I've never played as much pinball as I am playing now. I had my first pin in 92 (still have it, DW) and bought a second in 07 (FGY) but this past year I have started playing about three times a week and I even travel to go play.

I love it, there is something about the angles and the unknown speed variables, that i just can't get by kicking my 9 year old sons butt in COD...

Started at the fun arcade in Metairie near New Orleans around 1986. Used to play almost every weekend

I really started playing on a regular basis in jr.high. I had a paper route after school and I would always stop at this little mom and pop store and play big brave and wizard. this was 1977.before that I would play pinball with my dad but at the point of 77 I was playing by myself or with friends almost every day.

I grew up playing pinball. We had a Bow and Arrow and i remember playing it standing on a chair so i could see.

I played pinball once in a while growing up, but I mostly played arcade games. I didn't start playing regularly until I bought High Speed about 5 years ago. I still played mostly arcade games though. Pinball play started to outpace arcade game play last year when I bought STTNG and DM. The System 11 games are fun to play once in a while, but the DMD games are really fun for me.

High Speed, Pinbot, and STTNG are really the only pins I played until the last few years. I played others once in a while, but those 3 defined pinball for me. I am going to be selling the Pinbot and HS though. I don't play them enough with the WPC games there. I will enjoy them at CAX and PAGG though. lol

I was 9 years old when I first walked into a Bowling alley with loads of pinball machines in 1983, I was instantly hooked from that moment. For some reason I was drawn to them

Mid 70's as a teenager in W. Lafayette, IN.
Of course there has been a couple gaps of years of not playing pins

Early 80s as a teenager. We played about once per week during the school year, but then 2-3 times per week in the summer at a local strip mall. Good times, great memories.

I played pins in arcades BITD, but I started regularly playing in 1995 at local pool halls and started almost daily in 1996 at the Coffman Union gameroom while I was attending the University of Minnesota. It was an absolute mecca of pinball machines and the competition there was top notch. Same thing for all the fighting arcade games back then. I took a break in the early 2000's but got back into it in the late 2000's when I got into competitive playing.

I played some pin in the arcades when I was a kid around the time TAF and TZ were out. Hadn't seen a pin in 10 years until I moved to Pittsburgh in 2010 and started playing all the time.

Shortly after I learned to walk.

Late 90's.....would get to work early (bowling alley) to play a few games before work....life was so simple than.

Early 70's. Me and my buddy Doug would jump the fence most every summer day at the local amusement park and head straight for the arcade. If we ran out of money early, we'd steal coins out of the wishing well so we could keep playing. We had it bad.

I didnt even care about pinball until less than a year ago. I didnt really grow up with it either (born in 1989). Just caught the bug and now I cant get enough.

I started in the early 60's, But started playing regularly, when I stopped getting Laid regularly!

In between tournament matches of mk2. Tri state champ de nj pa bitches 1993

Where is the 2013 option? I'm new as of March.

Even as a kid in arcades I played more of the video games as I would have a limited number of quarters and I could simply play Donkey Kong or others longer than I could a pin. For me it was bang for the $.25.

I am VERY glad I looked into this back Feb. This has been the most fun hobby I've ever been a part of.

Darin

My parents took me to a local arcade in 1970 at the coast in the Netherlands at The Hague.
The virus has never left. In the end I was spoilt as the place was a beta arcade for pinball in the Netherlands. EM were many games from Bally, Williams, D. Gottlieb - not so popular in NL - and even Chicago Coin. Around the end of the seventies the importer for Stern was also in The Hague (Den Haag in Dutch) and most of the games were placed in the arcade. Later Alvin G and Capcom games were there as well before the pinball era came to an end. Having played over eight hundred different games from all eras was a bit of a advantage when playing at Pinburgh this year.

Early 70's while in college I started playing in earnest; wasn't that good then and not really much better now. Put a lot of quarters in Fireball.

Come to think of it, I also can't drink as much beer as I could in '72.

It's hell getting older...

Robert

500 cash a sound track cd a t shirt and a 200 dollar gift certificate to funco land.

I was 16 at the time. Lived 4 blocks from the boardwalk and did nothing but play Mk2 for a entire summer. My father worked at dupont at the time and I had access to what was at the time "INTERNET" I had the complete move lists for all revisions.

I don't know if I've ever done any hobby "regularly" for any length of time.

I've been playing pinball since 1977 or so......but not regularly. I've probably been more regular with console gaming.....been playing and have owned one or more system(s) since 1976.

I've done scuba diving, astrophotography, competitive pistol shooting, motorcycles, home theater (that's pretty regular.....just watch a movie at home....with at a least a modicum of equipment and surround sound ), golfing, weightlifting.......etc.....but most of it comes and goes.

1989-1993 and then pretty much not at all until 2010.

Probably 1979 or 1980, it was just before the Pacman craze. I know for a fact I was playing Gorgar.

Started in late 90s, but came back to it in 2009.

Around '84 or '85, I was about 10 or 11. Played a haunted house at sevvy and I was hooked.

Unlike many here, I have no fond memories of arcades and vintage
pinball machines from whan I was a kid. Discovered the hobby when I
bought my first pin to help fill our empty, 'new' house. Then all 'heck'
broke loose! That was in 1987. Still enjoy playing every day but need
a much bigger house.
Steve

1980 to 1984. The golden era of gamerooms!!!!! Gosh I'm glad I grew up during that unique and never to be repeated time.

