Y'all know about Pinball?

i'myourpal

i'myourpal

New Member
Yesterday I was telling my friend about this pinball game I used to play with my brother downtown in California.
Unfortunately, I believe I have the wrong title of it.
Good thing is that there were some I remember.

I learned how to play pinball from bigger guys and standing off to the side.
I think I was at first using both flippers at the same time. That's not a good idea.
I like playing doubles, but a 3rd or 4th player is better yet.

Here are 2 to name so in case someone has some replies.
1. Sinbad came out early. It's based off the movie. I like the teal coloring for the numbers. This came out in the 70's.
2. Terminator 2 or T2.. again, based off the movie. T2 was fun because it had a gun trigger. This came out in the 90's.
My brother and I used to stand off on the side of the pinball so we could accurately shoot.

One time it was very funny the guy came from behind the counter. My brother said "1, 2, 3, go".
I was holding my trigger with my left hand about to shoot, and the guy said, "You guys had me worried.
I thought you guys were going to flip the pinball over onto the ground.😲
It kind of looked that way. It was all a misunderstanding.

Ok, who would like to share any pinball experiences?
You don't need to know titles but would be a plus if you did. Maybe you could remind me of some I have forgotten.
Ok, who's first?🙂
 

There was an arcade in the mall that I use to go to (before video arcades) and it had a couple of machines I really liked. One was Captain Fantastic based on Elton John's album and another was based on the movie Rocky. I always seemed to do better on those two machines over any other.
 

At at nearby "Blackberry Farm Recreation Park" they had a couple pinball machines when I was about 10. One summer we started playing one of them and we could bumb it hard and it would start a game for free. So we got really good at it. We competed to see how many free games we could get. Sometimes we could get almost 15 free games. When you play a pinball game long enough you become very familiar with how to score big, when to hit the big score things, how to get an extra ball, etc.... I would play that thing for hours at a time....totally mesmerized.
 
Blessed said:
I liked pinball but I was more of a foosball girl.
Click to expand...
Yea, I forgot about foosball. I was terrible on that game. Speaking of that when I was at the Santa Cruz beach Boardwalk,
there was a game there was only $.05. It had metal soccer players that were painted. You would sweep with the handle and hit the ball.
 
I don't know the names of any of the games but I used to play pinball in the 70's and 80's. I learned that if you truly got into it and shook the sides as you played you could become a high scorer.

For video games, Pong and Pacman were great. I also played Super Mario and Sonic religiously in the 90's via a game console. I miss the tactile feel of the controllers for those games.
 
The 1975 movie Tommy hasn’t aged terribly well, and parts of it are almost painful to watch today. But I still get a kick out of seeing Elton John as the pinball champion defeated by Tommy, complete with his towering height and enormous shoes…kind of like a living cartoon character…

8EEB8F3A-C682-4585-8157-E4CA2207773E.jpeg
 
I always wondered if the "tilt" sensing thing was there to encourage cheating or to discourage it. I also wondered if knocking the pin ball machine around as they did really helped them get more points. I think that was the player's intent, but I never saw anyone get a high score from it.
 
We had ways of playing these games for hours for a few quarters in the college rec room. Besides the subtle slide to save a ball, pounding on the scoreboard to rack up points to earn a free ball just a half second in time were some methods used. It was helpful if no staff were around!
 
When I was in the USAF during the Viet Nam War, was stationed for nearly a year down in Mississippi Gulf Coast for electronics training. As an under aged 18 year old Californian, had never been in bars and the like where pinball machines in that era tended to be. The base had endless pinball machines all over for a quarter a game and there were countless more outside the base about cities along the Gulf and even more in New Orleans not far away. I played so much that my wrist from pushing, shoving, shaking, the machines became permanently damaged enough that after that period to this day, trying to play those games at arcades is painful to my wrist.

Another damaging game activity to my body was shooting marbles in 2nd thru 4th grades at schools. I developed a powerful way to shoot using a released thumb action and after endless games of "pots" in dirt or sand that too has permanently damaged my right thumb haha. School eventually banned this little person and my two main friends from playing at school because mom's of other crying kids complained we won so much. To this day, I can still shoot marbles at high velocities.
 
For video games, Pong and Pacman were great. I also played Super Mario and Sonic religiously in the 90's via a game console. I miss the tactile feel of the controllers for those games.
Click to expand...
The base had endless pinball machines all over for a quarter a game and there were countless more outside the base about cities along the Gulf and even more in New Orleans not far away.
Click to expand...
First to say that I've never seen that many pinball machines at once. The most I've seen were 3 or 4 at most. That would be the bowling alley in Heyward and at Santa Cruz.
Now since dseag2 mentioned video games I'll mention some.

I'm going to make 2 lists here. The 1st pinball I remember, and the 2nd video games. If anyone knows the names of some of these let me know.

The pinball list isn't too long.

1st was tic tac toe which was the earliest with x and o.
2nd had a picture of a pilot in a classic plane without the roof.
These 2 early pinballs were popular because I saw them in several places.
I even think I saw one of the 2 on Happy Days.
Sinbad came out in the late 70's. It's hard to remember the pictures that were on these games.
Gorgar was another early one. This is one of the earliest pinball games that were talking. .I think he was a demon carrying a woman.

My Grampa used to laugh at this because he watched Creature Features.
I think the next one was called 8 Ball. It's just like Pool where you need to hit every ball with 8 being last. I think the picture was a southern guy with a cowboy hat shooting pool.
The next one is Happy Days. It had Fonzie and Pinky on it.

Next is Superman. I think this had giant balls that came out. It was rare to see this and wasn't very popular.
Now going into the mid 80's I think it was called High Speed Chase. In this game you have to get all the green, red, and yellow lights. Then the police go after you telling you to pull over.
 
The next pinball is a pair. The first one is called PinBot and the sequel is The Bride of Pinbot. My brother and I liked the 2nd one better because it had more action.
This next one was called Diner? It had to do with ordering food and sounded funny.
Next one was about a storm. The game started saying " The storm is coming return to your home. Then for real the fans on the machine start blowing, cooling you off.
The next one is about being on a TV game show winning prizes.
The next is about Earthquakes. It does end up shaking by itself.
Next is Fun House. This game is eerie because this puppet moves his eyes and you hit the balls in his mouth when he falls asleep. When you hit the mouth he wakes up and spits them out.
Cyclone is about an amusement park carnival.
I thought the next one was called Safari but I couldn't find the name in a search. This game is about water slides and whirlpools. The voice on this sounds like the guy from the old 7Up commercial where he says "The Uncola" Hahaha.
Lethal Weapon 3 is based off the movie.
Creature of the Black Lagoon is next. The game doesn't look that scary though.
The last 2 even though I played more:
Star Trek the Next Generation and the last one is something like The Invasion of Mars. It has 3D effects.


I'm ending this list because I have to do video games list.
I'll do that tomorrow.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top