Pinball!
Pinball! Once a year at the Calgary Pinball and Arcade show, we get to play. And we do it old school, with real pinballs, the stuff to make a serious pinhead jump with delight. The classics are all there – Williams, Bally and Gottlieb – the good stuff (and some Sterns and Data East example, but I don’t like either of them). We play until we’re dead and tired and we love every minute of it!
If you are a pinhead, you always have a few favourites and I am no exception. Of the ones at the show “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” and “High Speed 2, the Getaway”, both from Williams, stand above all else (IMO). Both date from the early 1990s, during one of pinball’s golden periods. There are other good ones and a few stinkers, but these two models are pinball-nirvana for me. Both have features I enjoy, very fast game play, good rules sets, and great sounds and graphics. Who ever owns these machines had them in absolute perfect shape, and I thank them for that.
And then there’s the arcade games, Space Invaders, Pac Man. We recall the good old days when there was an arcade on every corner and our pockets bulged with quarters. I wasted a lot of time playing and it’s nice to relive that, if just for a few hours. Space Invaders, by the way is often considered to be THE game that started the arcade game revolution (around 1978).
One modern game seen, often also seen in pubs, is the shooting game Big Buck Hunter.
The pictures here were contributed by our good friend and professional photographer John Sharpe. Arcades were dark, seedy, gritty places and I think he did a great job of capturing that atmosphere.
All pictures are copyright John Sharpe of SharpeShots.com (now offline).
Check out the Calgary Pinball and Arcade show Facebook page (now a dead link).
If you wish more information, by all means contact us!
Date: September 2012
Location: Calgary Alberta.
You would likely enjoy the Musee Mechanique in San Francisco…put it on your list if you ever go.
You have quite the comprehensive travel blog! Great shots of the Crowsnest Pass, I love the ‘then and now’.
Wow, I’ll have to find an excuse to go to SF. That place is very cool. Thanks for your comments and it’s our pleasure to write these articles for you!
Great pictures! I agree, Sterns just don’t have the magic. Could it be you was you who was playing HS2 with my husband? He said some bald guy was kicking his butt on that game. I am one of the rare girls who likes pinball.
It may have been me. Myself and two other guys were sort of monopolizing that game. They were good but I was able to beat them, but not the machine and I did not get my name on the high score board. That pin was set up perfectly, fast an unforgiving! Just how I like it, what a rush. Thanks to all the people who put this together.