The latest machine to arrive at arcade Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe in Pōneke Wellington is Pulp Fiction. It’s packed with the classic soundtrack and audio clips, together with table sculptures of your favourite characters and a half eaten hamburger - the iconic Royale with cheese.
Pinball remains the same pumping physical game it has been for decades - silver balls, flippers, bumpers, bells, ramps, bangs and lots of flashing lights - but now, players are also looking for characters and a story.
"It's a fabulous game. It is immediately engaging, it's beautiful, colourful artwork that draws you in from the other side of the room. It's the audio callouts and sound kits from the movie that you know and love and there's adult versions, edited version, PG versions as well," says owner Hamish Guthrey.
"But yeah, once you get into the game play it plays like an old-fashioned game from the '80s, which is something that Quentin Tarantino, the director, was very specific about wanting when the company who built the game first pitched the idea to him."
Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe Photo: Hugo Strang
Pinball has become firmly welded to popular culture. At Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe you'll find games devoted to everything from Lord of the Rings (suitably complex) to bands Metallica and AC/DC, with playlists to match. Guns N’ Roses even staged a lock-in here when in town to play their own game. The Foo Fighters, meanwhile, didn’t pick up the invite.
The arcade’s name Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe proves a little tongue-in-cheek. While there are some vintage machines, and plenty of retro reconnections for older patrons, this is a majorly tech wired-up facility.
Hamish Guthrey competing at Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe Photo: Hugo Strang
Guthrey is not just a dedicated pinball enthusiast - or pinhead as they have been dubbed - he is also a self-described ‘AV integration geek’. He left a job dealing with home entertainment systems to set up the arcade with machines of his and friend Simon Haxton, and is also now a showroom for the latest ‘Multimorphic’ machines.
Yes, if you have a spare $15,000 or so you can buy a new machine, but Guthrey is also passionate about making this a comfortable community space for all-comers.
"We'd often meet at people's garages or occasionally a bar which we'd get a couple more games in, and we felt it would really benefit the sport to have a dedicated tournament venue in town somewhere, where we could have a line-up of games that are always available to play for these tournaments but also have it set up as an arcade to get new people into it."
He's got about 24 machines running in the arcade, which has been open for almost three years now.
"A lot of it is the people who loved pinball in their youth and so it's typically middle aged men, but there really is a strong growing community of women playing pinball and younger players in particularly are particularly skilled at pinball it seems. We find that some of the youngest players in the country are some of the highest ranked players in the tournament side of things.
"There's definitely an advantage for the younger people once they get hooked on pinball, but it's typically the older generations who are bringing in their kids to show them 'hey, this is what I used to get up to when I was a kid your age', and 'wouldn't this be a cool thing for you to do?'"
Guthrey describes it to Culture 101 as, beyond the machines providing a unique digital playground. A sign on the wall warns: “(A ludicrous number of) internet streamer cameras operating.”
There are three webcams on every machine. They provide streams of the game in process on screens above, to in-house spectators, but also enable streaming of competitions to streaming platforms like Twitch. And it allows the player to take away a digital screener of their game. The cameras allow Guthrey’s team to keep ball by ball accounts of game scores and scores are uploaded and viewable for the different machines. These feed into players national and international player rankings, as held by the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA). Even a beginner can get on the ladder.
Guthrey is hands-on with the technology, building add-on instruments to enable patrons to choose to use the streaming options. He shows Culture 101 the impressive IT he’s built into the back of the machines.
Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe Photo: Hugo Strang
One of Guthrey’s current projects is to enable technology that allows visitors to scan QR codes and make payment at the machine for freeplay for an hour or more, rather than having to deposit endless two-dollar coins or purchased tokens. As it is, the arcade hosts plenty of freeplay nights (costumes optional) and competitions.
While pinball remains a popular casual pastime in everything from cafes to game centres, competitive pinball has become an increasingly big deal. There are monthly competitions in Pōneke and other centres and plenty of international competitions. The skill levels relate not just to pinball generally but the tricks and strategies with every individual game.
The IFPA recorded more than 500 active competitive players in the country. Danielle Peck from Auckland, is the current IFPA women’s world champion, with her dad David Peck also a top-ranked player.
The style of pinball we play, says Guthrey, goes back to the late ‘70s in tandem with the development of the video arcade. The golden age of pinball game design is often considered to be around 1992, the time of The Munster Family game (available here and still popular widely in New Zealand) in the early 1990s, but as well as increased tech there are also more video based machines (again, playable here) which allow you to change your table over to a different game, including swapping in and out a headboard of ramps, lights and sculptural features.
We even have a current Aotearoa design connection, notes Guthrey. A new game based on Jim Henson’s film Labyrinth (with its memorable David Bowie soundtrack) has had its sculptural elements created by Pōneke based art director Johnny Fraser-Allen. Your ultimate goal: to get through the labyrinth to reach the castle beyond the Goblin City.
