Pinball Wizards

by Adam Ruben

I could be the C Division winner. I could be the PAPA world champion. I could be the top-ranked player in the world, hopping between tournaments and consistently clobbering all opponents, crowds gathering to watch my live catches and slap-saves and bounce passes.

  But I could never be Mommy.

  I started this book to learn whether an ultimately ordinary player could flip with the greats. And now I don’t think that matters so much. Obsessions are fun to indulge, and don’t get me wrong: I love pinball. But to become great, obsessions require time, and time is finite.

  “It takes a lot of determination, passion, and just really, really wanting this so much that you’ll do everything in your power possible to get it,” Robert Gagno says in Wizard Mode. Thirty weekends a year, this guy competes. Thirty. I guess . . . I don’t want this that much.

  I guess.

  Epilogue

  Insert Coins to Continue

  * * *

  CHECKING THE PINBALL ENTHUSIASTS GROUP on Facebook one morning, I stumble across (or, I guess, scroll to) a post from a player in crisis: “I need some serious help,” he writes. “Over the past six months I’ve been starting to lose passion and interest in pinball. I don’t know if people have been through this before, and if so, how did you get through it?”

  Admittedly his request for “serious help” is a somewhat ridiculous first-world problem to have. But the Pinball Enthusiasts community is quick to offer solutions, everything from taking a break to joining a league to obtaining, ahem, “a new set of balls.” One reply, however, is beautifully simple: “If you’re not having fun you’re doing it wrong.”

  There was a moment during league finals when I felt physically ill. I had just drained my ball on Medieval Madness in the most frustrating way while trying to control the ball and cradle it on my left flipper. I had the ball. I could have whacked it up the playfield, but I tried to get cute, to be masterful, to be Bowen Kerins. And in the process, the ball dribbled slightly upward, paused just out of reach of my flipper tips, and then fell between them. It was 100 percent my fault.

  I smacked the flipper buttons, even when it was too late, then screamed something impolite and walloped the game—not on the glass, of course—with my open palms.

  Then I felt a wave of nausea, actual nausea, and for a split second I sank to my knees and experienced a sensation I’ve only ever felt when inhaling pool water through my nose. You know that feeling? A second or two later, it passed, and I doubt anyone noticed. Still, now I understand something crucial about that moment: I sure as hell wasn’t having fun. I was doing it wrong.

  I think pinball has a future for two reasons. One is that it continues to evoke such intense emotions from those who alternately love and hate it, sometimes within the same minute. As long as pinball can make players feel so game-wallopingly frustrated and so high-fivingly exultant, all it needs is a stream of players willing to seek it out.

  The second reason has more to do with pinball’s current trajectory, the fact that there were 145 manufacturers in the 1930s, then twenty-three in 1980, then only three by the late ’90s, then one, then nearly zero during the financial crisis—but now, just in the last few years, the count is back up to five. The influx of boutique manufacturers may be problematic in some respects, but it shows something incontrovertible: that pinball can adapt.

  Pinball has reflected the zeitgeist of the eras it’s passed through, from the salons de jeu normalizing the pursuit of leisure to the tug-of-war between gambling and puritanical overreach to the public miniexhibitions of innovation in the arcade age to the individualization of entertainment that shifted pinball machines out of corner stores and into basements to what we’re seeing today—a reempowerment of the small-time creator, using tools formerly only available to large companies, to make and distribute pinball machines.

  We live in an age of unprecedented resources for individuals to do stuff. You can become a taxi driver for Uber or Lyft, own a bed-and-breakfast with Airbnb, manage a store on eBay, and crowdsource start-up funds. It remains to be seen whether this is a realistic business model for pinball manufacturers, but I think it says something that people at least want to try it.

  “The forces of change and development are relentless,” wrote Roger Sharpe in 1977, “and some people worry that the classic pinball machine may evolve into something less beautiful and appealing than it is today.” Whether his concern has been borne out over the past forty years is a matter of opinion; some would say that today’s sleek machines are more fun to play than the silk-screened beasts of the Carter years, while others believe that pinball peaked at some juncture in the irretrievable past—as, often, did the players themselves. But even though pinball can’t always adapt to what everyone wants, it’s shown a remarkable ability to do what’s necessary to stay alive, despite facing serious challenges.

