That completely non-handicapped 28-year-old man sure plays a mean pinball

5) Jurassic Park

Honestly, this one's really here because I felt the need to include one Data East/Sega/Stern game (Stern being the only company still making pinball machines today). Even though their games always feel plasticky and fragile compared to Bally/Williams games, JP was a fun adaptation of the movie. All of my top 5 have at least one fun "toy" on the playfield; JP's was a giant T-Rex head that swooped down to gobble up your ball.

This game blatantly stole the idea of mode-based play from Addams Family, to good effect. Each mode award was represented by a lit computer screen on the playfield, collected from a scoop (which even had the same placement as Addams'), and churning through all of them earned you the "wizard mode," System Failure. The first time you hit it, you might think you've killed the game, because everything goes dark; suddenly, the T-Rex toy burps, and an intense six-ball multiball starts up. Great dinosaur sound effects from the movie complete the package. Derivative, but fun.

4) Funhouse

The game that introduced the giant taking Rudy head to the world:

"Quit playin' with the clock!"

You, presumably some crazy kid rampaging through Rudy's fun house, hit targets to try to get the clock to advance to midnight. This causes Rudy to fall asleep and start snoring. Then, shooting a ball in his gaping mouth starts a fun multiball. Once he spits out the ball of course...

"BLEAAAHHH!"

All the while, creepy Rudy's eyes dart around as he encourages or taunts you.

"I'm not happy with you now!"

Maybe the best playfield toy ever. The rest of the game was fun, too.

3) Banzai Run

This is one of the games I cut my teeth on back in Montana; originally, it was located at a gas station near my dad's house, and years later it wound up at the University of Great Falls' student center.

At first, Banzai Run seems like a standard, motorcycle-racing-themed game. But not only did it have a rocking soundtrack, which was an innovation at the time; it also had an incredible vertical playfield in the backglass.

Yes, that playfield is standing up on end! A magnet attached to a motorcycle-riding plastic dude grabs your ball from the regular playfield and drops it off here, where you try to "overtake" rival racers. Just the first brilliant innovation by designer Pat Lawlor, who designed games #1-#4 on this list.

2) Addams Family

When I first played this game, I thought it was way too hard to be entertaining. The playfield was very closed, it was hard to get any kind of flow going, and to top it all off, a pulsing electromagnet called "The Power" wreaked havoc with the ball during multiball and certain modes. "Screw that," said 14-year-old James.

But after playing it a few hundred times, it's grown on me. This is a challenging game every time, which you can't say about most machines. The mode system made its debut here and revolutionized rule sheets for the rest of the '90s. Plus, who can resist Thing, the disembodied hand who grabs your ball (via a magnet) to lock it?

Throw in a great voice track by the late Raul Julia (Gomez in the movie), an unusual "Thing Flips" feature in which the game flips for you, and the fact that this machine rarely has anything broken on it, and you have a game that easily became the top money-earner of all-time for Bally/Williams. (Sadly, they would shut down all pinball operations a scant eight years later.)

1) Twlight Zone

This one's the Holy Grail of Pinball for me. I spent way too much time playing it in high school and college. I also spent way too much time in class thinking up strategies that would help me get through all 14 modes. But I should be forgiven for that, because accomplishing said feat would get me to the most heralded "wizard mode" of all time, Lost in the Zone, an unlimited 6-ball frenzy that lasts a delirious 45 seconds.

But even if you're not good enough to get through all the modes (and I wasn't for about five years!), there's so much else going on in this game that you won't care. Lawlor once again gave us an incredible innovation, this time in the form of a hard ceramic pinball (really!) called the Powerball.

Designed for use as a heat-resistant ball bearing, the Powerball had the look of a gumball, which was intentional -- you see it here in its natural habitat, a gumball machine toy on the playfield. Releasing the ceramic ball opened up a tempest of pinball fury; it was much lighter than a normal metal pinball, causing it to fly all over the playfield, usually completely out of control.

Is the Powerball "too hot to handle?" Then try the Battle the Power mini-playfield, a small elevated triangle where your "flippers" are actually electromagnets.

(What was up with Pat Lawlor naming everything with the word "Power?" The world may never know.)

Innovation after innovation was packed into this widebody game. Throw in the creepy atmosphere of the old Twlight Zone series ("Hi, I'm Talky Tina! Here's your extra ball! [BOOM!] Hee hee hee!") and you have a timeless classic of a game. In fact, easily the best ever.

The only knock on TZ is that, if you encounter it on location, there's almost always something broken. Fortunately, most of the private TZ collectors these days are dedicated to keeping this great game in top shape, which is no easy task, considering the sheer number of fragile mechanical parts that went into building it.

In conclusion, I would like to ask somebody with a lot of money to please buy me a Twlight Zone. I promise I'll take good care of it. No? No takers? Anyone?