The best pinballers treat a machine as if it's a woman craving a caress, they say.

"They're female, and they need a little tender, loving care. You gotta play 'em to know 'em," says Gary Stern, president of Stern Pinball Inc.

A favorite pinballer to win the tourney is Sean "Storm" Grant, an amateur rapper who stands in red shoes, striped gangster pants, and rhymes thus: "Super jackpot! You can't believe what you're seeing. After the game, put up my name. I'm the grand champion!"

The event comes at a rebuilding time for pinball, which has faded in the age of Xbox. Only Stern's company still mass-produces the machines, churning out about 10,000 each year and selling each for about $5,000.

Each machine is handcrafted from 3,500 pieces, a half-mile of wire and smaller flippers than ever.

"There are more man-hours and moving parts in a pinball machine than in a Ford Taurus," Stern says.

If the pinball event is a manly domain, there's a boy's world this weekend at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Game dorks will be checking out video games, football-tossing games, pool tables and "Dance Dance Revolution"-style arcade games during the Amusement Showcase International trade show and "Coin-Op Olympics."

A popular new sequel is "Big Buck Safari." You point a plastic rifle at a video screen where wildebeest and gemsbok frolic and roam in lush and tranquil native greenery until you blast them in the head and they keel over dead, kaput, finis.

"It's a very primal thing to do. Bam-bam!" says co-designer Scott Pikulski of Play Mechanix. "It's the only thing we can't do in real life. I don't kill anything. But I'll kill a pixel."

Pinball starts at 10 a.m. today at the Pinball Hall of Fame. The trade show is open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the convention center.

Neither would be super for building a relationship. Grant the rapper guy, whose pinball weakness is tilting machines with his "Bruce Lee death touch," proves that pinball and coin-operated arcade games aren't exactly Match.com icebreakers.

"In Japan," Grant says without rapping, "taking a girl to an arcade is considered a good date. ... But not in America."

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal. com/elfman.