Slashdot Mirror

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet. Here's the link to the slot machine via the manufacturer's website: http://www.wms.com/Games/AdaptiveGaming/Pages/TheLordoftheRings.aspx The machine has fixed betting amounts but can also save your progress if you let it. You start in the Shire and gradually gain miles as you go. (When I played the miles seemed to be granted manually but there might have been some metric I wasn't aware of.) The reels themselves are about what you'd expect, random symbols and face portraits. The big appeal is ultimately the themed mini games (which you can view on the site). It's more enjoyable than some of the older generically themed slot machines but the preset bets weren't my thing. On the whole, it's not really different from the Star Trek/Stargate/Princess Bride/Ghostbusters/any other licensed slot machine. At the end of the day, it's just there to take your money. :)

It's sad really. I own a pool hall in a small town and pinball still registers decent coin drop (I have two machines). The problem is that the industry went a little crazy trying to catch up to video in the early 80s and the designs got too complicated and therefore, more expensive to purchase and maintain. Operators started abandoning them in droves near the end of the last century. When companies such as WMS (Bally/Williams/Atari Games), who owned two of the major pinball manufacturers, bailed out in early 2000, the death knell was sounded for the industry. Stern Pinball is still alive, having bought out Sega's pinball division (originally Data East Pinball), but most of their sales are to overseas distributors. The pins they sell in the US are basically writeoffs. It's a shame really. I think if the industry stuck to innovative, less complicated designs, it might still be thriving, rather than barely surviving.

It's sad really. I own a pool hall in a small town and pinball still registers decent coin drop (I have two machines). The problem is that the industry went a little crazy trying to catch up to video in the early 80s and the designs got too complicated and therefore, more expensive to purchase and maintain. Operators started abandoning them in droves near the end of the last century. When companies such as WMS (Bally/Williams/Atari Games), who owned two of the major pinball manufacturers, bailed out in early 2000, the death knell was sounded for the industry. Stern Pinball is still alive, having bought out Sega's pinball division (originally Data East Pinball), but most of their sales are to overseas distributors. The pins they sell in the US are basically writeoffs. It's a shame really. I think if the industry stuck to innovative, less complicated designs, it might still be thriving, rather than barely surviving.

Actually, the best part of that linked page is the audio samples. "At last we shall reveal ourselves to the Jedi".

perhaps the best thing to come out of Episode I was one of the last production pinball games, Star Wars Episode I Pinball 2000. totally cool tech (Pinball 2000 is the name of the pinball tables containing a video monitor in the back), a fun playfield and very, very few Jar Jar noises. :)

Williams knew how to make 'em.

first fucking post, again

time for pinball

I remember once seeing a program on television about modern pinball machines. I was surprised that they actually used a 486 in the pinball machine, with a special "video" card to display stuff on the LED grid display.

Why in the world is a whole 486 needed? I don't see why they couldn't implement the thing using a few cheap 8 bit processors. Oh well.

Dunno what you were watching, but they're entirely wrong. Late model "true" pinball machines did indeed use 8-bit processors in them ... specifically, the Motorola 6809. Sega games used a 68000 16-bit CPU to run the dot-matrix display (gas plasma, not LEDs), but that was about as complex as it got.

Now, if you wanna talk Pinball 2000 ... then yes, these machines used more "standard" PC-style hardware. Whether it was indeed a 486 or not, I don't know ... but these games came with full-screen color video monitors, not LED displays.

Here's how you update this AMAZING pinball table. (It's amazing because there's a CRT underneath the playfield so you can squirt new backgrounds into it whenever you want, among other things.)

--

Here's how you update this AMAZING pinball table. (It's amazing because there's a CRT underneath the playfield so you can squirt new backgrounds into it whenever you want, among other things.)

--

You can read information about the pinball 2000 machines here http://www.pinball.wms.com/pinball2000/home.html.

They appear to be run off a standard PC so a ethernet hack shouldn't be too hard.

I'm still debating what my first one will be. Probably Star Castle or Pong, while they're still available.

Maybe Midway picked up the rights to these at some point, but Defender, Joust, Robotron 2084, "Defender II" (which was actually called Stargate in the arcade, but changed later), Sinistar, Bubbles, and Satan's Hollow are all Williams games. Out of the games listed, only Spy Hunter, Rampage, and Tapper are Midway games.

Note that Williams still exists. They haven't made video arcade games for a while, but they started as a pinball machine maker, and are still producing new pinball machines. Their web page is here