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Is Pinball Dying?
Hipgnosis pointed me to a story on MSNBC about what how the age old game of pinball is dying. I'm a pinball junkie: I can't resist throwing quarters in a machine whenever I pass one in an arcade or airport or something. Gotta admit this one kinda makes me sad not just because of Tommy, but the countless hours I spent as a child enjoying games, and watching others play. I even bought my own pinball table (Jackbot) a few months ago ... there's something about those little flippers and pinballs that makes the game seem so much more tangible then the N64 or anything on my PCs.
I must say, I'm surprised to see everyone yell "yes!" so quickly. I was up at the Pin-a-go-go in Dixon, CA a few weeks ago. It was hot, loud and packed. People were coming from hundreds of miles to go to this pin convention. I'm not much into pinball myself, but a couple of my friends were coming up from LA to go to this, and it sounded like fun.
So while pinball may have passed from the mainstream, much like live music, there's still a very strong and devoted following. This is probably where the future of pins lies. As long as you want to play, I'm sure you can find the companies and community to support you.
I will certainly echo what many others here have said: the games are getting rather lame. I saw some really creative designs at Pin-a-go-go, like Joust (a two-person pin) and something hill (don't remember what it was offhand, but any pin affectionato would be able to) that was this two part pin, where the game went vertical in the back, instead of having your usual graphic and score display. So rather than crank out more pins based on lame concepts (my God, the Jar Jar Binks in the Episode 1 pin was annoying!), come up with something origonal and people will clammor to it.
Which brings me to my last rant, video games in general have gone downhill. Someone else made this general point too. All you can find anymore, even in good arcades like Gameworks (okay, maybe not good, but at least huge) is FPS's and Kung-fu games. With a bit of driving and sports games mixed in for good measure. What happened to origonal games like Spy Hunter, Rampage or Gauntlet? But then I'm preaching to the choir, aren't I?
-"Zow"
Who said pinball is dying? The person that posted this comment needs to give us some proof of his claim. I still see pinball machines in almost every arcade I go into. Sure its probably not as popular as the latest Tekken 3 but that doesn't mean its dying.
Pinball is kind of like The Beatles it had its day of fame but it will never completely die. Its to much a part of the American Culture. Ten years from now no one will even know what Tekken 3 was, but PinBall will still be kicking around. I mean ask a 6 year old Nintendo freak what Space Invaders or PacMan is and they probably couldn't tell you. Games like Tekken 3 are just passing fads, trust me they will never eliminate PinBall.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I remember a T2 at FT in '95...
In high school, I found a '73 Williams pinball machine at a garage sale. They wanted too much money for it, and it wasn't working. After the garage sale ended, they still had it, so they offered it to me for free. After a bunch of contact cleaner, and a bit of tinkering, I got it working. (the NC part of the coin accepter switch was bent, so it wasn't NC anymore.) We had lots of fun with that machine. Alas, my mom gave it away after I moved out...
I played lots of Cyclone at college... Once I get space to put it, I hope I can find a Cyclone machine. Although, I imagine it's really different inside compared to the '73. Probably doesn't have all those relays and mechanical rotary counters and such.
"Ride the Comet!" "Ride the ferris wheel!"
"Hey you, step right up!" are phrases I'll remember forever. (Although, "Oooo don't touch me there" on the Addams family when you tilted... That ranks up there too.)
When i was very young my family owned an arcade. I loved the pinball games more than anything. Although pinball games are getting more hi tech nowadays I still love them for the basic reason that they involve more skill than any video game. Pinball games have been a part of my life for years and I always seek them out in any arcade I walk into. I only wish that i had snough cash to buy 15 or more machines and start my own pinball room in my house.
I really hope this kind of technology does not go away because no matter how the techn0ology advances in video games, pinball is still the king of games.
Walk into any video arcade and you will see about a 30-1 ratio of video to pinball. Maybe developers got lured into video because of the money and the shiny aspect of it.
I for one will be totally saddened on the day that pinball machines are nolonger produced. Although this will make them more valueable but it will mean that it will cost more for me to buy one. Maybe ill start a company, Go IPO quickly and put all the stock profit into building a pinball company... dreams... wishes... it could happen....
hoping this scenario doesnt happen....
Clustersnarf
tripe is really gross fish, but some people dig it, I guess. go figure, some people even like sushi....
tripe is the stomach lining of a cow, some kind of Italian delicacy.
George
Pinball is dying, albeit slowly.
I rarely see pinball machines in any small arcades anymore. When I ask the management why, I always get the same answer- nobody wants to do the upkeep.
Pinball machines are VERY sensitive, and many of the better maachines require almost daily tuning with heavy use. Without maintenance, the ball doesn't move correctly, and players lose too often. This is very annoying to good players, and very discouraging to pinball neophytes. Once the machine is out of whack, it doesn't make money, gets shipped out, and is replaced with the latest hot fighting/racing/shooter/etc. game, but rarely by a pinball machine.
The only pinball machine currently installed in a public area of the entire city and surrounding suburb I live in is a Medievel Madness machine at the local community college, and it rarely gets worked on. I remember several days in which the ball was stuck in the left hand ramp/tunnel thingy, and every time it was popped up, it hit a loose part and went right back down. This went on for DAYS. The score got into the high hundreds of millions, with plenty of extra plays. We would sit and watch it, and occaisionally someone would smack it and the ball would pop by the loose part and go into play, but other loose parts always sent it back. Eventually we jsut gave it up and a few days later it got fixed. I don't think it has been maintained since then, because the machine is now so out of whack that nobody can ever make 3 balls last more than 3 or 4 minutes. It kind of makes me want to cry.
At this point I guess all I can do is save up and buy a machine of my own. Playing in my house won't be nearly as fun as playing in an arcade/restaurant/etc., but I'd rather do that than drive over 20 miles to the nearest arcade with a pinball machine.
This was the first I had heard that Williams had gone out. This makes me real depressed, I loved Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness & Monster Bash, I was thinking I'd probably rent one of the three from the arcade I play at for the next LAN party :-)
I've never heard of the company mentioned in the article - at least I don't recognize the name. At the arcade I play at, there are WMS/Ballys/Midway (all good games) and SEGA (yech..). What games has Stern made? Can someone fill me in?
The one thing that the article states well is how quickly the machines erode. Maybe it's just the guys that repair them, but on the ones I play something new is broken every couple of weeks. Along with the reoccuring troubles...
The arcades are dumping them because when an individual achieves a certain standard of skill they can get free balls quite easily, they then can start picking up free credits. Therefore one can hog the machine for bloody ages for a couple of measly credits.
I can't remember the last time I saw an arcade machine allowing this. Probably when I was at secondary school some 17 years ago. That said, each machine may well have a series of dip-switches that will activate such functionality for all I know. Haven't seen any evidence of it mind.
Who gives a shit about the arcades anyway. They're always empty as everyone is downloading porn, warez and pirating grossly over prices music titles.
In the UK were starting to see entertainment machines sneaking into the pub where once a hulking pin-beast would lurk within its lair. These new "games" have taken a rather nasty turn and have the playability and gfx of some crap you'd expect to find on an old 286 heap-o-shite. They're like the trivia games that offer the *chance* to win cash without actually bothering to pay out.
When I visit other shores, I'm always pleasantly surprised by the constant site on the glorious pin-machines. The US seems to have plenty around, and they're like a bloody virus in New Zealand.
Okay they're big mechanical bastards that may suffer breakdown, but who gives a fsck? Isn't that half the fun, trying to jam the buggers? Once played you're hooked (assuming that fscking tilt isn't too sensitive).
I'm mean, has anyone actually seen the pathetic level of game play these days. They're just so BORING! Most of the *fun* is bashing the fsck out of your mate on the screen. Gimme a ball bearing and a ramp any day!
Hate to show my age, but in the 60's (when I started playing pin ball machines) all machines were muli-ball machines. Each machine had five balls. Drop in your nickle and the five balls would drop into a 'resovior'. Below the plunger was a second lever which you pushed to raise a ball from the resiovior to the front of the plunger. If you were hard core, or just bored, you could put all five balls in play, one right after the other.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
I'm only 24, but I've still seen a lot of the stuff I grew up on disappearing, only to be replaced by sterile, soulless computer games. Even pinball machines that still exist aren't the same as those from the 80s... remember how cool it was to break a million points on some of those old ones? Now an easy twenty to thirty million is considered a crappy attempt. Don't even get me started on the cheeseball TV show ripoff themes.
I love technology - it's my career and my lifestyle - but I doubt that memories of Duke Nukem et al will still rattle around in my head ten years from now.
NerdPerfect.com : breakfast of champions.
- Adams Family
- Twister
- Theathre of Magic
- Guns 'n Roses
Theatre of Magic was a huge hit in the local arcade. Not only was the game insanaly cool, but the tilt sensitivity was set so high you could literally move the table half a meter and it wouldn't even give warning! You could also lift the table so much that a ball which was sliding towards doom in the side ramp would change direction and roll back to the playfield (but that's where I drew the line - besides, those thing are really heavy)..I've been thinking about this for a while..
I think it would be great to adapt something (keyboard?) a pinball base, have bearings etc that it rides on to detect the bump, regular flippers etc along the side..
I dunno, might suck, but someday maybe I'll give it a try..
Ugh!
SEGA tables IMHO suck real hard. The controls are weak and wierd, too many ramps, too few goals. I don't know of any SEGA table that I have ever enjoyed enough to keep pumping quarters in.
I guess if all others are gone and SEGA still makes a new table every now and then I might change my opinion. But more than likely I will still play Medival Madness/Attack From Mars/Monster Madness/Junkyard/Star Trek TNG..
Having spent *cough* years playing in a league in Pittsburgh, the Steel City Pinball Association, participated in tournaments in the past few years, and against other leagues, I think that, from the standpoint of players, pinball is not dead. From an industry standpoint, there have been some major gaffes (notably, the introduction of the Pinball 2000 system that killed Williams/Bally dead), but I can hardly imagine no new pins ever, even if they are made by small companies.
To see a living pinball community, come to Pittsburgh, PA to compete at Pinburgh 2000 June 23 through 25. Top prize is $2000. You need not be a "wizard" to play, there are multiple skill-divisions.
This is a great pinball game for Linux. Truly wonderful music, anmation, you-name-it. http://medialab.lostboys.nl/projects/madewith/pinb all/pinballgame.html
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
The CRT-pinball idea is sort of interesting, but IMO Revenge from Mars does it better. The only real problem with these games is that the machine isn't wide enough...there isn't any space for the ball to bounce around, and the result is that it falls down the side gutters way too often.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
a good pinball game, a good player, and the right atmosphere, and a good session of pinball can turn into a 2-hour workout that leaves you drenched in sweat!
That doesn't mean anything, it's not heavy workout sweat, it's excitement/stress sweat, like when you get really nervous or have a nightmare. I break out in a cold sweat playing Quake or writing a calculus exam (definitely sedentary activities); it doesn't bear any relation to the sweat that pours off my body after the 1000th squat or during the third hour of judo practice (probably not sedentary...).
http://www.gamespy.com/top10/pinball_a.shtm
:)
A good article related to this.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Well, the only computerised pinball game I liked was this one called Rock'n'Ball for the nes, and that was for a simple reason: head-to-head play. Why the hell didn't anyone ever build deathmatch pinball machines? I mean, if airhockey was popular, why not that? That was one of the coolest console games of its time.
No... Some of my best memories of my first year in college are centered around the pinball machine in our dorm lounge. Watching everyone play, and then trying to conquer it yourself. By the end of the year, we had about 3 or 4 masters of the "Terminator 2" Pinball game. Probally one of the worst pinball games ever built (technology wise) but I loved it.
Double J. Strictly for the . . .
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
about the same time their is no market for a 69 Mustang....errrrr....NEVER!!!
But looking at you wacky kids nowdays -- anything is possible...
By the way -- I just purchased 3 CD's based on songs I heard from napster and gnutella...
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
The good thing about digital pinball -- it ends up costing a hell of a lot less than all those quarters :D
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Isn't a story like this at least 20 years late?
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Up here in Calgary, the one arcade that I know of that has more than 2 pinball machines also has a whole whack of old coin-ops. They are an outlet for Southern Music (who rents games to other arcades) and hence end up with a lot of old stuff.
If you are ever in Calgary it is called Southern Fun and located downtown.
