About silverballmania

I'm Frank aka FRG aka silverballmania. My journey into pinball began a bit later in life, in 2006, when we got a STTNG machine for some office fun. Before this, my pinball experience was limited to just one game on a Terminator 2 back in the early '90s, which quickly convinced me that I was more adept at enjoying a good beer than playing pinball. My real passion for pinball took off in 2009 after I added a second machine and started participating in tournaments from 2010.

Fast forward to today, and my enthusiasm for pinball has only intensified. Every aspect of learning and playing the game brings immense joy, with competition sparking an even greater passion in me. Over the past decade, my interest has led to a rapid turnover of pinball machines, as I found myself falling in love with nearly every machine I played. This passion eventually drove me to delve deeper into the world of pinball in my own basement, where I could explore these machines in detail. My particular affection for classic pinball machines meant that discovering Bob's Guide on the IFPA page was like hitting the jackpot; it resonated with me on so many levels.

I did some videos a long time ago, but then PAPA (Bowen and the team) started releasing top-notch tutorials that were simply outstanding. There was no need for me to add to that – they had it covered.

Then came the pandemic. When socializing around pinball became impossible, I found myself needing motivation to keep playing alone in the basement. I picked up some video equipment and started making pinball tutorials in German, mainly because there weren't many out there. I wanted to create the kind of tutorials that would have helped me when I was learning – straightforward explanations with actual gameplay.

My format is simple: Introduction → Layout → Rules → Gameplay → Summary → "The Machine in 1 Minute." I try to do everything in both English and German, covering machines like AC/DC, Congo, Led Zeppelin, Stranger Things, Spider-Man, and others. No fancy editing – just honest gameplay with explanations of strategies and rules that I found helpful to understand.

When tournaments came back, I upgraded my setup to stream and started the silverballmania shootout format. I compete against other players from the community across six different machines, and we both share our thinking and tournament approaches as we play. Between games, we chat and I put my guests through a fun 15-question rapid-fire questionnaire (inspired by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert):

We also make it a charity event - We're proud to support Auria by Plan B, helping make a difference while doing what we love.