Next Friday: Mule Summer School continues with me and Erika hosting How to Have a Conversation. It’ll be a fun, and useful hang!

This week’s question comes to us from David McCreath:

What is the best arcade game? Pinball or video, or both.

Addams Family pinball.

The Addams Family pinball machine was released by Midway in 1992. It was based on the 1991 movie of the same name, starring Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christina Ricci, and some other people. It is the best-selling solid state pinball machine of all time with 20,270 units sold. (According to Wikipedia, where I lifted that sentence from.) It is—and I say this with every objective bone in my body—the greatest thing humankind has ever produced.

I was 25 years old when Addams Family pinball showed up in my life. And while arcades were definitely already on the decline, there were still quite a few of them around town, which was Austin at the time. Being that I was 25, and in art school, I was insufferable enough to most likely complain that they were making movie tie-in pinball machines, while repeating something about “hyperreality” that I’d read in a French theory book, before fishing a quarter out of my pocket to play.

There are moments in your life that are changed by the push of a button.

The first time you were tall enough to reach your grandmother’s doorbell. The first time you hit RECORD on a mixtape you were making for a crush. The first time you turned on a table saw. The first time you paid for gas. The first time you hit SNOOZE one-too-many times on a clock radio. The first time you hit the morphine button. The first time you dialed your therapist. The first time you hit the throbbing red start button on Addams Family pinball and it delivered a shiny chrome ball to the plunger.

The first thing to know about Addams Family pinball is that if you pull the plunger back all the way, to prove how very strong you are, you’ll miss the skill shot cubby that lives right in front of Thing’s box, which is worth two million points on your first visit, and accumulates on every subsequent successful attempt. This, my friends, is what we call a life lesson. The game, like life, rewards nuance and curiosity. If you enter every moment of your life at full speed, you’re gonna miss out on some points. I forget who said this, but when you walk into a party, do a circle around the room first. See who’s there. Listen to what’s being talked about. Get a feel for the event before making yourself a character. Find the hidden skill shots.

Pinball is the same. The amazing thing about pinball machines is that, even if they all came off the same assembly line, eventually they all become their own unique device. Of the 20,270 units of Addams Family in the world, I guarantee there are no two alike. A pinball machine is a complex collection of interwoven parts, and they tend to break down a lot. Like me and you. We’re all born roughly the same, we all get Apgar scores from the wee human QA team, and depending on our score we’re handed over to whoever agreed to take us home. Over time, we need servicing for things. We get ear aches, we fall out of trees, we find out our hearts beat in strange ways, we find out our brains are several flavors of spicy, and we become us.

And yes, we tilt. We tilt like motherfuckers.

Pro tip: Tilting a pinball machine is a sign that you are a shitty pinball player. Pinball machines don’t respond to force. They respond to care. They respond to nuance. They reward a soft, well-placed shot. They respond to a player that’s taken the time to know its peculiarities. If you tilt a pinball machine, you have failed. Walk away. You need a break from each other.

Over time, pinball machines become something other than what rolled off the assembly line. They do time in arcades, movie theaters, bars, etc. Sometimes getting serviced by people who know what they’re doing. Sometimes getting serviced by people who have more creativity than sense, and sometimes getting serviced by people who know just enough to be dangerous. (Feel free to map these categories to medical professionals you’ve interacted with.) What I’m saying is that no two pinball machines are alike.

I’m also a fan of video games, mostly the old ones, but video games tend to remain what they were coming off the assembly line. They exist in a state of binary. A state of work or not work. And in that, they have their own grace. Once you’ve learned Galaga, you know Galaga, and it will be the same Galaga that took your first quarter, and every Galaga you encounter will now become known to you. Video games exist as time machines that take you back to the first time you played them. Like the dream where you are back in high school, but this time you know the answers.

Pinball games grow old with you. They change as you change. The rubber rings around the flippers hardens, snaps, and gets replaced by another set of rubber rings, and suddenly the machine behaves differently than it used to, and you have to relearn it. The light touch that shot the ball right under Fester’s electric chair thousands of times in the past is now off-target and you have to readjust your timing. You have to relearn. Video games reward memorization, pinball machines reward curiosity and adaptability.

