TRON!!!

Yesterday I visited my sister in Worcester, MA.  On the way back, I got to go to the Pinball Wizard Arcade in Pelham, NH.  We've already written here and here about how much we here at Drop Target HQ love the Pinball Wizard Arcade.  Owner Sarah St. John runs a tight ship, and all the machines were in perfect order.  There were a couple of new machines, including Hook (Data East), Riverboat Gambler (Williams), and TRON!!!!! (Stern).

I was told that the machine had gotten there a day earlier; it was in perfect working order!  This will probably the closest to "out-of-box" that I'll ever get to playing a game.  Here are a couple of my quick reflections on the game.

The shots felt real smooth and satisfying.  I didn't have a problem figuring out the timing and position on a lot of the shots except one.  In the center rear of the playfield there was a gate with targets that protected a spinning light disc that you need to hit to start multiball.  For the life of me, I could not hit the shot from the right flipper.  I know that there are tons of shots on almost EVERY pinball game that can only be hit from one flipper, but since the disc is pretty centrally located, I kept on trying to hit it from the right.  Take all this with a grain of salt.  I'm NOT the best player, an might just have been eff-ing it up.

I loved the music and the color scheme.  The sound effects were really great.  I could tell the video effects on the dot matrix screen were really good, but my eyes were glued to the game, so I didn't get a good look.  I had a great time playing the game.


The only other thing that I didn't 100% love about the game was that more than once I had NO idea what the game wanted my to shoot at.  I started a couple multiballs without knowing it.

Again, I'm not the best player in the world, and I only got to play 2 games.  The game was, understandably, really popular.  I really hope that I get the chance to play it again soon so I can get a better impression on what the deeper gameplay is like.