We
called it the 'Con-Job' because the tables were always steeper than
the other arcades and there was a widespread rumour that the
management fixed the replays to the lowest setting. It's real name
was the Connaught Arcade and it was opposite Worthing pier. There's a
Connaught Leisure there now, but it's not the same. I made the
mistake, just the once. About five or six years back I went in and
had a look, but it was all gone. It was awful – row after row of
fruit machines and nothing else. There wasn't a single pinball in the
place, so I left by the side exit – it was the same, never to
return.
I can't
remember the guy's name, but the manager of the place was a kind
bloke who was always over with his bunch of keys tied to his jeans to
open the cash box and give us back the 10p's when the machines nicked
them, which wasn't uncommon back then. He'd always give the secret
button a couple of pushes too – we thought he was brilliant and had
the best job in the World. Probably he did.
Above: Old favourites, with screenshots below. Battlezone was a top game, with it's periscope styling and wireframe tank battle action.
Below: One of my heroes had his own game
We had
lived in Sussex when I was a little kid, moving back after a few
years in Surrey to a place along the coast from the place that was my
first home. Worthing was everything Shoreham by Sea – and, later,
Witley hadn't been. To a kid like me the sleepy seaside town seemed
like Las Vegas must to a traveller wandering in from the desert. The
epicentre, make that the neon epicentre
of town was the Connaught. I made few friends, chief amongst them
Chris S, Mark H and Simon H (The 'H's are unrelated). Mark lived in
Lancing, where we went to school so it was usually Chris or Si who
would call (At the time that meant either coming round or phoning my
Mum's phone in the hall) with the exciting words 'Coming down the
Con-job?'. Wheedling and pleading came naturally to me; handing over
a pound (An ancient form of money made from ye olde paper and
involving a LOT of dog walking, car washing and paper delivery)came
naturally to my Mum. It was many years before it dawned on me that a
quid to offload a gawky pimply twat for several hours must have been
a bargain worth phoning her friends for. If I'd have been her I'd
have slapped down a fiver into my-his
sweaty palm and made sure of an evening free of arguments about
watching The Dukes of Hazzard
followed by thumping-up-stairs and loud music...
Above: The Connaught today
Below: The film Tommy cashed in on the pop culture aspect of pinball
Apart
from the girls who hung around the place – and that was more than
enough for the over-hormonal fourteen year old me by itself – there
was the excitement and thrill of walking onto that dark blue carpet
and looking around. Push-bikes parked up round the corner –
possibly even padlocked if someone had brought one (D-locks were in
the future) Was there a new machine?, was that hard kid I was
avoiding at the time in there with his mates?, no? - we'd decide
where to start; the Pac-Man for Chris, me watching – you always
watched your mates before deciding whether to drift off to the
pinballs along the back wall and the cubby-hole bit at the back. It
was there that Tron was waiting. Tron was the new machine, they had
just got it when I saw the film at the cinema – the Dome or the
Odeon, I can't be sure which it was, but the machine was all the
rage. There was usually someone on the popular games, with someone
else waiting. It was fun just watching other players doing their
best, trying desperately to out-run the light cycles or beat the MCP.
Tron was one of the first with different games in one, it was the
best game since Galaxian, an
old favourite that I was unbeatable at, largely thanks to all the 25
pesetas I'd thrown into the game at Freddy and Pepe's bar in Tenerife
a few years back. I loved Tron, although it was rare for me to beat
the MCP.
Looking back, I suppose I was average on most games, good to
excellent on a few – but it was on Pac-Man that I truly excelled. I
was DIABOLICAL – seriously, it was unusual for me to be on the
second screen. I'd panic and race off to the next corner for the pill
that made the Ghosts run... not like Chris. Chris was the Master of
the game; he could stay on there for ages. I knew his secret; he had
a book listing the 'correct' route to take to beat the Ghosts. (There
was an odd thing with Pac-Man – if
the Ghosts weren't close on your heels and you went to a certain
corner, you could stay there forever – taking a sip of Coke and
chatting to your mates while the girls looked on in awe of your magic
ability. It was just a glitch in the programming of course, but back
then, anything to do with computers was seen as cool and amazing...)
