Pinball Machines Not Yet Found In Columbus

Addams Family - Tate Center, 5/.50; Georgia Square Five, 5/.50; Foxz, 5/.50 - ****

One of the best-selling pinball machines in history, for good reason - the theme is cleverly fleshed out and integrated with the plethora of tasks you have to complete. Throw in a couple of good gimmicks, great balance (there's not one cheap drain), and a few challenging shots, and you've got a classic table. Just see if you can resist tapping the flippers along with the "clicks" in the theme music.

(This entry is from my years in Athens, Georgia and refers to a pinball machine I have not yet located in Columbus. All information about location, pricing, and condition of such machines may be horribly out of date.)

Austin Powers - Tate Center, 5/.50 - One Star

A cheap and flimsy-seeming table, which looks profoundly worn-out considering that it can't be more than a few years old. I doubt it's from excessive playing, because it's not that fun: the shots are hard to nail and the cheap drains are plentiful. Austin Powers, mod extraordinaire, might plausibly be a pinball fan - but this kind of thing ain't my bag, baby!

Champion Pub, The - Steverino's, 5/.50 - Two And A Half Stars

This has some great mechanical gimmicks revolving around the bar-room brawl theme, including a “make the ball jump rope” mode and a "beat the stuffing out of a mustachioed plastic boxer" mode. Unfortunately, aiming for the boxer is apt to send your ball draining straight down the middle almost every time, which makes it hard to get anywhere in the game. A shame – it’s the most interesting of Steverino’s surprisingly generous pinball offerings.

Cirqus Voltaire - Room 13, 5/.25 - Three And A Half Stars

Even the machine's own between-game diagnostics will tell you that the cool Ringmaster head gimmick isn’t working, meaning you can’t really get anywhere in the game... but it’s still worth it for a quarter. Recommended in the quiet hours, when you'll be better able to appreciate the table's wonderful MIDI score and the perfect cannonball-firing sound effects. If they’d just fix the Ringmaster this would be four stars...

Elvira and the Party Monsters - Coin laundry on Baxter Street, 5/.25 - Two And A Half Stars

Surprisingly cool! You’ll lose a lot of balls to the huge center drain, but aside from that this is a fun enough table from the last days of gimmick-free pinball. The details in the artwork are what make it truly loveable. Wish they would turn up the music though...

Elvis - Tate Center, 5/.50 - Three Stars

An engaging table with lots of bumpers and targets, plus a sorta cool "Heartbreak Hotel" minigame in the upper playfield. Amazingly, the music is the biggest minus: sure, there are clips of Elvis singing, but they're from the Vegas era and are drowned out anyway by the house music, the game's own rinky-dink MIDI of "Don't Be Cruel," and the tuneless screaming of the Offspring (courtesy of the nearby Crazy Taxi arcade machine). Bring earplugs and go to town.

Getaway, The - 40 Watt, 5/.50 - Not Rated

So many lights are out in this thing that it qualifies as out of order. Bonus points if you manage to catch sight of your ball before it drains.

Harlem Globetrotters On Tour - Inter-City Bus Station, 5/.25) - Two Stars

Possibly the oldest machine in Athens (its manufacture dates back to 1979), and it harkens back to simpler days on several levels. The gameplay is basic - just bumpers, spinners, and flippers. That's right, no ramps, no trapdoors, no monsters emerging out of the playfield. The LEDs can display only letters and numbers, and the soundtrack consists of deliciously rudimentary bleeps and bloops (if they're trying to replicate "Sweet Georgia Brown," I missed it). Sure, this game doesn't offer the flash of more recent tables, and may not really command repeated plays, but it's a taste of pinball history that everyone should try at least once.

Junk Yard - ~~Foxz, 5/.50~~ - Three And A Half Stars

This is a fabulous machine (although irksomely dark). The challenges you complete actually make remote sense and fit into a passable story: you're trying to escape a Satanic junkyard by building a contraption made out of junk! Collect the bicycle wheels, the bathtub, and the fan to build a fan-powered bathtub jalopy; once you've assembled the toast-shooting hair-dryer gun you can play a minigame where you shoot toast at the junkyard dog! Don’t be surprised if you let your turn at karaoke pass by when you score a replay on this thing.

(Note: When Foxz relocated to the Homewood Hills shopping center, they apparently shed this pin in favor of Addams Family. Addams Family is in the end the better table, but does Athens need another one?)

Jurassic Park - Lunch Paper, 5/.25 - Three Stars

Strangely addictive, and quite challenging. There seems to be some incorporation of dialogue from the movie, but Lunch Paper is a loud place, so I couldn't tell if classic, arguably-pinball-relevant lines like "It's a UNIX system - I know this!" and "Hold on to your butts!" made the cut. Unfortunately, the “Computer Screen” modes are inaccessible (due to a common malfunction), meaning half the game is essentially not there. "Eventually you might have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right?" Even so, for a quarter it’s still a fun challenge.

Medieval Madness - Tate Center, 5/.50 - Four Stars

This is great! Rich theme, even with the very corny "humorous" take, and plenty to do, including busting into and "destroying" a fabulous plastic castle, whacking pop-up trolls, rescuing damsels, and so on. Going for the castle gates is likely to send your ball rolling straight down the middle drain, though, so be careful. (Note: the left inlane is sticky; keep whacking the left flipper to shake it out of there.)

NBA Fastbreak - 40 Watt - N/R

Out of order.

