ramp.

It wasn’t until a couple years later that I was playing White Water at an arcade. Watching the attract mode, I saw that I needed to complete the vacation planner to get the vacation jackpot. Suddenly, I realized that there were objectives. Levels, even. Like a video game, and that if I did it all, I’d “beat” it. Way cool. Double hooked me because I wanted to know what it was like to beat the game.

It wouldn’t be until my adult life, having owned the game, that I’d find out.

As a kid playing Addams Family. I remember the mystery/magic of the stair cases and the whole playfield.

1) getting the bell to go ape shit on Space Shuttle.

2) after buying my first pin (DE Simpsons) and realizing I was turning on and plunging in less time that my Xbox could get to the home screen… only to then need a game update, reboot, system update, reboot… etc.

Finally getting multiball on our Embryon when I was a kid. As soon as I could afford it I started buying games for the house. The rest is history!

Mine was when I went to papa headquarters when I was very new to pinball. I played Lord of the rings and when gandolf started shouting jackpot made me feel like a better player than I was and I was hooked.

When I was 13 and Skateball showed up at the arcade.

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Seeing Thing grab your ball, or the Showtime multiball awesome.

Visiting some friends in Portland back in 2005 or 2006 who had gotten into pinball. It was LotR that did it. Things clicked for the first time that I realized there were modes and objectives to a game.

They took me around to other games they were more excited about like AfM and MM, and I liked those enough, but I kept going back to LotR. Couldn't stop thinking about it

First time I played Theatre of Magic started my pinball bug.

I got hooked watching a YouTube video of a guy repair some Gorgar drop targets. The way the mechanism worked fascinated me.

Suffice to say, my first pin was a gorgar. I like to play them, but moreso, i like to repair them.

My brother rented Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection for Wii for a week, and during that time we were competing for high scores.

The way the game is set up, with achievements and having to complete those to unlock machines for free play, helped show both of us that there are objectives and scoring strategies to the games, and so we had to delve into learning the rules.

I think the moment I first managed to score a jackpot on Funhouse was the exact moment I got hooked. Everything from the buildup as you get into multiball, to Rudy's scream, to the victory music that plays afterwards, not to mention the big points, got me more excited than I think anything else I'd ever experienced playing video games.

Still crazy to think that what most would consider to be a B-tier Wii game changed my life forever.

The first time I hit the 3 million shoot on Elvira and the party monsters at a pizza shop I Frequented during college!

Scorpion is an awesome game. Mine was when I was 7/8 and got multiball on DE TMNT and everything went nuts in the game. “I love being a turtle!!!”

When the Black Knight told me how bad I was.

As a youngster in the 80s going to local arcades was my thing. Played tons of video games and sometimes pinball but pinball didn’t bite me until the early 90s. I was on vacation in Phoenix visiting my grandparents (a very boring type of trip for a teen). My older cousin arrived too and we went to a big arcade in Phoenix several times (I think it may have been Aladdin’s Castle). He was into pinball and he showed me the ropes on several games. They had some of the 90s greats like Funhouse etc. it was then I realized the depth of the games and I loved pinball since. It was about 10 years later after I got my first good job and as soon as I could make it happen got my first pin - a Funhouse for $1200. Bought site unseen and shipped. Luckily it worked out. Still have that machine 20 years later.

I remember the moment i got hooked on pin repair. I bought CV as my first pin in really nice shape for a really nice price (in the eyes of the seller anyway). But i was afraid to tinker with it because it was expensive and i didnt know anything about them. I had a loose post from a stripped wood screw in the playfield. Just securing a plastic but it still bothered me. I eventually mustered up the courage to disassemble what i had to and made the repair and put it back together. Felt happy with that then changed some burnt out bulbs behind the ringmaster. Big deal… but these bastards were very difficult to get to which is why the prev owner never changed them. In retrospect dropping the ringmaster would of been easier. Baby steps…

So with that i went out and bought a dead F2K and brought that back to life, even swapped a playfield. I learned so much from doing that game, from troubleshooting to board work. All because of that stoopid loose playfield post.

My neighbors got a Mata Hari SS for Christmas when I was 13. That was in 1982. I couldn't stay away. My parents bought a Meteor not long after that.

Scared Stiff and Medieval Madness in the student union at Kansas State University. My wife got bored with bowling and wanted to play the pinball machines she heard in the arcade room. I was hooked.
Took me 20 years to get the space and money for a Scared Stiff.