Favorite Pinball Machine(s)

[Burma Jones]

I am a big fan of pinball. I've played the old fashioned Gottlieb Wedge Heads, the Classic Bally Tables and the newer tables like Lord of the Rings. I'm partial to a 20 year old Bally Machine called 8 Ball Deluxe. What do you folks like to play?

[bullimiami]

1. doctor who

http://www.missingpiece.com/pinball/drwho/

[Mojambo]

2. Twilight Zone

Theatre of Magic is pretty good too.

I used to like the Indiana Jones one as well.

[chiburb]

19. Great artwork!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

20. Theatre of Magic!

plus Jackbot, The X Files.

From a bygone era: Black Knight, Fire Action.

From an even MORE bygone era: Expo.

[ihaveaquestion]

3. Pinball Wizard - circa 1976 (about) n/t

[vptpt]

4. I liked the Kiss machine n/t

[chiburb]

22. Kiss!

[redqueen]

5. There was one I really loved

that I can't remember the name of... the theme was a fighter plane. I would love to have one of those.

I like just about any pinball, though.

[chiburb]

18. F-14 Tomcat

[redqueen]

21. YES!

That's it... that has to be my all time favorite.

Thanks.

:loveya:

[The Doctor.]

6. I like the williams machines..

like Earthshaker.

[The Doctor.]

7. dupe

how'd that happen?

Oh- I like th southpark game too.

[ScreamingMeemie]

8. Animal House...

Great pinball game

[The_Casual_Observer]

9. The old "Fireball"

and the Addams Family one.

[chiburb]

23. Yes!

[GingerSnaps]

10. Harley Davidson

It doesn't matter to me any pinball games I will play and win because I am the Pinball Wizard.


PC Games Creep night

I like Sierra pinball games.

[chiburb]

24. Harley

[GingerSnaps]

29. That's the one

I love the way that it moves when you get the ball in the holes.

[Ron Green]

11. My favorite was from the late 50's-early 60's, and the theme was

poker, or at least suits of cards. It had just the right amount of difficulty for the replay, and it didn't score millions and millions of points, but in the thousands, which is on a more realistic scale. It was fully electro-mechanical, of course. A beautiful machine that took nickels - quite a few of mine.

[gratuitous]

12. Oh my

There was a Movie Magic machine years ago (Laurel and Hardy featured prominently on the back glass). You can still hear the sound effect of its bonus bell on movie soundtracks even today. It was a distinctive, flat "donk" sort of sound.

Eight Ball Deluxe was pretty good, but I detested the "voice": "Let's quit talkin' and start chalkin'." I spent many an afternoon working a machine with a whitewater rapids theme, whose name escapes me. I also liked the "Twilight Zone" and "Pinbot" games. Oh yeah, and the Taxi one where you picked up various passengers, including Mikhail Gorbachev.

A few others that I probably could have bought by the quarter: A grand prix racing game with a spinning wheel at the top; a haunted house game with a little pinball-within-a-pinball feature; a wheel of fortune game that awarded a free ball when you spun the wheel enough to get three stars on a turn.

I should buy me an old-time arcade machine. I loved playing real pinball!

[redqueen]

16. Oh! I loved Pinbot and Taxi as well!

Thanks for reminding me of some of the names of these great games.

[Bronco69]

27. Taxi was the ONLY pinball game that I could figure out.

All of the other ones were too confusing for me, but DAMN I loved playing Taxi! :-)

[chiburb]

39. Taxi

[chiburb]

40. For you...

[gratuitous]

41. Uh oh, maybe I meant "Fem Bot"

That sure doesn't look like the glass I remember. But I usually consumed a couple of pitchers of alcoholic libation whilst playing, so who can say, really?

[DelawareValleyDem]

13. 8 Ball Deluxe was a great game

I also liked Black Knight with the magna save

[redqueen]

17. YES! Black Knight

I miss pinball... how come there's only one machine in arcades now? :(

[trogdor]

26. Because the ROI isn't high enough.

The assembly and maintenance costs of pinball machines is WAY higher than for video games, and it's easier to control the play parameters of a video game than a pinball machine that is subject to the real-world laws of physics and chaos theory.

The one machine that's still in there is probably ten years old or older, and it's there for the same reason Ford still makes the Mercury Grand Marquis - because of certain people who still demand them.

[redqueen]

33. Check your PMs

Thanks for the explanation. :hi:

[chiburb]

25. 8 ball deluxe

[tomhayes]

14. Black Knight is THE Classic

http://pinball.flippers.info/blackknight.asp

Awesome machine. Has been sampled into songs by Mr. Bungle also.

-Tom

[blindpig]

15. 25 hole machines

flippers are for chillun's.

[chiburb]

28. I spent the weekend at the Pinball Expo!!!!

What a great time! Over 200 machines from the 40s to now, all set for free play, many for sale...
All the designers and artists were there too.

[Burma Jones]

30. I'm going up to Lebanon, PA this Friday

to a place with four floors of pinball machines for sale.........Hell, I might even buy one.

[RetroLounge]

31. I have a 1964 Bally Bongo 2 player.

Love it...

RL

[chiburb]

36. This one?

Only 1,050 made. You've got a rare one!

[tridim]

32. Twilight Zone

because I swear the whole of the electronics in that machine make it schizophrenic. I actually feels like it's alive, but crazy as a loon.

I also like Addams Family and Jurassic Park because I got really good at them when I lived in my dorm. I could play either one of those machines for hours on one quarter.

[chiburb]

34. Oh. To answer your question, Sea Witch...

from 79 or 80, or Swing Along from the early 60s. Btw, I have a friend that owns EVERY Gottlieb Wedge Head!

[NuttyFluffers]

35. Funhouse and Black Knight

loved the music on those. also liked Theatre of Magic and Circus Voltaire. kinda sad to see pinball mostly gone from arcades, though they did take up a hell of a lot of space - and player turnover rate was always quite slow. more value for the money, but greed saw to it that they were not as profitable in arcades compared to fighting games.

i miss the diversity of arcades. arcades are so dead for this generation, makes me sad.

[ProfessorGAC]

37. The One At The Bar I Worked As A Janitor

It was pool related, but i don't remember the name. However, that's not why it was my favorite.

It was my favorite pinball machine because there was a broken hinge on the back of the machine, and i could pull the corner back and reach my hand in there and turn the little "Games Remaining" counter. (Remember, when i was in college, there were no digital pinball games.)

So, in the winter, when i was done working (at noon) and the place didn't open for 4 more hours, i could play pinball for free for a couple hours. Pretty cool! That's why it was my favorite machine!
The Professor

[Kat45]

38. I LOVE pinball! And I miss it so much.

I can't remember the names of all my favorites. In the house I lived at in college, we had 2 pinball machines and they would have been going 24/7 if we didn't make some rules so the sound wouldn't be waking everyone up in the middle of the night. I particularly liked one of them, but I can't remember its name. In bars and arcades, I always liked Haunted House because there were 3 levels of play, I think one was mirrored IIRC. For the newer machines, I really liked The Addams Family. It was pretty cool when you'd hit something and it would start magnetizing an area a little ways up from the flippers.

The older games were the best--3 games for a quarter, 5 balls per game, a reasonable number of points needed to win your first replay--and your third. The newer machines gave only one game for a quarter, although I think these days it costs several quarters for a game instead of just one. The game only gives you 3 balls and it takes a bazillion points to get a replay, and an exponentially higher number to get more than one. If your first ball gives you a straight pipe down the middle, 2 more balls isn't enough to make up for it; 4 more balls was.