EP11 David Benke My Journey Into Pinball
In this episode, we’re joined by David Benke from South Carolina. David has been a competitive pinball player for many years and currently serves as a state director. We dive into his story and talk...
Highlights
- David grew up playing pinball at four Charleston locations in early 1990s: Chucky Cheese, Hot Wheels skating rink, James Island Cinema, and Aladdin's Castle at Citadel Mall
- Palmetto Pinball Club was originally a secret, membership-only arcade requiring insider knowledge to access
- Heath Ashley won the first South Carolina state pinball championship
- Pat Pietras was the first South Carolina state director
- Ken Grant has loaned pinball machines to at least 6 different people's houses and maintains a 15-game collection at his home
- John Marsh, a homebrew designer and Spaceballs creator, passed away earlier in 2024
- David completed a school animation project adding animations to Robo War using CAD/animation work with John Marsh's technical support
- Michael Bernard (Jaws designer) was previously unaware of the homebrew pinball community before David introduced him
Notable quotes
“I didn't even know games really had like a way to play them at first i was just like oh you're just supposed to keep the ball on the play field and there's not really a game but then later when i found out there was actually things to do that's when pinball actually became fun for me”
“you walk in and there's like 15 pinball machines and nice it was incredible”
“I call him Penn Santa. He's the best.”
“I don't want to spend thousands of dollars and it look half-assed like i want this thing to look like who made this”
“It was a side scroller of him going through the junkyard, collecting all of this stuff like rockets and all these different junky things to make weapons and stuff”
Entities
- FAST Pinball· company
- Spooky Pinball· company
- Junkyard· game
- Robo War· game
- Charleston Tech School· organization
- Palmetto Pinball Club· organization
- University of South Carolina· organization
- David Benke· person
- Heath Ashley· person
- Jared Rice· person
- John Marsh· person
- Ken Grant· person
- Michael Bernard· person
- Nate Grant· person
- Pat Pietras· person
- Sterling Martin· person
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