Location: Oxford Street, London W1
Nearest Tube is Tottenham Court Road station (Northern and Central Line)

Here's something you don't see every day - an arcade returning to pinball more than two years after giving it up.

Play 2 Win in London's Oxford Street was well known as one of the first places to get the newest games from Williams/Bally and Capcom, but with the demise of those two companies' pinball divisions, the arcade gave up on pinball.

Now it's back, albeit in a small way.

Inside (at the back) is a new Playboy pinball fitted with the nudity picture set and the UK All-Skill outlane and centre posts - which actually work. The extra posts come in handy as the rubber has been removed from the outlane posts making them much more dangerous. There was also no skill shot award or ball saver, so it's not exactly generous in its settings. Despite that, the game was clean and everything worked with the single exception of the ball lock post. It didn't effect gameplay much but you did have to wait a while after starting multiball before jackpot shots actually awarded anything.

Pricing is the standard 50p per game, but if you're going for the high score you'll need plenty of stamina - the GC is over 3bn. My best game barely scored one sixth of that and lasted about 30 minutes.

The game received a decent amount of attention, not least from the security staff who were plentiful and sadly not prepared to allow any pictures to be taken.

Update:

The Playboy machine was replaced by a Simpsons Pinball Party but is now a Spider-Man. So far, then, they've had three of the most current games which bodes well.

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