Hi folks.
First here's the background for those who don't know (most everybody).
I was into pinball fairly big several years back. Got into it when one was left for the landfill but it followed me home instead. Thanks to the now sadly defunct CFH pinball guides and an Echo Lake MPU I brought it back to life. Eventually I ended up with five really nice games in my living room, but I sold everything off for financial reasons and dropped off the radar. I still lurk here quite a bit though and have even contributed a couple Pulitzer posts for all to witness. The jury is still out, but I think a few got a giggle at least.
So that's about it I guess. The thing to note is that my time away from the hobby has made me pretty unbiased about the big picture and more objective than I used to be.
OK, so I went to Las Vegas for a few days last week for some time with my dear Mom and away from my house. It was a fun trip. It would be a terrible waste not to go see the PHOF while I was there of course. My other trips to that little burg netted me several hours at the old location. This time I only ended up spending about 4 hours at the new place. The time flew, but this time that one trip pretty much quenched my appetite for pinball. The new location is tons better than the old one.
First off I think my appetite would have been bigger if I hadn't run into several games which had issues that wouldn't be tolerated on a game if you had it in your own house. However that is very easy to say and it still left a ton of games that worked well enough to enjoy. The only problem is that you don't know if the game has a problem until you load your coin in and give it a go. The money goes to a good cause and it's a cheap date anyway, but the time spent playing a problem game rubs some sparkle off the experience. Oh well. It is what it is, and what it is is a place with more pinball machines that anywhere else you're ever going to run into, a lot of them being rare old gems, so take all that for what it's worth. Plus, I'm sure Tim does the best he can with what he's got to work with - and he was there to say "hi" to
late on a Saturday night, fixing things the whole time. There are so many machines there to keep up on that I'm not surprised at the number of issues I ran into.
And of course the other reason my tolerance was short is that I haven't played much pinball for a long time now and I SUCK. This leads to frustration and that leads me to calmer subjects so...
So anyway, I took away a couple ideas for myself. They might apply to somebody else too, but of course you have to decide that for yourself.
First, the PHOF is awesome but don't expect to walk in and experience a bunch of excellent "players". They all kind of play at least OK and a handful are very nice. Most all of them are
very good cosmetic examples and there are a handful of rarities that are fun to play just for the chance to do it. I've never been to an expo, but I would guess that those machines are in a lot better playing condition. But of course that's because the responsibility to keep them maintained is like one man per one or two games instead of one man per hundred. Big difference. I could be wrong and I certainly wouldn't want to discourage anyone from taking a pilgrimage to the PHOF, but for this rookie I'm not sure it's worth a special trip just to go see it due to the playing condition of so many of the games. But it's certainly a great thing to do if you find yourself "in the neighborhood".
Second, I discovered that I tended to really enjoy the SS games the most. This was a big surprise to me as I've always kind of liked all the bells, whistles and rulesets of the DMD stuff back in the day. Those games are still fun of course and if I get the chance to buy games again I'd still like to have one or two. Every once in a while a guy will declare that he prefers the SS games the most and that always struck me as a little odd for whatever reason. But I guess now I've come to realize that I'm apparently in that same camp.... for whatever reason. I can't really put my finger on it, but I know how I felt when I left. I just enjoyed playing them. Another thing is that I specifically enjoyed some
Data East titles a LOT. If I ever get back into the hobby, I think I'd like to have a Time Machine for sure. And even though it was on the cutting edge of DMD, I've always wanted and still want to get a Check Point. I had and restored a Secret Service and that was just a great, fun SS game.
I have to admit that there isn't another location open every day of the week you can just go and discover something like this.
OK so that's my perspective du jour.
Sorry - I didn't have a camera to take pictures this time.
