Pinball in Latvia
Pinball: A Love Letter
It has been awhile, but I feel like I need to write something, so let me announce the introduction of pinball to Latvia!
Thanks to Pinball Arena, Latvia may finally join the rest of the Western World! Yes, that’s right, we may have pinball machines!
What is pinball?
For those of you who don’t know, pinball is an arcade game where a little silver ball goes onto a playing surface, and the goal is to just keep hitting it up with flippers to score as many points as possible. If you have only played digital versions of the game, then you aren’t getting the real experience. Maybe I was influenced at an early age by the musical Tommy by The Who and the iconic song “Pinball Wizard” by Elton John.
As I explained to my good friend, Renārs, pinball is a physical, visceral experience that is all about the tactile feel of your hands and body becoming symbiotic with the machine itself. I know it sounds weird, but when you watch a “real” pinball wizard, their whole body moves in time with the machine and micro motions influence the flow the of the game. Modern machines are mostly based on popular culture and movies like James Bond, The Terminator, The Addams Family, Star Trek, Star Wars, and so on.
I grew up with pinball machines in my tiny town of Yutan, Nebraska at Jeris’s Cafe. She usually had two or three machines along with whatever the most popular video games of the time were. My brothers and friends would go play for hours with the few quarters we would manage to rustle up. At first, we even shared games by each taking a flipper.
When you first start playing, you just kind of randomly flap at the ball hitting both flippers at the same time and hoping for the best. But as you learn and develop, you gain more and more control, ultimately being able to “freeze” the ball on a flipper in order to aim the ball for a target or ramp for maximum results. Like any game, there is a learning curve, and while it seems like a lot of luck as to where the ball bounces, there is skill behind every flip and shake of the machine.
I remember some of the old machines very fondly. There was a poker-themed pinball machine (Joker Poker) where you hit the targets that were decorated like cards to make hands. And I will always remember the Playboy pinball machine with images of cartoonish beautiful women that, at the time, made me feel squeamish and a bit embarrassed.
The difference between pinball and other arcade games is that if you are good enough and lucky enough, you can score enough points to win a free game. When it happens, there is a physical “POP!” that you feel as the machine shakes, and everyone around you knows that you just won a game. Not only that, but even if you didn’t have a good enough game to win, you can always MATCH at the end. This is where the last two digits of your score match a set of random digits that appear on the screen. So every time you play, you have a slight chance to play again for free.
When you play, you can play against another opponent, usually up to 4 players per machine at one time, or you can play against the high scores on the machine. When you want to see what the high scores are or what it would take to win a game, generally you hold down the right flipper for information. All modern games have some kind of storyline that you can follow and learn how to light up certain modes like “Extra Ball” which means you get a free ball in addition to the usual 3 per game. One of my favorites was always “Special” which was marked by a distinct deep-red color, and usually on one of the gutters that meant you would lose the ball but win a free game at the same time. Achieving goals and learning the story of each machine is one of the joys of pinball.
Surprisingly, pinball machines were actually outlawed in some cities in the USA, including New York, because people would gamble on the games, and this association made them kind of unseemly. Despite that, their popularity has remained relatively steady.
The Black Knight
I still remember the magical day that my brother Norm drove us down to Lincoln in the early 1980s, and we went to some arcade that had newer machines. The one that always stands was The Black Knight. This machine was different because it introduced the concept of “multi-ball”. The idea was that if you were able to hit the right ramps in the right combination, you could lock 3 balls, and then release them all at the same time. During the multi-ball, there was a sensory overload for this little kid from Small Town Nebraska that still lights a little fire in my soul. You know that feeling when you can almost taste what it was like to be happy? Those moments in our life live on eternally because there was so much emotion attached.
I know, it sounds weird to say that about a machine, but what can I do? I am just being honest. Since that day, I have been chasing the feeling of my first multi-ball.
Pinball through the years
Through the years, my enthusiasm for pinball waxed and waned. It returned again after Omaha opened its first adult arcade bar called Beercade. When I first went there, I thought it would be nostalgic to play some of the old arcade favorites like Galaga, Pac-man, or even Dig-Dug. But what I really found myself drawn to were the pinball machines. My brother and I would go every now and then to play and compete at getting high scores. I also went with my friend Matt, and we always had a good time. There is just something about the combination of really good beer and pinball that makes me a happy man.
Whenever I traveled, I would check online to see if the city had pinball machines. I played in Portland, Oregon; Denver, Colorado, and in Salem, Mass. among other cities.
The problem with pinball is that it takes a particular set of skills and a bit of patience to learn. Like anything else, if you started young, then you are going to be better at it than if you just try to start later in life. So there have been those failed moments where I tried to share my love for the game with a date, and she just couldn’t get into it.
Another issue is the score inflation that has taken place over the decades. When I was a kid, it took hundreds of thousands of points to win a game, then it was millions, and now it is billions. Interestingly, there has been a recent attempt to return back to lower scores. I played a Wizard of Oz machine in Minneapolis where points were quite hard to come by, and it took only thousands to win a game.
