EM:
I agree with Popotte on that one. The reason being is there isn't enough opinions left there from the hundreds of pins listed. I am not saying I am a world beater, though I am very good, but I have played them all when the pins were new!! I was around during the sixties and seventies, being the mid 50'ish person that I am, and even rating the top ems of all time are crazily out of whack. Within the Gottlieb EM faithful there are arguments about 60's small flipper vs 70's large flipper machines. The sixties machines were money makers because the small flippers limited even on a great game the chances of keeping the ball from draining down the huge hole sdtm or outlanes almost wide enough to include an inlane. The seventies, in my opionion, changed all that. The advent of inlanes and large flippers led to much more controlled aiming and setup shots, to win free games. The skill levels increased for those that had already spent a decade or more with the sixties machines. When games became less money-making from winning special after special, due to an advanced player owning the table, the add-a-ball became popular with the vendors/routemen cause every new game cost money. Having lived on the west coast (Arizona and California) in the 60' - 79' all the games were special orientated either with high score special or red light. In the midwest I noticed that all the collectors have add-a-ball versions of the old classics ems. The bottom line is that a skilled player could play for free at an arcade, bowling alley, or bar all night out west. In a single game I could rack up 3-5 sometimes 8-10 specials, that would keep you drinking and playing during the few bad luck/bad bounce games. In the midwest there is a premium for adding balls so you get a HIGH SCORE, but maybe only one high score replay and a few extra balls, which was great for the old ems high scores, but after a very good game you might win one or two free games on high scores with the extra ball, but none on red light specials. So you end up, in the long term, spending more money on the Add-a-ball then the ones set up for specials.
I feel sad for those who never got to play the classic gottlieb em's from the 70's in perfect condition. (Fast Draw, 2001, El Dorado, High Hand, Drop-A-Card, Lucky Hand, Jumpin Jack, Volley, Free Fall/Sky Jump, Spirit of '76, Jungle, Joker Poker etc etc, and there are dozens I have left out from the sixties) I gotta laugh at some of those polls and what place those got ranked. El Dorado ......47th......meh!!!. That single game has the longest skills shots in all of pinball and will test your reflexes and hone your skills like no other!! It was one of the Players favorites out west.
Quite honestly in polling it would be nice if the responses are from people who actually played the games on numerous occsion IRL. Finding a perfect Medieval Madness to play...Is PRICELESS but near impossible, but trying to say it is better than half the games on the poll list is not doing justice to the others. A fair representation would be to list your ten favorite that you have played and have a point system in place where #1 got a logarythmic amount of points compared to #2, #3, #4 etc.Then in an agreed upon timespan...say two weeks compile the results and issue the winner. Granted the poll itself may not be able to handle ten inputs. And if you cannot get over 100 responses then you should probably throw out the results. LOL
SS:
There are a few games I would rate equal or better than MM, if I had played them, like AFM. I wouldn't vote for a game I haven't played, even if everyone else says its great. Spiderman plays extremely well, is fast and is a blast., IJ93 is 20 times harder than the emulation,drain city, But still begs to be played. I voted for MM, because I found two machines in Milwaukee and have logged about four hours on the two. Thats not alot of time but, it was so much fun, because they were set up level and were fairly new, and I won about a dozen free games on them.
Trust Me
, don't under estimate an EM pin:
Whether it be a 70's or a modern pin: Strip all the toys, bells, whistles,
DMD games, story lines, and humungous rule sets in the end its all about flipper control, aiming, reaction time and a bit of luck!!!!
Edited by ANDROID, 14 July 2010 - 06:45 AM.
Mars, God of War was good too.
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