  When I started writing this book, I had no idea I’d encounter anything beyond surface-level controversy. I was naive, though, and I soon discovered that the pinball world, like every other part of society, is sometimes roiled by major acrimony and abrasiveness. While many people I’ve talked to were simply happy to bask in the fun of a complicated game, others seemed to spout controversy with every sentence.

  Multiple people ordered me to stop my iPhone’s voice recorder function before they’d continue talking. (Once, for no reason at all and without me noticing until much later, my iPhone’s voice recorder stopped itself ten minutes into a two-hour interview. Many thanks to Jay Stafford of the IPDB for being a good sport about this.)

  “This isn’t for your book,” someone told me about their last statement, eyes narrowed, “and if you print this, I’ll deny it.” (I didn’t print it.) I even had someone deliver a Facebook message diatribe about another person’s fiscal mismanagement/embezzlement that led me to enlist a computer-savvy coworker to dig through public tax records—only to learn that I have no idea how to interpret public tax records.

  Part of the reason for the secrecy and the subterfuge is, maybe, a general fear of claiming to know where pinball is headed next. No one wants to publicly misjudge the future, especially in light of the consequences for those who’ve misjudged the past.

  “It is hard to predict the future for a game that has endured so many ups and downs,” wrote Marco Rossignoli in The Complete Pinball Book. Rossignoli wrote this in 2000, when, as I mentioned, we all thought virtual reality helmets were the future.

  “Imagine a virtual reality pinball where one can pick out their favorite pinball from any era, just like songs on a jukebox,” Rossignoli muses. “Insert the money, step up onto the game arena, pick the pinball, and put the visor on.”

  The good news for Rossignoli, and undoubtedly for some others, is that this is already possible. In March 2016, Jessica Conditt reviewed something called Pinball FX2 VR on the tech blog Engadget. It’s simulated pinball using the then best commercially available virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift, and since a virtual world fills the player’s entire field of vision, it feels much more immersive than a regular computer game. The bad news is that most pinball players would still rather spend time with a physical game, no matter its age, than in a virtual arena, even a good one.

  “Nothing will ever beat playing a real-life pinball machine in a dark, sticky-floored arcade,” wrote Conditt, whose byline calls her a “professional nerd,” “but Pinball FX2 VR is a close, gratifying second.”

  “I think pinball will always be around,” says Dan Toskaner, the admittedly biased general manager of the Silver Ball Museum. I’m willing to agree that pinball will always be around at the Silver Ball Museum, as long as kids—both the regular kind and the technically adult kind—need something to do at the beach in the evenings between dinner and ice cream. But what about the rest of the world? Will pinball ever again be as ubiquitous as it was forty years ago? Will there be a pinball machine in your barbershop? Can you play a game while waiting for an oil change? Or ordering pizza?

  “Pinball deserves a better fate than i
t currently has,” laments Roger Sharpe in the documentary Pleasure Machines. The good news is that he said this in 2009, and just a few years later, pinball already has a better fate. Whether or not it will ever be as widespread as it was in 1934 or 1982 or 1992, pinball already has a new direction. I, for one, can’t wait to see where it goes.

  Everyone who likes pinball seems to have their own unique pinball-associated comfort memory. Pinball reminds Pat Lawlor of his dad’s Schlitz beer truck; Andrew Heighway thinks about sneaking away from McDonald’s; Ash Preheim at Beercade pictures a gas station game room; and when I hear Raul Julia’s voice from The Addams Family say, “Keep the ball! I have a whole bucketful!” I’m eleven years old again, banging flipper buttons on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, blissfully unconcerned about work deadlines, or preschool schedules, or paying my mortgage. I’m a child once more, and when my last ball drains, that’s okay because Dad said we can stop at Dairy Queen on the way home.

  I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about pinball that gets inside people’s heads. And I can make up any number of answers about what, objectively, makes the game brilliant. But obsession and fascination are hardly unique to pinball.