WMS had bought Bally, so they aren't doing them anymore.
It was also the name of a pinball machine.
Munky_v2
"Warning: You are logged into reality as root..."
Jay
I've noticed that I'm the only one on those pinball machines lately.
:-(
It's a shame, too. Taco has a point about tangibility. In fact, my older brother refuses to play it with me, even though it's one of the cheapest games there.
Even computerized pinball is dying.
|/usr/games/fortune
I love pinball too but how is arcade games more expensive. The joysticks are like 10$ and the buttons like a dollar each. Pinball parts are more expensive!
Have A Nice Day Punk!
At least in my area of the country there seem to be plenty of pin-ball machines in arcades, putt-putt golf places, etc. Even new ones have gone in.
Its not as much of a culture anymore though. My dad used to talk about his "friends" hustled people on them. (sure dad, your friends :).
The Anti-Blog
I dropped about fifty dollars into a pinball game called Earthshaker during my junior year of college. It was on the first floor of our dorm and provided a reasonably good study break. Trouble is, most of these breaks ended up taking about an hour. Great game. Anybody ever play it?
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
There is a volume control :-)
In fact most of the older games that I have seen are louder than most of the newer games. In my case it could be the volume is cranked down on purpose because there is a lot more noise happening
Here's an article that was in wired magazine a while ago. "Game Over"
It was a while ago that I read it, but I think it mentioned the biggest pinball machine manufacturor had stopped making them. To big, bulky, fragile, and not exciting enough for the kids with no imagination.
My good buddie's dad is the president of Midway Games, and I believe they just retired the pinball business for good. Kind of sad, but it was an inevitability...
Those of us that collect Arcade machines and Pinball machines have known the sad truth for a long time. Pinball machines have long been dying.
There was a resurgence in the early 80's when machines like Gorgar came out (first talking machine), and games like High Speed and Pin*Bot (both of which I own now) really caught on.
But in the end, people went to video games.
The saddest part is that last year, Williams finally gave up and closed their Pinball division. That was pretty much the nail in the coffin.
--mark
Really... she's not your wife! Does she even pay the rent? I'll bet she has done something much nastier to the place without your consent. Usually it's putting those little soaps no one uses and fluffy toilet covers in the bathroom.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Things that are "real" - physical objects - are in a slump these days in light of all the cool new digital stuff, but they'll make a comeback once our glazed eyes get tired of our monitors.
--
Have good ideas? Want good ideas? ShouldExist.org
I love the Pro Pinball series and (as an added bonus), I have Fantastic Journey working pretty well under Wine!
I had to make a couple of tiny code changes, it doesn't recognise the two shift keys as being different (so I use \ and / instead of the shifts) and the sound doesn't work (or doesn't work well enough to have it unmuted), but the game works, is playable and is at least as fast and smooth as it is under Windows.
Drop me a line if you have a copy and want to try to get it working under Wine.
Oh yeah, and I also have an old Black Knight machine (currently at my parents house until I have somewhere to put it) which needs a bit of fixing up but which pretty much works. My vote for best (remembered) machines? Adams Family and Twilight Zone - these two both appeared in a laser tag/Quasar place in Leeds (UK) when I used to go in there a lot, and I spent *many* hours playing them.
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Ehh sorta
It's not the weight but the shape of the machines.
The pinball machines are lighter and bulkyer.. You can fit one video game machine on a dolly and carry it away.
On many video game systems there is a basic machine and the roms change.
It's usually pritty easy to swap out parts... No need to accually repair damaged parts when you can replace them. Any idiot can handle that...
Pinball machines must accually be repaired...
I don't actually exist.
Video game machines usually use the same logic. They don't wear out that fast and when they do you can swap out the damaged board with a replacement (just move the roms).
One point is video game logic boards get tested.. Usally trial by fire I admit.. but the newer the machine the more tested the logic.
Upgrades are made only when they are needed.
Fix the damaged board and set it aside for the next breakdown. (It's cheaper to fix than to throw away)
You are right however. You never have 100% uptime. But thanks to swapout replacements you can get a video game machine up and running faster.
Also he is wrong about the heavy pinball machines.. It's the bulk...
It takes two people to carry a pinball machine becouse the weight is distributed over the whole machine. With a video game you place it on a dolly and carry it away...
But one person CAN move a video game machine off the floor... One strong person..
But.. video game machines are heavyer...
I personnally prefer the old Asteroids game.. the arcade machine not the home versions or the clones. The clones are nice.. But give me that raster display...
Sadly raster displays burn up a lot faster than normal CRT displays... havn't seen any raster machines made sence the 1980s
I don't actually exist.
Today, I attended an auction in Cheltenham (a suburb of Melbourne in Australia) at which a number of pinball machines were for sale. Judging by the turnout, I'd say that there's still a great interest in pinball machines. Prices realised today at the auction ranged from about A$100 or so for mounted backboards, to A$1000-A$4000 for machines.
The machines sold today ranged from early 1950's machines of various designs (including one called simply "Pinball"), popular machines like "Playboy" and "Kiss", and a prototype "Dr Who", allegedly one of only 6 in the world that went for about A$3700.
If pinball's dead or dying, then I saw no sign of it today, if the turnout and spirited bidding was any guide.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Wouldnt you even make more money beucase if you have it on 100% of time you are useing power. If you take it down to 90% witch doesnt affect much you are useing a little less power. Less money spent!
Have A Nice Day Punk!
> When video games began to "invade" (pun intended),
:)
:)
Video games from outer space
I'm slightly younger than you... 30...
I saw video games come in.. Space invaders..
I allways saw video games and pinball as diffrent kinds of games.
Pinball isn't dead.. just not mass market...
I expect arcade style video games to fade into a nitch market as well over time. Maybe when I'm 60 and your 65
I don't actually exist.
Pinball is slower paced
I have yet to see a WARNING THIS CAN CAUSE EPELEPTIC SEISURES on a Q3 box.
You have not lived until you've played a pinball game, keeping the 3rd ball up for ~15 minutes, getting ever closer to the highest damn score you've ever seen on the machine, or a shot or 2 away from beating the objective of the game..
I like q3, but pinball is a LOT more fun.
Subject of a song by the Rubinoos, complete with sound effects allegedly from the actual machine.
He is a political Eliza....
That speech is a basic political speech...
Just change things around for the occasion....
It could be an Eliza or just a silly person..
It is kinda funny.. pointing out the kind of nonsence that gets passed off as insightful..
And scary enough... it makes sence...
I don't actually exist.
Sega dropped their pinball division sometime in 1999. I have a cousin who is head of one of the development departments there. I'm studying computer engineering an so I thought it might be interesting to take a tour since I'm only a couple miles away during the school year. (now 365...) I called to make an appointment with him and he we talked for a while. During the course of the conversation, he mentioned that they were now "Stern Pinball Inc." I guess the head of the pinball division bought the division from Sega. The website isn't much at all, but here it is. You'll notice that they actually make many of the popular games seen in arcades if you browse through the firmware library.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
It was given to me by a friend who used to get the high score in the local pub whilst tripping on LSD.
The storm is coming, return to your homes!
There is a game out there, Mars Attacks I want to say... Anyway its a pinball game except that there is a well more or less GUI at the back of the board. You have to hit the back of the board with the ball in predetermined spots to shoot a missle for example, this setting of a graphical sequence. What you get is a nice mixture of the two sides and just a damn good and funny game. Perhaps this could be the saving grace of pinball?
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Spell THAN right!
Connah
Connah
"Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for this change to take effect."
When I was a kid you could get pinball toy machines. Some keep score.
:) (there's a slogen for ya... now go build em)
They were extreamly simplifyed versions of the archade machines.
Throw in todays technology and you could build home pinball machines.
One of the big defects of the home video game market is convencing costummers to buy new game consoles. You must discontinue old units to keep the cash flow.
With pinball each game is imbeded in the hardware. They are insepreable.
Also you could nock them off for less than full game consoles (probably more than game cartrages).
Battery powered, cheapper and non-vertual.
Good for pulling game addicted timmy into the real world or just an easy way to give your kid hours of arcade enjoyment.
Plus a golden market from the pinball wizards of the 70's and 80's.
I think the market is ripe... It's a matter of time before someone leaps on it...
Pinball isn't a video game... it's a reality game
I don't actually exist.
Agreed! :-)
What's the highest you've hit on Junk?
~140mil for me.. that was a good day
Pinball is non-sedentary?
Yes, with the right combination -- a good pinball game, a good player, and the right atmosphere, and a good session of pinball can turn into a 2-hour workout that leaves you drenched in sweat! I've done this, though I don't do it often. When it happens for me, it's when I really get in the groove, I'm doing well, probably getting quite a few replays, and I just want to keep going until I get that high score.
Unfortunately, the machine that I can say this best about is Black Knight 2000 -- a pinball that was made in 1989. There have been a few high points since then, but nothing has matched BK2K.
It was not long after BK2K that the pinball manufacturers introduced dot matrix displays on pinball machines, and ever since then the games have been becoming more and more video-game-like. Williams put the nail in the coffin last year with "Pinball 2000", a new pinball design which incorporates a full-color video display projected over part of the upper part of the playfield. The problem with these games is that they've essentially become video games, but a variety of video games that don't work these days. People don't really want this. People who want to play pinball by and large want something like the pinball of 10 years ago. Also, those old games were only a quarter and usually still are, while pretty much nobody sets a Pinball 2000 game below the default price of 50 cents a game.
I played some pinball today. High Speed (the original), Funhouse, No Good Gofers, Attack from Mars, the Addams Family, and Cirqus Voltaire. This was at Salem Willows (Salem, MA); any pinball fan in the greater Boston area should go visit sometime. They have many more games than those but that's what I played today. They have both Pinball 2000 games there too, if you're interested, but I generally don't bother.
Well, I have two machines: "F-14 Tomcat" and "Genesis", and lemme tell you, it's like keeping old cars around: Good conversation pieces, and lotsa fun, but also lotsa repairs. Parts are hard to come by now that Williams has stopped producing them. So, you make do, with chewing gum and baling wire, and hope you don't break any of the plastic targets.
Now that I've had 'em for a while (10 years), my wife wants to use the room that they occupy for a jacuzzi. Well, perhaps I can put them up on blocks in the garage, and cover them with tarps...
Ahh.. TNG..
We've still got one at the arcade I frequent.
6 ball multiball, now that is a blast.
okay, i feel dumb...I should have read the article first...they actually mention the company my cousin works for...heh.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
Yes, for you Natalie Portman fanatics out there, the Star Wars: Episode 1 pinball game does have Natalie Portman. There are even some Queen Amidala modes where she's featured.
Not to mention the kick to the leg of the table when it pisses you off. I don't think the screen version could possibly enable that reaction in me.
I believe it was actually "Will you CHALLENGE the Black Knight again?"
Great game. Magna-Save was awesome. And it actually changed my pinball style. Ever since then, I've operated the flippers with my middle fingers, due to the magna-save buttons.
Pinball is the last great electromechanical gizmo.
Pinball is a harsh mistress.
Pinball is good.
"Hey... don't be mean." --Buckaroo Banzai
Bullshit. Sure, it _maximizes_ your earnings, but certainly does not negate your earnings if your machine drops down to 90%. Plus, mechanical electronic systems are about a million times easier to fix than complex video game circuitry. Oh wait, I forgot we live in a throw-away society - just toss the old circuitboard filled with hazardous materials into the closest lake and install another one. Yah, that's the ticket.
Understand some basic economics before you spout off such crap. I suppose you would say that a taxi must be in operation and billing 100% of the time. Or a Greyhound bus must be in operation and full of passengers all of the time to break even.
There's a big difference between maximizing earnings and breaking even. And Tekken 3? That sucky ass, crudely done Neo-Geo excuse-for-a-game? I played that twice and realized I'd much rather play the venerable classic fighting game Renegade, than this cheap JapTrash game. Certainly I'd rather play a good pinball machine than that.
Who the hell moderated this spewing of crap up to 5??
I thought that this article had more soul (found on Fark last week).
It's sad but understandable that pinball is going the way of the dodo. A good pinball machine is a masterwork of engineering and art, and a good game of pinball manages to be captivating in a way that I've never experienced with a video game. For all that, they are insanely complex mechanical devices with a tendency to break down under normal use. Solid state has a lot going for it, and a pinball machine is the ultimate in electromechanical. How solid state can you make a solenoid?
