I've owned quite a few of the DMD pins. Thanks largely to Odin and his great collection of EM's, I started to really appreciate how fun they could be. One of the things that I love about any pin is if it has that strong "just one more game" pull to it, that makes you want to play the game again as soon as it's over.

EM's have that in spades. As others have said, the rules are usually pretty simple to understand with easy goals. Simple to understand...difficult to master. I also appreciate the shorter ball times. My Sure Shot, set on 5 ball play, kicks my ass on a regular basis. Those 5 balls won't last as long as a 3 ball game on Iron Man.

Since you don't have music, call outs, a DMD, etc., the games are more pure in terms of concentrating on the silver ball. I do love the sound of the chimes/bells too.

I'm really glad that I've discovered how fun EM's can be. It's like another world of pinball...and the bang for the buck in terms of fun is extremely hard to beat for the price of admission.

I couldn't possibly agree more with this. Absolutely true.

It has been virtually impossible for me to get any of my non pinhead friends into playing multiplayer games on my DMD's. They will literally leave the room, go talk to others, etc, while one of the other players is playing. There is no excitement for them, and they seem distracted. This has gone on for years.

Enter my first EMs several months ago. At first I thought my non pinhead friends would laugh at them. I told them "you've got to see my old school pinball machines I got". Much to my surprise...they loved them! It quickly became obvious that they enjoyed them way more than my DMD pins. After I explained the goals, which were easy to understand, they were addicted to achieving those goals.

Then we started in on the multiplayer games. Playing 3 players on my Bow and Arrow was addicting as hell! Nobody was walking away while someone else was playing, that's for sure. Some super close games, tons of yelling and screaming, ridiculous amounts of fun. The fact that the EMs level the playing field helped a lot too, because they felt that they had a chance of beating me, which wasn't the case on the DMD's.

EM's are by far the best multiplayer pins. Not even close.

This post is embarrassing for you, even though I'm sure that you don't realize it.

The ignorance shown here is astonishing. I'm sure a lot of people have taken note.

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Actually I don't agree that the above statement is insulting or ignorant.

He says that if you don't at least appreciate EMs, then you don't really appreciate pinball. I don't think that means that you have to love EMs, but how could someone not, at a minimum, appreciate them and still be a lover of pinball? Hell, the mechanical genius of these games is more than enough to appreciate, even if you don't like how they play. The artwork can most certainly be appreciated by anyone.

Except Markmon apparently.

His post has more thumbs down than games he owns now.

To follow up on my statement that those 5 balls on an EM won't last as long as a 3 ball game on IM, it isn't even close.

For the fun of it, the last 30 or so games I've played on my Slick Chick, I decided to time the length of my games with a stop watch.

The *average* game (5 balls) lasted all of 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

I had some games that were less than a minute and a half!

The two longest games I had, where I had real good scores, including my second highest, lasted 3 minutes and 36 seconds and exactly 3 1/2 minutes.

There is something very appealing to me about the fact that I can have a great game, with a high score and getting a few specials, all in 3 1/2 minutes.

Funny thing is that I know that the game times were even shorter on my Sure Shot that I recently sold. Slick Chick isn't easy, but ball times on other EMs will be even shorter, as the ball can stay in the 9 pop bumpers on SC longer than other EMs.