Manly manipulations

The secret to playing good pinball is to approach it with willful confidence. You catch the ball, lovingly cradle it against the wings of the flippers, manipulate it with a firm but gentle touch, and score in ways that minimize the risk that your ball will fall in the wrong hole.

This isn't a coveted secret. It's a basic instinct developed by the world's top pinball pros, 64 of whom have spun into Las Vegas for the World Pinball Championships at the Pinball Hall of Fame today through Sunday.

The best pinballers treat a machine as if it's a woman craving a caress, they say.

"They're female, and they need a little tender, loving care. You gotta play 'em to know 'em," says Gary Stern, president of Stern Pinball Inc.

A favorite pinballer to win the tourney is Sean "Storm" Grant, an amateur rapper who stands in red shoes, striped gangster pants, and rhymes thus: "Super jackpot! You can't believe what you're seeing. After the game, put up my name. I'm the grand champion!"

The event comes at a rebuilding time for pinball, which has faded in the age of Xbox. Only Stern's company still mass-produces the machines, churning out about 10,000 each year and selling each for about $5,000.

Each machine is handcrafted from 3,500 pieces, a half-mile of wire and smaller flippers than ever.

"There are more man-hours and moving parts in a pinball machine than in a Ford Taurus," Stern says.

If the pinball event is a manly domain, there's a boy's world this weekend at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Game dorks will be checking out video games, football-tossing games, pool tables and "Dance Dance Revolution"-style arcade games during the Amusement Showcase International trade show and "Coin-Op Olympics."

A popular new sequel is "Big Buck Safari." You point a plastic rifle at a video screen where wildebeest and gemsbok frolic and roam in lush and tranquil native greenery until you blast them in the head and they keel over dead, kaput, finis.

"It's a very primal thing to do. Bam-bam!" says co-designer Scott Pikulski of Play Mechanix. "It's the only thing we can't do in real life. I don't kill anything. But I'll kill a pixel."

Pinball starts at 10 a.m. today at the Pinball Hall of Fame. The trade show is open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the convention center.

Neither would be super for building a relationship. Grant the rapper guy, whose pinball weakness is tilting machines with his "Bruce Lee death touch," proves that pinball and coin-operated arcade games aren't exactly Match.com icebreakers.

"In Japan," Grant says without rapping, "taking a girl to an arcade is considered a good date. ... But not in America."

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal. com/elfman.