Stern is the only company that still makes pinball machines. Midway I think went out of business a while back. I forget what the other major pinball manufacturer was. Hopefully Stern will keep the torch alive for many years. Thank god for virtual pinball, although it isn't the same.
I still like playing real pinball any time I run across a machine in the wild. I can take $5 and spend a half hour playing. I can't do that with a modern video game. There is a small arcade by me that has one or two pinball machines that I play whenever I'm there. Used to be the bowling alley by me had them but they haven't had them for a long time now. But yeah it is getting harder and harder to find them 🙁

There are two things I find sad about pinball machines. The first is the wear and tear of the ball hitting the mechanical objects. Its really sad when the flipper is no longer snappy or one of the impact locations is broken or one of the lights is out. Unfortunately, due to the mechanical stress on the parts, it is going to happen sooner or later and repairs can be very difficult.

The second one is with modern machines, they always seem to be based off some movie license. Is there no room for originality today? Isn't the pinball experience enough? Most movies don't lend themselves well to pinball.

Pinball is a very tactile experience, there's a real ball moving around in there making things happen, and I think that makes pinball tables enjoyable even to people that aren't very good at it. (Like me! 🙁)

The Wii actually has a pretty faithful recreation of some of the better known Midway tables, like Gorgar and Pinbot. And yes, pinball machines tend not to last but not much you can do about that other than maintain them.

I don't know that movie licneses bother me that much. I'd be interested to see that Tron Legacy pinball table, I bet that is pretty neat.

Oh man...it's been more than 2 decades since I last used a real pinball table. No parks or amusement centres are keeping them anymore over here. Kinda missed them.... Only playing Pinball Illusions and Pinball Fantasies and Epic Pinballs nowadays. I'm not at these games anyway, but just play them for fun.

While I like Pinball Extreme, Pinball Illusions, Epic Pinball etc. they are just not the same as a real table. But yeah most places don't have pinball machines anymore. You might find a few at a large arcade like a Dave and Busters, most small arcades don't have any at all. About the only other places you see them out in the wild anymore are the occasional bar, diner or truck stop that might have a machine or two that may or may not be kept up.

Pinball machines started really going by the wayside in the early 80s when arcades put in video games, so a place that may have been mostly pinball machines would put in as many videogames as they could. Nowadays standup video games are getting hard to find, and the arcade itself is going extinct. More often than not, if you find a pinball machine at all, it is in bad shape and paired with maybe a 4 in 1 cabinet that has Pac-man, Galaga, Centipede and Asteroids or something. The bowling alley I used to go to had at least a dozen pinball machines along with maybe the same number of stand-up video games. Then they halved the number of pinball machines and finally got rid of them altogether. They barely have videogames anymore, except for a few really popular ones in the lobby.

If I recall, there were at least 10 arcades in my area growing up, of varying quality, now there are maybe only 2 or 3.

Actually, the maintenance thing is an interesting point of note because over the course of the four hours I was there for:

* The Robocop machine, being a new acquisition, had a few bulbs out, its kickers weren't kicking strong enough, and its left flipper was a little soggy.

* One machine had a slot that the ball managed to get severely wedged back into. (Eventually got it out but it took two people to do it.)

* Another machine was working fine, then suddenly refused to kick the ball into the inlane during a high-scoring run. (Said machine was also not registering tilts very well.)

* Even Tron Legacy, being a newer machine, lost a tiny little washer off of something in the playfield during the course of the night and we couldn't figure out where it came from. One of the tools this person had was essentially a magnet on a stick in order to fish out things like that.

So one thing's for sure: If you're gonna own these things yourself, you've gotta know how to maintain them because little things seem to happen all the time. :P

Real pinball machines are indeed a lot of fun. My all-time favorites are Firepower (Williams, 1980) and Eight Ball Deluxe (Bally, 1981); a somewhat distant third is High Speed (Williams, 1986). I was really good at getting multiball with both Firepower and High Speed 😁 .

Malik wrote:

Oh man...it's been more than 2 decades since I last used a real pinball table. No parks or amusement centres are keeping them anymore over here. Kinda missed them.... Only playing Pinball Illusions and Pinball Fantasies and Epic Pinballs nowadays. I'm not at these games anyway, but just play them for fun.

Likewise Malik. I played my last real pinball in the mid 1990's (I believe it was Twilight Zone by Bally); it's been PC pinball games only since then. Extreme Pinball and Silverball Plus 2 are my choices as of late. And yes, getting multiball is a lot harder with these 😦 .

snorg wrote:

If I recall, there were at least 10 arcades in my area growing up, of varying quality, now there are maybe only 2 or 3.

In my neck of the woods there used to be up to 6 arcades at one time (plus the local bowling alley); now the arcades are gone (last one replaced by a fitness center 3 years ago) and the bowling alley only has vending machines 😐 .

In my area, the arcades that seem to have survived the best are the "family fun center" type places, where they have minigolf, go-carts, the games that give those tickets for the horrible prizes (kazoos with lead paint ftw) and that may or may not have a pizza & burgers type food establishment attached.
The hardcore arcade-only places are long gone. You know the type: 30 or so machines in a dimly lit store front in the mall (maybe even the crummy mall that no one goes to and only has Orange Julius and Footlocker still there) stained carpet, the guy that runs the place may have ties to organized crime, that sort of thing.

snorg wrote:

In my area, the arcades that seem to have survived the best are the "family fun center" type places, where they have minigolf, go-carts, the games that give those tickets for the horrible prizes (kazoos with lead paint ftw) and that may or may not have a pizza & burgers type food establishment attached.

The only "family fun center" place that I know still exists is in another county from where I live (about an hour's drive); I took my sisters and their children there about 5-6 years ago. At one time there were pinball machines and video games everywhere; now, the only video games you can find are at the so-called family restaurant - about 4 of them.

snorg wrote:

The hardcore arcade-only places are long gone. You know the type: 30 or so machines in a dimly lit store front in the mall (maybe even the crummy mall that no one goes to and only has Orange Julius and Footlocker still there) stained carpet, the guy that runs the place may have ties to organized crime, that sort of thing.

I remember one that I used to frequent quite a bit in my high school years, it was next to an auto repair shop - and across from it was a bar. It was OK during the day; at night, however, it was very different - and quite scary-looking. It was finally shut down in 1988 by the local police - don't know what really happened, but it seems a raid of some sort had taken place.