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Last friday we went to Bart Mushroom Amusements Baeyens with a double mission.

We needed to take some pictures from his awesome Boxster pinball(more about this in a later article) and to invade the gameroom for GameRoom Invaders. I don't need to say that it was fun again and that we did flip quite some games do I?

Barts collection has changed dramatically over the years, from the many Capcoms he had only Big Bang Bar is left. He also has some alphanumerique System11's like Earthshaker, Diner and Funhouse. I liked the Funhouse part cause he has it to look at it cause it's a nice looking machine but he doesn't like to play it. I feel the same way about it, while it has some nice mechanical features I just don't like it like and I have this with Roadshow too.
The most remarkable pinbal machine has to be his 'hybride' Boxster pinball which is together with BBB the highlight of the GameRoom and they're both really fun to play!

The best part that evening was playing those few games at BBB, I never thought to play the wizard mode and now I almost did it twice in one game and I reached 1,500,000 from which I was really surprised!
Bart wanted to take out the batteries but he didn't count on Capcoms zero power RAM which doesn't need batteries! Capcom had some genius working for them! :-)

If you look at Barts garage it is dressed the most with promoplastics, playfields and more from pinball Expo in the late '90s at the wall.
In the GameRoom we even find back a collection of Marklin trains which were all properly hung at the wall with a little pinball memorablia and a mechanical Williams shooter called Bonanza. Too bad the 8-track was broken but nontheless a very nice looking and fun game. I think I'm going to search something like that for myself to, it's way more attainable than a BBB anyways!

To be honest, it wasn't the first time that we had a really good reception with Bart but I need to say that it was amusing in his combination of gameroom-house.

Now follows the interview accompanied by our video tour and a short pictureshow.
Like we ask with every invaded Gameroom owner, this time the music for the video is also chosen by Bart and it is Moan by Trentemoller.

B: Which is the first pinball you remember playing?

The first pinballs in my memory needs to be somewhere in the '70s, I was very little and I really liked the technical aspect. I remember I never got any money to play on them and that they were EM.
When I was 17-18years old and I frequented some more bars I was in the heyday of the alphanumerique games. In the swimming pool at Ninove was a Diner, in the Snooker hall(which was very hot those days) I remember a Jokerz and a Taxi, in the restaurant at the same camping were a Fire and a Big Guns! I played those two uncountable hours. Big Guns was my favorite, I did find it the end how the balls were projected. Also the "match" for an extra ball at the end of the game caused quite some twist during gameplay.

B: Which was the first pinball you bought and do you still have it?

After this period I went into the army and there was on old EM, but after that modern Big Guns violence  it couldn't interest me anymore and I can't even remember what game it was. After the army I started working and the pinballs went out my mind until I thought all of a sudden in '95: "Wouldn't it be cool to own a pinball of myself?" The internet had just begun those days so there wasn't a lot on it like all the sites you have now like Ebay, etc. Talking to some people I found out that that machine I really liked was a BG and so I started my search. There weren't any sell sites nor google, the only thing you could do was take the yellow pages and start calling. Eventually I came with an operator in the neigbourhood who sold a nice Fish Tales.
I went to watch and this was the first time I saw a DMD and I could watch at it forever, I really liked this. Once again fascinated by the technical aspect FT also had a fantastic color palet and I was really happy to pick it up.
Even the manuals were there. Only reading the manual did amuse me already, actually mostly the manual cause playing bored quickly, really quick and sooner there was a second(I did find a BG after all!!!) and a third and so on...

The FT has been in my collection a loooonng time and I sold it only two years ago.

B: How was the name Mushroom Amusements born?

The name MA is born really stupid.

There needed to be Amusements in it so that was easy. Furthermore I have certain words in English which (IMO) sound really cool like Grashopper for example, but also Mushroom and the fact that there are also Mushrooms on a pinball playfield and the name was chosen ;)

(AI: In dutch some English words indeed seem funny but that's a lot in strange languages I guess)

B: Which is your favorite pinball machine and why?

The favorite with no doubt is BBB. Since my trip with Luc de Borger to EXPO in Chicago where we got up at night just to play some more BBB is it my favorite game. It's also when I got to know BBB that I was let down by the other new pinball machines. While we were playing BBB there was also the newest Williams Monster Bash and in comparison with art, speech, view, sound etc MB was in my opinion a big flop. I also didn't understand the fuss anymore about Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, Cirques voltaire etc.. I felt like all those machines only came at knee hight from BBB.

But BBB wasn't for sale, so... the next best thing: Airborne, Pinball Magic, Breakshot an flipper Football. I've had them all, but when I heard that Gene was hoing to remake BBB I couldn't say no and directly signed up, and it did pay off.

B: Which pinball would you still like to buy?

The Kingpin from Capcom is actually the only one which could tempt me to buy NIB, nontheless I don't think it will be reproduced  anymore.

B: Do you have a favorite arcade and have you bought one yet?

On arcade level I've always been crazy of the Prop Cycle and I also had one for a short while, but the trapping was to much + I get bored quickly, keep on playing just to have a better score or to poke an extra balloon isn't something for me. It's the same for pinballs actually, I've seen it all really quickly.

For the rest I like to play race games with no special favorites. They need to be sitdowns and if it's possible with a moving chair too! ;-)

What I've always wanted was a Jetski video, I used to have a Jetski and to Jetski a little without having to redress and get wet interests me, however it can never give you the same feeling.

B:  Which pinball would you keep if you can only have one?

Well if I need to chose I'll have to say BBB again cause it is *THE* pinball machine, for the rest my favorites are the well-known alphanumeriques like Earthshaker, Swords of Fury, Whirlwind, Big Guns of course etc... At DMD level I'm more interested in the less deep machines like Airborne, Black Rose, Judge Dredd, Fish Tales etc...

And that's once again the end of our interview and now we start again at our visual tour!