Greetings from Portlandia where our slogan is "Keep Portland Weird"

Howdy Fellow Forum Fans,

I saved my official introduction until my 100th post. I thought this would give some of the regular’s time to get used to my lengthy style of writing. I can be long-winded.

As my screen name says, I am Frank and am 53 years old. I was born and raised in Montana, 100 miles away from Old Faithful Geyser. Yellowstone Park is simply amazing; especially for me since I’ve always loved geology, volcanoes or any kind of physical science. Quantum and String Theory has me thinking that we live in a holodeck made by the master Creator. Theorized strings remind me of pixels.

My world changed when my best friend in this world gave me my Asus T300T tablet for a black Friday gift. The reason my world changed is that I found The Pinball Arcade app in the Android store and from that I found this wonderful forum. Actually, I had a tear in my eye because TPA had so many of the tables from machines I loved in my youth and I could play them in my home.

I love my privacy, so Facebook is not an option. This forum offers information and socialization without the BS which is prevalent in the social media network. I want to thank Gord Lacey, Jeff Strong, PinWiz and Don Sean Carlos for the excellent way they manage this forum. Also a shout to Kolchak357 for being promoted to Senior Pigeon, I don’t know what that means but you deserve it. Also, the members of this forum are a great group of people from around the world. It’s so good to hear Fortnight used in a real situation. It’s also nice to see the “u” in color from time to time.

My love for pinball has been with me since I can remember. There is not a time in my youth that I don’t remember some sort of pinball in my life. I lived 10 miles from the small town in Montana so the only pinball games I played until I was 13 were hand held pinball games and at ages four and seven I received a battery operated table top pinball machine. It was all great fun.

At age 13 we moved into town from the Federal Fish Hatchery and I was able to play real pinball machines at the local bowling alley. In small American towns, it seems if you are not a jock, you’re nothing. I certainly was not a jock, so this nothing spent most my free time at the bowling alley playing pinball and bowling. I might not have been a jock, but I could beat all the jock’s arses in bowling or playing pinball.

Here are a list of some of the machines that I got to play in real life that were brand new or only installed a few days before I came into the bar to play them or at the bowling alley I frequented as a youth.

Big Shot - Fast Draw - High Hand - Atlantis - Royal Flush - Jacks to Open - Spirit of 76 - Surf Champ - Big Brave - Jungle Queen - Gorgar - Black Knight - Black Hole - Eight Ball Deluxe - Comet - Cyclone - PinBot - Dr. Dude - Elvira and the Party Monsters - Fun House - Addams Family - Whirlwind - Star Trek, 1991 - Star Trek: TNG - Twilight Zone - Attack From Mars - Hurricane - Eight Ball Champ - A few others.

I was very fortunate to be able to play all these tables in prime condition. I don’t get to go out and play pinball much IRL here in Portland, Oregon because of my disabilities. Here in Portland the selection of machines available to play are remarkable. I think there is around 500 machines in the area and that does include duplicates.

Thanks for taking the time to read my introduction.

Hi

I lived in Portland for a year or so and loved it. So much pinball on location, it's not even funny.

yo frankie

a pristine blackhole huh? im pretty jealous

id say welcome but you have been one of us for sometime now so ill just say...ermmm

happy pinballin' !

Hello, MontanaFrank- I see you have some really high scores on TPA!

BTW, do you know about Peter Paltridge? He has this website you might be interested into called For Portlanders Only, which talks about some of the unknown history of your home town. http://platypuscomix.net/fpo/

heya. I read your posts often.

That shows funny as sheet! Nice to meet you Frank

Seems strange to say hello to someone we've met 100 times before, but hello anyway. Thanks for sharing your story. I have good memories of playing pins in bowling alleys too. I don't really like bowling, so if I went there with my friends most of of my time was spent playing pinball, pool, or some video game.

Good read, as usual when it comes to your posts. It's great to have you here, man.

Captain B. Zarre said:

Hello, MontanaFrank- I see you have some really high scores on TPA!

BTW, do you know about Peter Paltridge? He has this website you might be interested into called For Portlanders Only, which talks about some of the unknown history of your home town. http://platypuscomix.net/fpo/

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I'll have to check that out. Thanks Captain. I thought you blog entry about Nick-at-Nite was great. Thanks for saying I have some high scores. That's just two machines PB-Centaur. I've now played 28 games of TZ and still haven't got the required amount of points to stop the table. One day FarSight will get my money.

SeaWitch has flown into Portland

Thanks everyone for their kindly hello. I know 100 posts is a little late, but I'm kinda shy and wanted to get to know all you great forum members before I opened up about myself.

