I’ll admit to being a compulsive gambler, but I’m no high-stakes player: I deal rummy at the dining-room table for pretzels and peanuts; I spin the dreidel for five-cent donkeys. Once in a while I’ll go crazy at the casino, upping the ante on the R1 poker machines.
I’ll quit when I’m twenty bucks ahead and splurge on filtered coffee at the bar, slapping down shiny 50% tips and haughtily surveying the sea of losers at the slots below.
Yet even the fun of gambling pales, for me at least, in comparison with the thrill of pinball.
The last pinball manufacturer in the United States has finally halted production due to lack of new demand, but the machines hang around like vestigial appendages of the amusement industry — lurking against the rear wall of a kiddie arcade or in the remote corner of a smoky pool hall, with some die-hard loner bent over the glass, knocking one coin after another into the slot.
Pinball has become more high-tech over the past two decades, adding video displays and digital sound along with ever-more imaginative gimmicks. But it remains essentially the same game it has always been: you whack a steel ball around an inclined table, using little flippers. It’s precisely that crude physicality that is so compelling — it gives you a feeling of control that no completely computerised game can match. The ball is a prisoner to the iron laws of classical physics, but with your flippers and a few well-judged nudges to the table, you can bend its movements to your will. You’re not just buying amusement; you’re buying an illusion of power.
The best pinball games are those that offer a wide variety of ways to score points without an overwhelming array of confusing technical gimmicks. Ask anyone who’s played pinball in the past 10 years what their favourite machine is, and chances are they’ll say The Addams Family — a dorky, low-tech contraption that broke so many sales records when it was released in 1992 that the manufacturer issued a commemorative ‘gold” edition. The game doesn’t have any fancy equipment, other than a plastic hand that emerges creepily from a red box every now and then to pick the ball up with a magnet. Its appeal is that despite its simplicity, it offers dozens of different ways to ring up the millions — from ‘Uncle Fester’s Treasure Hunt” to ‘Raise The Dead”. And it exudes an irresistibly cute retro chic, with canny running commentary provided by the recorded voice of the late Raul Julia, who played a swashbuckling Gomez Addams in the movie and its sequel in the mid-1990s.
In terms of design, more kitsch generally means a better game — and if the surroundings are tacky, too, so much the better. Saul’s Saloon, on Main Road in Sea Point, Cape Town, whose menu boasts a 1,2kg hamburger among other death-inducing delicacies, has created the perfect pinball environment. I recently emptied my spare change into Theatre of Magic and Twilight Zone over the course of half an hour while standing ankle-deep in the grease that the maintenance guys were cleaning out of the kitchen’s extractor fan.
Then there are the crane games — a close second to pinball, in my book. I find them irresistible — the menacing steel claw hanging above that treasure trove of colourful but almost worthless toys and cheap watches.
There is a widespread suspicion that crane games are a scam. As kids, we believed that the arms of the claw were greased to prevent you from picking up the prizes. But crane games are winnable with a little practice, and my skills are now sufficiently honed so that I pick up prizes at about the rate of once every three or four tries.
There are two important skills to master. The first is the art of choosing which prize to go for. A good target will have some part of itself protruding into space — such as the rotund head of a teddy bear. If the toy is partially buried under other toys, however, or if its protruding part is too small relative to the rest of the object, it may be better to try another. Items near the glass walls are almost impossible to retrieve.
The second skill is the operation of the crane. You have to learn how to aim it just right and avoiding errors of parallax. You also have to learn how to rotate the arms by shaking the joystick — and if it’s a game that offers a ‘super strength” option you’ll have to learn to time your drop to take advantage of it.
And all of this under pressure of time! But master these skills, and you, too, can adorn your car’s rear window with cute fuzzy creatures and wear a different watch every day.
Who profits from these games, and how do they get there? Most pinball machines and crane games are imported by local distributors, who collect the money from the coin boxes every so often and pay a percentage of the takings to the owner of the store where the machine is placed. The guy who runs most of the crane games in Cape Town is a former classmate of mine who uses the money he makes to support his creative writing career. I’m told that when he goes out to dinner he pays the bill in two rand coins.
Perhaps I should have outgrown these simple-minded amusements by now. But on a rough day these small pleasures can turn your attitude around. When you win that replay, or snatch that fuzzy pink rabbit, you walk away a winner, convinced for several minutes at least that the universe is working in your favour.