LOLA Issue Four

Pinball
Game On
After decades of use, every machine plays
differently. Repairs have been made,
pieces modified to fit into place; some
parts simply cannot be fixed. Each table is a
Sisyphean puzzle, with players endlessly competing
against their own highest score. And
like life itself, no matter how good your game
is, the ball always drains in the end.
Despite achieving popularity as an American
phenomenon, the general consensus is that pinball
was invented in western Europe during the end
of the 18th century as a spring-loaded variant of
the French game, Bagatelle. They called it Billard
Japonais – Japanese Billiards. As it had nothing
to do with Japan, the game’s title was a misnomer.
In an ironic twist, however, the same game also
evolved into the Pachinko machine, Japan’s most
widespread and beloved form of gambling.
1940: New York City. Pinball machines were
a largely mob-controlled business, and the
press-hungry, bullish Mayor Fiorello La Guardia
was sick of them. In an effort to combat what he
saw as “mechanical pick-pockets,” La Guardia
conducted prohibition-style raids on arcades and
bars across the city. The ‘gambling machines’, as
he saw them, were rounded up and smashed with
sledgehammers, then dumped into the rivers. Major
cities across the US followed suit, and in many
places pinball became a criminal activity. Yet,
despite its struggle, pinball lived on. Major companies
continued to produce tables and distribute
them to regions where the game had not been
banned. In places like New York, pinball machines
were imported on the sly, sitting in the back rooms
of seedy porn shops and gambling dens.
That was true until May 1976, when a young
pinball fanatic named Roger Sharpe was brought to
a Manhattan courtroom to play in front of the New
York City Council. He was a good player, even rumoured
to be the best. A writer for GQ and The New
York Times, Sharpe gave an eloquent and logical
explanation to the City Council about how pinball
had evolved into a game of skill. To prove this he
began to play ‘Eldorado’, one of two tables brought
to court that day. The Council, keen to see a
demonstration of such skill, requested that Sharpe
play on the table that had been brought along as a
backup. He was much less familiar with the second
table, ‘Bank Shot’, having trained for his day in
court on ‘Eldorado’. However, he stepped up to the
second table and announced that the ball would
pass through the middle lane of the playing field.
Sharpe pulled back the metal plunger, launched
the ball into play and sent it through the desired
lane. He had called his shot, and the Council formally
recognised pinball as a game of skill. Today,
Sharpe looks like a typical dad. His formerly wild
mustache has been trimmed, he’s neatly dressed,
and wears glasses. At pinball conventions, however,
he’s a living legend – known as the man whose
bold demonstration of skill saved pinball.
Following the City Council’s ruling, the
machines became legal, and across the country
pinball experienced a renaissance. At this
point, pinball’s history starts to get pretty nerdy.
Machines changed from electro-mechanical to
solid-state, dot-matrixes were introduced, etc. To
sum up: it was the 1980s. America’s arcades were
packed. Capitalism and haircuts were out of control,
and kids had coins to burn. Video games were
already starting to encroach on the pinball market,
which only fuelled the fire for pinball designers,
who were trying to keep the game (and their jobs)
alive. During the mid-1990s – like poets on their
deathbeds racing to finish their magnum opuses
– major pinball companies such as Williams and
Bally produced the most technologically advanced
and entertaining pinball machines ever made, but
neither ‘Addams Family’ nor ‘Twilight Zone’ could
stop the bubble from bursting. All of the companies,
with one exception, eventually shut down or
used their factories to produce a much more profitable
coin-operated contraption: the slot machine.
But pinball didn’t just lay down and die.
Instead, it was martyred, and from the ashes of a
once-thriving industry rose a new form of competitive
play. Obsessive fans and barflies began
putting their skills to the test as an official global
ranking system, the International Flipper Pinball
Association, emerged. Today, whether for amusement
or for glory, players flock to pinball competitions
all over the world. This brings us to Potsdam
in 2017 for the 20th German Pinball Open.
Pinball by nature requires a stretch of the
imagination. In ‘White Water’, the ball represents
rafters heading through turbulent rapids
as it descends a bumpy ramp. In ‘Banzai Run’,
the player is a dirt biker ascending a treach-
words by
Ryan Rosell
photos by
Soheil Moradianboroujeni
Pachinko
Gambling for cash is illegal in Japan
so Pachinko players win steel balls,
which can be exchanged for prizes or
tokens. Pachinko balls are engraved
with elaborate identifiable patterns
specific to the premises they belong
to, and this has led some fans to
start collecting the different designs.
Summer 2017
17