Pinball rolls back into prominence during pandemic | Entertainment

Score it as an unexpected side effect of the pandemic.

Prices of items like sports cards and comic books boomed while stuck-at-home people were feeling nostalgic for things that provided them happiness.

Ditto for pinball. If you buy a machine or resuscitate one that has been in hibernation, it can be played in the safety of your home.

“Pinball is pretty much at its most popular point in a long time,” Travis Murie, the state’s top-ranked player, said, indicating that supply chain issues are causing a backup for pinball machine orders and manufacturer Stern Pinball is behind on fulfilling orders.

“The sales of pinball machines have skyrocketed,” Hamid Amini of Amini’s Galleria said. “There is a high demand for them right now. There are not many companies that make them anymore, so on a lot of machines there is a long wait list.”

Bartlesville-based player and unofficial 918 pinball ambassador Jared Ferree said the whole hobby has “just kind of exploded.” Mike Denton of Tulsa-based Hangar Pinball said it would be mild to call pinball’s rise meteoric. Both pointed out soaring prices of machines in the secondary market.

Hundreds of pinball machines and arcade games were put on the auction block when the Museum of Pinball in Banning, California, closed five months ago. The three-day auction generated more than $3.5 million in sales, according to pinballnews.com.

“When I first started buying games, you could get a really high-end machine for around $3,000,” Denton said.

“That same game today is clearing over $12,000. The demand is there and supply is low, so the laws of economics have taken their toll. A lot of people are getting priced out of the industry, which is why it has kind of overflowed into location play. Some people can’t afford a $10,000 pinball machine. Well, what are they going to do? How about you go drop some quarters at your local location? It’s a win-win.”

Though pinball may have been “comfort food” for folks who quarantined during the pandemic, competitive pinball was temporarily paused by COVID-19. “Pinheads” are hopeful 2022 tournaments won’t go down the gutters or the drain.

A “Godzilla Stomp Down T-Town Launch” tournament, won by Murie, was held Jan. 15 at Magoo’s. Murie expects a May 20-22 Stern Pro Circuit Tournament at Cactus Jack’s Family Fun Center in Oklahoma City to attract world-class talent. A significant Tulsa event, the Route 66 Tilt Championship, is scheduled July 7-10 at Magoo’s. The tournament is open to anyone, but, ideally, the the pool of competitors will include the world’s top-ranked player, Illinois’ Raymond Davidson, according to Ferree.

“I don’t know another sport — some people may not call it a sport, but when you watch what all these guys do, it’s a sport — but where else can you go and play against the best?” Ferree said. “Like I can’t go play golf against Phil Mickelson. I can’t go catch a ball with Tom Brady. But I get to stand next to Travis Murie and play pinball with him on a Saturday afternoon. It’s pretty cool.”

He said he played a bit of pinball at Godfather’s Pizza during Friday night family outings when he was a kid.

“I had no idea what I was doing, but I just enjoyed the lights and sounds,” he said.

Fast forward to 2016. Murie had been telling his wife how interested he was in getting a pinball machine. His wife and sons surprised him with a Father’s Day gift: a Walking Dead pinball machine. His love of pinball spread like the zombie contagion in “The Walking Dead.” Additional machines were acquired and he joined a league.

“Eventually I realized I had a natural talent for it and was enamored with learning rulesets, too,” he said. “Once I found out there were tournaments, I decided to start competing and that grew out from playing local tournaments to playing on national level tournaments.”

Murie played baseball from the time he was tiny until he was in his early 20s. A sports background brewed hand-eye coordination and a hankering to compete. As of Jan. 26, he was ranked 39th among the world’s best pinball players, according to the International Flipper Pinball Association. Other Oklahomans ranked in the top 500 are Jon Stewart of Stillwater and Austin Trent of Oklahoma City.

Denton called Murie a “super nice guy” and an incredible player: “So skillful. I mean, you just watch him play in utter reverence and awe sometimes. … He doesn’t know how to lose.”

Murie excels because he’s focused, according to Ferree.

“When he’s playing, he knows what he wants to do,” Ferree said.

“He came to a tournament in, I want to say August or September, and he played a machine called Oktoberfest. … He didn’t do very well on it. It was a game he was kind of unfamiliar with and he wasn’t aware of the rules — how to get points or whatever — and he talked about it on his podcast.

“Well, he came back in October and I got the fortune of playing him head-to-head on Oktoberfest. I think after two balls, I had 146,000 and Travis had 4.6 million. He destroyed that game because he came back with a laser focus on what to do. He understood the game. He knew what the game wanted to do, where to get the most amount of points, and he took it apart.”

Ferree said he had tried pinball perhaps only 10 times before he began playing competitively in 2021. He took the leap after a web search introduced him to Hangar Pinball.

Hangar Pinball is a pinball service company (just about everything pinball-related) operated by Denton. It’s a side gig. He’s a pilot with a pinball crush.

“I have a picture of me sitting on a pinball machine when I was 3 years old while my dad played on the game next to me,” Denton said. “I got bit once when I found the game at church camp when I was 7 and I’ve been pretty sick with it ever since. Once I finally had some disposable income, I bought my first game and it just really snowballed.”

Denton, who said he has a knack for electronics, doesn’t only play pinball. He works on machines, thanks to things he learned by way of conventional education and “mostly a lot of late nights reading the Internet. There’s an amazing amount of information out there if you are just willing to take the time to look at it.”

When talking about the cost of pinball machines, Denton predicted that, because of supply and demand, high prices are here to stay.

“But I have a different take on things than a lot of others,” he said. “I don’t see it as a way to make money. I’m not here to capitalize my passion. That turns it into a job. I’m here to create an environment where we can play pinball and have a good time doing so by my rules, which are have a good time, treat each other with respect and (enjoy) the competition, you know?”

Denton serves as tournament director for Pinball Hangar-hosted events in Tulsa. Ferree, after discovering Hangar Pinball’s existence, messaged Denton about the possibility of checking out a competitive event. Denton assured him introductions would be made and a good time would be had.

“So I literally showed up and didn’t know anybody,” Ferree said, “There were 20-something people there. Nicest group of people ever. I’ve probably got the phone number of every single person that was there that day and they are in my Facebook and we see each other two or three times a month and play pinball.”

Denton said pinball is here to stay and there’s a reason pinball has lured generations of players to machines.

“It’s because it’s freaking awesome and people need to come taste it and see what it has evolved into and, even better, come take part in the competition that takes place here at least once a month, if not more,” he said.

Ferree, asked why pinball appeals to him, said this: “It’s not like a video game where like, Pac-Man, I kind of know what to do. Because physics is involved, it’s just different every time. I like the stimulation of it, the lights, the sound, the themes — Star Wars, Avengers, Jurassic Park — and, honestly, the people. I moved here about three years ago and I’m going to tell you right now, I’m closer to these people that I met six months ago than anybody I’ve met in my three years here in Oklahoma. It’s just a good group of people.”

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