I’m a Gen X guy, so my jam as a kid was video games. I believe the first one I ever encountered was a tabletop unit of Pong at the Pizza Hut on Route 1 in Alexandria, VA in the late 1970s. Space Invaders and Battlezone would follow, claiming my quarters after hockey practice at the machines in the Mount Vernon Ice Rink, later to be replaced by the dozens of machines in the animatronic lair of one Chuck E. Cheese. I was definitely *aware* of pinball and had probably played a couple of times as a kid, but for my peer group in the 1980s, it was all about the pixels.

I wouldn’t have a serious interaction with pinball until 1993. Just out of college, my former roommate got his hands on a mostly-new pinball machine based on the 1991 The Addams Family movie, starring Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia. The game and the experience sucked me in. The early 90s represented sort of the last stand of the Golden Age of Pinball. A number of new machines were produced then – many based on films or popular bands of the era – that captured both the visceral mechanical experience of traditional pinball, but had also evolved into a sort of ‘level up’ mentality more associated with video games. That is, the player becomes hooked on trying to progress through the game’s narrative to complete a series of tasks which are rewarded by moving the successful player to new ‘levels’ with the ultimate goal of ‘completing’ the game. The new machines also offered a variety of additional AV elements such as video screens and sampled voices & music sourced from the featured film/band. These pinball machines became a fairly all-consuming entertainment experience. The Addams Family pinball machine checked all of these boxes and, to this day, Bally’s machine remains the most successful commercial pinball machine of all-time.

And consume me it did. At that time, I was in that weird limbo between graduation and meaningful employment, and The Addams Family pinball machine helped fill that void day and night for several months. I loved that game. Then I moved to New York City and got a job at Children’s Television Workshop and forgot all about pinball. So did most of the world.

By the late 1990s, most of the major pinball manufacturers went under. Arcades featuring both pinball and video games disappeared as the home consoles grew more sophisticated and more ubiquitous. I wouldn’t really think about pinball again until 2020. Leigh and I were in South Australia at an amusement center called ‘The Beachouse’, located in Adelaide’s quaint, oceanside suburb of Glenelg. I’ve always loved Glenelg, in part for its amusements. From 1982 until 2004, Glenelg was the home of Magic Mountain – a fabulous amusement center featuring waterslides, bumper boats, a miniature golf course, and, of course, arcade games. It’s faux mountain design irked the older locals who felt it resembled ‘dog poop’ but the kids, including me, loved it. The Beachouse now serves as Magic Mountain’s modern successor and in our visit, I was astounded to discover an The Addams Family pinball machine hidden away on the second floor. In an instant and for the better part of an hour, I was transported back to 1993 and it made me want to seek out machines I could play that weren’t on the other side of the planet.

COVID put a dent in that search, but then in this past year Leigh and I discovered we were able to play The Addams Family both at the Saratoga Pinball & Arcade Show and at Pastime Pinball in Manchester, VT. On our last trip to Pastime, Leigh and I decided that we should focus our attention on the many pinball machines they have there that are based on movies, beyond The Addams Family. We wanted to review and rank those machines, but after playing each one for a bit, we realized it wasn’t entirely fair to do so based only on a handful of games. Some games play easily at first, but then can get tedious. Others are difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it you realize they are more actually more fun than the easier ones.

In any event, here is a quick list of the movie-themed machines that live at Pastime Pinball: The Addams Family (1992), The Ghostbusters (pro: 2016), Halloween (Collector’s Edition, 2021), Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure (1993), The Lord of the Rings (2003), The Pirates of the Caribbean (2006), The Shadow (1994), Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), The Wizard of Oz (2013)

With pinball now making a remarkable turnaround, we are beginning to see new machines re-enter the market and not surprisingly many of these new machines are based on pop movies. At the top of my list is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the machine based on This is Spinal Tap. Interestingly enough, this machine is being built by an Australian pinball manufacturer, Highway Entertainment.

Which makes a nice segue into our first Arcade Movie recommend, the 2023 Australian documentary, Still Standing

Of the various arcade-based docs I’ve seen of late, this one might be the best. I know I’m a little biased since it focuses on Australian arcade history and the present scene Down Under, but as a doc it does an excellent job of digging into the forgotten corners of the story and helps capture the passion that is driving these collectors and preservers of arcade culture against all the odds – not the least of which is attempting to get machines and parts from the other side of the world. I was pleasantly surprised how much of this film takes place in South Australia. I had been to Glenelg’s Magic Mountain in its heyday, but I was unaware that its urban sibling, The Downtown, was at one time (according to this doc) the largest arcade center in the world. In any event, I delighted to stumble across this doc on Tubi and found imagine one would find it compelling even if you’re not super knowledgeable about arcade culture.

Tubi is where you’ll also find the 2023 doc by Bob Rose Token Taverns. Like Still Standing, the film has a regional vibe and in this instance it’s a look at a handful of modern bar-cades (adult-oriented entertainment venues that feature both arcade games and serve alcohol) that are predominantly located in Florida. Each establishment has its own take on the concept, usually as a reflection of the owner’s particular personal connection with arcade gaming. In that way, these independent bar-cades mirror the individual differences that you might see in, say, drive-in movie theatres… For obvious reasons, it was easy for me to feel a kinship with these entrepreneurs and operators as they try to navigate and evolve a traditional concept and culture into an engaging modern interpretation. I did find it interesting that the film was produced and features on-camera interviews with the foil from the aforementioned 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Billy Mitchell. He’s been involved in a variety of litigation and controversies with the gaming community since the release of that film and there is definitely something of a sub-agenda here to rehab his image as part of the film’s messaging. Nonetheless, its still a solid watch and if you are headed to Florida to play pinball, this is great starting point for putting your list of destinations together.