<NOSTALGIA>
Pinball and Tommy (the rock opera version) played significant roles in my childhood. Pinball was my first experience of affinity with technology. It was something that I could relate to and watch with endless fascination. As a sub-teen child, pinball mesmerised me. I recall a time that I was playing Gottlieb's Hit The Deck (a circa 1978 machine, so I was probably around the 10 mark myself), and I was One With The Machine. I was only dimly aware of the others that gathered around me to watch this young pinball wizard do his thing. After a couple of decades' pinball experience, my all time favourite machine is Williams' Fun House.
</NOSTALGIA>
Oddly enough, I visited someone today, and noticed a new piece of furniture in the corner: they had acquired a Hit The Deck pinball machine! It was in fairly poor condition, unfortunately: my conclusion was that it had developed an advanced degree of cantankerousness that affects many old electromechanical devices, and it will not be truly playable without a major overhaul, which is probably not possible.
While there, however, I did get to study the interior of the machine and its circuit diagram. That's when All Was Revealed: pinball machines are just big finite state machines! Well, duh! But really, even though I suck at electronics, I could understand this circuit diagram. It was just relays, switches, solenoids, and lights! It was a hard-wired computer program; a series of ANDs and ORs that I could grok immediately.
A friend of mine suggested building a pinball machine as a project, and I told him that they are too complex. But having seen this particular machine -- an old and simple one, I grant you -- I feel that I could at least take on the task of reconditioning one with new relays and things. For some reason, this fact makes me feel a whole lot better about the future of pinball. I don't know if new machines will ever be built, but I feel assured that I could grab an old, broken machine and get it back up to a playable state if I ever needed to.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Results were outstanding. Machines were turning over thousands. Best I can see, here were the reasons, why:
1. There is never a 'home' version. Mortal Kombat, Crazy Taxi, you could buy a copy that mirrors the arcade and play it at home for free. Pinball is something that isn't in the home, unless have serious funds. Also, to buy a pinball at home would also require space as well as room. These were apartments.
3. Early 90's pinball not dated with time. Video games that are genre based like a racer, or fighting game, have had graphics improved greatly since 1992. People would have better racing games at home on their console than a 1992 arcade machine. Pinball from early 90's is same if not better than 2000 models.
4. Age group. These were apartment owners, in the 19 to 40 group usually. Old enough to know how to play pinball, have enough memories of enjoying playing one.
5. Inclusivity. Male/female numbers looked about 60%/40%. Seemed to draw in significant females as well as males to play repeatedly. Also, no new learning curve really needed for initial good game. To get anywhere in Mortal Kombat types, need to have memorized new long button sequences, in Racing genres have to have memorized the new tracks. In pinball, can transfer your old skill of how to flip and shake to a new table that you've never seen, making for a good game off the bat--important for bringing in new users for a repeat experience.
6. Replayability. It was niche, there would be about 10-15% of the population that would keep playing the game, due to a unique game each time. Put it a Time Crisis and once those 15% of people in the building beat it, the numbers fall as repeating the same exact sequence gets tiresome.
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"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
http://www.pinburgh.com/
i admit , lame-o-rip from movies were always a little lame ... but , the classics from williams we're really originals ... think about FUN HOUSE ...was ruby really alive ?... did he think ?.. could he see ?!! now ... that one i could BUY ... anyone with info ?... i mean search the web... true geeks are the one keeping it alive... remember the first time you saw INSIDE a pinball? now there a sight to remember... ..hey... it's phreaking early... sorry bout all the blabing.. ;] !! i still am a pinball wizard...
http://mrhide.pinnesota.org
That's in my opinion of course, but I believe it was in the early eighties when the first machines with a digital display hit the market. Evil Knievel comes to mind. That's not to say that there weren't charming and exciting machines with a digital display, even during the nineties. However, the moment the clink-a-clonk digits counters where pulled off the market (and it was a darn rapid process too) was the moment where pinball went downhill...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
You've made an excellent point there. What pinball has that (most) video games (and all pinball sims I've seen) is really good physics. Not to mention, when you're playing pinball, you are seeing a steel ball move in a 3d space, and you can really get a feel for how it's going to move.
That's also sort of related to pinball's demise, though. A lot of makers (All of them, really) have brought out some poorly designed games that really don't act like they should. Bumpers are often prone to firing the ball in what looks like a random direction, flippers grow weak quickly. A number of the tables I've played even seemed like they didn't have enough power and the flippers would move more sluggishly when the board was all lit up.
Some of the new games are fine games, like Star Trek:TNG, but they have expensive parts that break too easily, and are very inconsistent between machines, whereas a video game can be expected to follow the same rules from place to place. Sure, there will be enemies in new locations, or enemies will be harder to kill, but everything works in the same way.
I do however think that pinball will stick around for a good long while, at least until large computer displays get cheaper (High resolution is important) and people put better physics into pinball tables. In order to really capture the feel you have to have the game play just like pinball, where the ball's mass presses back the target which has such and such resistance, and so on. It must be difficult to resist the temptation to make pinball games that are an ideal situation; Every target drops just so, the ball rebounds instantly, et cetera; But that's not how pinball machines work.
As a final note, if pinball machines are going to survive, they have to be playable, reliable, and inexpensive. If they can keep that up, then we'll all be seeing those little steel balls cruise around the tables, if only in the biggest arcades and smokiest bars.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is a bit off topic, but it just hit me: pinball has one of the greatest domain specific interfaces ever developed. The basic setup is three controls: the launcher handle, and two flipper buttons. Some replace the handle with a button, add start buttons, and additional flipper controls, but if you have a vague idea what the game does, the interface is almost transparent.
Tis sad they are dying...pinball didn't leave your eyes aching. Of course, I'm on one to talk, since I spend orders of magnitude more time playing pinball than computer games: almost none, any way you cut it.
I always find pinball more enjoyable than other arcade games, maybe that's because I like the "match" feature at the end for free games..(being a cheapskate and all). But seriously.. the pinball machines that have recently hit the market are
/williams release. You could get a fair game of pinball on that unit, unless the owner was cheap and raised the rear supports so that you could get the ball up the ramp. The original star trek one was quite well done too..and the TNG. The whole trend in having electronic displays was just starting when these machines came out, so there still is a lot of 'old school' feel to them..
1. have more plastic, which gives the unit a very cheap/ cheesy look
2. often include a colour video monitor built-in..like the new star wars..so what is it, a pinball machine or a video game box ?
My personal favourite is the
Star Wars pinball, the original one, not the sega
I agree with all of those who are saying that they're kind of sad about pinball's demise. I, too, regret this. When I was 12 years old, Santa Claus brought us a pinball machine (the local movie theater was selling the one they had next to the concession stand - the old folks had a little trouble explaining that it was mere coincidence that the pinball under the Xmas tree and the one that had just been removed from movie theater were not the same machine and that, no, really, there _is_ a Santa Claus). Anyway, the pinball was left in the basement for years while I lived in NYC. My folks finally retired down south and told me to take it or they'd have to get rid of it. Although it wasn't going to be fun moving it I didn't hesitate! Getting a pinball up five flights of stairs was no picnic, but definitely worth it. Every time friends come over they want to fire it up. The best part is that it's one of those old ones with the physical counters that roll over - not an electronic display. I miss their passing!
Sigh. My id isn't prime. 2 2 2 2 2 3 5 313
Wow - pinball fantasies rocked! :digs out UAE :-)
You can get games from a couple of different places:
1) eBay - Look in the "collectables: Coin operated" category. There's tons of stuff in there. You might have to wait a while to find what you're looking for in good condition and chances are if you are looking for it so is someone else (hey, its eBay). Also you will most likely have to deal with shipping, which is a major pain in the ass unless you have a decent sized truck and strong friends.
2) Local dealers - Belive it or not there are shops that sell old games. There's at least half dozen where I am (Chicago) and I'm sure there would be at least one in any semi major metro area. You're gonna pay through the nose if you go to one of these guys though. The one near me wanted $1200 for a Street Fighter II machine (Approximate value = $300-$400). But these guys will service the machine if it funks up on you.
3) Usenet - try rec.games.video.arcade.collecting (or something close to that. Can't remember). Look for FS (insert your area here). Or ignore that last sentence if you don't mind dealing with shipping. Good deals to be had here
4) Other Collectors - After one or two posts on Usenet looking for an old Gauntlet machine I had the email addresses of two guys in my area that could hook me up with pretty much whatever I wanted. Not too bad. Plus these guys usually know how to service them and will charge you a nominal fee to do so. When the monitor on my Gauntlet (purchased on eBay) went south on me I called up one of these guys and he set me up with a new monitor and did the install for $100 (the local guy wanted $500).
Hope this helps anyone looking to get into the hobby.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Part of the problem was due to the expense (in terms of $$$ as well as resources and actual manhours) involved in creating new boards; in addition to designing new bumper and ramp layouts, licening fees (for tie-in games, music, etc.) and transport damage caused by distributors to arcades/bars/etc. also added to the toll.
Most of the titles over the past two decades have been more prone to having the ball crack and shatter backglass due to the higher elevation of the ramps, which were raised for the extra flipper/bumper setups. Williams and Gottleib, in an effort to save on expenses, would canabalize the leftovers of many titles in order to reduce the manufacturing labor on newer tables ("Cue Ball Wizard" was an anniversary redress of "2001").
Compare that to video arcade games, where new motherboards and marquees are tossed into older console shell, and you can see how pinball companies stuck with doing a lot more work for the same market.
For a listing of the other pins Capcom made, check out the pinball link archive: http: //homepages.paradise.net.nz/~frenzy/pinlinks/games /games_manu_capcom.htm
The short of it is, pinball is a mechanical game. A pinball machine in the arcade takes a lot of abuse. Parts break. Switches stick. It just plain gets dirty. It's a very high maintenance item for any arcade owner or route operator, for not a very high return. The latest Mortal Street Kombat Fighter will pay for itself in a matter of weeks, and the only maintenance it requires is to wipe the screen and empty the cashbox. Pinball machines are lucky if they pay themselves off in months, and they require constant adjustment. Is it any wonder that operators don't want to buy them?
*sigh* Programming pinball machines was the best job I've ever had, with some of the best people. At least I got a BBB machine after I left. My wife tells me to think of it this way: How many people get paid for a year and a half to build themselves their own pinball machine?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Have you ever been to a Dave and Buster's?
If not, you have no idea what you are missing. For those that are not aware it is a huge arcade for adults complete with pool tables, a restaruant and a bar. Unfortulatly, my local D&B's (Denver, CO) doesn't have any pinball machines.
I really wish they did, however. Even still, going there is still a blast.
Funny you mention the cyclone pinball game. Last year we bought the cyclone at an auction. It's a really cool game. Sometimes when I'm lying down at night and someone has left on the pinball machine I chuckle as I hear, "HEY YOU WITH THE FACE!" We lucked out when we bought a fun pinball machine because we didn't really which were good. We just went through and played a few before the auction started and liked that one. We got it in pretty good condition (one LED score thing out, and the spinning bonus wheel gone) for $250 not too bad.
unless the owner was cheap so that the ball couldn't get up the ramp.. damn cheap owners!
My favorite was The Shadow. It was a complex beautiful game. It had that wonderful upper battlefield. It had a couple great video modes. It had a great set of easter eggs. It was a bitch to win and when you got to the Final Battle...it was worth it. Six pinballs and all you have to do is should one of every shot in the game. I got to the Final Battle and lost so many times before I won, I was on the verge of crying several times. Just the right combination of difficulty and features for me.
Whenever I get the space and money I will be buying one.
It is sad to see pinball dying...I wish I had more time to play. Those people that thing that pinball is no fun cause it is mechanical are IMHO crazy. That is the best part. Moving the machine in just the right way. Being able to feel the balls on the flippers. Death Saves (if you don't know, just check out rec.games.pinball) and bang backs. Milking a single ball for hours...if you do it right, pinball playing is an art that combines tactile experience with plot of a novel.
Hell I even watch "The Shadow" the movie just cause I like the pin...i wouldn't suggest it as a classic.
It was a LUCKY run. The best I ever did on ANY other table was about 30 minutes. The Pinball gods were smiling on me that day
A few years ago I got a PalmPilot. Guess what I felt a need to carry with me everywhere?
Today, I installed Linux on a new machine, and got all my apps running. One of the first things I installed was...
As long as there are crazy people like me, pinball can never die.
it's green.
