Senior is self-proclaimed IU pinball grand champion

Daniel Miller stands hunched over a pinball machine, jumping as he presses the buttons for the flippers. As he plays, his body is always ready for a well-timed hip thrust to tilt the machine and save a dying ball.

The flashing lights from the “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark”-themed machine reflect off of his glasses while his eyes are firmly fixed on the game.

Miller, a senior, is the self-proclaimed “grand champion” of IU pinball, and based on his scores on the pinball machines in the Indiana Memorial Union’s Back Alley, few would dispute it.

He has top scores on two of the five pinball machines in the Back Alley and a second-place score on another. The other two machines don’t keep track.

But Miller is the grand champion of a game he knows is dying.

Marc Schoenberg, the director of project management for manufacturer Stern Pinball, said pinball’s peak has passed.

He called 1979 to 1994 the height of pinball manufacturing, with 50,000 to 75,000 machines produced between three companies each year.

Stern Pinball is now the sole manufacturer of pinball machines in the world and produces about 8,000 machines each year, Schoenberg said – a result of the rising popularity of video game consoles.

“The entire coin-operated market is down,” Schoenberg said. “Now we sell games more to the home. It’s a different marketplace.”

But he said that people like Miller are central to the continued viability of pinball.
“There are people who are extremely enthusiastic, and they are the core of our community,” Schoenberg said. “They keep the game alive.”

Miller said he spends anywhere from five to 15 hours a week playing and spends about $20 a week on games.

“I play at least four days a week,” Miller said. “I usually spend at least 15 minutes playing, but it’s not unheard of for me to stick around for one to two hours.”

Miller has only been playing since last summer. His brother introduced him to the game while they were working at a pizza restaurant in Portland, Ore., and Miller “got hooked.”

Miller is also a part of a “pinball crew” from his pizza-serving days. His crew is called “Old Town Pinball” because members were from the restaurant where he worked, Old Town Pizza.

Because members used the crew’s initials, Miller said he always enters “OTP” when he breaks machine records.

While pinball crews might not exist in Bloomington, Miller said that when he was in Portland, the city’s pinball culture lent itself to crew rivalries and turf wars among the “pinball jocks.”

He said one of his best pinball memories took place on the turf of the “Crazy Flipper Fingers,” a rival crew.

“I put up the fourth-place high score on ‘Medieval Madness,’ my favorite machine, at their home bar my first time playing it,” Miller said. “I put up ‘OTP.’ It was a slap in their face.”

Miller even has battle wounds from playing by performing the “death save,” a move that involves slamming one’s body into the machine as hard as possible to push a dead ball back out onto the table.

“I drew blood in Texas,” he said.

Despite that most pinball players Miller sees are men, he said the game isn’t just a boys’ club.

“Chicks that play pinball are mystical, like unicorns,” Miller said. “They’re sexy.”

Because he spends so much time playing pinball in the Back Alley, he said he notices more than just the occasional girl who comes by to play.

One of the regulars at the Back Alley is Steve Irish, who holds all but one of the top ten scores on the Asteroids machine.

Like Miller, Irish said he plays three or four times a week, usually going after his morning classes. Irish said for him, playing Asteroids is a “secret pleasure.”

“I noticed the machine was here,” Irish said. “I play to reconnect with fond memories. It’s a re-connection to the past.”

Miller said he knows regulars like Irish not just because of his pinball addiction; he works for the Back Alley as well – a position he said he chose because when looking for jobs, he looked for places with pinball machines.

“I play pinball while I work sometimes when it’s really dead in here,” Miller said.
Although he has a job and is a full-time student, Miller said he must make tough decisions when it comes to making room for his pinball habit.

“Pinball money takes priority over other spending, so sometimes I skip lunch to eat at home so I can play,” Miller said. “Sometimes, I need to write a paper, but it’s like, ‘Nope, I’m going to play pinball.’”