I also want to say a HOWDY to all you new forum members. I hope you enjoy this forum like I do. To all you curious visitors to this site, sign-up and let us get to know you.

I just got very excited today. They have a SeaWitch that has just come to an establishment. I'm just going to have say "heck" about feeling so crappy and go play this machine.

The back and forth between SeaWitch and Flight 2000 in the past classic Stern table poll makes me want to play this machine. This is the first old Stern I've seen in Portland since I got the Pinball Map app from the Play Store. Maybe a Flight 2000 will come in soon. Now that would be cool.

Never to late for an introduction especially when it's a good read like yours. Very happy to have you among us Frank. Howdy indeed.

Good to meet you MontannaFrank. Living near Yellowstone and having pinball ; I'd call you a very fortunate person. Don't about being wordy; all the post's of yours seem polite ,well thought out and informative

MontanaFrank said:

Thanks everyone for their kindly hello. I know 100 posts is a little late, but I'm kinda shy and wanted to get to know all you great forum members before I opened up about myself.

I also want to say a HOWDY to all you new forum members. I hope you enjoy this forum like I do. To all you curious visitors to this site, sign-up and let us get to know you.

I just got very excited today. They have a SeaWitch that has just come to an establishment. I'm just going to have say "heck" about feeling so crappy and go play this machine.

The back and forth between SeaWitch and Flight 2000 in the past classic Stern table poll makes me want to play this machine. This is the first old Stern I've seen in Portland since I got the Pinball Map app from the Play Store. Maybe a Flight 2000 will come in soon. Now that would be cool.

Click to expand...

Lucky you! I haven't seen a SeaWitch in a while. Fun game, classic art, and cool sounds. My favorite of the old Sterns. Let us know what you think of it.

MontanaFrank said:

Thanks everyone for their kindly hello. I know 100 posts is a little late, but I'm kinda shy and wanted to get to know all you great forum members before I opened up about myself.

Click to expand...

If 100 is late ... what am I? I still haven't taken the plunge.
I would love to get some play time in on those tables you mentioned. Some great tables there ... and some Big Shot love!
What did you think of Hurricane? Was looking at one a while back, layout looked fun but man....so many creepy clowns.

Crazily enough, Hurricane is like Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball to the community: it's almost never seen, not many people like it, but it's still worth it just for one awesome ramp (Hurricane's titular one and BBBB's spinout ramp). I like BBBB just the same as Hurricane, which is probably a 6 in my book.

hello you can celebraste your 100 posts i've read your posts around the boards.

I haven't figured out how to put multiple quotes in a message so here I go without the quotes.

Karl: Thanks - Everytime I see that big smiling avatar of yours, it puts a smile on my face. It's brightened up a few down days....Thanks

Dach: Yes, I was very fortunate to have both Yellowstone and great pinball machines in my youth. Thanks for the comment about my polite messages. My friends describe me to others as the "Nicest man you would want to meet". I usually am, but my fur does stand-up when someone does someone wrong.

Kolchak: I am looking forward to SeaWitch. I'll give a report when I do play it.

Grasshopper: I think Big Shot, which was Hot Shot in Montana because of the four player machine, was the first game that I played when we moved into town. FarSight did the table justice. The great thing in my youth you got 3 games with 5 balls for quarter. Cheap even if it was a drain monster. I want to thank you Grasshopper for sticking up for me when I accidentally cross-posted my score to "Space Shuttle" in the tournament before the last one.

Grasshopper and Captain: I think "Cyclone" is a lot more fun than "Hurricane" The bowling alley I bowled fall league on had the machine in house on the first of April. I played a few games and remembered how much I didn't care for the big loopty- loop ramp. It's looks fun, but you wait a long time for the ball after you launch it. I give "Cyclone" an 8 and I agree that "Hurricane is about a 6. Though I would like to try Bug's Birthday Bash.

norbert26: howdy and thanks for reading my intro.

I don't know what it is but I just love Big Shot. Just simple pure no confusion fun. I would love to find a real one to play on one of these days. Always wondered why they used Big Shot over Hot Shot in the game due to it being the 4 player version by default.
Anyway, no problem on the score glitch problem. Feels quite nice that ya remembered.

At a glance I did kind of like the loop at the bottom of Hurricane. I guess it would kind of wear out it's welcome after playing a bit. Still would like to give it a try one of these days.

Well, MF, one of the main reasons I love Hurricane is that it's the first table I ever played. They had one at the arcade in York's Wild Kingdom (York, ME) and I was attracted to the spinning disc on the backbox. Next thing I knew, I played it, and loved it. Sadly, they seem to be kinda rare nowadays, so I'll try to keep steady lookout.