Sportys (Como, Mpls)

I remembered that there were a couple of odd bars on Como just west of 280, and lord knows there is no better spot to find a pinball machine than an odd bar. My first stop was Station 280. My guess is this place used to serve to a lot of workers in the industrial days-gone-by. Now it seems to be a sports bar with a d-bag clientele from the U who are choosing  to not live in Dinkytown. They have a large game room, but no pinball, so I headed further west to Mannings and Sportys. Mannings seems like the kind of place that is owned by The Mob. At 10:30 on a Saturday night it had four employees and two customers, with a clean, quiet, old school atmosphere. Sadly they had no pinball machines, so I walked across the street to Sporty's.

 Sporty's is kind of strange. There was definitely nothing sports-related about it, and the clientele seemed college-hipster. Its an old bar that added a weird dining room by expanding into the space next door. Here I was excited to find Terminator 2 and Star Trek: The Next Generation machines.

I first played T2. The right side coin slot ate my quarter, but I looked up to see it had a free credit on it. It is only $.50 per play. Not a bad game, but I don't care for the "gun" shooter it has.
My High Score: 5.6 mil
Replay 36 mil

Moving over to Star Trek: The Next Generation I was disappointed to see that it also had the "gun" shooter, although it would probably be categorized as a phaser. However, don't let that get you down. This game is great. It had a ton of ramps to shoot over and over, and a reachable replay. Its priced at $.50/1, $.75/2, and $1.00/3 games. I got an extra ball and came so close to hitting the replay that I almost added another quarter to keep my game going. However, part of me feels like that is cheating, and it was getting late. I look forward to playing this machine again.
My High Score: 321 mil
Replay: 345 mil