![]() But by then, most major American cities had outlawed the game as another form of gambling. The flipper wasn't introduced until 1947. The first mechanical pinball machines were largely games of chance you shot a ball and tilted the machine to control its trajectory. Now, five months into 2014, Florida has already seen ten.īack in the day - before Xbox, Nintendo, Donkey Kong, or even Pong - there was only pinball. Last year, 13 tournaments with 168 competitors were held in Florida. Fueled by the internet's enthusiasm for all things retro and a new world ranking system, its popularity is surging across the United States. The Palmers' pin success comes amid a pinball resurgence. ![]() "He's going to be playing against literally the elite people from the United States." "You have people who are flying in from all over the country," Jeff says. Atticus will be the youngest competitor at the event. And this week, the whole Palmer clan is heading off to Lyons, Colorado - just outside Denver - for the International Flipper Pinball Association's U.S. He clinched those bragging rights at a nail-biter tournament at Club 66 in Boynton Beach in February. The younger Palmer is currently the Florida flipper champ. "We're not," says mom Nancy, "like the other families in the neighborhood." Put them together and you're looking at Florida's first family of pinball excellence. ![]() His only son, Atticus, is a cheery 15-year-old with a Nicolas Cage fixation who likes to dress up like Doctor Who. The man of the house - who, thanks to a Duck Dynasty beard and shoulder-length hair, looks like he could be hauling around guitar cases for Metallica - is a friendly engineer named Jeff Palmer. Another 11 rigs are tucked away in the garage. It's Mayberry 2.0, a David Lynch movie before shit goes bad.īehind the front door of one such modest suburban house - a three-bedroomer on NW Tenth Street - is a living room like a million others, except this one is lined with five blinking pinball machines. The boxy patch of West Broward is made up of neighborhoods of modest ranch homes planted evenly on shady, manicured lawns. Suburbs don't get much tidier than Coral Springs.
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