Pinball Plays on in Toronto(National Post, 5 Aug 2003)
by Liz Clayton
At 9:30 on a Tuesday evening, the basement of Union Station is relatively abandoned, except for the sounds coming from the Amuse-O-Matic arcade. While pretty much every video game here has a steering wheel or a pair of sub-machine guns attached to it, the video machines sit untouched. Everyone in here tonight is playing pinball.
Funland. Gameland. The Pinball Spot. While Toronto’s whirring, flashing video arcades have dwindled in numbers, a few, like this one, remain as a living testament to the lure of the silver ball. Seven colourful, kinetic pinball machines crowd this small arcade, one of which, Terminator 3, is the newest model in town. A steady stream of players feeds the machine loonies and twoonies — at $1 a play, pinball seems like a bit of a luxury these days, but for an endangered species, the price seems about fair.
“I am more than happy to pay $1 for a game,” says local player and collector Jeremy Wilson. “When you think about how much everything else has increased in price, plus the cost of games going up and the price per game hasn't gone up past 50 cents since the 80's, it's only fair.”
As Yonge Street slowly heads towards a Giuliani-style cleanup and Times Square-ification, Toronto’s musty old arcades are fading into history, leaving pinball addicts to take matters into their own hands. Fans of the game are more likely than ever to own their own machines, and, in Toronto, they’re likely to be members of the Toronto Pinball League as well.
The predominantly male league, established in 1997, meets at different sites throughout the GTA to play weekly tournaments. Though some tourneys are still held at arcades, the majority of play is done at private facilities — players’ homes and workplaces, where the games are set to “free play” and the beverages are flowing. Watching these guys play is completely unlike watching a someone play a video game: the pinball machine, in all its physicality, becomes an extension of the body — not of a game controller.
Charles Blaquière, who runs the Toronto Pinball League with the help of Nick Angel, says until he found the league on the Internet, his life as a pinball player was fairly lonely.
Angel adds “The Internet is a really good resource for this type of hobby, as it is for all kinds of hobbies and gatherings of freaks.”
The league has about two dozen members, who Angel likes to categorize as either players or collectors. “About half of us are pure players who get enjoyment out of destroying each other by playing, and the rest of us are collectors and restorers and are willing to buy games and fix them up to immaculate condition and then store them forever,” says Angel, who currently has 30 pinball machines at his house and 10 in storage at his father’s home in Caledon.
“They’re actually a very good investment, especially if you fix them up,” says Angel. “Much better than any stocks or mutual funds I’ve played with in the last little while.”
Among those who play purely for the love of the game, opinions vary widely on what the most enjoyable games are. League member Kim Darowski prefers older, less flashy and distracting pinball machines, while his 65-year-old mother in Windsor prefers the more recent Guns and Roses game he’s storing at her house.
And if there’s anything a pinball addict needs more than a place to play, it’s patient friends and family. Blaquière says his boyfriend is supportive of the hobby.
“We were talking about our relationship a few months ago, and we agreed that we’re both happy he’s not into pinball. We’re not joined at the hip,” says Blaquière. “We’re both super-competitive,” he adds, “but he is one sore loser.”
While pinball collecting has grown dramatically in the past decade — about 15-20% of manufactured games end up in private homes nowadays — pinball’s presence on the street (in arcades, bars, laundromats, etc.) has declined significantly.
“People are staying home more, all kinds of things have affected the street businesses,” says Gary Stern, owner of Stern Pinball, Inc. Stern estimates his company produces a third of the pinball machines it used to produce during the early 1990s. Of the three major manufacturers of the past decade — Stern (then known as Data East), Gottlieb and industry leader Williams — only Stern remains in the pinball game.
Despite the continued success of video games — which have always been able to make more money than pinballs because players can compete simultaneously, instead of taking turns — the magic of the game — its mechanical, more organic appeal, remains strong. Pinball’s noisy jackpots, satisfying drop targets, and tempting ramps give the game a physical appeal that’s hard to match.
“We all here want to make a living, we have a mission to keep pinball going, it’s part of the lifestyle, the world would not end without pinball, but it’s good that it’s here,” says Stern.
“It’s part of the quality of life.”