Yesterday morning I was inexplicably awake at like 7 AM, which gave me the opportunity to get a lot of work done before I'd normally even be awake. In a rare instance of time well-managed, I utilized the extra time for a quick trip to Pinballz in order to find something spooky. As I suspected, there are a ton of Halloween-appropriate machines in the Pinballz arsenal, from Freddy - A Nightmare on Elm Street (apparently the designers of that one were worried that Freddy Krueger's face and the Nightmare on Elm Street title wouldn't clue players in sufficiently to the fact that this is, indeed, a Freddy Krueger pinball machine) to Elvira and Twilight Zone machines. But my favorite was an original property - Haunted House, which I'm pleased to find out is considered by connoisseurs to be a classic of the pinball form.
That pleasure comes from the fact that I had a really great time playing Haunted House, and it's always nice to have your good taste confirmed. The most striking feature of the machine is the cool subterranean level, which looked to me like an inverted reflection of what was actually physically going on under the machine. It's a disorienting experience whenever your ball ends up down there, similar to a "hall of mirrors" effect in a haunted house. Thematically appropriate, and very addictive.
What else can one say about a pinball machine? Flippers seemed to work well, sound effects and music (Toccata and Fugue in D minor) were loud and clear. Probably better than the Wayans movie with the same name.
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