We have a ping-pong table set up in the garage, a pool table in the lounge and a fooz-ball table upstairs. :)
We spend FAR more time on these archaic devices than on Q2 and the like (Q3? That's waaay too modern
Vive la pinball et al...
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Tarkwyn.
Pinball is alive, though slightly obscure these days. I envy your pinball machine :) honestly. There's nothing like lucking out and getting a free game. I always wanted to build a pinball machine. If you didn't use a coin feed system and after you built the light sequencing devices and the score counter, it would be pretty easy, lest design and a few of the really cool mechanical devices. I'd love to have a machine, even if it was broken to see how it worked to design my own.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Actually, there are plenty of bumpers and switches on a Pinball 2000 (P2K) playfield. It's just that the contact switches in the middle are obscured by the reflected CRT image. This allowed the programmers to have different targets projected into the player's POV; i.e. one time a left middle shot hits a Martian, another time it might be a giant duck, another time it might be a rocket launcher. (those examples are from Revenger from Mars, the first of the two P2K games, and one which I probably pumped enough dollars in to have bought my own).
The phrase "the machine tracks the ball" makes it sound like some kind of elaborate laser or magnetic sensor devices are included, and while that would be pretty freaking cool, it's, unfortunately, not the case.
For the record, I own a Gorgar machine.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
If you need to break into a sense of the real world for an afternoon, and pinball's just not around anymore, I'd highly recommend taking up shooting. For physical thrills, it's pretty hard to top shooting. You detonate a small bomb in your arms for the express purpose of accelerating a small piece of lead towards a target some 100 yards away. Hitting the target is easier said than done.
To shoot, you need a gun. I'd recommend starting out with a relatively high caliber rifle. You could go assault style but a lot of people prefer bolt action because they are mechanically simpler and are also a lot cheaper. Pistols are ok but this is about sensation, and for sensation its pretty hard to top a high caliber rifle.
What is riflery all about? You pay a few bucks to get into a range. Then, you set up your target at something like 100 yards away. People at the range have a strictly enforced protocol for "clearing" the firing line so this is safe to do. Once your target is set up, everyone checks to make sure no one is beyond the firing line. When it is safe to proceed, you can begin.
Do wear ear and eye protection. Even with ear protection, you'll find that a rifle range is louder than most concerts. And eye protection is just common sense.
You'll load a few cartridges into your rifle, then engage in the seemingly simple but physically difficult act of pressing the rifle against your shoulder, trying to ensure the barrel is parallel in all axises with a track slightly above the bullseye. You will pull the trigger. If you took my advice about the high caliber rifle, the recoil, the noise, the muzzle flash and the gases spewing forth will conspire to kick your body's adrenal glands into overdrive. You will be instinctively afraid of what you have just done. Then, shaking, you'll do it again. If you actually hit the target, you will get an immense sense of satisfaction of mastery over something almost primally powerful - the fire, the explosion, the sulfur and the forces of hell.
Oh yeah, and if you stand next to someone shooting with a high power rifle, the blast wave from the cartridge detonation is often strong enough to knock your hat off even though you may be a few feet away. It's awe inspiring.
Shooting a target may seem to be dumb thing to do, and quite frankly, it's gotta the most boring thing in the world to watch on TV. But that's because TV can't give you the smell, the recoil, the explosion. For a dose of physical reality, it's pretty hard to top standing in the middle of an explosion, and shooting is the safest way to do that.
This is my sig.
http://w ww.medialab.lostboys.nl/projects/madewith/pinball/ pinballgame.html
Just saw that this morning. Mac, Be, Win-32, and Linux!
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I don't what it like now, but when one was shooting pool, bowling, or play pinball with girls, one *always* positioned yourself behind them. Note that this was in the days of mini-skirts and short-shorts. The view was pretty good.:) Lot's of, uh, hip action when they played pinball.
Visualize a certain young actress playing pinball. No wait, don't.
Yes, it was in the February 2000 issue (issue 8.02). It is on their Web site under the 8.02 section, and the article is entitled "Game Over." Overall, a good article...worth a read.
Upon Reading the title of this article, I became immediately enticed. I LOOoOoOoOVE Pinball. Everytime I went to the East Village Grill or Raccoon Lodge(Same Building, different dress and look) I would play pinball. These were the days when I would jump a few feet in the air everytime I hit the flipper buttons. There was no real rhyme or reason to the hitting of the flippers except that I would start banging as soon as the ball got close to me. My pinballing has evolved since then. I now have tricks to hold the ball, bounce it back and forth between flippers, use one to flip the ball into the other tube to gain points, and flip the ball only when It hits my flipper. We could never have had any of this if we didn't have the flipper. Ahh The Flipper, the evolutionary aspect of modern pinball! The thing that brought pinball to the top and kept it there for a while. According to Russ Jenses(whose pinball genius can be found at: http://members.aol.com/rusjensen/index.htm): "There was, however, another pingame from that same year which could even be broadly considered to be "the first flipper game". That game was called DOUBLE SHUFFLE and was released by the Hercules Novelty Company sometime around the Fall of 1932. DOUBLE SHUFFLE had seven ball hitting devices on it's playfield (3 on the left side and 4 on the right)." Thank you Hercules. Once again the strong man brings us victory. Well, even if that is greek mythology, Hercules Novelty Company brought the world something that would entertain it for years. Well, I'm just trying to show that even though there were pinball machines, they were not pupular at all because the user had no control of the ball. Somebody took something boring and uncontrolable and tried, at risk of losing thousands of dollars, and succeeded in enhancing the pinballing experiance of thousands of users..errr...Players. Pinball has never let us down and I don't think any of us will live to see the day it does. Long Live Pinball!
A persons true power is a combination of mind and body. To reach full potental you must get both to work as a si
Been there a couple of times. Unfortunately they've got the same general inventory of a bunch of driving racing games, a bunch of stand up hold the gun and shoot games, a few of the timed gauntlet sequil games and, as you noted, no pinball machines. The multi-player mechwarrior simulator is kind of nifty but pricey, short lived and hard to get on to. The virtual golf course would do well in any executive's office. I mostly go there when I'm entertaining visiting Romanians (Nothing like Dave and Buster's in Romania heh.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
suck my balls
Maybe it's just because I'm an out-of-shape geek, but I know *I* break into a sweat when I'm banging around a multi-hundred pount piece of equipment.
The combination of strength and finesse required to tilt a pinball machine yet not set off the tilt detector is something else entirely.
No, it's not like running laps, but it's not sitting on your ass, either.
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
In case you weren't aware, Williams = Williams/Bally/Midway. Gottlieb, Sega, and Data East were always substandard games anyway. It's a shame about Williams, though. P2K must have been the best concept for pins that, IMHO, would bring revived interest in pinball. Sadly, operators began to let their machines slip away. Jacked up prices and no maintenance. Nobody wants to play, for example, a Star Wars: Episode 1 pin that tilts when both lasers are fired. And since the op doesn't give a rat's ass about maintaining the machine, nobody will play it. Then since nobody is playing the game, it gets yanked, and replaced with a ratty-ass Bad Dudes game or something similarly unpopular. Then those same ops advertise a non-working pin as MINT, get the highest possible price for it, thus continually screwing the customer. It's f'ing sad.
We all turn into old farts sooner than expected. Before we know it, our youth is out of fashion. Takes just a few years actually.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
Nope, it's not "Captain Fantastic", it's just "Fantastic". Backglass peeling a bit but still presentable. Play surface will need a re-paint.
Electronics complete and in good condition, but there's a relay sticking somewhere that causes it to blow its internal fuses.
Easily repairable, nice restoration project, circa 1971. Playfield, backglass, lights and sound effects were obviously inspired by the myriad of psychedelic compounds the designers were consuming, making this a very neat machine.
Piss off your father by bringing home the pinball machine that kicked his ass back in college.
At the very least, it's loud enough to be the second best way (after a red bandanna, some Zippo fluid, a Stratocaster and a Marshall stack) to deal the neighbor who plays rap "music" all night. Yo. yo. yo-yo. Walk the dog?
Best offer - FOB Toronto, Canada. Have truck, can deliver from Windsor to Ottawa.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
It doesn't compare to it's predecessor Attack from Mars(or what ever it was called) though.
I don't think I've ever been in an arcade that doesn't at least have a few pinball machines somwhere, if down the back. And there's almost always someone on at least one. Like you can't have a science fiction section in a book store without a Tolken book - no one buys them any more, but you have to have them to be considered serious. When I last went into a "Timezone" with a free game token from a Pepsi (Choice of a New Generation) promotion, I walked past all the same-as-each-other 3D games and straight to the Pinball games. I couldn't play the one I wanted because there was someone already on it.
But maybe I'm coming from a bias position. I love pinball games, but what's perverse is that I love pinball on PCs. I remember spending ages as a kid playing with the Pinball Construction Kit as a kid. I had a huge number of tables I'd designed. Since then I've had at least one pinball game on every platform I've owned - PC, Amiga (CDTV), Atari Lynx, Game Boy, PSX, PalmOS (yes, there's one for the Palm). I love the physics. Simple, eligant. You make one move and the effects last forever, until the ball comes back down that it ;). It's also nicely abstract. I don't want to drive into a city then play a realistic driving simulator - I want simple, abstract pinbal game or shoot-em-up. In fact, there are fewer simple 2D shoot-em-ups in most arcades than pinball machines. Perhaps shoot-em-ups are dying?
I disagree with several of your assertions, and, as a long-time arcade operator and pinball owner, I should know. Pins are no heavier than the standard vid (still takes two to move either or a lift), they are the same complexity as a vid (you fix EM parts about the same, though the parts you fix in a pin are typically better documented and more "obvious"), and *contrary to what most believe*, a pin *can* be up 100% of the time. The problem is that nearly every arcade owner/manager I've ever known is an *idiot* and doesn't know how to keep the vids running, let alone care about the 15 minutes a week upkeep that a pin requires. My arcades, at their peak (in 1992), had a total of some 50-60 pins all running beautifully. These days, I only maintain a couple of personal machines that I set up at Caltech, and while I love playing my machines, I haven't seen a decently maintained pin at an arcade in over five years.
Final word: the problem isn't the machines or the means, it is the owners and operators.
Joseph R. Kiniry
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/
California Institute of Technology
Joseph R. Kiniry
http://kind.ucd.ie/~kiniry/
Lecturer
UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics
Every eccentric geek needs one? No. Only people that actually like pinball 'needs' a machine. From the sounds of it, you don't play any pins based on a tv/movie theme. I noticed you crammed Addams Family in there with a lot of loser pins. In case you weren't aware, Addams Family pinball was the highest sold and highest grossing (quarter-wise) game of all time. It may have been based on a movie, but there's one thing that makes a great game - game play. If it weren't for the incredible game play, and the addictiveness because of it, I wouldn't have lost 6 months from my life playing the hell out of it. Similarly, I've lost countless hours of sleep due to low frequency buzzing being practically etched in my brain thanks to Demolition Man. It was a crappy movie, but killer pin. I've been tortured by phrases of "Now you're asking yourself one question - did I fire six shots or only five?" compliments of Dirty Harry pinball. You can't rule out Twilight Zone or Creature from the Black Lagoon either. In fact, some of my favorite pins have been based on movies. Then again, put me in front of any pinball machine and arm me with a couple quarters, and I will play it. You can't say that about any video game. I'm someone that needs pinball. You aren't even close.
Wooooah hold on there.
Addam's Family was certainly one of the best pins to come out in YEARS. I wasn't a big fan of the other TV/movie "theme" games you mentioned, but Addam's Family was a fantastic machine, one of the best designs I've ever seen.
As far as the "Amusement Park variations", I assume you mean things like Whirlwind, Earthshaker, and Funhouse... Again, Funhouse is one of the better machines to be released in ages. I wasn't a big Whirlwind or Earthshaker fan (primarily because the arcade I worked in at the time didn't have either, but had Funhouse right next to Addam's Family.. er..), but something about smacking Rudy in the face every time I made that left orbit shot...
I started out on the EM pins of the 70's, but it was modern design and tech that brought me back into it in the late 80's.
And really, they HAVE tried to make some interesting variations. Ever played "Twilight Zone"? The machine's a wee bit wider than most and includes the "powerball", made of a different material so it behaves differently and the machine knows when you're using it for different point schemes. Though I guess if you saw this one you'd just dismiss it as another of the "rip-offs of really bad movies and television shows"...
