I haven’t really posted about it on here but I’ve been playing a lot of pinball lately. I’ve always liked it but for whatever reason, I really got the pinball bug about two months ago. I think it’s mostly because I made an account on Stern Pinball’s achievement tracking thing, that automatically tracks achievements and scores across their tables as long as you scan a QR code on your phone using the machine’s QR reader. I’m generally not an achievement fan but it makes sense for pinball to me, where the goal is to reach higher scores. I think tracking my scores, even in the non-Stern tables, has made me more excited about pinball. It also just feels great to play and once you get good enough, it generally feels fair and you can play for longer.

The arcade I’ve mostly been going to has been Pinball Pete’s in Ann Arbor since it’s by the Downtown branch of the library. They recently moved from another location, which I think I liked slightly more because of all the old arcade games they used to have, but now they have more pinball tables which I guess fits in more with the name anyway. Just yesterday, after the Comics and Small Press event they had at the library, I walked over and played Elvira’s House of Horrors, Pulp Fiction, the new Transformers table, Foo Fighters, and Uncanny X-Men. My favorite table at Pinball Pete’s at the moment has been Stern’s Godzilla table, which I think is a great tribute to the Showa era of Godzilla films.

I’ve also been playing DEMON’S TILT and XENOTILT (both great, I should do separate posts for those) and Pinball FX, where I really like the recreations of real tables and can’t stand the ones made for the game. Anyway, pinball is great. You should look at this map and see what tables are near you. There will probably be more posts about specific tables in upcoming weeks as I play more tables and revisit others.