I have owned different arcade games and pinball machines since I was 15. Since I moved out onto my own I started buying more games to furnish my place. My first pin was 1977 Joker Poker which I still have and is probably my favorite game. From there I started looking at other games and ended up buying a Data East 1991 Batman game. My most recent purchase is 1991 Data East Checkpoint. Once a month in the winter at my house we have a pinball tourament. It involves five nights of pinball with each player playing 10 games each. Each score is recorded from each game and then totalled with the others. The person with the highest score after the 50 games is the winner. This really gives a good idea of how consistant you can be from game to game and night to night.

Joker Poker is a three flipper game that was made the last year that electro-mechanical pins where manufactured. Meaning most of the game is mechanical, except for the scoring which is electronic. This game has a decent, but used, playfield and has the flippers fairly far apart. Adding in that the ball moves fairly slow it is not a major disadvantage having the flippers so far apart. The one feature on this game is the third flipper on the top of the playfield. This game is my favorite game out of all of the ones I own. High score for this game is 860,590, which has never been challenged by any of my friends that have played.

Backglass of Joker Poker

Playfield of Joker Poker

Batman is a three ball multiball game with one ramp. The reason for purchasing this game was to get something that had multiball play. Getting 2 ball multiball is fairly simple on this game and 3 ball is also not to difficult (my 5 year old can do it). One thing I am disappointed about in this game is the flaw with having a ball get stuck by the top left popper. I have inspected the mylar very carefully and it looks perfect in that area, but yet the ball will get stuck up there once in awhile. Luckily with all my games I disable the tilt so it is not a major ordeal when it does get stuck. High score on this game is also held by me and is 160,698,000.

Backglass of Batman

Playfield of Batman

Checkpoint was purchased in April of 2002 and it is not so simple to get multiball unless you understand what you have to do to get it. You really do have to follow a pattern to get multiball or the main jackpot. This is a feature I wanted when I purchased this game, something not so simple to score points with unless you had some skill in hitting the ball and being able to do it in a certain time frame. I do not remember at this time what the high score is, but it is over 7,000,000.

Backglass of Checkpoint

Playfield of Checkpoint

Simposon's is the newest game in my collection and it is fairly simple to get multiball. The playfield is fairly open and it has a lot of great sounds from the characters. The ball really moves fast on this game, although since the playfield is so open it does not make the game as difficult as Checkpoint. The high score is over 8,000,000, but I do not recall the exact score right now. I will update later with the actual high score and pics of the backglass and playfield too.