The Hampy is located at 91 Parramatta rd Camperdown. It has recently had a few minor renovations and along with a new coat of paint there is now an NBA pinball at this location. It's 5 ball and $2 a credit.
Although there is only one pinball machine there are quite a few other games on offer including two of the punching bag, strength testing machines, a "Deal Or No Deal" machine, a crane machine (with mini footballs as prizes) and a Golf machine as well.
They have a good sized courtyard that's great for a few beers in summer and a cheap and cheerful bistro with the standard $10 pub fare. There's also a pool table and they have trivia and meat raffles on various days of the week. Overall it seems to have retained the air of a genuine inner city pub and hopefully the new renovations don't diminish that. The addition of a pinball machine keeps me optimistic.
I hadn't played this machine before. It's from Stern, 2009, and is the first I've seen in Sydney. I'm not an NBA fan but the novelty factor on this machine is fairly high with a number of shots seeing the ball thrown onto a magnetised backboard to drop through a pinball sized basket. There is also a spinning disc in the centre of the playfield that can act as both a help and a hindrance. I'm generally not a fan of the spinning dics or magnetised playfields as they add that random element that makes it easy for me to blame the machine rather than myself when I have a bad game. However, I did find this one fit nicely into the game, both preventing shots from rolling straight back down the centre and also acting as a kind of "defence" when you needed to shoot for the hoop that fit into the NBA theme.
My biggest concern with the machine however was that the right flipper botton was broken. I know this machine had only been in the pub for a week at most when I played it and to see it already has a broken flipper button already has me worried. Hopefully this was something that occured after the machine was installed in the pub and will be fixed soon, but if this was installed with the broken button (a very cheap part that should be a relatively easy fix) this doesn't bode well for any future issues the machine may encounter.
I'm sure I will head back over the coming months so I will report if this gets fixed or not, and whether the completed pub renovations see any more machines installed.
Overall though the Hampy is a pub well worth a visit, whether it be on a sunny weekend to have a few beers in the courtyard, or to duck in for a few games of pinball and a $10 steak. The bus stops right out the front and next door is one of the best places to buy a chicken burger in Sydney while across the road is a great little Korean restaurant if you're not up for pub grub. All in all the addition of pinball to this pub has only increased my fondness for it.
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