>Now that I'm making a handsome salary, I need to
>consider buying a vintage pinball machine for my
>apartment. Every eccentric geek needs one.
Okay, this one I'll agree with. 'cept for me, "vintage" would be Black Knight, maybe High Speed (the original, *not* Getaway, ick). I'm just not sure how I'd get it up the stairs or how the downstairs neighbors would feel about it.
-LjM
Good man good man!
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
Hmmm.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
Pinball is going strong in Ann Arbor, between the many Pinball Pete's and the little arcades near the computer labs on both central and north campus the one constant is that any South Park, Attack from Mars, or Medievil Madness table is always relatively crowded. I know that I pumped in a few thousand quarters during many a late study sessions.
Black Knight 2000 was a great game all around. Remember the catchy theme song? W = woman's voice, B = Black Knight (this is CNN) W: You've got the power. B: Ha ha ha ha W: You've got the might. B: No way. W: Get ready for battle. B: Give me your money. W: Beat the Black Knight! Plus, the magnasave and an utterly playable upper deck (ie doesn't drain after 3 seconds every time) make this one a lot of fun. High Speed and any game I could get an extra credit on were also fun.
Pinball is still alive, and always will be. I myself have been in love with the steel ball since I was but 6, when could only watch that magical ball roll up and around and bounce madly back and forth. My personal old time favs are Pin-Bot, Ice Comet, and Black Knight. I also dig Machine Bride of Pin-Bot, and a Jack-Bot, a redone Pin-Bot machine. I any case, I hope to own many eventually, as I intend to have an arcade.
Now, on to business. Is there anyone here who would be interested in joining me to get enough money up to start a Pinball Parlor? I only make a little over minimum wage, but I would be quite interested in getting together with my fellow enthusiasts and pinball wizardss in order to stick it to all these non beleivers and lazy ass arade op's who don't appreciate a great thing. I would more than make up on my end to help get a decent sized place going, and a hell of a profit is ripe for the taking, untapped and pure. Any takers? I live in San Diego, and I think San Diego would be a great place to start. There are many people here, and many are enthusiasts like me. I know you guys are out there, so let's get it on!!!
Pinball has WAY too many people who have enjoyed playing it that for the next several years it could stay alive based purely on nostalgia. My dad bought 3 pinball computer games last year... If the real tables go away, we will always have computer pinball.
Well, my favorite importer and maker is still around. They aren't making many pinball machines these days, but Sega is still kicking around.
I am surprised that more old school pinball companies didn't switch to making electronic games. I love it when sega remembers the past by putting pinball stages in their games -- like the casino stage in Sonic Adventure.
Anyway, I bet pinball machines will always be around. The companies that make them might go into hard times, but they will probably be like player pianos. Player pianos were largely replaced by the phonograph but even in the days of CD's and napster you can still see a few player pianos now and then.
This is true, it is also true I'd guess that arcades in general have suffered because of the home entertainment center and the PC. This would make my goal as a pinball machine company obvious, a home pinball machine. No not one of those itty bitty plastic toy ones, a real pinball machine. One that can reconfigure itself by entering a new program. There would be two ways to do this I think. Through using a virtual table that replaces the mechanical table w/ a screen of some sort and a computer processor. This would probably be the easiest way to go for a true home pinball table. You could also arrange the various table elements to be able to rearrange themselves which would probably please the hardcore pinball junkies best. Myself I'd vote for going w/ a virtual pinball table that is light and reasonably cheap but maintains as much of the feel of the old games as possible. You could probably build and sale such units in the same price range as the PS2. Then use the money from that to keep making the mechanical pinball machines for arcades and such to buy. As I kid I always watched my father play Pinball games (and PacMan) and I wouldn't say either is dead. When I was in my teens I was rebuilding pinball machines in a rotting abandoned warehouse across the alley from my home. I have no idea who would leave 30+ pinball machines to rot but I really appreciated it as a kid. Pinball is here to stay, it just needs to grow with the times. I love the Phantom Menace pinball table. When it comes down in price I want to add it to my collection.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Bally/Midway was bought by Williams. Alvin G & Sons crumbled, Gottlieb closed their doors, Capcom closed down. Data East was bought by Sega. Williams decided to change the platform and set goals to be reached to continue business. They also decided to raise prices fouling an order that would have kept the business open. So on the Monday after the Pinball expo in Chicago, employees were notified that pinball was closed. Rumors stated that the only thing keeping Sega going was Joe Kaminkow's ego. Since he left to design for IGT Casino Gaming, they might not be long for this world. And the arcade divisions of many companies are going under or moving to home console work. All part of the current stay at home society that is being created.
Gun control is hitting what you aim at
I haven't been able to find a well-maintained pinball machine of any variety (let alone a good one) near here for some years.
Recently (a few days ago) I happened across a game called Roll 'Em Up (http://www.medialab.lostboys.nl/rollemup), a single-machine pinball simulator. The physics are a little wacky in places, but it's mildly fun to play. It exists for Windows, BeOS, MacOS, and Linux (all binary).
Anyone know of any other reasonably good pinball games, perhaps with some sort of swank OpenGL hack?
Kid-proof tablet..
everything non-sedintary is dying. Foosball, Pinball, Table Tennis, you name it. All the fun games we grew up with are being replaced by Q3A and UT. It kinda sucks...i always thought computer games were a very good suppliment, but *definitely* not a replacement.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Any game can break. There is a signifigant difference between a pinball machine and a game that requires physical movement.
An arcade console is really nothing more than a game unit with a large television and a special joystick. If the most physically abused component (the joystick) breaks, it would be much more easier to diagnose, repair or replace. As for a pinball machine, the sensors, flippers, everything matters. It's not so easy when it comes to replace complex components that require physics to operate.
Pinball machines are pretty much all the same. While they may have different themes and setups, the object is to keep the ball from passing the flippers, and racking up as many points as possible. It would be like setting up a row of solitaire machines and the only difference was what design was printed on the back of the cards.
I think, that if new strategies and concepts were considered for pinball it might make still make a comeback, but they all have the same mechanical issues that need to be addressed.
- Detritus
"I never really liked computers, but then the server went down on me"
The great thing about pinball is that you can play the game by BEATING THE SHIT out of it. I recall a psychotic fuckhead database lecturer many years ago ... after every lecture, I would go to the cafeteria and bash the living tar out of a 'Back To The Future' machine. One coin, half an hour? NO problems.
You just can't do that with video games ...
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I'd argue that it's a digital device. I have several of them in my house, and I've had to fix stuck relays a few times. (Breakdown-prone, I'll readily agree to, but probably not as bad as most /.'ers would think.)
Relays are either on or off. Pinball machines are primarily big piles of relays. (Old or new, don't care; solid state logic is just a more modern equivalent.) The flapper is either on or off. The ball is either hitting the bumper (magic mushroom), or it isn't. And the bumper is either on or off.
The cool part is that I've got a 1971 Williams "Fantastic" machine - note that this isn't a "Captain Fantastic" machine. The really fun part of this machine is that it has a CPU clock (a motor spinning a cam to create a pulse train at, like, 10Hz) and has a big pile of relays which together make a shift register (simple form of memory). It's a really cool 4-player game that remembers the state of the playfield for all contestants, and resets it to that point when the player's turn is next up.
BTW, it's for sale, needs some work, best offer, FOB Toronto, but will deliver free-of-charge (on my schedule) to anywhere from Windsor to Ottawa. If you can't decipher my e-mail address to reply, you're not smart enough to own it.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
It looks like my 'Natalie Portman Pinball Machine' that i've devoted the last year of my life to making might not be as profitable as I imagined. Oh well. If there are any major toy companies or wealthy indivuals out there, you can email me at Alex3917@hotmail.nospam.com to discuss the sale of rights, that is if anyone is still interested...Oh well, at least theres still good old Natalie Foozball.
Those games are more like 350-400lbs. I've had one fall on me while I was moving it... not fun (and the designer was pissed cause it was 1 of 5 machines made and the entire backbox of the unti had to be reconstructed, I had saved the main body with my foot. Naturally people were pissed cause I tried to save it but damn I loved that game.
The company I worked for was Capcom, which was in buisness for about 3 years and only put out 3-4 games because of crappy funding, little interest, and Williams stealing ideas. Oh well, it's all done and I've got lots of pieces and backbox glasses to prove it. It was damn fun, but the general public just doesn't love pinball anymore.
Such a shame.
I've seen several people in this story mention they want or have bought such-and-such a pinball game. Now, I can see the lucky finder coming across one in some sort of yard sale or junk pile, but that seems to be a rather haphazard way to go about doing things.
Buying an arcade game new is out of the question for most people, with the price generally over $1000.
So, how does one buy a used arcade game for personal use? Is there some sort of catalogue or website? Or should I just keep an eye on ebay?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Amen, brother. I would rather have 2 mediocre pinball games than another 6 clones of Mortal Kombat or Yet Another Driving Game.
| Reality Avoidance Therapists Homepage |
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Black Knight 2000, hands down.
Only sequel (in pinball at least) that was better than the original.
Come on now.. that giant spinning soccer ball... a goal at the top of the table with the goalie swinging back and forth.. light the rollover targets, score a goal, unlock a mega-scoring spinner/bumper/drop target bank... it was heaven man.. i had a record at the U of Winnipeg for a day or two :) This game stole my food budget first year uni AND almost started to dent into my beer budget.... almost. :)
I've never known a pinball machine being in our town. The only chance of playing pinball was at motorway service stations, and I haven't seen one in there for ages. There was one at gatwick airport, but when do you get to go to an airport in britain. Damn shame.
Peter
Thinks all Natalie-bloody-Portman posters are idiots.
-- This is not a sig. But I'm a liar.
Dying? I was honestly under the impression that it had been dead for years. Here, all the pinball machines are relegated to the back corner of the arcades or to small fish'n'chip/chinese takeaway shops alongside Arkanoid and the pacman-era-but-not-league games - ancient arcade machines that failed to become collectors items like pac-man and thus are as cheap to hire as pinball...
I've only played a few times in my life, but I do like the physical nature of the game, so someday I might make my own pinball-style game...
Actuly my favorite pinball mahcine was the Judge Dred one. That was liscensed from the sly stolane movie but it was just a fun cool play.
Theres one problem with reflecting your reality, sometimes your reality starts to reflect you.
Psshtt, where *I* come from, it's not that uncommon to go out back with your plasma rifle and whip some alien ass. As for war with other countries, is it that hard to declare war on some 3rd world country, like say, Canada?
Actually, I liked the Simpsons pinball game. "Double chocolate!" "Triple chocolate!!" :) Jurassic Park was kind of fun too, when the T-Rex ate your ball. Except, I think Jurassic Park used the electronic launcher instead of the good old-fashioned plunger, which is far superior, and allows for the time-honored initial Skill Shot. :)
"500 more points and you get a free game."
"Great. Another chance to lose!"
For me it has to be Centaur... sort of a first love thing. I guess I spent my first two years at Uni on it pretty much solidly, till they took it away.
Nothing else really ever came close, though T2 gets an honourable mention (my wife's favourite)
for those of you claiming pinball to be dead, please checkout the starwars episode one machine, it's made by midway/williams (the pinball wizards) and is truely an amazing machine. there is some information on www.pinball.com. But that of course doesn't do the real machine any justice.. so make your way out to a few arcades and find one of these machines.. It's definately worth throwing a few bucks into. Paul.
...especially if you pronounce it with the accent on the first syllable, AL-eht so it rhymes with "mallet," "ballot" or "shallot." That's the way I hear it when I read it. Immediately you think of something Ogden Nashish in trochees or anapests
This AC's so angry to hear the word ALOT
He's going to knock in your head with a mallet
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
You're exactly right!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
My son loves the arcade version of Tekken 3 even better than the Playstation version. He's really good at it too. When we play in the arcade, in public and all, he kicks my ass at Tekken 3. I, his old Dad, out in public. Not that I mind.
But when I was a teenager I took a lot of acid and played an uncountable number of genuine analog pinball games. How bright the colors were, and how my heart raced when I looked at them flashing! So now I have pinball nature and when I lean into one of the three pinball machines in the arcade and make the ball tremble and fly and the counter whirl I amaze my son and he admires me.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I'm an addict myself. I have a bunch of quotes memorized from many games. What's even better is the fact that I have set high scores on 10+ different games.
