In 2011 I embarked on a project to document the Perth Pinball community
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I was a lucky little Italian 70's kid growing up on the cool as coast of Western Australia on Scarborough's sunny beach front. Hanging out along the original strip of burger bars, pinball parlours and carparks filled with magnificent muscle cars and decked out panel vans competing
in burnout comps to halfcut crowds on Friday nights. Tanned salty surfers and slinky sunbathers shaped a spectacular summer view from my favorite hangout joint, Happy Grannys.
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Hardcore bogans swam in their black jeans and dozens of Harley's dominoed outside the notorious Scarborough Beach Hotel. My Dad worked across the street at Gino's Pizza Bar as well as other take away places along the strip. Mindbenders and the Salty Dog were cool, but Tom's Amusement Palace was the best, located on the corner nextdoor to the unsafest BMX track ever.
My brother and I spent our Saturday mornings with a bag of 20 cent coins eating fresh ham and cheese toasties and kranking MJ's Thriller on the jukebox while playing a range of mechanical amusements, video games and pinball machines including the legendary Hercules, the biggest pinball machine ever made. It was even bigger to a little kid who could just reach the flippers.
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Local delis cashed in on the arcade craze reactivating storage rooms into mini arcade parlours. Timezone launched arcade into the future by opening a customized dynamically branded venue in Innaloo, offering gamers the latest video games and pinball machines. The legendary lockdown sessions kept us out of trouble until we couldn't play anymore. Afterward, we'd jump the fence into the Twin Drive-In Cinema nextdoor sitting in between cars watching The Terminator in the rain.
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Raised in the golden age of TV, music, movies, and games, seemed like there was a trending flow of the latest mega cool stuff always zooming in from an infinite green gridded horizon. But despite all these cool distractions, pinball was my thing, and thankfully it still plays a cool part in my life.
Pinball’s remarkable history and evolutionary waves through the decades is due to its brilliant visionary designers, marketers and engineers breaking ground by adapting modern technology, continuing enhancing this product and staying connected to the next generation of pinball players.
Incredible artwork draws the player into a fantasy world as they use their senses, logic, reflexes and super mental powers of prediction to take on the challenge and test their skills playing these astonishing complexically crafted impossible playfields to dominate the highest score and be elevated to Wizard status! But, they're only known to all their predecessors by three initials _ _ _
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Then in usual pinball commerce history, there was a lull in the fad and pinball machines were few and far between. But I produced a successful classic arcade gaming bar at the Beaufort St Festival, with the services of Kids Just Wanna Have Fun amusement hire, I was invited to attend their weekly gatherings at Joe's warehouse. These social evenings were a chance to engage with collectors and play an awesome range of pinball machines, plus observe technicians as they worked collaboratively repairing machines and talking tech specs and pinball stuff over a bbq.
Some pinball enthusiasts agreed to be photographed with their prize collections. Images, video and sound recordings were collected from around fifty machines with the intent to ultimately develop a live interactive exhibition and publicly promote this cool past time in all its brilliance.
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Pinball Forever captures a particular time I spent with a subculture of longtime avid pinball collectors. Today, pinball in Perth has resurged well into the mainstream with themed venues and more locations to play. WA Pinball coordinate regular competitions and the West Coast Pinball Festival is supported by Stern Pinball (USA) and AMD Amusement Machine Distributors, Australia.
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WELCOME TO PINBALL FOREVER. PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS AND ENJOY THE RIDE.
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Video, Images and Webpage by Ivan Gian-Piero. Sound recordings by Sam Michelides
