did ya lll play pinball?

[wesw]

from pinball to pacman

i was a wizard, at times

my convenience sfore was next door to the office of the top amusement company on the eastern shore, Parson s Amusements.

we had the firdt space invaders on the shore.

Parson s Amusements supplied the boardwalk at OC, MD

my question is....

what were your favorite pinball machines slash early video games.

i ll start with old chicago and surfer for pinball.
, and...

space invaders and dig dug and tank battle and asteroids for video games

oh, and cong gorilla which was a pseudonyn,m trial name for donkeykong

[Sue U]

I played a lot of pinball during my wasted youth; the laundromat I used in West Philly had a pinball arcade attached, every bar had a machine or two. I never cared which table as long as it was a Williams or Gottlieb machine. Only one I remember by name Is Gorgar, because it was the first time I ever heard a pinball machine talk to me ("Gorgar needs meat!") and I nearly died laughing (that was a Bally's game, though, and generally I didn't like their style).

I played a dime pinball machine at a bar in Lenox, MA that paid out if you won; that game bought a lot of pitchers of beer.

Never cared for video games.

[Big RR]

I used to play pinball and would play whatever machine I came across; I never played enough to have a favorite game, but I was pretty good. I also do recall coming across machines that paid out for exceeding certain scores, but I'm not sure where (other than that they were in bars and, like Sue, the winnings paid for a lot of beer). I missed much of the video game "revolution" (being a little too old), but I do recall playing pong, some game called shootout (where you moved your cowboy up and down like a pong paddle and could aim his arm as well), but I lost interest quickly. I am sure there are some I would enjoy, but I never had enough interest to try. For the most part I enjoy the mechanical games like pinball much more.

[Sue U]

Oh, I went and looked, and I had mis-remembered Gorgar -- it actually was a Williams machine, not a Bally's. And it was apparently the first talking pinball machine.

[BoSoxGal]

I recall a few pinball games from my early childhood, especially after a family friend opened a family fun park.

I drive by that place every so often and it compels a little pang in my heart - for the times in the 70s and 80s when whole families spent evenings playing at the arcade or playing the mini golf course or riding the go carts around the very cool twisty track they built, or hitting balls at the batting cages. It’s overrun with nature’s growth now and the buildings are long gone, just loads of cracked asphalt with shrubs and trees pushing through. I really kinda wish someone would buy and develop the property, it’s a sad little ghost.

Anyway in middle school and high school I spent some time at the arcade and got to be very proficient playing pac man. I wasted a lot of hours on that game - my mother’s boss had a console in his office and I would visit there after school and play for hours while he was out on job sites.

Are there arcades anymore?

[Bicycle Bill]

I was a child of the sixties, and back in the days of thumper-bumpers and reel-style scoring, when you got five balls a game and the games themselves were a dime a play or three for a quarter, I got moderately good at several of the older mechanical machines — although I never much paid attention to their names. It was a case of whatever the vending company stuck out there, and so long as the machines continued to work and the money kept coming in, they never saw the need to keep switching out machines.   Later on, after the games became a fusion of mechanical action, multi-ball play, dot-matrix screens, PC boards (and later microchips), and bonus 'games within the game'. I do recall becoming quite adept at the 'Addams Family' game (which was made by Bally).

Although on the early machines a skilled player *COULD* do a primitive form of multiball.  Back then, there were actually five silver balls contained in the machine, and it was necessary to operate a lever to bring a ball up from underneath the playfield and into position at the plunger...  so you could, in theory, start your game, bring up all five balls, one at a time, and launch them into play until all five balls were on the playfield at the same time.

I do have to agree with Sue, though, that back in the golden days of after-school time-killing, Williams or Gottlieb were the biggest names in the business when it came to the money-munching monsters.   Bally and some of the others were Johnny-come-latelies.

-"BB"-

[wesw]

yeah, i just remembered, Disco Fever machine

you could get up to five or six balls in play at once

it had powerful banana flippers

i had such a supple wrist....

tommy can you hear me?