Unfortunately, Rapid Fire (which was a Williams game) was so unlike any other pinball machine out there. It was more like the game "Crossfire" (Remember that old board game?). The servos would overheat over time, and the game was out of service more than it was in service. If only they could have perfected it, though, since it was a pretty damn cool game.
I think it is pretty obvious to anyone who has spent even a modest amount of time in arcades during the last 15 years that pinball machines have definately "moved on".
The fact that they still rely, partly, on something as primitive as gravity and steel balls doesn't necessarily render them obsolete. Anybody disagreeing with that is welcome to let me dispose of their fully functional Silver Surfer machine! :-)
It's funny seeing this article just now. I just this morning got in an argument with my girlfriend because I got a used Black Knight 2000 at an auction while she was out of town. She was like 'no way that fucking machine is going to be in this house'. I put up my best fight, but there was just no way she was having it. It gets to live in the garage now. Abd it does live - you know this if your familiar with this machine.
Swear to God.
I Love pinball.
Anyway, um, topic relevance. Pinball is the only gaming I really care about in arcades. Now that I think about it, my favorite games on my PC are more often than not just pinball emulators, which may say something itself. Hmm. How much does a machine cost, anyway? Maybe someday when I'm not living on a student's budget....
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Yes! It he first pinball machine I ever used! I've only used it once, years ago, but it was brilliant!
Peter
This message was Made with Macintosh
-- This is not a sig. But I'm a liar.
You're right about the decline of pinball machines.
After all, the machines cost a lot of money and time to build because of the many moving parts inside the machine. Today's arcade videogames are cheaper because the "guts" of an arcade videogame is the computer itself, which is generally going to last longer than a pinball machine full of intricate moving parts; it's almost akin to comparing a Swiss chronometer watch to a Casio digital watch.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Xenon was released in November 1980. Gorgar was released in November 1979. =)
/No. 1062/ Williams Electronics, Inc., November 1979, 4 players
Gorgar
Model number: 496
Production run: 14000
Theme: Fantasy
Design: Barry Oursler
Art: Constantino Mitchell
Notes: 'Gorgar' was the first talking pinball machine commercially released
--Mark
Of course you would be hard pressed to find dammit in an english dictionary.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
Terminator
The Simpsons
GhostBusters
Adams Family
Twister
Jurasic Park
Batman
Friends
And then there are the obligatory Amusement Park variations of Pin-Ball. There must be three hundred of those games, where a clown laughs, a barker taunts you and you smack the ball around a makeshift amusement park or thrill-ride.
If they'd try to make some genuinely interesting pin-ball titles, perhaps they would stick around longer. Pin-ball isn't dead in people's hearts -- it's just not as prevalent in society. If there were a pin-ball machine in half the locations that arcade machines are (your local grocery store, your gas-station, your cafe and mall, etc.) people would naturally pop more quarters in, and a lot would probably grow semi-addicted. As it is, I'm sure there are a lot of grade-school kids who wouldn't be able to describe to you what a pin-ball machine is, let alone ever played one.
This also reminds me of a great story I read in a Science-Fiction/Fantasy anthology (I wish I could remember the title of the book or the authors), called Dante's Inferno, all about this guy addicted to this pinball machine in an arcade. I haven't read the story since I was about twelve, but I wish I could find it again. It was such a great tale.
Now that I'm making a handsome salary, I need to consider buying a vintage pinball machine for my apartment. Every eccentric geek needs one.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
A few Stern Machines:
Ted Nugent
Galaxy
Stars
Disco
Muhammad Ali
Big Game
Quick Silver
Iron Maiden (not the band)
9 Ball
Viper
Stern machines date back all the way into the 1930's. Maybe even earlier.
--Mark
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Centaur was a major staple at the Alice Lloyd dorm
at University of Michigan. Several of us got to be so good that we'd average about three free games a play, so one quarter went a long way (albeit even further with a case of beer...)
We even had our own lingo for the game, such as "fucking the queen" (the hardest thing to do in that game. Anybody who's played it enough probably knows what I'm talking about...)
T2 was cool until the flippers got worn down, and you couldn't execute the major shots anymore.
duh!!
Pinball is not dying, it is already freaking dead!!! everyone knows this, why can't people let old things be gone. get a life people!
dorks!
duh!
- A Pool Table
- A Dart Board
- A Pinball Machine
Of course, if a bar has more than one of the above items, it gives them serious points. Now if they're going to take away #3, then we have a problem in the rating system.Please stop this insanity and hug your local pinball machine!
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
I was thinking if they stop making pinball machines they will start to be come a collectors item. They could be come very valuable and a museum might be a good way to preserve this important part of our culture. People will pay a lot for things that bring them back to thier childhood. A pinball museum would be a interesting thing to see. I know I'd pay to go to one.
Fastball, Curveball, Changup, and Screwball were the pitches. And let me tell you, the fastball had some serious heat. The machine would put spin on the ball for the two breaking pitches. The Curveball was espcially nasty with a sharp, last second change of direction [it seemed more like a Slider].
There was one flipper, shaped like a bat which had an almost 270 degree range. You could also pinch hit, the strength of the flipper was determined by the statistics of the current batter, and try to steal.
Outcomes were decided by indicator lights in front of the wall in the back of the board which were pictures of fielders. Out, Single, Double, Triple, or Home Run. The percentage, type, and left-right location of the lights changed according the the statistics of the batter also.
One of the coolest features of the game was the Home Run ramp. At various times throughout the game, the ramp would pop up behind second. If you hit the ball just right you could sent it flying into the upper deck for a home run.
When the game first came out, it's gimmick was that for each run you scored, it would give you baseball cards that were despensed on the lower right on the front of the game. I collected cards back then so I thought this was the coolest game in the world. I lost track of how much money I dumped into those things. I STILL dump quarters in to play when ever I see it around.
Those games you list were the "old" Stern from the late 70s/early 80s. The "new" Stern was bought by Gary Stern in Sept 1999 I believe. That company was formerly Sega Pinball, and that was formerly Data East Pinball. They have been in operation since mid-late 80s.
Williams died on Oct. 25, 1999 (if that hasn't been covered yet). I was a programmer there (worked on Revenge From Mars), and am now a programmer at Stern. (Me and one other programmer went there after Wms closed.)
keith
Sucks to hear about Williams, cool to hear Sega's still doin' 'em. Howsabout Bally?
Yup, Pin*Bot was onuvtha coolest talking pinball games of the day, along with Black Knight.
Although they may not be making too many new ones these days, at least they have an extended afterlife in bars, at least in (moderately) big cities such as 'frisco...
(on a sideline, I'm much more concerned about not being able to find classic video games. sure I can find ROM disk images of Sinistar or Qix or Tron for [insert your favorite emulator here], but I'd much rather plop quarters into the real beast and wrestle with the old analog controls!)
I am a 16 year old guy that just barely caught the tail end of the pinball era. Every Sunday night when my parents went bowling, I would spend three hours playing all the old pinball games. Now here is my question, where could I purchase one of the older (early-mid 80's) pinball machines in the Kansas City area fairly cheaply? I desperateley want one. I love playing games like UT and Q3A, but with a physical pinball machine, NOTHING is predictable.
"Haunted House". - I can't remember who made it, but it had three levels, and was great fun. The bottom level was dark until the ball dropped down there, and the first time you play it, you don't realise that the normal playfield is in fact darkened glass, with another playfield underneath...
What saddens me the most is that it has been a slow, 15+ year decline. Pinball got cancer in the mid 80's, and the chemo hasn't been working.
From the article:
Rather than staying old school, the companies tried to compete with video games. "They gave pinball lots of glitz and gizmos," Levine said. "But they had games with very little soul."
I would somewhat agree with this, but the last Star Wars pinball game had a pretty fun video mode. Plus, not all innovations were bad. Black Knight's Magna-Save was great. Pinbot had a cool lock. The LCD animation in The Adams Family was fairly entertaining. Really it was the few terrible ideas that stick in your mind (like PacMan pinball. Yech!) when you could tell that the game makers were desperately throwing in the kitchen sink.
Anyway, I'm just rambling in my despondant sense of slow loss. If anyone knows a good location of games near Austin let me know. I've got lots of quarters, and who needs to do laundry anyway?
were alright. Now days, when I go into a tavern and have to sit anywhere close to one of 'em, I find myself petting pissed by the sheer volume of the things. I hate having to shout over all of the electronic clanking. I won't miss that aspect.
I'm sixteen, and my dad was a fifty-year-old pinball nut. He endowed me with a love of the game, and now I have an interest in it. We even have a "Haunted House" machine now. It's fun, has three different levels, and is definately not one of the soulless machines that everyone is talking about. The problem with it is the blasted thing keeps breaking about every two weeks. At sixty bucks a pop for a guy to come out and fix it, that ain't cheap. There's nothing really major with it, but ciruit boards keep frying, bumpers snap, etc. The problem is you have to purchase physical parts as opposed to just downloading a patch from the web. That's the problem. There's nobody with a open source version of replacement parts.
Ever notice how they say "Pentium or better", but they say "Windows 95 or higher"?
Well, my favorite importer and maker is still around. They aren't making many pinball machines these days, but Sega is still kicking around.
I hate to say it, but I wouldn't put bets on it staying, as Sega is having a bit of trouble called 'two console flops in a row' and Pinball might be 'downsized'. That isn't an expert opinion though...
Peter
Thinks there should be a 'no signiture' tickbox...
-- This is not a sig. But I'm a liar.
No they don't (at least the Midway part).
Midway IPOed 2 years ago and is independant save
for a few technicalities
Certainly, I don't play pinball as much as I play games on my computer, but, and let me make this clear, only because I don't have a pinball table. Yet. I personally love pinball, as well as air hockey, and play both at a local arcade whenever I get together with friends there. This is of couse only a cross-section of myself and my small band of friends (and my parents, they play as well), and this post a cross-section of the geek comunity, but considering that we geeks are the majority of computer users (total time spent wise, mind) and game junkies, I think it is still a valid point that pinball and it's ilk are not really dying, if the most computer using sub-culture still values such an analog sort of game. Just because something that was one of the most popular form of arcade games 20-30 years ago isn't as popular now doesn't mean it's dying; that it's still around as much as it is, and played means it's got real lasting power under the face of a quite determined try to make computer/console/video games the only electronic games. Think about that.
Prolly the 39" HiRes monitors and custom hardware
inside that drives the cost up
I also remember reading somewhere that Williams/Midway recently said that they would be ceasing pinball production entirely. They tried to simplify the operators experience with their Pinball 2000 cabinet (one generic cabinet with easily swappable playfields and ROMS) but they only produced two of those (Attack from Mars and Episode 1). It really is sad. I guess I better snap up a Twilight Zone and ST:TNG machine before they all end up in other people's hands.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
I only hope the designers get picked up by Gottlieb or Bally!
"Master, whats a torso." Igor, in Monster Bash
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
http://biz.yahoo.com/p/m/mwy.html Midway is independant now...there are still ties to WMS in some ways, but they are their own company (I work there).
I don't know about you people, but when my parents bought that shiny new Playboy pinball machine when I was a kid (and it was very clean and non-offensive, thank you), I recall my dad saying that it was in the four-digit price range. Now, I don't know the current prices for pinball machines, but I'll bet that nowadays the newer pinball machines cost three times that as much as the price my parents paid for the old one (which we ended up getting rid of :( ), and the older ones like Pinbot and Playboy cost even more because of the nostalgia value.
;)
My point is that pinball was getting pretty old when I was a kid, back in the 80's. But it won't die because those who were raised with the sounds of flippers clacking and bumpers bouncing that shiny lead ball across the table's surface will want to stick a quarter (or two, nowadays) in a pinball machine and play. I know for a fact that I'll want my children to experience the simple, harmless pleasure of playing a good game of pinball. But I know that it'll be hard for me to buy a pinball machine if the prices don't go down, unless I land a really good job after I graduate.
- Firecaster
For pinball to grow, companies absolutely have to develop the inexpensive architectures. It's so clear that a horizontal market in pinball -- never before so advanced -- provides an indication of resource-leveling platforms; we are convinced a leadership position continually is not the momentum needed to bring pinball out of its slump.
These, the visions of what pinball should be, are never easy to fully accomplish. If we can foresee the benefits of technology, then the customer-compliant drop dates will assure us enterprise-wide deliverables. Third party research tells us that the drop dates repose methods of empowerment for the pinballing community.
