Portland Pinball Map: Not Just For Portland Anymore (But It Still Loves Us Best)

Let’s be straight pinball fans, ever since Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and the rest of their pixelated brethren started crowding arcades and convenience stores, the pinball industry has had to fight flipper and bumper just to survive. Over the last three decades it has become increasingly difficult to find a quality table anywhere.

Thanks to Ground Kontrol, Portland’s pinball fans are blessed with at least one place catering to the hobby, but is that the only option our city offers?

Enter Portland Pinball Map.

Created by Blogtown regular Ryan “ROM” Gratzer and Scott Wainstock (with an iPhone app crafted by Isaac Ruiz), PPM is exactly what it sounds like: An online map of the Greater Portland Area specifically dedicated to the region’s pinball machines.

Yes, Erik covered the site way back in 2008, but I’m always up for re-pimping the efforts of our readers, especially if they’re actually useful. Bake me some cookies and I’ll write an article about how rad you are.

• … and if you make me a Futurama pinball table, I’ll tell everyone that your junk smells like a brand new Lexus.

Hit the jump for more about the Portland Pinball Map.

Here’s a full explanation of how the site came to be, what it is and the accompanying iPhone app, straight from the e-mail ROM sent me:

Two years ago Scott Wainstock and I launched portlandpinballmap.com (Scott’s the main programmer, and I manage the data and do the css/html). It’s a database-driven google maps mash-up that lists all the pinball machines in town. The data is kept up to date by users – if they see that a location has experienced a line-up change, they can make the changes on the map. The site also has a bunch of other little tools and features. For Portland, it’s currently listing 190 locations and 396 machines.

Earlier this year we spread the scope and started adding in new regions – thus far: Seattle, British Columbia, and San Diego. We then picked up pinballmap.com as the new url. The site gets something like 2k hits a day, often more. And we’ve heard from quite a few people (including some of the world’s top players) that it’s the best pinball map out there.

And earlier this year, local flash and iPhone app developer, Isaac Ruiz, made an iPhone app for the Portland Pinball Map. It’s had over 450 downloads (purchases – 99 cents), and people are super into it.

If you’re an Apple devotee and wanna get your hands on the app, you can find it on the App Store, and more info about it is available on the PPM website. If, however, you’re one of those phone geeks who prefers gadget functionality over being popular and attractive to females, an Android version of the app is currently in open beta.

Though the original focus was the Portland area, ROM also told me that it was a foregone conclusion that they would have to expand PPM’s functionality to include other cities. As he said above, they already have Seattle, British Columbia and San Diego up and running. Plus, in the two weeks that elapsed between ROM contacting me and my writing this piece, they also added LA and Boston to the site.

“Rapid expansion” seems to be the operative phrase here, as ROM also tells me that the site will be adding coverage of New York City and San Francisco very soon.

If all this is making your Portland elitism boil over, don’t fret, Portland is still the king of pinball mountain. As ROM told me in a more recent message about his site, “Portland just hit 400 public machines. I am faaaaairly sure that no other city in the US can top this. NYC, for instance, has like 70 machines. Seattle has 177, etc.”

So when your friends call from Capitol Hill or Williamsburg you can still lord that over them. They might have Kurt Cobain and Revolutionary War reenactors, but we’ve got more balls!

• Nintendo
• … though Japan still holds the monopoly on Pokéballs.

DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: The above has been slightly altered to offer “real name” credit to the three men responsible for the PPM empire. Now their mothers can look at this post and feel a swell of pride at seeing their sons’ names appear on such a prestigious news outlet.