Monday, November 17, 2014

Flipperspiel Wunderland (Nov 2014)



Here's the final of the three walkthrough tours I took while I was in Las Vegas. I would have done four but there was really nothing different in the Riviera Pinball Hall of Fame so I didn't bother taking a new one, just watch the one from last year and figure the games are in worse shape then when I went.

So today we're taking you to a little place called  Flipperspiel Wunderland. I had found out about this place a few years ago and didn't have the chance to make it there. After talking with the owner Adam he agreed to pick me up from the hotel so I could give the place a look and I'm very glad I did! Adam is a route operator who's got games in multiple places all over the Las Vegas area. Flipperspiel is his home base for all of the best pieces in his collection and games that aren't on route. He operates the place Thursdays to Sundays from 8 to Midnight and it's all run on donations. All of the games are setup on free play and Adam kindly asks for everybody to slip a couple of bucks into the donation bin at the end of the night.

Inside you can see Adam's games run the gambit from classic 80's arcade games, EM pinballs, early solid state pinballs up to newer dot matrix display games like Demolition Man and Sega's Twister which was nice to finally rediscover after not playing it in years. Adam's got a couple of rare games like his Tournament Cyberball 2072 that he fully restored after finding it for just 100 dollars! He's also got a very rare cocktail game in the back from a company called CES. It's called Galaxy Games and it's a two player cocktail arcade game that looks like it was made for the bar crowd. The game has two fire buttons and you control the games using a trackball. It works like a Neo-Geo where operators could purchase carts to add in more games. CES was able to get the licenses from Atari to have games like Centipede but they also got the rights from Namco to have Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man! I've got a separate video of the Ms. Pac-Man game running with two players, simultaneously so be sure to keep a look out for that!

This afternoon I recorded a solo podcast about my trip to Las Vegas and I sent it over to Gerard who's not feeling too well. Hopefully he'll find some time later in the week to upload it and we'll share it here.

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