ARCADE PINBALL

"Ever since I was a young boy, I played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton, I must´ve played them all
And I ain´t seen nothin´ like him in any amusement hall,
That deaf dumb and blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball..."

The world of pinball, as sung by The Who´s Roger Daltrey in their song Pinball Wizard. Ramps, kickbacks, extra balls, multiball, captive ball, match, a skillshot, get a highscore for a replay. How come that it was not until 1990 when I got introduced to pinball?

Basically, in small villages there were no arcades, and even if there would be one, you´d need dough to feed the machines. At age 12 or 13, you are "too big for the napkin and too small for the tablecloth" as per a dutch expression.
We´ll step once more in the virtual time machine (by the way, for fans of Doctor Who, there are 2 cabinets themed after this show)!

The journey brings us back to Summer 1990. After a dull WorldCup with a lousy performance of the "orange lion", our neighbours Germany win the tournament and, just like the previous year we decide to go to la belle France for the holidays. The chosen area is the south west (centre) département nr. 24, La Dordogne.

We arrive on a camping in Sarlat-La Caneda and the first thing to see on any camping site is whether it has an arcade. Italy 1987 had a racing game, Switzerland 1988 had a tennis game, France 1989, well I do not really recall, but there was a pool. So here in Sarlat there was a Williams pinball table, Jungle Lord from 1981.
There was this other dutch bloke hanging around the pinball table and somehow he figured out to hit the table on a certain spot to get free games, not having to stash french franc coins in it. The table itself consisted in putting the ball in a kind of lock to activate a miniball to fall in the letter L, O, R or D, writing LORD and getting a bonus.

In 1991 during a visit to our nephews who have a Nintendo NES, from a store we borrow the by Rare Ltd. adapted, originally issued in 1986 High Speed cartridge.

For those who do still have a NES and if you are keen on pinball, then I recommend it, otherwise you can simply find the ROM somewhere and use an emulator.

4 years later, while I am studying "International Commerce", I receive my "public transport annual travel card", i.e. an invention of the Dutch State so that all students can travel through the country without having to pay. Those were the days...

My province Gelderland has a couple of historically important cities (normal size, not to be compared with capital cities around the world), e.g. Arnhem, main city of the province and Nijmegen, the oldest city of the whole country.
Behind the Korenmarkt, a large square in Arnhem where you can find all popular pubs and their terraces there was (not sure if it still there now) an arcade, I went there several times to flip guilders in the pinball machines.

During the 1995 summer I visited my niece A. We didn´t have anything to do and she also received her public transport travel card.
"Let´s grab the train and go to Nijmegen", I proposed. We had a kriek (belgian cherry beer) and I started to like the city of Nijmegen, strategically situated in South Gelderland near the borders of Brabant, Limburg and Germany.
During another "whole day Nijmegen visit" where I used to go regularly on a dutch national holiday, I found a nice café with a Theatre of Magic pinball cabinet. Until now it is still one of my favourites.

Spring 1998. I quit studies and my mother takes me to Zutphen, where I present myself in several temporary job offices. It´s 11 o` clock in the morning, and I´m on the streets again (Not 3 o` clock as sung by Phil Lynott in "Dancing in the Moonlight).So I enter the pub "De Gevel" where owner Martin serves me a nice cup of coffee. He has the Red & Ted Roadshow pinball machine, so I play it. Just a couple of months later the cabinet is gone and an Oldtimer gambling machine is put in it´s place. This became a tendency to swap all pinball cabinets for slot machines, which is not really cool, as slot machines swallow down a lot more coins.

Two years later I finally find a job in Zutphen. In the summer, my friend N. and me, we go on an interrail trip to France. We end up near Sarrebourg in the North-east, département 54.
Sarrebourg has a couple of nice pubs, the best example is the Heineken Pub, where we flirt with the french chicks and think on how to write poems using Je l´aime a mourir by Francis Cabrel as a source of inspiration. The World Cup Usa 94 cabinet is here. All small change (10 franc pieces, value about one and a half buck or euro) is "wasted" in this machine. And in the last week, the cabinet has been changed by the 1996 Tales of the Arabian Knights...

Eventually, movie culture got blended in pinball machines, especially in the decade of the 90s. Just a few examples: 1991 Terminator Judgement Day, 1992 The Addams Family, 1993 Dracula, 1993 Last Action Hero, 1993 Star Trek The Next Generation, 1996 Mars Attacks...

Four years ago, Farsight Studios issued a pinball app, simply called Pinball Arcade for your cell phone and for other gaming platforms. Go check it out, really splendid and once you've downloaded the pinball table you don't need Internet to play it. Of course you'll have to spend some bucks, but eventually it will be cheaper than buying a whole cabinet and stash it into your garage only to find that you will lack space to store other stuff.
My good friend M. with whom I used to play Manchester United Europe and rent a lot of Sega Megadrives  gave me this tip. Thanks buddy.
Here is another cool link to the IDPB, don't be afraid, just click on it, it is a pinball database.

1991, Road Rash and other stuff

Somewhere in the eighties, they are just everywhere.
Video games. Consoles. Entertainment. Play. Come play on the NES with me, my Amiga. Connect the Atari 2600 to the telly.

Small joysticks, Space Invaders, I never had an Atari myself, but made some great highscores on the normal pc. Who remembers the Digger game from 1983?

Nintendo came up with the NES. We all love(d) the dog in the duck game, that barks and jumps in the bushes.
Here they are again, the italian brothers. Luigi is the green boy, a bit younger as his brother Mario. How many times we fell in the sea, couldn't swim,dropped into the ravines, got hit by bombs or killed by backbouncing Koopa shells. The castleworld with the lava and Bowser. Jack and the Beansteak by climbing to other worlds.

Sega had the Master system, and then in the nineties, they hit the gaming market with the Megadrive (or Genesis). We were kids in secondary school, 13 or 14 year olds, and in the weekends, I used to go to the videotheque and loan a megadrive with some games there.
What Mario is for Nintendo, Sonic became for Sega. Coins are rings.

Searching through all those game titles, such as European Club Soccer, also one of my favourites back then, my eyes fall on the Road Rash cartridge. Racing on the US highways, kicking other bikers off or hitting them just in front of a car. The funky noisy sounds, the somewhat sinister gameplay, chasing the way down the finish, getting knocked on a tree or a cow, falling from the bike and running over the highway to follow the route. What kind of keyboard/synthesizer has been used to create these brilliant mega drive tunes?

After 5 circuits ending good enough on each track, you get in the second level. The tracks are longer, there is more police to tail you and bust you, fining you and eventually when you get a more expensive motorcycle, you crash more.

This is 1991, and all these old games bring back nostalgic memories. Here in Spain there are a lot of second hand cash converter stores where all these brilliant "living in the past" consoles are still being sold. Then again, there is also Ebay. And what about our friends that have a basement full of Commodores, with thousands of floppy disks.
But you can also run your torrent client and find all roms you want. Emulate any rom for any console and travel back in history of gaming.