New pinball: The Lord of the Rings

I always wanted this machine. Long before I could afford any real pinball, I played a ton of Virtual Pinball on the computer, and Lord of the Rings was one I kept coming back to. I grew up loving the movies, so a real one was always going to be a must-have for me.

The timing was almost funny. Right around when I picked up my Funhouse as a project machine, my pinball friend Troy sold me a Lord of the Rings that was home use only, meaning it had barely been played. It was beautiful, and I still love playing it and having it around.

Honestly, I am not sure how I pulled it off at the time. As I mentioned in my Funhouse post, I had just bought a house, put down a down payment, all of it. How I also had the money for machines like this, I genuinely could not tell you. I was young enough that financial decisions like these got made without a whole lot of regard for the future. It worked out in the end, though, and Lord of the Rings has stayed in my collection ever since.

That photo is the old basement, shortly after I moved in, with about four machines crowded into it. I knew when I bought the house that the basement was going to need work. The carpet was old and rough, and there was an odd layout down there that wasted a lot of space. (I will write up the basement rehab eventually and link it here.)

A bit about the machine itself: Stern made it in 2003, and it was designed by George Gomez, who also designed my old Johnny Mnemonic. The Balrog guards the ramp up to the One Ring, where a magnet grabs the ball and pulls it through. It is a deep, beautiful, sprawling game.

There is one quirk worth pointing out, and you can see it here. Mine is a later-run game, so the little character figures on the playfield are missing the weapons they are supposed to be holding. From what I understand, as production wound down, Stern went from minifigures with weapons, to minifigures without weapons once they ran out, to some games with no minifigures at all. So mine sits in the in-between: figures, but no weapons. I have thought about tracking down replacement weapons, which seem more available these days, but honestly I have grown to like the little bit of factory weirdness. Maybe some future buyer will be glad to have the rarer, intentionally-incomplete version. For now, it is just one more thing that makes this one mine.