No pinball in Latvia
When I moved to Latvia in 2017, I thought that I would find a cool bar with some pinball machines, so I could hang out with my new-found friends playing pinball and drinking beer. Disappointingly, my friend Hal and I found only one place, Pepsi Centrs that had one machine, Dirty Harry. The machine was broken, so you couldn’t really see your score, and nothing quite worked right. With that said, Hal was a true champ, dominating the machine and my score with ease.
After talking to a few locals, I learned that Latvians didn’t really know what pinball was. It had never made it here after the fall of the Soviet Union. Imagine, growing up in a world without pinball? It seemed almost inhumane to me!
Still, when I traveled, I would try to find pinball machines, and I had a very successful adventure in Vienna!
Brūzis Manufaktūra 2025
What a great and pleasant surprise it was then when my instagram reels displayed an ad for pinball right here in Riga! By chance, the ad came to me and I shared it with Renārs and suggested we check it out. Luckily, he read the ad and noted that the place didn’t seem to be somewhere to go. It turned out that the address given is just a storeroom and not some bar for playing. He called and found out that the pinball machines would be, that very night, at a brewpub called Brūzis Manufaktūra, a place I had always wanted to go to anyway. Serendipity!
I rode my bike to the bar after work, but was a bit sad to see that there were no pinball machines, and, instead, only a lone pool table. I asked the waitress what was going on, and she said the machines would arrive at 6 p.m. Weird, I thought, but okay.
Renārs showed up, and we had a nice meal on the terrace, and we watches as, sure enough, the pinball machines were being set up inside.
After dinner, went in and met Agris, the owner-operator of Arena Pinball. He brought four machines, Godzilla, Dungeons and Dragons, Venom, and the Mandalorian. All of them were in beautiful shape and set up perfectly. He made it so you didn’t have to pay to play, but could just play as many games as you wanted with the push of a button. The idea is that he is trying to get people to play, so they can see how fun it is. He is basically a Pinball Evangelist.
Renārs and I played a few games at each of the machines as I drank a few delicious beers (the perfect combination). I taught Renārs the basics, and was quite impressed that he picked it up so quickly. I demonstrated the concept of “TILT” to him as I banged around the Mandalorian machine a bit too much only to lose my ball. Agris showed us that we could log into the machines and get on a leaderboard.
Unfortunately, the app didn’t work, so he gave us premade badges with QRL codes so we could track our progress.
Both of us made it on the Big Board, and this created another level of excitement and competition. Later, he invited us to join the tournament on the Dungeons & Dragons machine.
This was the first machine we had tried, and neither of us were very good at it, so I didn’t think I would do very well in the tournament. However, I guess I was all warmed up, and I was able to get something like 89,000,000 points, while the next highest score was in the 20 million area. Surprisingly, I won my first-ever pinball tournament and took home a Jaws poster as a prize.
The whole night was incredibly fun, and there was such energy in seeing these young Latvians playing pinball for the first time. One young man playing Dungeons & Dragons had the right idea when his ball went down the gutter, and he disappointingly cried, “What the fuck?” Like any good game, pinball is full of joy and heartache. The highs are high, and the lows are low. There has to be a balance.
Now I am hopeful that Pinball Arena can catch on here in Riga, and we will have a regular spot to go have a few beers and play pinball. I know it is niche, but it is one of my niches, and I love it!
Epilogue
Agris says that he is showcasing the machines, but so far they have no permanent home. After we finished at Brūzis, he took them back to the warehouse. So if you know any bar that is looking to be a home for pinball, keep this in mind! Hopefully, it won’t be long before we see a pinball arcade here in Rīga!
Pinball Gallery
Side Note:
Tips for playing pinball:
- Before you play a new machine, examine it. Pay attention to the targets and ramps. Notice all the little bumpers and doo-dads at the top of the machine that you might not notice when you are focusing only on the ball and the flippers.
- Don’t flip as soon as the ball hits your flippers. Try to freeze the ball by holding a flipper up and letting the ball rest, and then take a swing when the ball slowly rolls to the tip of the flipper. Aim each shot and you will get better and better.
- Pay attention to the mini-games and multiple flippers. Some games have an extra flipper higher up that lots of newbies don’t even notice. Take care to use this flipper as much as possible because it will keep the ball away from the gutters and give you chances to hit ramps and targets you can’t hit with the regular flippers.
- Take note of the story of the machine. Watch for the blinking lights and listen as the newer machines tell you where to aim.
- Lots of new machines have actions where you make choices on the screen. Take note of these selections and choose, usually using a flipper or even an extra action button.
- Pay attention to the launch! Many machines have skill shots right at the start where you can score big points, and there are usually bonus multipliers that you can activate with your flippers by selecting certain light-ups.
- Don’t get discouraged! Pay attention to the ball, and just focus on keeping it up as long as you can. The longer the ball stays in play, the more points you will score. With each game you will improve and the enjoyment will grow.
- If the machine is rigged, don’t waste your time. This is a discouraging dark side of pinball that I have noticed. Machines can be adjusted, and sometimes the operators will rig the machines so they are at too steep of an angle, and the balls just go down way too quickly. There are also machines with weak flippers that just kind of tap at the ball, and it is just frustrating. Walk away, don’t try to beat these machines because there is no point.
- Lastly, play with friends! Pinball is always more fun when you are competing with people. While I do enjoy solo games trying to win a free game or beat the high score, it is always more exciting with a companion!