The customer base *MUST* be galvanized in order to assure that the task-oriented piball machine will dominate the market, and to be certain that the price-intensive sponsorships are going to help in the concepting of new multimedia for the machines. The deliverables will knock your socks off, notwithstanding that the architecture really signs up for a quality-oriented new generation of technology. As always, the task-driven pinball design team will provide SUPPLE support for paradigms, and bring pinball back to life.
That's just *MY* two cents on the issue.
The pinball experience, however, can never be duplicated in the home cheaply. If arcade operators want to stay in business, they need to push pinball via contests, classes to teach you how to play, and techs who keep the machines clean and working well.
Our local arcade first pushed out pinballs and replaced them with video games. Now THEY are being pushed out and replaced by kiddie "games of chance" where you bop groundhogs or play skeeball, get tickets, and buy stupid prizes.
This is the most disturbing trend. Nothing like teaching little kids how to grow about and be a gambling addict...
I can't believe Epic MegaGames is still selling that pinball game. It's super old !!! Can't they just give it away ? C'mon guys !!! Get real !
- sigs are for wimps.
...those two words together make me feel nauseous. To be fair, I am guilty of playing a game of space cadet which spanned 3 days before my computer crashed... but still, to claim that any computer game is pinball makes me sad. It's a whole different world. -- r.
I even bought my own pinball table (Jackbot) a few months ago ...
Wouldn't a printer have been more useful?
I'm addicted to Williams' Monster Bash. It's hilarious, well designed, good variety of minigames, and damnit it's hilarious! Also I used to play Scared Stiff a good deal. And the old Data East-made Star Wars was pretty sweet. -- r.
No, seriously! Mail me if you need to get rid of it.
After a long session of real pinball I've found myself physically exhausted. I guess it's because I push the buttons more forcefully on a big heavy machine than on a computer. There's something about the physicality of a pinball machine, the realness of it that sucks you in the way a CRT never can.
With a computer game you can mentally "become one" with the machine. I remember feeling exhausted after my first few Doom deathmatch sessions, but it was a mental exhaustion, not the same as after playing pinball.
With pinball, you physically "become one" with the machine.
Or if you're having too bad of a day to "become one" with anything you can just take out your frustrations on a pinball machine and it will affect the game, whereas banging on a video console is like banging on a brick wall.
Sci-fi aside, I think there will always be a noticable difference between virtual and real.
Two of my favourite all time pinballs, they will never die in my mind.
Dante's Inferno was one of three parts of his Divine Comedy which was published in Italy during the Renaissance by Dante Alagheiri(sp?). It became world famous because it was the first book to be published in vernacular, ie. the local language and not latin like all other books of that time period were. The book was about how he went through hell, purgatory, and then heaven guided by the poet virgil so that he could find his lost love Beatrice. Anyways, your probably thinking of the wrong book, but if your not please tell me where to get that anthology, major suckup points in history class :P
My ex-girlfriend got me into pinball in 1991, and I've been hooked ever since. We used to play some game(forgot the name) whre you have to knock a mini-pinball on the backglass up and up.
I got hooked on T2, and looking back, that was a simplistic playing field(1 level), but hey! it had the led screen.
Then I got into Fun House, sworn to destroy Rudie. Think my record was 12 million. Still a fun game to play.
Never mastered Star Trek:The Next Generation.(can anybody?)
Played Hook and left the machine with 5 credits. easy as hell. Got a free game on the first play of Demolition Man.
My take on pinball machines? That's ALL I play when i get to an arcade. MInd you, arcades seem to be on their way out much like drive-in theaters, but the pinball machines will always be the sauce to me. The machines got a lot more fun and challenging since the advent of the LED screen.
Mind you, the WORST pinball machine ever( from '86) was Dungeons and Dragons. Funky side drains and awful sounds.
I noticed that Sega and Data East made the WORST pinball machines ever. Williams games are always fun to play. They being the MS of pinball? Heh
When you look at the games that are currently being played by University age people (19-25), ie. Q3A and UT, you can easily see why pinball is dying. Pinball is slower paced, no violence and most of all it's not interactive. Single player only. People today want to play with other people via the internet.
If they made a violent multiplayer pinball then it may have a really good chance.
I believe I remember reading in Computer Gaming World Magazine that Empire Games is most likely not making any Pro Pinball games. (This was in a review for the Fantastic Journey 2 or 3 months back).
Unfortunately this was the only company that seemed to get that 'pinball' sense, the only thing missing is the feel of the actual physical movement of the machines.
...and I'm a little ashamed to say it, but I truly get more enjoyment out of the electronic versions. There's something about a real pinball table that irritates me - it's lack of precision, unpredictability, and even flaws. Not to mention the requirement to pour in hundreds of pounds ;-)
;-)
No doubt these same irritations are exactly what veteran players of real tables like so much - but for some reason, I enjoy the predictable and understandable universe of the software version, where I know the entirety of what's going on. Is this a bad thing? Possibly. But it's what I am.
Sheesh - I haven't been this deep since... hmmm... no, never mind
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
There used to be a cofee shop around here that had Elvira's "Scared Stiff" machine(her 2nd!) that NEVER saw a minute of idle time. I saw people play the hell out of that machine, and knew almost every sound byte and easter egg to that game("a cow?!?!?"). i only got to level 4 on the stiff-o-meter tho.
It was made by Gotlieb. You can play a computerized version in MS Pinball.
this is entertainment. classic console style.
if you don't dig it, don't play it.
tripe is really gross fish, but some people dig it, I guess. go figure, some people even like sushi....
pinball, console video games, pachenko, fuck--even karaoke, geeks really do get out of the box sometimes (hypocrite--I write this from work on an unpaid Saturday afternoon!), and old analog toys are a great deal o' fun!!
my MP3's might be really rad, but I still cruise into the city to hear real vinyl get spun on real turntables weekend evenings! Me being a geek doesn't detract from my ability to enjoy old analog toys.
don't get me wrong--Quake3 Arena rocks on my iMac, and I wouldn't consider it a proper Linux distro if it didn't contain xEvil, but there's nothing wrong with racquetball, rugby, or a good-ol' goddamn game of pinball!!!
be less serious!
late'
=)
The Episode 1 Pinball game is one of the more interesting pinball games I have seen in a while - but it seems to be a deviation from other pinball games. Essentially, you shoot a ball into a black space, where an image is reflected from a CRT display hanging upside down. No more bumpers and lights and whatnot. The machine tracks the position of the ball as you fling the ball at images reflected onto the glass plate.
It's some freaky stuff.
That's because it really is more tangible. On an N64 or PC, the "flippers" and "balls" are merely images projected onto a sheet of phosphors by an electron beam. This confused me for a while, too.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
The reason you love pinball is simple... it's not a game... it's a SPORT! It it played with a ball, therefore a sport. I could easily launch into any of the myriad of discourse I gave on this topic while in college, but I think I prefer to see what the slashdot flock thinks of my theory.
There has been a few good attemtps to bring the magic of pinball in to home computing. Pinball Fantasies for Amiga is still one of the best flipper simulators ever. There was even made a joystick to emulate that arcade feeling.
I believe we'll see more of tomorrows kids emulating todays games and sports on their computers - instead of really playing them.. Perhaps it's already happened?
I see a few major reasons for the so-called recent death of pinball. Back when I stopped playing around 1994 due to RSI in my wrists (a combination of typing and pinball messed up my ulnar nerve pretty fierce), the 'art' of pinball was actually at its highest. Funhouse (1989?), The Adaams Family (1992?) and The Twilight Zone (1993) are arguably the best pinball games ever. Deep rulesets that were well balanced and allowed both novices a fun game, while experts had a variety of goals; a sense of humor; and well-laid out shots.
However, all through the 1990's Data East pinball (who became Sega and are now Stern) continued to pump out mediocre games using licensed themes. Simpsons, Jurassic Park, Tales from the Crypt... even up to South Park recently. (I haven't played any of the new Stern games) The game would suck in the average arcade goer who wanted to play a game tied to the latest hip cultural trend. They'd find a game with flippers that were hard to control (compare an early-90's Data East to a Bally or Midway of the same era for "flipper feel"), and had boring gameplay. Thus, the person attracted to pinball for perhaps the first time, would find that it just wasn't that much fun.
Top that with the need of operators to actually *maintain* the games (hahah!) -- something as simple as a slightly weak flipper could ruin a game with the advent of ramps on the playfield, I belive in Black Knight from 1981 or 1982. The longer gameplay combined with the ability of an expert to get a replay and continue playing for free, and operators simply were not making much money in the same amount of time as with the (then) hit chop-socky games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II -- both of which almost guaranteed a new quarter being pumped in every 90 seconds or so, especially during two-player games. When I was good I could easily play for ten or fifteen minutes for fifty cents on Addams Family, after only about one school term's worth of daily practice.
I think the final nail in the coffin was Bally/Midway/Williams's attempt to update the pinball game by bringing in a video monitor for their Pinball 2000 line of two games - Revenge From Mars and Star Wars Episode One. Unfortunately neither of these games were real barn-burners in the fun department and the setup to reflect the monitor obscured shots and made play difficult. They bet the farm on this idea, and it failed.
Fortunately, pinballs still live on. Stern (who made games back in the 70's, and I'm sure earlier, I'm just too lasy to hit the pinball database) purchased Sega's pinball division, and that's it for currently manufactured games. Let's hope they don't continue the Data East - Sega tradition. Some people are starting to make their own personalized games. And eBay has a nice category of pinball stuff, which, as all things eBay, can be both a ripoff or a treasure.
And, finally I have to mention the simulations. I forget the company, but one group put out "Timeshock" and "The Web" (and, I'm sure, more since then) for both Windows and Mac which struck me as very nice and realistic feeling new-style games with dot-matrix display and all. Another company put out a number of originals ("Loony Labyrinth," "Crystal Caliburn," and recently "Angel Egg") that are pretty good, and two reproductions, ("Royal Flush" and "Eight Ball Deluxe"), all for the PC and Mac. I own 8-Ball Deluxe and found it very fun and pretty good physics, and much as I remembered the original. They had also programmed most of "Funhouse," which many were drooling over, but it was never released. The company apparently split into a Japanese group which is still producting games and the American group doing the reproductions which has been dead for five or six years. Anything with Sierra's name and "3-D" on it is probably a waste, it only looks like pinball but sure doesn't play like it. And, surprisingly, the Game Boy game Pokemon Pinball is an excellent little simulation for the $25 it cost and has given me more pleasure than any Game Boy game I own.
Does anyone know if there's a pinball game under Linux available?
-- Cheers!
For the most part true..
However arcade machines are not up 100% of the time.
Video games don't usually take up floor space when dead becouse they can be removed with a hand cart (not easy but doable).
The parts that usually die are coin box, joystick and buttons.. Those parts can usually be swapped out with replacement parts.
Over time the screen burns out.. That can be replaced but it's not so simple...
Eventually the ROMs start to show some age... if you clone the roms in advance then it's a matter of keeping the logic intact.
The ROMs and logic however take a matter of 10 to 20 years... By that time the machine has allready become obsolete.
Compare this with pinball.. any sensor, bumper etc can go out. Lights burn out.. byond costummer abuse you have a heavy ball banging around slamming into every sensor... eventually something is going to break.
I personnaly never got into pinball...
I see the addiction... But to often I'd get the ball to bounce between two bumpers.. rack up a nice little score... only to find the sensors were dead... The score reads 0....
Also I dislike the bodymass environment of the archade (excluding one place.. but it was also had dart boards and a pool hall in the back... and I played darts).
(Stopped playing when all the dart boards went to safty darts..)
I don't actually exist.
Don't worry! Pinball's not just about using your eyes-hands coordination. You play it from the hips, using your entire body...like dancing But the time will come when computer games and pinball close in on each other again
---
"The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of non-sense" - Dr Pnin
For the uninitiated, _Dance Dance Revolution_ is a game where the player stands on a platform and hops, jumps and steps on big floor buttons in order to do a preprogrammed dance. Timing is critical. When you get really good at it there are challenge and competition modes; it's a two-player game.
(I got addicted to DDR while spending 6 months in Hong Kong, so I'm overjoyed to finally see it making inroads here. Now if only we had _True Kiss Destination_...)
I play Nerd-Folk!
