also, pinball

Here's some photos of a few of the pinball machines I saw the other night. This guy bought a ton of single-word domains at the dawn of the web, and has been slowly selling them off for large sums of money. He currently owns a former church; it's a nondescript building somewhere in New Orleans (I'm not sure if I should say exactly where) that's chock full of lovingly restored pinball machines – something like, um, 40-50 machines, ranging through the entire history of the game. The collection includes some ultra-rare prototypes, like one Williams game called Taxi. And a couple of token video games, including a Tempest, which I gravitated to. I discovered that being able to kick ass at Space Giraffe does little for being able to kick ass at Tempest, especially when the dial judders a lot and slows down way too fast.

I also remembered that I am an utter nerd; most of the machines were off when Lewis and I got there. The Williams game got powered up while I was in another part of the room; I heard its sound effects and instantly said “I hear a Williams video game!”. I think it is arguable that I spent entirely too much time playing video games in the eighties.

: Atari sure had a pervasive design identity in the 70s.

: My inner 8-year-old thinks this is the coolest style ever. The guy who owns these machines pointed out that the art on top of the bumpers is on plastic cut to fit the art, instead of the usual “here is the triangular space you have to fill, go crazy”.

: This game wants to be the Dr. Strange pinball SO BAD.

: “Spectrum”. OMFG the colors <3 <3

: The whole thing is covered with pictures of resistors. Rainbows and resistors. How’s that for a game theme? Apparently it has some kind of color-guessing game ala Mastermind going on. It was out of order, so I couldn’t power it up and find out how impossible it would be for me to actually input a color code by hitting targets; I put all my skill points in video games, not pinball.