The Gottliebs EMs were still all on route. The new Bally SS games were showing up nearly every week. Then there were the game changers like when they first rolled in the Black Knight! And that's not even mentioning all the fun I had playing the early video games.

Good times.

-Jim

No doubt! It really was a truly unique and exciting era to be a kid.

Just over a year ago. Never really played as a kid. (I only remember playing a handful of times in high school) I sarted playing early 2012, but didn't get totally hooked until after a visit to the Silver Ball Museum in Jersey last July 4th weekend. Bought my first machine a couple of months back, now I'm looking for machine #2.

A little bird told me that Stern's next music pin will be Janis Joplin.

♫ Oh lord, won't you buy me, a pinball machine ♪

Must be around 1979 i think. My nephew had a pin at home. Dont remember which one.

Started in 50s - neighbor had one in their basement and there were a number of machines in the pool hall downtown (mother did not approve, oh well). Played in college in 60's and with my son in the 70s. Now play with both grown children = just back from Seattle visiting son with trip planned around NW show.

I seem to recall playing as often as possible around 1969-70. Each week when my mom would go to the grocery store, there I was helping her place items in the cart. At least for the first five minutes or so. After that, it was off to the small game area between the grocery store and Target. Pins were 10 cents a play or so. No game or games stand out from that time period.

A few years after that, pinball arcades sprung up all around the neighborhood. I could walk in almost any direction and find locations each filled with 20 or more pins within a mile or so from the house. It was great. Pinball machines in the 1970s in St Louis was everywhere: arcades, bowling alleys, grocery stores, bars, quick shops, barber shops, hotels, department stores. Only place you didn't seem to find pins was at church. River cruising ship "The Admiral" on the Mississippi had an entire floor dedicated to pins and other coin op devices.

Remember when Fireball came out, didn't play it much because it was so hard to beat. Found Gottlieb games easiest to beat, followed by Williams, and Bally was the toughest. It was fun to play Nip-it, using that metal thing to grab or smack the ball, trying to last as long as possible on Travel Time. One of the tech guys was always spraying silicone on the spinner arms for different games. We would follow him around after he was done and play those games just to see the spinner whip around.

Probably played the most pin of my youth in 1974, had plenty of pocket change from grass cutting jobs, and since I was in middle school plenty of time, too. It was such a cool time to play pin, as every month or every few weeks it seemed, there was a new game to play at the arcades. As much as my friends and I would miss a game leaving, another one would come in to fill the gap. It got to where we would seek out certain games that we knew we could beat, just to see how long we could play on a quarter. At that time, some arcades were charging 2 games/quarter with five balls, and other arcades were 3 games/quarter with three balls. Satin Doll, Bow and Arrow, Delta Queen, and Top Card stand out from that time period. We could rack up games and play for hours, then occasionally sell them to someone and get our money back. When that happened, we would walk out of the arcade like kings!

aLways found them fascinating, but never saw them around often enough to play much. my college back in the late 90s had a Mousin Around i put quite a few quarters into, but honestly my interest didnt spike until the last year or so.

To top it off, there were also two bowling alleys within walking distance, each with five pins. Not to forget Lambert St Louis International airport, a bit further walk with 6-8 pins. We loved the airport pins because there were always free credits to be found. I guess because people would have to leave to catch their flights? Who knows.

Both bowling alleys rotated games much faster than the arcades, and one alley always had the latest Bally game. Arcades were mostly Gottlieb, with Williams, Bally and the occasional Chicago Coin game, not to forget Sonic a few years later. An ice skating rink, also within easy walking distance, still had several older 2" flipper games years after the change to 3" flippers. I guess they must have owned their own games. A couple of hotels were within walking distance and had game rooms, too. I was run out of one of them by mgmt after they found out I wasn't a guest. After Wizard by Bally came out, we started seeing more Bally pins as a proportion to other pins through the end of the '70s. This "pinball heaven" condition lasted for about ten years or so.

I wasn't really aware of pinball so much growing up, but toward the end of college, like 1995 or so, I found out about Good Times, a very large arcade in Somerville, MA. I became thoroughly addicted to Theater of Magic as well as arcade games Primal Rage and Bubble Bobble. That was the point where I became aware enough of pinball to know a specific machine title I liked a lot, such that, when I came across one at an airport, I was appropriately excited to see it.

about 1974

Started playing regularly in about '68 in my parents bar.

Mid/Late 70's.Pins were at all the malls.Right next to the headshops....I mean record stores

Used to hit the Time Out and Galaxy arcades in Massapequa L.I. regularly in junior high, 1978-1980, but never really played pinball much. That all changed when more sophisticated SS tables like Firepower, Firepower II, Black Knight, Haunted House and Black Hole appeared in the 1980's. My friend Geoff and I would pop quarters into BK and FP, which were set up next to each other, and whenever one of us lost a ball we'd switch machines, back and forth in the middle of our games.

I got my first pin a year ago and never played much in the 80's. I'm 38 so they were around....just don't recall playing many except at a Mexican restaurant that was always busy in the day. Now I'm on here reading every day and have been building some virtual pins for folks because while I like real pins the convenience, versatility, and cost of a virtual is awesome...especially if you make a mid size that is more space efficient. I NEVER EVER thought I'd own a pinball in my own home let alone 3 and my rotating stock of virtuals.. I love it.

became a regular when i bought one for my wife's 30th birthday....been an addict ever since.