Back in the 1950s, when pinball machines took nickels or dimes, my father put me on a strict limit with them; he told me that if I played them too much I’d become obsessed with them and… well, I don’t remember what he told me would happen.
Maybe it was the same thing he warned me about when he took a dislike to my reading Mad Magazine; I think he told me it would give me bad attitudes.
Either way, I never lost my taste for satire or for the noises and flashing lights of pinball machines, although for the past fifty years or so, I’ve only run into them at arcades ‘down at the shore,’ next to the Skeeball games.
But it all came flashing back last summer with a visit to the Pinball Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown area. Dozens of machines, from the earliest ones I remember to ones that are so up-to-date they may well have more memory and intelligence than me.
And the best part is that once you’ve paid your admission fee, you can play them all, no coins required, for as long as you can take it. There are two floors of machines with, literally, all the bells and whistles you could want. And even a bit of punful humor (if it was intended)…see this sample from a 70s machine.
One thing became very clear early on as I moved around the room and the second gallery above it: The machines that kept us enthralled for hours years ago, were a lot more simple than they seemed then. Try this one, with its simple layout, perhaps a dozen bumpers, two ball traps and one pair of flippers.
Compare that with these newer machines, with dozens of chutes, devices, bumpers, flashing lights and more. Much of the time the ball is at the back you can’t even see what’s happening to it! The one below is just as complicated. I hate to sound like an old crank, but I liked the old ones, and still like them better; they let me feel like I’m playing against my past performance, not against a machine that could probably also beat Bobby Fischer at chess.
Still, I can’t say I didn’t have fun, because I did. And a good part of the fun was looking at the changing styles of the backboard artwork, which could be a good subject for an exhibition at some enterprising art museum
I’ll be visiting Las Vegas in December, mostly as a base for a couple of National Park trips…but it’s just come to my attention that there’s a pinball museum, there, too! Ping! Boop! Whee! Ding!
