Notes From The Pinball Expo

This weekend one of the most holiest of holy days fell upon us. Of course I am talking about The Annual Pinball Expo! For the past couple years some friends of mine and myself attend to gorge on hours and hours of pinball. You see we grew up in a town where there wasn't much to do so we played pinball. We would roam around town looking for pinball machines and deposit our quarters with gleeful anticipation. Now let me clear things up a moment. A pinball convention is not as dorky as say...a Star Trek Convention or a D&D Tournament. It is probably slightly above a comic book convention on the nerd scale (only due to the recent acceptance of comic book movies) but no one dresses up like Thor or anything like that.

In fact the typical Pinball enthusiast is usually between the age of 30-55 and is often unkempt. There is a 70% chance that they will have some sort of facial hair and it is more likely than not that they are either very large and rotund or extremely wiry (there is usually no middle ground). Upon entering the Expo you are assaulted by a cacophony of dinging due to the fact that there are about 50 to 60 machines all on free play. It is truly a glorious sight to behold. Now most of the machines fall into categories of year they were made:

50's: Pretty basic machine. No ramps and probably three bumpers.

60's: No doubt some sort of space motif, but similar to 50's machines.

70's: For some reason the couple of 70's machines I played all had some sort of scantily clad woman on the front. From barbarian women to robotic space women to voluptuous women bending over to shoot pool. I guess the 70's were a pinball sexual revolution or something.

80's-90's: Lots of pinball games based on bands (The Who, Guns N' Roses) and movies both good (The Addams Family) and most of the times awful (Congo, Judge Dredd, Johnny Mnemonic, Space Jam etc.).

00's: Most machines that have come out now are based on some type of nerdy popular movie (Lord of The Rings, The Dark Knight) or a popular TV show with a nerdy following (The Simpsons, Family Guy)

All in all it was pretty awesome I got to play the new Dark Knight machine which was cool and play some old favorites. When I played White Water (a personal favorite) it was like visiting with an old friend. I probably haven't played it in two or three years, but as soon as I pulled back that plunger it was like it had only been yesterday. I also played machines I had never played at all like Dolly Parton (which was weird) and the Elvis machine (which was cooler than I expected). After 5 hours of continuous pinball playing my eyes felt like they were going to bleed out of there sockets, while by head was buzzing with a headache brought on my trying to focus on a metal ball bouncing around for 5 hours...but it was totally worth it.

-Astroboy