  Pinball happens to be my “thing,” but around the world, millions of people caught up in random fandom spend nights and weekends addicted to thoughts of their “thing.” I have a former editor who’s obsessed with high-end audio equipment. My dad is a life master in bridge, which he’s now played for fifty years, and he says that when he returns from a tournament, his active brain—shuffling decks and pondering moves—won’t let him sleep. He’s using as much of his retirement as possible to bounce between bridge tournaments. Heck, just this morning I parked behind an SUV with the license plate “DOCKDOG” and a vinyl sticker declaring a dog named Harry to be the 2011 champion of what Google tells me is “the world’s premiere canine aquatics competition.” While I’m reading a Pinside discussion about Stern’s newest game or learning the finer points of a flick pass on PAPA TV’s YouTube channel, someone nearby is sitting at his or her desk dreaming about bringing a chocolate lab to the wildcard qualifier at the Old Florida Outdoor Festival, digging into a heated Internet forum debate over the rules of the speed retrieve event.

  Whatever force picks out our hobbies for us—be it socialization, memories of comfort, coincidence, skill, love—everyone has their own passion. That’s what makes humanity so varied and eclectic and magical and interesting. I’m glad mine is pinball.

  In May 2016, a new pinball-and-pizza joint opens in Bethesda, Maryland, about a fifteen-minute drive from my condo. It’s called VÜK, the acronym for the vertical up-kicker that returns a pinball onto the playfield after it’s settled in a divot. The reason for the umlaut over the U is unknown, at least to me, nor can I figure out whether it makes the name rhyme with “puck” or with “work.” (As it turns out, according to an e-mail from the owner, it rhymes with “spook.”)

  Regardless of the linguistic function of the diacritical mark, the weird thing about VÜK, which sells only a few types of pizza and has basically bet the farm on pinball, is the fact that it’s in Bethesda. This is not a quasi-funky, pitcher-of-beer town—it’s freaking Bethesda. In 2014, the real estate blog Movoto ranked Bethesda as the richest small city in America, with a median household income of $141,817 and easy proximity to a polo field, luxury car dealers, a private airport, and plastic surgeons. Businesses in downtown Bethesda are fashion boutiques; they’re jewelry stores, they’re hot yoga studios, and they’re handcrafted olive oil emporia. They’re not pinball arcades.

  VÜK is the brainchild of Scott Nash, the CEO of MOM’s Organic Market, a local grocery chain. An April 2016 article in Bethesda Magazine trumpeting VÜK’s arrival had a mixed, somewhat confused reception in its comments section. “Oh goodie!” someone wrote. “Just what we need in a high-rent, upscale, highly-paid, and highly educated area, a pinball and pizza shop.”

  Exactly, I thought. For all the reasons you listed, this is indeed just what you need.

  I’m itching to visit VÜK the moment it opens, but kids, but work, but life, et cetera. Then, one Sunday night, as we’re thinking about what to do for dinner, I float an idea.

  “Hey, Maya,” I ask my daughter, now five years old, “how would you like to go play pinball and have pizza with me?”

  It’s a yes. Pizza is always a yes. I could have asked if she’d like to have pizza and a rotavirus vaccination, and she would have said yes.

  Inside VÜK, nine games are lined up against one wall; on the opposite wall is a television showing, for whatever nostalgia-inducing reason, the 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot. I ask Maya which game she’d like to play first.

  “That one!” she says, pointing to AC/DC. She’s never played pinball before, and she certainly has no idea who AC/DC is, but I guess to a five-year-old, a game with flashing lights is a game with flashing lights.

  We start from square one. I explain how to insert quarters, how to press START, how to launch the ball, how to flip. Maya kneels on a chair, staring at the vast kinetic expanse under the glass.

  “Here it comes!” I say when the ball rolls toward her. “Flip! Flip! Keep it out of the drain!”

  Maya’s flailing at the flipper buttons, and most of her balls last just a few seconds, but she’s having a blast. I find myself wishing, more than ever, that I knew what was going on inside her head. What is this busy-looking gigantic toy? What do all of these lights and sounds mean? And—maybe?—so this is what Daddy was doing all those times he left us.

  I don’t know whether Maya will one day remember her first pinball trip, but the skill she masters immediately is feeding quarters into the coin slot. If there’s anything kids can do well, it’s spend their parents’ money.

