Above the blinking orange and red lights, rattling bells and clickety-clack of flippers stood 45-year-old Mike Freeman, his belly not quite leaning against the Bally NBA Fastbreak pinball machine.

His eyes rapidly daunt up-and-down the vibrantly colored landscape, following the every move of the small silver sphere while effortlessly keeping the metal ball within the glowing playing field, passing over targets of free throws and slam dunks to rack up points so quickly the neon screen could barely keep pace. Within two minutes, the ball disappears into a dark hole at the end of the sloping board.

"The secret is trying to play like you’re playing in your own house, nice and relaxed," Freeman, of Pittsfield, said on Saturday afternoon. "There are tricks to every game but I think, and I know it sounds cliché, the trick is to keep the ball in play; shoot for the things that are flashing and hope for the best."

Nestled in a worn-down industrial complex at 134 Haines St. in a working-class Nashua neighborhood, Freeman drifts from machine to machine at the Southern New Hampshire Pinball Club’s new facility.

The private club offers 24-hour access to its equipment for $30 a month or a straight $350 annual fee. Those less inclined to drop three figures on pinball may toss in $5 for up to two hours of play time, or $10 for a little extra.

"There’s a lot of good players in the area and they need locations because the arcades are just not out there anymore," said Austin Chenelle, a Pittsfield resident who has helped establish the club in Nashua.

"It’s growing in popularity, there’s players everywhere and they need places to play. This area was a little bit underserved and this idea is kind of a new one – people wanted a 24-hour facility," he said.

Chenelle’s fixation with pinball came during his college years at UMass Lowell, playing at a tournament in Boston. The club he helped bring to Nashua currently has about 15 members.

On Saturday afternoon, the club held a tournament to celebrate the official grand opening. The facility, filled with the sounds of ZZ Top and Black Sabbath coming from a small stereo, had its soft opening earlier in the month for its financial backers.

Chenelle said there are currently 14 pinball machines on locations and several video game consoles available for play on a flat-screen television. Next to the video game set-up is a well-used sofa and refrigerator.

Snacks were placed on a folding table in the center of the room for the roughly two dozen players. Many of the gamers handed off their half-finished cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon to a friend when it was their turn on the flippers.

Pinball has mainly fallen out of style since the early 1990s when video games became available in every household. While it may never achieve the levels of popularity as in previous decades, players enjoy the nostalgia and the unpredictability of the game.

"It’s always different. The early video games, once you know the pattern you can beat it; but pinball is a different game all the time," said Nashua resident Chip Morton, who has been playing pinball for a half-century. "It’s dynamic. The same machine, you could play it 10 times in a row and you’ll never have the same game twice. Never ever."

Younger players, those who may never have walked into an arcade, are slowing coming around to pinball as well. Millennials, the generation born between 1980 and the early 2000s, grew up playing simulated pinball on their computers and now are looking for the real experience.

"When they learn there are actually machines they can play locally, they catch the bug. We see a lot of new blood here," Chenelle said.

Freeman, like many who share the hobby, remembers when he first gravitated toward pinball. He used to go with his father to the local tavern with a pile of quarters to play the pinball machine in the corner.

"A lot of my friends liked Space Invaders, the Pac-Mans. Those were popular, but I always went to the laundromat or the bowling alley that had a pinball machine," he said. "Anytime you can walk away with the top score when you’re playing with a bunch of guys, I love it."

Chris Garofolo can be reached at 594-6465, cgarofolo@ nashua
telegraph.com or on Twitter at
@Telegraph_Chris.