On our recent trip to Budapest, we spent an evening at Flippermuzeum - Europe's largest interactive pinball museum. They have over 150 machines ranging from ancient electromechanical machines of the 1960's to modern machines often themed on movies and pop culture. For the museum entry fee, you get unlimited play on the machines.
The strangest game to play was Orbitor 1. The ball moved seemingly randomly over the playfield and I suspect it had electromagnets changing the direction as the ball passed over sensors.
There were a few hybrid games where you use the flippers to control a video game but there were also others such as a Pacman Pinball game where you start playing Pacman on the video screen with a joystick and when you exit from the maze a ball is launched and you control it with flippers.
Target Gallery, 1962
Flying Chariots, 1963
Various machines in the collection
Some games had multiple balls in action. One machine released 13 balls if you hit the right spots. You could manually load multiple balls on some of the older games.
Multiple balls in action
Orbitor 1
There were a few hybrid games where you use the flippers to control a video game but there were also others such as a Pacman Pinball game where you start playing Pacman on the video screen with a joystick and when you exit from the maze a ball is launched and you control it with flippers.
Pacman
Granny and the Gators
The worst game to play was the pinball video game. It did not have the same feel to it after playing all of the machines with a physical ball rolling around and haptic feedback.
See all of the museum's machines listed on the Pinball Owners website. And for more info on almost all pinball machines ever made, check out the Internet Pinball Database.
