Author Topic: Old timer pinball habit VP reboot  (Read 3630 times)

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Offline Dutchman

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Old timer pinball habit VP reboot
« on: January 16, 2018, 08:58:10 PM »
When I got addicted to pinball we didn't talk about quarters, it was the early '60s and some 5cent machines were still around but most were changing to 10cents for a five ball game and three games for 25cents. The slots took nickels. When the games went from 5 balls to three balls we were not happy about it. Machines were in corner stores, diners, ice cream and soda shops, everywhere. The place I hung out was a soda fountain/grill two doors from where my boy scout troop held meetings. There was a back room full of eight pinball machines with a window to the main store so you could order change and get eats and sodas. My friends and I would go to scout meetings an hour early and play pinball. Trouble was we'd rack up the game counters and not make it to scout meetings on time. A scout master would come down to round us up and we were constantly in trouble for being late. Worse yet was that our parents would give us 50 cents for our monthly scout troop dues and of course it often ended up in the pinball machines instead. When the games started to take quarters (for three balls!) I sort of lost interest, or else my interest in girls took precedent, but I got away from the game for a while. When I would get the itch for a pinball session I'd seek out an arcade and try to figure out the new digital machines with ramps and ball locks and all kinds of new innovations. It was still fun and I still got to use the flipper skills I developed early on it is just that everything was faster, brighter, noisier and WAY more expensive.
 When I discovered Virtual Pinball on the internet I was happy with nostalgia. I set up a two screen machine and loaded up vintage analog recreations I grew up with. It was the best time consuming amusement I could ever think of. I still put in the most play time on the old analog recreation tables, my favorite is still Gottliebs, but I have loaded a lot of modern machines also. This is such a blast for an old guy like me, you will never know until you get old 50 years from now and discover that someone made an emulator that plays Medieval Madness or Mars Attacks. Hopefully you will find something like the nostalgic joy that I have,