One of my latest obsessions is pinball. I’ve liked it since I was a kid, but in the past couple of years I’ve really dived into learning/practicing flipper techniques and the rulesets for my favorite machines. I’m definitely past “just keep it out of the drain hole” and now if I have a rare day to myself I will drive two hours to my ultimate happy place – an all-you-can-play pinball museum!

I appreciate pinball machines like I appreciate turntables: I love them for their very mechanical nature. I love their sounds, I love their art. I enjoy playing virtual pinball on my iPad too though and own nearly 100 machine ROMs. A great feature is an instructional mode that will take you play-by-play across the table and explain the entire ruleset. Most of the machines that I own on the app I know very, very well and have played many, many times. Playing them in person is a different experience though, like seeing an old friend in a new way.

There is an arcade nearby with a decent selection of machines but my town isn’t quite big enough to support a league, unfortunately. I would totally join one if I could, but the closest ones are in bigger cities several hours away. So it’s mostly virtual for me, but I hit the arcade every couple months or so to get a fix. I wish I could own a real machine but if I had to pick only one that would actually be a hard decision!

I’m not listing these scores to brag (I’m not that good!), just to keep track of them in case the apps I use fail. Do you play? Let’s be friends on Stern Insider (@sfaze) or Pindingo (@sfaze=IRL machines; @sfazebot=iPad tables).

I like keeping my IRL scores separate from the machines I play on my iPad. Even though the ruleset is the same, it’s just not the same as playing a machine for real! (IRL = in real life machines; VRT =  virtual machines)