There has to be a twist

We picked up a Wii game called Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Williams Collection last year. It became Archer's favorite almost immediately. I attribute his interest to the fact that there are many complicated scoring scenarios, all of which are outlined and explained in very extensive rule screens that can be paged through for each table.

I love this game because these are fantastic tables (Funhouse! Pinbot! Taxi!), and because the pinball simulation is absolutely fantastic. Everything has just the right weight, sound, and feel. I don't know how they did it, but it's perfect. I can't quite explain how Archer achieves high scores on the tables when his strategy 75% of the time is just to flip continuously (he does hold the flippers up to receive ejected balls and then aims his shots), but he racks up huge numbers.

At the library the other day, I happened across a big coffee table book about pinball, and Archer was charmed the instant he opened it to find a picture and description of Old Chicago, the first table the author ever played, and one that Archer played several times at our local Old Chicago pizza franchise. He turns the pages looking at the pictures of tables and reading the description of their gameplay for hours.

I'd love to get him more books about pinball, to go along with his insatiable appetite for books about chess. If you have any recommendations along those lines, I'd love to hear them!