By Todd Russell
Happy 4th of July to all readers who celebrate America’s birthday!
On a future trip down to Next Level Pinball & Arcade Museum (see: Next Level Pinball Museum Hillsboro, Oregon has all 22 Stern Insider Connected Machines as of 8/10/2023), we need to plan a sidetrack excursion to Jackpot Records (https://jackpotrecords.com/) located in Portland, Oregon.
Jackpot Records offers two different vinyl albums of pinball music: Jackpot Pinball Vol 1 & Vol 2, both selling for $29.99 USD. Shipping is $5 as of this writing, if you can’t make it to the store in person.
These are the tracks and pinball games featured on each album:
Jackpot Plays Pinball Vol. 1
SIDE A
Black Knight 2000 (tracks 1-5)
Tales Of The Arabian Nights (tracks 6-12)
Attack From Mars (tracks 13-18)
SIDE B
Taxi (Tracks 1-5)
Pinbot (Tracks 6-9)
Jackpot Plays Pinball Vol. 2
SIDE A
Funhouse (track 1-8)
Medieval Madness (track 9-15)
Theatre Of Magic (track 16-23)
SIDE B
Banzai Run (track 1-6)
Fish Tales (track 7-15)
Ironically, my wife and I used to play Taxi at an arcade in the old Jantzen Beach mall in Portland, Oregon, right across the bridge. The mall hasn’t been there for years, but it had this really neat old school carousel.
Jantzen Beach Center is an outdoor shopping mall located in Portland, Oregon, on Hayden Island in the Columbia River, known as Jantzen Beach SuperCenter from 1996 until about 2012. Opened in 1972 as an indoor mall, sometimes known informally as Jantzen Beach Mall, it was largely torn down in 1995–96 for big box development. The remaining enclosed portion included Ross Dress for Less, Burlington Coat Factory and Target as its anchor stores until April 2012, when renovation work began. A new one-story Target store was constructed on the property over the site of a former Barnes & Noble bookstore and restaurant, opening in October 2012.
Jantzen Beach Center – Wikipedia
Sadly, that iconic carousel is just sitting in a warehouse, as of this writing, on the property, not in use for families and children to enjoy. Maybe they will bring it back someday, but malls are not as financially viable any more, so that seems unlikely. There are a lot of dead malls around the country.