No Fear - Ringer’s, 3/.50 - One Star

I love growling plastic skulls and extreme sports themes as much as anybody, but fifty cents for three balls would be steep even without the interminable “initialization” and “ball locating” phases of play. You’ll spend more time waiting on this machine than playing it, which is sort of okay because playing it isn’t that fun anyway. The Elvira machine is just a few doors down; do your laundry over there.

Raven - 40 Watt - Not Rated

You guessed it – out of order. Given the level of business the 40 Watt does, you’d think they could fix at least one of these machines, but I guess a reputation as Athens’s #1 Broken Pinball Warehouse has a certain cachet...

Revenge From Mars - Room 13, 5/.50; ~~Chaser's, 5/.50~~; Kingpins, 5/.50 - One Star

A very recent machine which employs the dubious gimmick of having video projected onto the playfield; you try to bounce the ball into onscreen targets. It's a hybrid of pinball and video games that serves neither very well; both sides of the action are painfully simplistic and badly-executed at that. To add to your woes, at Room 13 the screen has a blurry, out-of-focus quality that induces eyestrain and makes it hard to even tell whether you're playing as the revenging Martians or trying to resist them. Things are clearer on the Chaser's machine, but that only makes it easier to discover how limited and cheap the gameplay is. Still, it has its devotees, so maybe it'll be your thing.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not - Tate Center, 5/.50 - Two And A Half Stars

Was anybody clamoring for a pinball machine based on the Ripley's brand? One revolving around a quest to steal the possessions of exoticized indigenous cultures 'round the globe? If you don't find this concept offensive, boring, or just stupid, there's an enjoyable game here - you won't drain a lot, and there's a reasonable variety of things to do. Never really comes together though, and it’s a bit cluttered.

Simpsons, the - 40 Watt, 5/.25; Kingpins, 5/.25 - Two Stars

A decent, basic machine: bumpers, targets, a couple ramps, and some Simpsons dialogue (for which the volume is unfortunately set too low). The tasks set before you are challenging but not terribly varied, and the outlanes are cruelly open to the somewhat bouncy-feeling ball. I’d love to see someone get ahold of the more recent “Simpsons Pinball Party” table, which looks to be both more fun and less beholden to the “Crappy Licensed Product From Early Simpsons Mania” phenomenon.

(Note: The 40 Watt’s table is (surprise!) out of order, but Kingpins’s runs fine.)

Sopranos, the - Kingpins, 5/.50 - Three And A Half Stars

So apparently organized crime has been reduced in the popular consciousness to the level of seriousness at which things can be made into pinball tables. At least it’s a fun pinball table – certainly the best machine of the current decade. That’s even given that I know nothing about The Sopranos; a general familiarity with mobster clichés gets you by. The shots are fun to make, there are a ton of violent and mean-spirited minigames, and all the voicework is supoib. Forget bowling; go to Kingpins and play this.

Star Wars Episode One - ~~Blind Pig, 5/.50~~ - One Star

Same concept as Revenge From Mars, same problems. The Star Wars milieu raises it a star point; the fact that it's Episode One knocks it back down. Thankfully, the extent of Jar Jar's involvement seems to be a mode where you're trying to knock the babbling freak to the ground; I can get behind that, even if the rest of the game is deeply uninteresting. (Note: Blind Pig has since replaced this with a series of other machines, Playboy most recently; entry is here for legacy purposes.)

Terminator 2 - Steverino's, 5/.25 - Two Stars

A wide-open "just ramps" table with a couple of low-tech gimmicks that don’t add much, but are somehow more appealing than the fancier fare of Terminator 3 (see below). There seems to be a lot going on that I'm not good enough to access, which is always intriguing. It’s not bad for twenty-five cents.

Theatre of Magic - Room 13, Sons of Italy, 5/.50 - Four Stars

An addictive, lively machine, whose shots flow elegantly into one another; the clever, tasteful gimmicks are icing on the cake. It's unclear whether the periodic jamming of the left flipper (Room 13) should be considered one of the Theatre's freaky illusions, but the game is so good that it doesn't matter. In any case, of all the downtown machines, I've sunk the most quarters into this one and don't regret a one - this is possibly the most enjoyable machine in Athens. (Note: the Sons of Italy machine has a note on it warning the prospective player that it “sometimes” doesn't work. In my experience, it has fewer problems than the Room 13 machine; your mileage may vary.)

Whirlwind - Steverino's, 5/.25 - Two And A Half Stars

Recently marked down from an absurd 3/.50 to its natural 5/.25, this is a nice, traditional pinball machine (no video modes, few lights and doodads). The gimmicks it has are reasonably tied to he theme of, um, weather: start up the “whirlwind” and some spinning discs on the table will create turbulence for the ball, and a fan on the machine will actually blow air on you. It would be nice to have more modes, or specific shots you’re trying to make at specific times – but for just bouncing the ball around, this has a good flow.

World Cup Soccer - Sons of Italy, 5/.50 - Three And A Half Stars

A jam-packed machine with tons of stuff to shoot for; so much in fact that it’s kind of overwhelming at first. Great job on the soccer theme with the whirling soccer ball, the goalie you’re trying to sneak past, the animations and so on. I do wish we’d see a little less of that annoying cartoon dog, though; a better mascot would have been that commentator on Telemundo who proclaims “GOAL.. GOAL.. GOAL” every time someone makes a shot. The dog and general ugliness make it hard to fall in love with this table, but it’s really quite good.

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