![]() “My current collection of 15 machines is housed in my basement and I’d have more but I don’t have the space,” he said. It’s currently undergoing a complete restoration. In 2010, while Hamer was deployed in Iraq, his wife surprised him with a second pinball machine, a 1977 Evel Knievel game, that she picked up with the help of a neighbor drove her in his minivan during a snowstorm. The first machine he owned was a beauty, he says, a 1978 Mata Hari-themed Bally, with deep red and gold designs featuring the famed exotic dancer and spy. The first pinball machine Hamer ever restored was for a guy in Brookfield - a 1965 electro-mechanical game that took him six months to learn while the guts were spread across his kitchen table. And Jersey Jack, another U.S.-based pinball manufacturer, reported selling out of its newest machine in two hours back in October. For Stern, the world’s largest pinball manufacturer based in Chicago, reported sales during quarantine five times higher than ever before, according to RePlay Magazine. Pinball companies are reporting consumer demand is booming. “There were raids and they would confiscate and burn them until 1976, when Roger Sharpe, a well-known pinball player proved in court that it was a game of skill,” said Hamer, a senior non-commissioned officer in the Wisconsin Army National Guard and all-around tinkerer who repairs, restores and collects both vintage and new pinball games. Pinball first rose in popularity in the 1930s as a coin operated game but lost favor when it was banned as a gambling machine in major cities from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s. "There's definitely a nostalgia component to standing at the machine, pushing the buttons." "When I'm immersed in a game, I feel like I'm a kid again," Hamer said. Unlike video games, playing pinball has a tangible, physical element and each game is a different experience. Interest in the old-school arcade game has skyrocketed over the last decade or so, with the number of players and competitions growing globally, according to the International Flipper Pinball Association.Įnthusiasts, like pinball wizard Kirk Hamer of North Fond du Lac, says the current revival is due, in part, to the pandemic as people sought ways to amuse themselves at home. NORTH FOND DU LAC - A resounding comeback of the classic pinball machine with its bells and flashing lights and familiar frantic clang of flippers is a delight to devotees of this nostalgic game of skill.
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