  We take turns. Maya plays while I watch, then I play while she watches. In my mind I’m impressing her with my live catches and rule set knowledge, but probably not. Playing pinball with Maya watching is like playing pinball any other time, only with someone asking every few seconds, “Now can it be my turn?”

  We take a pizza break. In addition to pizza, VÜK offers soft-serve ice cream.

  “Daddy,” Maya asks, “can I have ice cream if I finish my healthy meal of pizza?” I see what she’s trying to do here. But sure, why not? Nothing wrong with tacking one more positive association onto Daddy’s hobby.

  After dinner, back on AC/DC, Maya’s flipper flapping somehow sends the ball to the right place, and suddenly the fun intensifies: Maya’s first multiball! Why isn’t there a page for this in her baby book? First smile: six weeks, at Marina. First solid food: six months, rice cereal. First multiball: five years, AC/DC.

  “So what did you think of your first multiball?” I ask afterward.

  “I like it,” says Maya, smiling. “A lot.” That’s my girl.

  Driving home at the end of the evening, I ask Maya what her favorite part was. If you have kids, you know this is a good way to guarantee you’ll hear the answer you don’t want.

  “The pizza!”

  “But besides the pizza, if you—”

  “Daddy, I have an idea. You say something, and then I’ll say it after you say it.”

  “No, Maya, I really want to know your favorite part.”

  “No, Maya,” she repeats, “I really want to know your favorite part!”

  There is no winning this game. Believe me, I’ve tried. So I say, “My favorite part was spending time with you.”

  “My favorite part,” Maya repeats in a silly squeal, “was spending time with you.” Then she relaxes out of her mimicry voice and says, “That’s what I was going to say, too.”

  Kids can be sweet when prompted.

  We drive for a few more minutes in silence. Maya stares out the window, watching the trees and storefronts and houses swish past. Then she asks, “Daddy, can we go back to pinball pizza?”

  I promise we will.

  Updates

  * * *

  IN THE PINBALL INDUSTRY, as in a
pinball game, so much happens so quickly.

  During the year or so since I finished writing the book, Stern Pinball has continued to dominate the industry. Perhaps inspired by their competitors, Stern’s game Batman 66 (2016), based on the campy fifty-year-old television series, became their first machine with an LCD screen in the backbox. It was followed in 2017 by Aerosmith, continuing the series of games themed after bands that Jody Dankberg likes, then Star Wars.

  Jersey Jack Pinball premiered Dialed In! to generally rave reviews from those who’ve played it and some bafflement from those who haven’t. (After waiting years to see how brilliantly Pat Lawlor can design a thoroughly modern machine of his own devising, no one really expected that theme to be “cell phones.”)

  Spooky Pinball edged away from the spookiness when a major pizza chain commissioned them to manufacture Domino’s Spectacular Pinball Adventure (2016), then returned to their roots with Alice Cooper’s Nightmare Castle (2017).

  Heighway Pinball’s infinitely replaceable playfields can still only substitute a Full Throttle for a Full Throttle, but their second title, Alien, has reached the preorder-and-prototype stage, with production moved from Merthyr Tydfil to the almost Welsher-sounding town of Ebbw Vale. In June 2017, Andrew Heighway announced he would step down as CEO.

  Dutch Pinball continues to sell The Big Lebowski.

  Astounding the pinball world and especially their customers, Zidware—whose Magic Girl pinball machine never materialized, famously squandering both money and goodwill—started actually delivering the promised machines. Under president Dhaval Vasani, a new manufacturer called American Pinball (whose director of software engineering happens to be Josh Kugler, the man whose homebrew Kugler Family Pinball I admired at Expo) stepped in to make Magic Girl for John Popadiuk, in exchange for Popadiuk designing a second game. The delivered Magic Girl machines were described as visually attractive but mechanically incomplete. Customers finally had their promised games, but they weren’t really playable, rendering Magic Girl what one Pinside commenter called “little more than an extremely expensive Christmas tree.” With Magic Girl behind it, sort of, American Pinball has embarked on its next game, Houdini: Master of Mystery, bringing an increasingly functional prototype to pinball shows and promising delivery by fall 2017. More than one Internet commenter has made the same cautionary joke about how Houdini will make your money disappear.