Pinball Wizard

I'm not quite sure how I got here, to be honest.

Back when I was a kid, I loved PA days.  Hey, I'm sure kids today still love them.  Me, not so much, since I have to be P about the A now, no matter what kind of stuff they come up with for us.

From about Grade 7 on, whenever a PA day would come up, I'd set things up with a few buddies, sometimes even a small group.  We'd meet somewhere on Lawrence, and catch the 54 westbound, nothing in my pocket but five bucks and some bus tickets.  We'd ride that over to the SRT, and head up to the Scarborough Town Centre.  Some kids would have shopping, clothing and checking out the opposite sex in mind, but my circle of friends (at the time, at least) was far more into more important things.

We'd head straight to the Cineplex Odeon, and pick out a movie to see.  Child admission was only $2.50, which was half the budget for the day, so we had to choose films carefully.  I clearly remember that Goonies was one of the films we hit - maybe Jedi as well at one point.  No popcorn for us, however.  We took the precious change we got back, and headed over to Wizard's Castle.  Ten precious quarters, and sometimes hours to wait before our show. 

I remember wandering aimlessly up and down the noisy, dark aisles, spending more time looking than playing - had to make it last.  The Star Wars sit in cabinet was always a favourite, and Dragon's Lair was cool, but it was 50 cents and always far too quick a play for my limited skills.  I was pretty good at Galaga, but it was when they put in a High Speed pinball machine that I found my mecca.  That game was just damn cool.

Anyways, fast forwards a decade or three, my group all discovered the opposite (or the same) sex, some moved on, some moved up in the world, and I find myself in Orlando with the family this summer.  We spend a day in the complex pool, and are sitting outside the snack bar having a quick bite to eat when nature calls for me.  The bathroom is inside another building, and to get there, I have to walk thru...the arcade.

It was pretty simple, three or four vids, no pinball, and a first for me, a coin-operated Xbox in a console.  They had Galaga in a multi, so I was kind of interested...but I had no time.  I couldn't linger, and I never did make it back in there the entire trip.

It got me to thinking - when DO I have the time for this kind of thing?  I used to love them, and still do, to be honest.  I don't feel my age when I'm playing them - not a bit, not that I'm that old or anything - but it makes me feel young, gives me an adrenaline rush.  The only time I really have to play them - is after bedtime.  Since finding arcades is pretty much impossible these days, the only option I have for playing is to...buy my own.

My favourite video game of all time is called Elevator Action.  I started out looking for that one.  I'd nearly bought one five or six years ago, so this interest couldn't have been a total shock to Gabi - but if she had any idea how much time I spent surfing websites reading about arcade collecting, even while still in Florida, I think she'd be surprised.  (not any more though).

At the end of August I actually found a few examples, and was willing to spend a couple of days on roadtrips to pick them up - but again, the time monster got in my way - I just couldn't pull it off, or justify ditching my girls for multiple days to pick up something as frivolous (yeah, right) as a video game.

Further to this, I made an interesting discovery.  Video games, unless expertly restored (beyond my skill-set), seem to not really hold up in value.  In short, they seem to be a bit like flushing a large part of any money invested down the toilet, unless they're Ms. Pac-Man or Galaga.  Pinball machines, on the other hand, seem to mostly hold their value, and in some cases, are rapidly appreciating.  They still make them, and once I found the website  that seemed to have a lot of people doing a lot of talk about pinballs (and vids too, to be honest, but it seems to be mostly pinballs), I became enthralled at the idea of owning a High Speed pinball to be able to play after bedtime, or even, if the girls got into it, before bedtime. 

I got so enthralled, that I made a rather impulsive move.  I found an ad for a Triple Strike, relatively close by and within my budget range at the time.  I'd been talking about it for a few weeks, so I took Maya with me after her squash lesson (I was still hurt, so wasn't playing) and we drove out to Burlington and Terrence Glover's place, and picked up Triple Strike.  In retrospect, I probably wouldn't have done it, although it's been a lot of fun shopping it out.  It was working, but a mess overall.  I've learned a ton on it, and I suppose in that regard $400 is a lot better than spending a lot more money and messing around with an even more expensive piece of machinery I had next to no clue about.

So I set it up in the garage, and we all played it, having some fun, and I slowly but surely learned how to take it apart to clean it, do what was necessary, and with the help of some fantastic people on Maaca, even solve the little credit switch problem I was having.  I can't even begin to describe the sense of accomplishment I felt when I finally got it working, on free-play, 100%.  While I'm very good at USING electronic equipment, changing the wiring setup and adjusting electrical switches was a new experience for me.  Just today, I adjusted the switch on the right flipper, and it's working much better.  Wouldn't have been able to do that two months ago, trust me.

So the plan all along was to finish it, and bring it into the basement to play over the winter.  I'd never really stopped looking for a High Speed, and they kept popping up, but always in places like Green Bay or Boston...places I could dream about heading to over the weekend, but not realistically.  So I decided to pick up, (after checking it out) a Rollergames, which looked both like an interesting game and a relatively kid friendly game.  Then, on maaca again, someone who decided to part with their High Speed saw my quest, and I cancelled my Rollergames appt.  I sold all the remaining Leaf tickets I had, and headed to Brockville to meet Bob, who was coming from near Montreal.  We swapped some cash for the machine with the OPP watching us conduct our business the whole time (I was waiting for them to bring a canine unit over to sniff the machine).

At any rate, I now have two fully working machines in my basement, and a day where I don't spend at least a few minutes playing one of them is rare.  They seem to require fairly constant tweaking, and the ramp is cracking pretty badly on High Speed, so I need to order a replacement, then figure out exactly how complicated the operation will be to put it in.  Hopefully not too bad...but really, who cares?  It's fun just working on them, if you can believe that.

And for a few minutes each game, I feel like I'm 14 again - without the acne and social awkwardness.