And here’s where I have to admit that when I told you Addams Family pinball is my favorite arcade game I was speaking about a specific Addams Family machine. I’ve played it more than I’ve played any other Addams Family machine, and I feel like we’ve gotten to know each other fairly well over the years, although neither of us are the same as we were on the day we’ve met, which in and of itself wasn’t a very memorable day. I don’t think I played particularly well, or particularly badly. But I was happy that there was now an Addams Family in the neighborhood. And I knew we were going to be spending time together.

Pro tip: Addams Family is the only pinball game I’ve ever actually learned. From the Mamushka, to Uncle Fester’s Tunnel Hunt, to the insidious trick for locking your second ball, to the various ways of getting a multiball going. (SHOWTIME!) I know them. Which doesn’t mean I always succeed at getting them, but I know them. I play, and enjoy, other pinball machines (Funhouse is my second-favorite), but I don’t know them like I know Addams Family. In your life you should learn the intricacies of at least one pinball machine. Or one way to make bread. Or one way to make a wooden joint. Or have one guitar that you can absolutely shred on.

After I got my second Covid vaccine, and felt a little safer going inside other people’s spaces, the arcade was the first place I visited. I missed playing pinball. And I’m glad the arcade was still there. So many places disappeared. So many people disappeared. I had a shitty game, which makes sense since I hadn’t played in almost two years, but I’d laid out all my quarters on the lip of the glass and I put some more in. The next game was a little better, and I realized it was going to take some time to get back to where we were. I was ready to put in the work.

Pro tip: you never play your free game. There’s always some kid wandering around the arcade looking for free games. That game is theirs. That way a free game rewards two people. Plus the game after a free game is gonna be shit. Go out on a high.

My first pinball machine was at the Philadelphia Portuguese Club. A social club that my parents frequented when I was a kid. We spent major holidays there, along with all my parents’ friends. And their kids, who always kept me at arms length. For which I was thankful. There was a ballroom, where the big holiday events happened. And a smaller room that served as a bar. The bar was mostly the domain of men, women-who-were-not-wives, and kids. There was a pinball machine in the corner. I don’t remember which. But sometimes my dad would bartend, and I’d go with him, and he’d give me quarters, mostly to keep me busy in the corner while he did what he needed to do. And this was the closest he ever came to parenting, making sure I had enough quarters. Which, to be fair, he got by opening the machine, fishing out a handful, and placing them on the pinball glass. When I think of my father, this is one of the things I put on the good list. Not that I kept score, he made it easy not to keep score. But I got good at pinball playing there.

During lockdown, the company that provides bars with pinball machines tried earning extra money by encouraging people to rent pinball machines for their homes. Which was a smart move. I briefly considered it. But our apartment was already packed solid. (There was a rowing machine in the kitchen that you had to time correctly if you wanted to reach across from the kitchen table to get to the coffee pot.) Also, it felt wrong to have a pinball machine in your house. Pinball is a thing you go to. It’s a destination. And somehow the journey feels like part of the game.

I have walked a long way to see you, and it was worth it.

At least a few times a month, I make the journey to the arcade. (You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you where my Addams Family is, but I’m keeping that to myself.) Sometimes because I’m in a good mood, sometimes because I’m in a shit mood. Pinball doesn’t care. It rewards both equally. Sometimes it feels like the end of the world, and at the end of the world I’d like to get in at least one more game of Addams Family. Sometimes because it’s nice out. Sometimes because it’s raining, and pinball is amazing when it’s raining. Sometimes just to clear my head. It’s a bit of a walk, part of it uphill (as is every walk in San Francisco), but on my way there I think of lots of things, some of those things are good, some of those things are bad. But the journey tends to amplify the good things, while sanding the edges off the bad ones. And at the end of the journey I am rewarded with pinball, which is nice.

And possibly a free game, which is even nicer, even though I won’t play it. Which makes the walk back home that much sweeter.

Thanks for a great question, David.

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