On the way home from Funspot in New Hampshire, Rob and I cut through Vermont and made a pit stop at Mystic Pinball in Turners Falls, Massachusetts.
What an awesome place. While Funspot wows with the sheer volume of games it has, Mystic wows with the quality. The owner, Mark Hankowski, is super nice and is meticulous with his games. He was going through cleaning and fixing all of the games constantly the entire time we were there. They had hosted a big Massachusetts tournament yesterday with tons of people playing games all day and most of the games still worked perfectly.
Mystic had 22 pins at its location and the owner has a total of 45 that he rotates in and out to keep things fresh. There was a great mix of old and new games, from new essentials like Total Nuclear Annihilation and Jersey Jack’s The Hobbit to older classics like Stars and Alien Star and awesome titles in between including Williams Indiana Jones and Circus Voltaire.
I was pleasantly surprised by two games that I had never played before. The first was Bally Midway Hardbody. Yes the art and theme are absurdly dumb, but man the pin had a lot of cool features...two sets of buttons on the side of the cabinet, one for the “Flex Save” and the other for the flippers and an an upper playfield with two flippers.
The other quirky cool game was the cocktail pin Night Moves. Cocktail pins are so unique. I so need to get one.
So there you have it. If you’re within driving distance, definitely make sure to check out Mystic Pinball in Turners Falls, Mass.