A couple of weeks ago, I was in New York City and had a chance to check out Modern Pinball NYC.  You can find them online at modernpinballnyc.com.  It is an incredible place for pinball.  I have never been to a pinball location that has as many excellent titles that are maintained the way Modern Pinball NYC maintains them.  Every game I played was error free, played very fast and was in excellent condition.  Modern Pinball charges on an hourly basis with all the machines set on free play.  I think the hour I played was around $10 which probably less than I would have spent on coin drops.  

When I go to a place like modern pinball, I usually have a few titles that I want to play to get an opinion about and I also end up playing machines I already own. I end up playing the machines that I already own because I want to see whether or not my machines compare to machines that are in tip top shape.  I quickly realized that my Whirlwind flippers were not up to par.  The upper flipper shot on my machine has always required a perfect shot because there is not much flipper power.  When I made the upper flipper shot much more easily on the Whirlwind at Modern Pinball NYC, I knew I had some work to do.  I ordered flipper rebuild kits that night and rebuilt the flippers.  The machine is much more fun to play with the more powerful and more responsive flippers.

I played Iron Man and was convinced that my Iron Man holds up pretty well against a well tuned machine.   I played Fish Tales and I think my Fish Tales compares pretty well in terms of flipper power and speed of play.  However, the playfield seemed faster due to a good waxing.  

When I went in, I recognized the guy who was working behind the desk as Alberto Santana.  I knew him from a youtube video where he plays a Johnny Mnemonic in an arcade.  I had heard that Modern Pinball was staffed by high level players and had seen posts on Facebook of them with customers and providing tips and strategies.  When I went in, he was busy and I didn’t want to bother him.  As I left, he stopped me and my wife and wanted to know where we were from and how we had heard about Modern Pinball NYC.  We had a interesting discussion about the machines and PAPA and tournament play.  He reminded me to sign up for PAPA on the day it opens up because it can fill  up fast.  He also told me that Modern Pinball NYC works hard to wax the machines and make sure that everything is working smoothly to make them as fast as possible.  Alberto told me that their goal is to have all the best arcade in america with public play machines that play like tournament machines.