Playing the silver ball
I've always had a fascination with pinball. I think it's for a number of reasons - the intricate mechanical design of the games, the thrill of score chasing, the fact that they just look cool as hell and are fun to play...
The last few years or so I've been playing a lot more pinball. There's a couple reasons for this: the first is that I'm lucky to live in an area with a lot of venues to play pinball at. In the Boston area alone there's Pop's in Somerville and Medford - full of my favorite 80s and 90s Williams and Bally tables, Flat Top Johnny's in Cambridge for the newer Stern games with big screen leaderboards I can flex my Jaws scores on, and even Roxy's if you feel like torturing yourself! If you have a car you can also drive a bit for a freeplay spot like the aptly named Freeplay Arcades in Worcester and Providence, the Electromagentic Pinball Museum in Pawtucket or even Funspot in New Hampshire (they keep calling themselves the world's biggest arcade but I think Galloping Ghost has them beat now...)
The other reason is the New England Pinball League. I've talked a few times on here about getting my "zest for life" back after Covid and one of the things I realized was that I didn't have many hobbies besides playing Final Fantasy 14. Many of my friends had also moved out of Boston at this point so I wanted to get out there and meet new people. NEPL ended up kind of fixing me... it got me out of the house every week engaging with a hobby I love with people who are very cool. And sometimes I even do well! There was one week that I finished in first place for my venue and I was practically skipping home.
The real full circle moment for me was a couple weeks ago visiting the Pintastic expo over in Marlborough and running into a bunch of pinball friends I met at league over there. It was nice!
Digital Vs. The Real Thing
The biggest downside to pinball is that it is an expensive hobby. Actually buying a physical table is akin to buying an old used car. You're spending a few thousand dollars at minimum and they require lots of upkeep and repairs to keep all the physical parts working. Even at an arcade the prices add up - many of my local spots have the games set to a dollar per play which can go by pretty fast if you have a bad game.
The alternative is digital pinball games you can play on your computer, phone or game console. This is how I got my fix for many many years. The first video game I even remember playing as a kid was Epic Pinball on my family's old DOS computer back in the 90s. I recently bought a copy of it for a dollar on GOG and it still holds up!
I've played dozens of these virtual pinball games over the years - from the omnipresent Space Cadet Pinball that was on everyone's computer back in the day, to CD-ROM games like Pro Pinball and 3D Ultra Pinball, to the weirder games like Odama and Flipnic, and even licensed ones, ranging in quality from my GOAT Pokemon Pinball to the worst video game I think I've ever played - Mario Pinball Land.
Nowadays the big three options for pinball sims are Pinball FX, Pinball Arcade and Virtual Pinball. Each has their pros and cons. Pinball FX is the easiest to set up and play but is the most expensive and has a just okay mix of tables to choose from. I like to go for the digital versions of the real tables and they just don't have as many - their original tables aren't that good. Pinball Arcade has way more options but they lost the license to Williams/Bally years ago so unless you can pirate them or pick up an old PS4 disc you're kind of out of luck. Virtual Pinball is all open source, free and has tons of recreations and really cool custom tables but is a pain in the ass to set up.
Digital pinball is not as fun as the real thing but it's a good alternative. It's just way easier... the physics are a lot more lenient. I have some pretty impressive high scores on Pinball FX - 10 billion on Attack From Mars. On a real table my average is about 1 billion. It helps you to learn the rules for each table but god I wish the skills transferred over more LMAO. I'd be slaying in league more!!
Sean's Top 5 Pinball Games
This game fucks. People call this the best pinball table ever made and I'm inclined to agree. It has a very straightforward and easy to learn ruleset, a great layout and a fun theme. You can not know anything about how to play pinball and easily learn how it works just by playing this game since all the objectives are so clear. I love the little trolls that pop out from the table too. You can impress your friends by telling them that Tina Fey voices the princesses in this one!
I have a lot of nostalgia for this one since I remember seeing it everywhere as a kid in the late 90s. This one also has a really fun layout and ruleset where the objective is to smash a big UFO in the middle of the table. I also really like how scores are massively inflated in this one. Getting under a billion points is a bad game in my eyes! It's a good little confidence booster.
This is a recent favorite of mine that I learned about on Pinball FX first then got to play a lot of it in person when one of my pinball spots got a table in. The object of this one is to score goals (with a real moving goaltender!) to power up different things on the field that will give you more points when you hit them. It's fast paced and fun even if I'm not the biggest fan of the layout. Plus it has the same announcer as NBA Jam so you can't beat that.
Jaws is one in a long list of very famous and influential movies I have not seen because I don't really watch movies LOL. I'm not the biggest fan of most of the modern Stern games (I think they focus too heavy on the licenses and the big LCD screens on the backglass at the expense of game quality) but the Jaws game rules. I couldn't tell you why I like playing it so much beyond really liking the table layout but somehow I score pretty consistently high on it. At Funspot they have a copy of this game in a shark cage with projectors and extra speakers which is really cool.
80s+90s pinball games are my favorite era because they are a perfect blend of good game design and not too much fancy technology, but I do love the old school electro-mechanical games as well. Spanish Eyes is my favorite of those because the layout is so different and cool. The flippers are placed higher up on the table than usual and under them is a bumper that will often times send your ball back up to the playfield instead of draining it. Because of this, the designers added the nasty trick of your ball being able to go under a flipper when you're activating it, sending it right to the drain. It's very different and very fun!
Why you should play pinball
pinball should have gotten popular instead of the games where you're a soldier and shoot other soldiers
— drewtoothpaste (@drewtoothpaste.bsky.social) May 1, 2025 at 2:57 PM
I think everyone should get really into pinball. It's hella fun and you can be as good as you want to be. You can compete against your friends, the machine, your best scores or the world. When I first joined league I was nervous that I would embarrass myself like I had many times before at fighting game locals (ever lose every single one of your warmup games then go 0-2? I have!) but it turns out going out and having a beverage every week with like-minded people playing fun games is worth it every single time. It's made my life better!
Hit me up if you see BEERSMOKER69 on a Stern Insider leaderboard near you.