Pin Ball

I onced lived in Ocean Beach CA in the early 60's, you know, when the Beatles made my sisters go crazy. It was a very small beach town with not that many people back in those days. There was no pier built at that time.

My friends and I used to go to this little hole in the wall place across the street from the life guard station. We would order taquitos and a coke and play pin ball on an old "Williams" pin ball machine. Founded in 1943 by Henry Williams, the Williams company has a long history of producing some of the finest entertainment machines available.

One of the employees had shown us where the secret button on the bottom of the machine was hidden. If you pushed it you would get a free game. So we would insert quarters when anyone was around and when no one was we would sneak in a free game or two. I don't think the owner minded because we young people bought a lot of junk food while playing against each other. I never quite got the hang of jolting the machine with out it tilting. Old timers will understand...

Yes, folks. Step right up. It's the 2013 Texas Pinball Festival, except... Whoops! You missed it. But don't despair, because Tim Lord was there with his camcorder to interview organizer Paul McKinney and to point his lens lovingly at pinball machines new and old, complete with whistles and bells, oh my! It was a riotous time, with players of all ages. Pinball machines were played, bought, and sold.

 There were plenty of exhibitors, including some with shiny-new machines. The most interesting of these may have been Multimorphic, which is making "the world's first modular, multi-game, pinball platform." In other words, one machine that can become many games, sort of like a video game console. There's a separate, short, "bonus video" about Multimorphic (with no transcript), for anyone who is interested in their open source, "open platform" pinball machine concept -- and that may not be just old fogies trying to recapture their youth, when they had the high score on the Evel Knievel machine at a local pool hall, because McKinney says the people coming to the Texas Pinball Festival are younger every year.