I am a little obsessed with pinball. You might have noticed. This is not some passing fad for me. As a kid I grew up with a Star Explorer pinball in my basement. It is a really simple one you could buy at Sears, but I played the heck out of it. We also had a full size air hockey table. My dad would take me to arcades and I was always more interested in pinball. When I started getting an allowance I would spend most of it at sluggos in east park. Back then convenience stores had a few games and I spent so many hours at Swing In at 56th and Holdredge. The owner of the place would always get mad when I beat his high score. By that time I was getting replays all the time and would leave with credits on the machine. When they got a Pin*Bot it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
During my teen years I kept playing, but it was not an obsession like it was before. When I got my drivers license I started trying to find new machines. Arcades were dying and fewer places had machines. I could not go into bars yet so I played less and less. In late 1999 I had just been introduced to ebay and was working at Sandy’s. My first win was Pin*Bot from a guy selling it from Texas. Won it for $750 and the seller had never sold anything on ebay either. We had to work out a way to get it to my house and ended up having to hire a company to take it from his basement, crate it, and air ship to Omaha. That cost $500. A few years later while out on a pinball machine search I found The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot. Called up Cardinal Amusement and purchased it from them.
I love to go around and try to find pinball machines located around town. Started doing that again about a month ago when i had free time. Decided to contact VVS and see if they would send me a list. They did 🙂 Made my searching a whole bunch easier and I added them all to the map. I still need to contact Cardinal and see where they have theirs. They have older machines and that should be awesome. I know they have one out at earls tavern.
Checked out Virginias last night. They have a MAME machine with pacman on it and a silverball mania pinball. Not sure if it is working because it was shut off. Hit up Risky’s to play Monster Bash, pictured above. That machine is really fun, but needs some love. Drac does not come out of his coffin anymore and the flippers need some work. Been a really long time since I have played that one. hoping to hit some more places and play tonight. I got lots of quarters 🙂
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