Location: Wardour Street, near Leicester Square, London W1, UK

More news of a former pinball site returning to the game.

The Game One arcade is at the heart of London's tourist attractions just off Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus.

Several years ago it used to have pinball games but there hasn't been the sound of flipping for almost five years.

Now, however, there is a Stern Playboy game downstairs in the pool area. The arcade is owned by First Leisure, one of the biggest operators of leisure and amusement locations in the UK and any move to bring back pinball would have big implications for machine sales. The high scores on the game were in the mid 50 millions, so it wasn't too hard to get the grand champion score. Somewhat surprisingly, there were no credits awarded for achieving this, and no replay level either. The only free game came from a match at the end.

Although this game has the extra UK All-Skill outlane and centre drain posts, they are not activated. Indeed, the extra flipper buttons have been removed and replaced with blanking plates.

In play, the main problem was the weakness of the flippers. The centre ramp could only be made about 50% of the time, and the right ramp was almost impossible - very galling when it is lit for triple jackpot and a solid shot fails to make the ramp and falls back straight down the middle.

Apart from that, everything else on the game seems to work with the exception of the tilt, which makes death saves very achievable.

Despite being in a pool hall, the game is well located and never in the way of the pool players.

The game is priced at 50p per game or two games for £1 and, being in the basement, is not easily found by regular players, so you shouldn't have too much trouble getting a game.

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