Comments on: Time to Ruin Your Imagination

By: jonnypolite

jonnypolite — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:13:30 +0000

Great story, Robert, nice to hear the background behind lucky juju. My pal who lives in Alameda took me there a year or so ago, and i was in heaven. Pinball was bigger than video games to me as a kid because it was so unbiquitous, every airport had an arcade and every 7-11 had a machine, it seemed.

Thanks for the hard work, the show is fantastic.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:01:01 +0000

I emailed the freelance email at NPR telling them to check out this show. I listened to you on GWJ this week and thought I’d send them a note after what you said about your desire to do more radio stuff. I’ve loved the podcasts thus far, and am excited for the next one whenever you get it done!

By: Tucker

Tucker — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:15:30 +0000

This is the greatest gaming podcast on the Internet. And trust me, I’ve listened to a lot of them. Please keep it up for as long as possible.

By: Alan Kleiman

Alan Kleiman — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:40:23 +0000

>Actually, back in those days, your eyes only served two >purposes:
>
>2.) Shooting Nazis.

So you grew up during the late 90s?

By: Robert Ashley

Robert Ashley — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:05:55 +0000

Funhouse was a great game, right on that edge between the classic pinball and modern atrocity. I have a thing for Pinbot myself.

By: feitclub

feitclub — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:54:30 +0000

My loss of interest in pinball coincided rather closely with the popularity of the LCD screen feature, but that wasn’t the problem. For some reason all the games started inflating the scoring. Growing up in an arcade culture where a few thousand points was worth shooting for and a million points was all but impossible, playing the T2 pinball game and earning TEN MILLION points just for shooting the ball into play made me feel like a cheater.

My favorite pinball game will always be Funhouse. It featured a big, creepy-looking ventriloquist’s dummy named “Rudy” who taunted you as you played. This made the eventual “shoot the ball down Rudy’s throat” scoring chance all the more satisfying. And no, that didn’t earn you 100 billion points.