i'm a proud member of the very early Walkman-generation, right. there's been something else that has been extremely important almost my whole life - it's pinball. rocked a pinball-machine 1st. time when i was 10 years old, got my first own machine at the tender age of 16, and since then there's been no time that i didn't own at least one machine. there's been many - in the beginning off course electro-mechanical units, with time then some with digital displays. pinballs suffered the same destiny as cassette-Walkman did - they got out of fashion. so their last serious hight (...and even today latest stand of evolution) was middle 90'ies, in those days Bally/Williams ruled with their dot-matrix-display and wpc-board. today i own a few machines, 3 of'em are set up in my workshop: it's a 1991 Williams T2, a 1992 Williams Fish Tales and a 1993 Williams Indiana Jones. there's some more but mostly not set up or unrestored - is there any pinball-maniacs with you folks ?
That's more than we had at Brunel Technical College with a couple of thousand students. The two machines I remember from there were Williams Flash which in 1979 was the latest and greatest and an old electro-mechanical machine Jungle Princess. That had an interesting fault in that if you hit it on the tigers tail everything would reset including the ball counter. Guess why we always played games up to four balls
Jungle Princess wass an EM- machine, http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1339 Jungle Lord allready fully electronic: http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1338
Man i used to love playing pinball, there was an arcade above the Buger King joint in town (it was called "Piggys" then) and it had around 10 of them all in a row on one wall. There was a lone machine just outside the door to the change kiosk and we would play it day in day out, it was a cowboy one, they were great days. The arcade is still there but it is now an 18+ casino stle slots hall..... damnit.
Definitely Jungle Princess - I found the same flyer that you linked to. What surprised me was the 1977 date. I think in 1979/80 we though it was some 1960s relic, although I think it was based on that eras technology. Being electronics students we obviously couldn't help having a good look when the engineer came in to do the inevitable repairs and I recall it was crammed full of relays etc. There was a huge difference from the Williams "Flash" machine which seemed to have just a few PCBs inside but reading about it that seemed to be a milestone machine. http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=871 When it turned up had many new technologies we had never seen (or heard) before such as the electronic displays and sound. After finding a Youtube video of Flash, I then found the links to the Virtual Pinball Machines some people have built. I didn't even know such things existed. Next time I go past Bournemouth Pier I must look if they still have any real Pinball machines. They did when I last went in about five years ago.
Yeah, go and have look, you might be lucky ! Those new pinballs they make do not appeal to me at all (...well, some of'em i don't know), because their quality - and especially feeling - is not the same anymore as from those last ones from mid/late 90'ies (wich i funnily didn't like when they came out). The very new "Hobbit" pinball does feature a huuuge 32" tft as a display, wich doesn't leave much space for the artworks - and if i wanna play a videogame, i want to hang around on a couch. same thing with those virtual pinballs. My best pinball-story i ever had was on some airport in france (can't remember wich one), where i suddenly found a pinball-machine, wich was a "Mediavel Madness". i threw in a coin and had such a good play, that i decided to miss my plane, because i was so close to reach the "grand champion" (...seriously !). i managed to enter my initials in that machine and made so many "specials", that i could bridge those few hours untill the next flight ;-)
I have just been helping with the Radio Communications for the Bournemouth Half Marathon which starts and finishes outside the Pier so afterwards I popped in to have a look. Tucked in a corner were four machines: Ghostbusters The Creature from the Black Lagoon The Walking Dead Star Trek. Star Trek surprised me as it is obviously a recent machine. In fact you can still buy one http://www.sternpinball.com/games/star-trek/pro Unfortunately I had a load of stuff with me so didn't want to put it down and have a game. Maybe next time I am there.
those are all nice machines, the Creatures features a great hologram in the playfield appearing at some stage of play, the other machines are all still available new, in fact the StarTrek next gen. is known as one of the best machines ever... next time you should take your time for a few games !
I got married a few years ago and had to convert my basement into bedrooms and got rid of a lot of stuff to make room. So the only one I have left is a 1984 Lasercue https://pinside.com/pinball/archive/laser-cue
Got a 1955 Gottlieb "Gypsy Queen" EM I play on occasion. It now sits downtown in the pinball museum along with 80 other machines
Like i said i am not very good at Pinball, but i would love to have one if i had the room for it. I love arcade games more, would love to have some.
Nice pick up Northerner! I must have missed this thread autoreverser, sadly I just have two, Solar Ride (digital) and Rancho (mechanical), that are in storage right now. In the early days of the forum I used to stage all my Walkman Photos on my machines (most of which I can't find now). When I was a kid I loved the sound of a mechanical machine cycling up so I had to have one, I'm still looking for a Flash Gordon, I used to play that for hours on one quarter. Vintage pinball and video arcades are popping up everywhere around here, most also serve beer and have sports TV's. I was just at one, pretty neat and they also have the "machine out for repairs" signs on a few, just like the old days.
Yeh I love my pinball machine. Spent ages looking for the right one and knew I had to buy this one. Wasn’t cheap but it all works perfectly. It’s great fun. You need to get yours out of storage!
More of a airhockey/ foosball guy than pinball since you get real competitive with your friends, Although I did love those 90's pinballs with mechanical pistons that would send the ball flying up a ramp, real piece of work.
