Tommy never had it this good

Although pinball machines continue to be manufactured today, it's hard not to think of them as artifacts from another time. In 1932-the year Franklin Roosevelt was first elected U.S. president and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century debuted on radio-tables were made by close to 150 American companies. Over the next seven decades, pinball would become ingrained in pop culture. Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli got more than one replay on Nip-It at Al's Diner on Happy Days. Pete Townshend based his landmark rock opera Tommy around a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who sure played a mean pinball. And tables would pay elaborate tribute to everything from the Playboy Mansion to The Simpsons to Guns N' Roses.

As recently as a half-decade ago, pinball machines were found in arcades, pizza joints, and North American watering holes. Today, more and more of them are ending up in private homes. And according to Adrian Lodge of the United Kingdom-based Pinball Owners Association, which has members across the world, it doesn't take much for what's supposed to be a one-time purchase to mushroom into a full-blown collection.

"It's the kind of thing where not many people end up with just one game," says Lodge, calling from his Winchester, England, home, where he owns nine machines. "You buy one, and then it breeds. Many people have two or three. We've got four in the house and the rest in the garage. Our original idea was to buy a game, play it, sell it, and get another one. But we've enjoyed the ones that we've got so much that we've never been able to part with them."

Even if it's waned lately-in 2006, Stern is the lone company still manufacturing machines-the western world's love affair with pinball has been a long one. The game dates back to the 1930s, with Contact generally considered the first electronic table. In 1947, Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty became the first table to incorporate player-controlled flippers, leading to what's considered pinball's first golden age.

"At one point during the '50s, the coin-operated game industry was bigger than the movies," says Tim Arnold, director of the Las Vegas-based Pinball Hall of Fame, which boasts more than 150 ready-for-play machines. "This was at a time when the tavern business was extremely healthy. In America in the '50s, there was a shot-and-a-beer joint on every street corner, and most of them had pinball machines."

Things are different today. Right up to the early '90s, pinball looked like a religion that would not die, with legendary companies like Williams, Gottlieb, and Bally producing some of their most-worshipped tables during that time. And then, seemingly overnight, things changed.

"Pinball has largely disappeared," Arnold notes. "The type of location that used to take a pinball machine-the corner store, the corner bar, the corner candy shop-has been replaced with places like Chili's and Wal-Mart. And they don't take games."

Despite that, all isn't lost for those on a never-ending quest for that free replay-or at least the occasional match. As pinball machines have gotten rarer and rarer, they've become seen as more than a way to kill an hour with a pocket full of quarters. And like most big-ticket pop-culture collectibles-whether you're talking vintage Coke machines or Wurlitzer jukeboxes-they don't come cheap. Prices will start at around $700 for '70s-era tables like the Gottlieb-manufactured High Hand, and then run over $6,000 for highly-coveted units like Medieval Madness, a 1995 Williams design generally considered one of the finest games ever produced.

If you've always dreamed of owning a specific machine-Bally's much-sought-after 1979 KISS table, for example-an excellent starting place is the classifieds section at www.mrpinball.com/. There, you'll discover everything from newer tables like Data East's dino-themed Jurassic Park (featuring a ball-chomping T-Rex, US$1,150) to 1978's Disco Fever (US$650), famous for its John Travolta -inspired backglass and banana-shaped flippers. Sellers usually offer suggestions for shipping.

If bidding wars are more your thing, eBay (www.ebay.com/) has dozens of machines on the auction block at any given time; tables up for grabs recently included Bally's vintage Dolly Parton (US$570) and Gottlieb's Me Decade-era Sure Shot (US$400).

Leaving cyberspace, Vancouver has options for self-styled pinball wizards who can't wait to get playing. Jukebox Junction (7895 Kingsway) currently has the 1970s Gottlieb machines Jumping Jack ($1,095) and Pioneer ($1,295).

Meanwhile, a visit to John's Jukes Ltd. (2343 Main Street; www.flippers.com/) gives you a small taste of what it must be like to step into Vegas's Pinball Hall of Fame. Owner John Robertson has a 20th century- spanning range of machines for sale. Aging Lollapaloozers can reclaim a piece of their '90s youth with Williams's High-Speed ($1,995); baby boomers can revisit their misspent youths with Gottlieb's Bank-a-Ball ($1,995), which looks straight out of the soda shop in Back to the Future.

If a trip to John's reinforces anything, it's that pinball machines are more than games: they are also elaborate works of pop art. With its Frankenstein monster, haunted mansion, and grinning green goblin, the backglass of Midway's 1965 table Mystery Score looks like The Munsters as imagined by Tim Burton. Dating back to 1949, the Keeney and Sons machine Band Leader captures a bygone era with its depictions of old 78-rpm records and a female-fronted swing orchestra.

John's Jukes owner John Robertson has a theory why pinball endured over the decades, even surviving the early-'80s rise of video games like Pac-Man.

"It involves all of your senses," he states, interviewed in his cluttered Main Street mini-museum. "When you play pinball, you're seeing the game, you're hearing the game, you're feeling the game because it vibrates, and you're pushing against it to manoeuvre the ball. You're doing everything short of tasting the game. And you're also trying to control the almost uncontrollable-a little steel ball."

Arnold is happy to expand on this idea, arguing that, unlike video games, pinball tables take a long time to master, with no two matches following the same pattern.

"It's not like 'Punch the guy in the throat, punch the guy in the face, kick him in the knees, rip his heart out, jump up and down, and then go to the next screen,'" he says. "That's all reflex. Pinball is all about strategy, figuring out what's going to score the maximum amount of points. Certain shots will get you closer to your objective, and other shots don't. On the good games, those shots change and your strategy has to change accordingly.

"The difference between video games and pinball is like the difference between ticktacktoe and chess," Arnold continues. "You can play ticktacktoe the first time someone explains it to you. But chess, like pinball, has multiple levels with strategy shifts in the middle of the game. You have to think."

For those who like to think a lot, there's no better machine than Bally's The Addams Family, whose $3,995 price tag at John's Jukes is a direct reflection of how much it's valued by collectors. First produced in 1992, and now considered one of the most classic tables in the history of the game, it's a marvel of snaking ramps, trap doors, revolving mini-bookcases, and glowing electric chairs. And you if prefer something from a simpler time, Robertson can help you out there as well; he's currently restoring an art deco-indebted 1938 Daval machine called Odd Ball Junior. One pull of the plunger and you're back in the year when Action published the first-ever Superman comic, Howard Hughes was setting records for fastest airplane flights around the world, and pinball was the king of American games.