Reprint of Mike Burke’s pinball memories
My pinball years – Late 1970’s – 1990.
I am quite sure I have got my facts right, but as time marches on the memory is the first thing to go.
I’m born and bred in Lower Hutt, so most of my experiences happened in the Wellington area.
My first memory of playing a pinball game must have happened when I was about 9 (1976). I played a EM (electro-mechanical (pre-1977)) at a corner dairy in Petone. I have no idea what the game was and I don’t think the game lasted very long.
My first “real” experience was playing Meteor (Stern 1979) one Saturday night at a local Chinese takeaway. I played all night with a friend, and I was hooked. That must have been in 1980.
Wellington
There was an arcade called Fun City in Courtenay Place. It was long and narrow but it had lots of EM games. I used to try go there if ever I went to the pictures. By this stage the spacies craze was big, and there were arcades opening everywhere. Most arcades just had video games (which I played), but occasionally one or two had a pinball machine. Amongst the games I remember playing were:
Incredible Hulk (Gottlieb 1979)
Seawitch (Stern 1980)
The Amazing Spider-man (Gottlieb 1980)
Nine Ball (Stern 1980)
Kiss (Bally 1979)
Haunted House (Gottlieb 1982)
Stellar Wars (Williams 1979)
Gorgar (Williams 1979)
Freefall (Stern 1981)
Mars – God of War (Gottlieb 1981)
A place we used to visit was the Regent Picture Theatre. It had an arcade (Spaceworld?) and a couple of older pinball games. One of those was Hercules, which I could almost guarantee was the one that used to be at the Silver Ball Palace. Another older game and the only place I have seen it was Space Invaders (Bally 1980).
Lower Hutt
In 1981 the greatest thing happened in my home suburb of Lower Hutt. The Silverball Palace arcade opened. At the time this arcade was said to be the biggest in NZ. The ground floor had mainly table top arcade machines but there were 3 pinball machines: Black Knight, Xenon and Hercules. Then the second floor opened and what a major surprise it was to see so many pinball machines in one place. Needless to say I played every one of them. The games I remember at Silverball Palace were:
Hercules (Atari 1979)
Harlem Globetrotters On Tour (Bally 1979)
Future Spa (Bally 1979)
Genie (Gottlieb 1979)
Black Knight (Williams 1980) – 2 of them
Firepower (Williams 1980) – 2 of them
Xenon (Bally 1980)
Alien Poker (Williams 1980)
Flight 2000 (Stern 1980)
Viking (Bally 1980)
Flash Gordon (Bally 1981)
Jungle Lord (William 1981)
Eight Ball Deluxe (Bally 1981)
Supersonic (Bally 1979)
Time Warp (Williams 1979)
Hot Hand (Stern 1979)
also in Wellington:
After the Silverball Palace closed it’s doors in around 1984, pinball playing around Wellington was very limited. There weren’t too many remaining arcades after the video gaming bubble had burst. The same was happening all over the world.
There were mainly two places in Wellington you could play pinball. The first being Crystal City on Manners St. Crystal City was the old Fun City in a brand new location. In fact it was pretty flash for an arcade (it even had fake chandeliers, hence its name). The guy who owned this place I think was a Williams fan. He had imported original Stargate and Robotron video games from the States, often avoiding the NZ built cabinets. He also brought in a Hyperball (Williams 1981) game. While not strictly pinball, Steve Ritchie did design it. Unfortunately it broke down too often and the public lost interest. A friend of mine bought that exact Hyperball machine for $20 back in the early ‘90s and it was a blast to play. (The game is now in Christchurch – ed)
Crystal City also had Firepower 2 (Williams 1983) when it was first released and that certainly got a lot of play. It wasn’t until 1986 when they finally bought another game which was Grand Lizard (Williams 1986). This was the game that came out straight after High Speed, but unfortunately Grand Lizard was no High Speed. I did like it however for it’s Jungle Lord type features and it was easy to clock. Grand Lizard was the last pinball bought by Crystal City.. Another Williams video game Crystal City did buy was Star Rider (their only laser disc game). It wasn’t bad but like other LD games at the time there really wasn’t much to them. It had a nice dedicated cabinet that was converted in to another game later on.
Meanwhile further down the street, Wizards opened up in either 1983 or 1984. I think it was orginally called Pinocchio’s. I remember being excited at the time because on opening day it was advertised you could win a pinball machine. The day came and what a major disappointment. To win a game (an old EM I recall) you had to get the highest score on a Pole Position game. I just walked straight back out as I sucked at Pole Position. Soon Wizards got a few pinball machines in; Pharoah, Firepower and Bally’s awful answer to Hyperball: Rapid Fire (1981). That was about it as far as Wizards and pinball goes.
A video game side-note about Wizards. Unbeknown to my friends and I, the Wellington Wizards used to get in sample games from Williams, Atari and Bally. The games that turned up in their dedicated cabinets were Blaster (in the black/rounded duramold cabinet), a cockpit version of Sinistar, Turkey Shoot, I Robot, Major Havoc, Discs of Tron, Professor Pac Man. If we had known back then that these dedicated games were so rare, we would have found some way to buy them.
Palmerston North
Apart from the occasional new game turning up at Crystal City that was pretty much it for pinball in Wellington. Luckily for my friends and I, we discovered Georges in Palmerston North in 1985. Georges was an arcade that was long and narrow with a smaller mezzanine floor, and it just happened to be the home of the Palmerston North Pinball Club. Usually the latest pins (mainly Williams) were lined up along the right hand side wall, and the EM’s were located upstairs.
Every 2 or 3 months, we used to drive up to Palmy really early on a Saturday and spend all day playing games. One trip we did go and play Sorcerer (Williams 1985). It had been out a while but I had missed the last road trip and hadn’t played it. So a friend and I drove up early one Saturday morning, too early actually as the arcade hadn’t opened when we got there. When it did finally open my friend rushed down to play Sorcerer so he could show the game off to me. Because he was in such a hurry to get to the game, he hadn’t noticed the small crowd of people gathered around a game on the opposite wall, under the stairs. Well, I noticed it, and I didn’t even make it down to Sorcerer. After about 5 – 10 minutes my friend was getting a bit pissed off I hadn’t bothered to see him play. So he comes over to abuse me, but I didn’t take any notice because I was too busy playing High Speed (Williams 1986) all day, and I didn’t even play Sorcerer at all. High Speed was definitely a whole new level of pinball entertainment.
If it wasn’t for Georges, my friends and I would not have seen some great games because none of them ever made it down to Wellington. Some of those other games were:
Space Shuttle (Williams 1984)
Comet (Williams 1985)
Pin-Bot (Williams 1986)
Road Kings (Williams 1986)
F-14 Tomcat (Williams 1987)
As the 80’s came to a close, it was very noticeable that less pinball machines were making it to Palmy. The amount of games at Georges seemed to drop with every visit and eventually the mezzanine was shut. Our road trips became less frequent but we probably still went up there twice a year. In the middle of 1989 a restored original 1980 Black Knight game turned up and I had a blast playing that as I hadn’t played it since the Silverball Palace days. Then the six monthly visits started to turn in to years, mainly because pinball machines were making a welcome return to Wellington, and soon Georges was no more.
Footnote...other games:
I remember seeing a Orbitor 1 (Stern 1982) at Auckland’s Rainbow’s End in 1987, didn’t have time to play it though. I occasionally was in Auckland and this is where I saw my first Banzai Run (Williams 1988).
