PG - Advisory: Language May Offend

Through the ‘50s and ‘60s—a Golden Age in Hollywood—Americans were dropping more change into pinball machines than they were on a night at the movies. And that’s despite the fact that the colourful “game of chance” was confined to illegal gambling dens during that period, as a result of a government ban between the mid-’40s and 1976.

From a way to gamble your money to being relegated to the back rooms of pornography parlours and back into the disco era spotlight, the history of pinball is dominated by an undercurrent of rebellion and the Industrial Age quest for man to master machine. Through the flashing lights, whirling steel balls and manic flippers and bumpers, SPECIAL WHEN LIT does for pinball what KING OF KONG did for ‘80s-era digital arcade games. It’s part history lesson, part sports flick and part love letter to an era of gaming that is having its renaissance. TILT!

BDG