Back
to 1982 – we haven't got to the best bit yet, walk past the
one-armed bandits and the video games and there, at the back is, well
paradise. The Holy Grail if you were me. A row of pinballs, all
flashing, chiming, chirping, pinging and some even speaking to you.
Black Knight, Flash Gordon, Elektra, Eight-Ball Deluxe...
names, what names!. All these
machines were incredible – the long playfields sloping upwards –
the slopes steeper than most, as I've mentioned – with their array
of dazzling challenges; hoops, ramps, bumpers, kickers, spinners,
targets, slingshots, rollovers and all manner of gimmicks to hold you
in the spell and keep a line of ten p's along the top – the signal
to others that this table was taken – at least until those coins
were spent. Then, there was the backglass – the tombstone of my
youth, bright, cartoonish and trashy artwork that now commands big
prices from the collectors. Four slots showed the score – but
mostly we played doubles.
Above: Trade advertising for the Flash Gordon & Elektra pinballs, both favourites of mine at the time.
Lets
start with Black Knight – it spoke to you in a corny robot voice
with “The-Black-Knight-will-play-you” and
you were off. The game was the first to feature a double layer
playfield – a second level, at the back. You put your money in,
pressed the button to start and pulled the plunger back. Usually
you'd vary the pull, but at the Con-Job you needed to pull hard and
let go with a bit of timing to ensure the ball made it all the way
up. With pinball, seconds counted, keeping the ball in play was
important, second only to making sure you looked cool doing it. Black
Knight was easy – you were fairly sure of getting the multiball at
least once every two games. The multiball!, the multiball; one steel
ball bearing blasting around a load of electronic gadgets and
knocking down targets is fun; try it with three, four of them.
Multiball was great for two reasons; my favourite was the sheer joy
of juggling these with the flippers, desperately trying to keep track
of all of them – knock one up the top and you had a precious second
of relief – you could relax slightly, watch the other balls.
Batting away blindly was for mugs, you needed skill and timing.
Reason number swei: you got the score up dramatically, getting ever
closer to that hardest to reach of goals – the replay. The replay –
some places you seemed to find it easier to reach, such as the arcade
on Worthing pier, but at the Connaught it was a trick that had your
mates nodding appreciatively. Getting a replay was the sign of a
quality player; walking off, giving the free go to the next kid
waiting was a cool move, guaranteed to get you extra kudos – and
you knew they had no chance of that other chance event – the free
replay, sometimes, rarely awarded at the end of a pinball game, when
the counter spooled up to tot up the final score. Announced with a
loud smacking noise, the free replay told the whole place that
miracles happen, to keep the pocket money coming.
Above: Galaxian was the first colour video game, while Star Wars was available in a sit-down cabinet that really gave you the feeling of flying an X-Wing.
My
favourite pinball? - Eight-Ball Deluxe. A savagely difficult game, at
times downright unfair (It had a propensity for dropping the ball
straight down the gap between the flippers) and, as I recall only
three balls to a game, EBD was not for the wimps. If you were down to
your last twenty pence, maybe this wasn't for you. With it's pool
hall theme and snappy sound effects (Get the eight Ball –
Corner Pocket. Get the...Deluxe!) this
was the machine for the connoisseur. Sure, Flash Gordon was
good, granted that later on a machine called Haunted House
would come along with some
unbelievably fun
hidden level features and playability, but nothing touched the old
Deluxe. Did someone mention playability? - that's a word that comes
to mind when discussing the old arcade games. Nothing made it onto
that carpet that wasn't playable for at least half an hour. Nothing.
Some of today's 3d total immersion environment designers could learn
a lesson from these simple 8 bit machines. But it's all gone now.
Those were the daze...
Above: Flyers for Eight-Ball Deluxe and Haunted House, with the backglass for HH. Below: It seems everyone loves pinball!
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