Well, it has been sort of obvious that the pinball machine would die some day. Its like Xerox and Kodak. (sorry, Rochester) They're all being replaced by computers. (PARC: the irony to end all ironies. Xerox killed itself.) Its is too bad, but Pinball games are still very popular to people, and parents (even the most technophobic ones) love buying those types of non-violent games of their youth to their kids.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
Interesting to read comments of people on pinball who aren't rec.games.pinball regulars!
... Hopefully it isn't a 20th century artifact.
...
Pinball popularity has been cyclical in the past but has always come back. But it never had the Internet and realistic 3D sims and other games to contend with
Real 3D action with great sounds and physical effects will always IMHO be superior to something on a TV screen. I have an Apollo 13 game in my basement (and a lot of older ones). The multiball countdown is such a rush
But still, playing PC pinball or video is fun too, just not as much. I helped out on Epic's Epic Pinall and Extreme Pinball and while these have been superceded by newer (3d and non-scrolling) sims, they were a blast for the time.
Pinball may never hold the popularity level it had at junctures in the past, but I think it will come back. Surely some dot com billionare will start a new pinball company?
Pinball.
Yes, it's a breakdown-prone analogue device. So what? Life's not solid state, you know.
Unlike most reflex-twicth games, (ie: if it moves, {shoot, kick, avoid} it), pinball is directly kinesthetic in nature. The joys of a subtle table slap to full-on, tilt inducing hip check are uniquely pinball. Not to mention that pinball uses real world physics, not an approximation found in digital arcade games. No trickery or savvy programming here, folks. Just hard Newtonian rules and a dash of chaos theory to keep it fresh every time.
That's the fun.
Not to mention that I feel like a lab rat pressing a lever to get a food pellet every time I play a digital game for hours, and I know that I'm not alone in this feeling. Pinball won't die, but it will be relegated to a niche market (and this is not a bad thing).
Pinball is Dead! Long live Pinball!
NT
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I live in NYC, where, as the article states, pinball was illegal until 1976. Every summer we used to go upstate for a week, and I used to save up my $$, and play as much as I could. I can remember earlier than that (say, 1970) as a 7 YO, saving up and having A WHOLE ROLL of quarters! It lasted half the week
Best run on a quarter? A few years later (say 1978 or so), I was playing some game, and started just after lunch. This place closed at 8pm, and I still had 32 credits up on the machine!
The minute something is born it begins to die -if thats the way you want to look at it. -I remember seeing something about 10 years ago about how "Pinball is dying" - Its not dying- Just getting old, and taken in by those that really care about it.
Now how about some SkeeBall?
-
air and light and time and space
Since then there have been some good pinball games coming out, and recently there have been a few more pinball game releases. Okay, the computer is hardly like the real thing, but it's still fun, and they ARE still making them. I saw one just the other day called "Lula Flipper" or something.
If you're interested in some games, check out here. Admittedly they're all Windows and DOS games, but if you have the chance it could be fun.
Slashdot is populated by quite a few jackasses.
Yeah, but the whole 32X/Saturn problem was a long time ago. Whether or not they continue pinball depends on how many people continue to plunk in quarters.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Cyclone :: Because Queen Nancy looks like she's gonna hurl.
:: The best sound I have ever heard in any electronic game, ever.
:: Mind-numbingly addictive, loud, explosive, forgiving, high-scoring gameplay.
Addams Family
Dr. Who
DontBlow.com is an absolute good.
that unforgettable mechanical
being is
the key to understand
why people never
feel betrayed
and never will
so if it'll die
playing other abstract
games
people will remember
I'm 35 (it's not that old dammit!) and grew up just as the video game revolution was coming into full swing. Just before that, pinball machines and other games were fully mechanical (i.e., solonoid powered). I used to go down to the Balboa Fun Zone in Southern California, and loved playing them for hours. 3 games for a quarter, 5 balls / game!
When video games began to "invade" (pun intended), I started playing those a lot. But I still loved to play pinball. The thing about pinball is that it takes all the reflex talent of video games, but it has a mechanical unpredictability, and liveliness that a video game just never has. I never managed to hold a record in my local video arcade, but I held several pinball records (the typical arcade back then would keep the names of the local kids who held the records on the wall -- gotta encourage people to keep spending quarters!).
It's funny that this came up today... just yesterday, I played a pinball machine in a video store for the first time in a few years. Won a game the second time I played it. HA! I still got it. :)
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
What are some of the best pinball games you've all played? And just so this post has a point, I'll get the (silver)ball rolling:
Twilight Zone
Star Wars (the one with a big R2-D2 in the play field)
Adamns Family
Jurrasic Park
Others?...
Huh?
I guess you are talking about Saturn/32x thing.
The 32x was a flop, I'll give you that. I would consider the Saturn only half a flop because it sold well in Japan -- the most important market in the world, and if you actually bought one you would know it totally kicked butt! The thing flopped because of marketing not becuase it didn't have great games.
The 32x was an add-on and not a console. So I would only call that half a flop as well.
So the Sega is coming off of 0.5+0.5=1 flop. So what companies make mistakes sometimes. Don't forget about Sony and that whole beta max thing, or nintendo and that whole snes cd thing (better known as the playstation.) Sega still owns the coin-op arcade market (although that is shrinking too.)
Something else that I always liked about Pinball was the artwork. A lot of the old machines had really cool artwork. It seems like video games never really had anything as cool.
Anyone know of any books of Pinball machine art? If not, someone should make one! It would be a shame if it all disintegrated in someone's garage without being preserved.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
However, I suggest that for those with win-enabled machines to check out the series of pinball games from Pro Pinball (Empire games). The series is "The Web", "Timeshock!", "Big Race USA" and most recent, "Fantastic Journey". The boards are very similar to today's tables with lots of overhead ramps, more 'mechanical' features, and generally play as well as many of the recent physical tables. In addition, the physics and gameplay of the Pro Pinball series is super enhanced compared to anything else, with very tight gameplay and nearly bug free.
Pinball the physical game will be phasing out soon, but pinball is certainly not dead.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
WMS stopped making pinball machines last year. WMS owns Bally, Williams, and Midway. No WMS means, effectively, no pinball industry.
I found that link at bOING bOING, if you're interested.
What? pinball is dying? GOOD!
this isn't flamebait guys, it's my point of view: anything that neglects to evolve with the times is meant to die and justly. I believe there's a place for mechanical machines, but pinball is just outdated. think of how many new things are possible with a combination of electronics and mechanical devices, but pinball stopped evolving after PacMan (at least noticeabley). Or maybe I'm wrong and there isn't a place for mechanical machines anymore. guess i'll never know...
========================
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
I always use pinball to fill thre break between classes up at WVU. It's great. I mean, you can win free games if you are good enough. I can either shell out $X on video games, that even when I beat them, I have to pay again to play again, or I can pay my $.50, play pinball, and sit in the arcade and flirt with for hours for the same price, based on the games I won. It impresseses other people when you win free games too :-)
Eh...
My dad spent most of his university life playing pinball. He compared it to how people spend it all online nowadays. He met some of his best friends at pinball. He triedplaying it on the PC, and he enjoyed it, but he said it just wasn't the same. He also, when he sees a "new" pinball game where you get a replay at 16 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 points goes on about how much better it was at university. Replay at 60 000. I'd wanted to get into it, but we've got Quake! What am I supposed to do?
Of course, just because they wrote an article doesn't meen it's dead...merely dying.
Pinball Consruction Set?
//e building hundreds of pinball boards. It was the saddest day when the floppy (5 1/4, thank you) that I had saved one board that I had spent nearly a month on died.
I _LOVE_ that thing. I spent countless hours on my Apple
I really wish(ed) that someone would remake the game for newer computers. Hey, anyone want to write a GnuPinball Construction Set?
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Rather than staying old school, the companies tried to compete with video games. "They gave pinball lots of glitz and gizmos," Levine said. "But they had games with very little soul."
I was about 1 when my brother got a Pinball Machine for his 13th Birthday. As soon as I was tall enough to play it, they (my brothers) showed me the ropes. The ONLY fond memories of my brothers at that time are of pinball (I'm the youngest of four - I got beaten or ignored a whole lot).
Since then, I've been a pinball maniac, and when they say that pinball soul has died, I can't help but agree. If we were talking about the pinball machines of the 70's and 80's, I'd be angry at the loss, but modern pinball almost deserves to die - have you TRIED the southpark game?!?
Anyway, CT, if you've got Diablo2 stress tester AND a good pinball machine - Can I move in with you? pretty please! I won't be much trouble - so long as you don't need your computer much.
Everything and everyone is an aspect of Gd. So remember to show proper respect!
My favorite game of pinball had to be the game, well, Pinball for the Atari 2600. I could spend hours playing it and roll-over the score several times.
Unless you're really into having a physical table to bump a little silver ball around, computer pinball pretty much looks like the way of the future. You don't have to keep feeding it quarters, and you can beat the crap out of your game controller without it tilting.
These were the most addictive and fun games I can remember. I bet I (and my friends) paid for that Pinbot machine twenty times over in that school year when we played it every day after school.
Taxi Driver was just plain fun.
We are agents of the free
...I spent a lot of time being too short, marveling at the bad-boy mystery that was pinball, waiting for the day I would be tall enough. Around 1976 or 1977 I got tall enough and was able to persuade my dad to spot me the occasional quarter. That lasted for about 8 months. Then Space Invaders came out, followed by a lot of other classic arcade games. Guess where my quarters went.
I wouldn't say it's dying though. I think it will always be around, and who knows, it might have a nostalgia based revival someday.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Right when I was fresh out of high school, I was fiddling around with the idea of going into a career in graphic arts, instead of computers. Got word through a friend that none other than Williams Bally Midway out here in Chicago was hiring some new blood, so I tried out.
Showed up with like 3 years worth of my portfolio on VHS tape. They liked it, and called me back.
Brought some new stuff in. They liked it, and called me back a second time. This time I got a tour -- In order to get to the inner sanctum where the video games are developed, it was necessary to walk though the pinball machine assembly line. Reminded me of a sweatshop -- Thousands of clickety-clack relays, wire harnesses and all..very cold war.
During that visit, they sat me down in a darkened room filled with about 20 artists and programmers, a few years older than me (I was 19 at the time).. And took turns picking my brain while everyone reviewed my tapes. What amazed me was the fact that many of them thought I was a fraud, and used artificial sources to create realistic looking effects like marbleizing, eroded stone, fire, etc.. Here's how the conversation went, to the best of my recollection.
Big guy in the corner: "What did you use to render the fire effect with?"
Me: "Huh? Its not rendered."
(Various whispers among the artists..)
Big guy in the corner: "Well then, what did you use to do it with??"
Me: (nervous laugh) "Hire me, and i'll tell ya.
Big guy in the corner: "Seriously. Where did you get that filter?"
Me: "..Filter? Whats a filter?"
Big guy in the cornerL "Have you ever used Photoshop?"
Me: "No. Just Amiga stuff."
Big guy in the corner: "Well how did you do it then?"
Me: "Heh..Well...Ok, Well how about you tell me how you guys do it first, then i'll tell you how I do it."
Big guy in the corner: "Well.....to be honest, we go get some newspapers and lighter fluid, and take a camcorder out in the back lot. We crumple up the newspaper, set it on fire, then videotape it for a few minutes. Take the tape back inside, and framegrab it."
Me: Jeez. Its nothing like that. Doesn't that take alot of time?
Big guy in the corner: "Not really. We grab the frames with an SGI Workstation. Takes us about a day to get it to look right."
Me: "God. Ok......" (awkward pause)
Big guy in the corner: "...What?"
Me: "I dont do anything like that. You've got DPaint IV right? Just draw a the shape of a flame, and pick it up as a brush. Go into the gradient editor, and make a gradient that goes from white to yellow, from yellow to red, then from red to black. Switch to Range Mode, and spray the screen with the airbrush tool, using that flame shape. Within a few seconds, a wall of flame will begin to emerge from the background. Takes about 15 seconds to paint a whole wall of flames, its pretty cool.."
Heh. My interview sort of concluded very quickly after that. The guy who co-designed Mortal Kombat walked me out to the reception office, and told me he'd put in his reccomendation with Jack Haeger. Never heard from them again.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
There is nothing as satisfying in any of the modern day video games as the loud "ka-klaccckkk" sound that a pinball machine gives you when you win a free game. It's so much more visceral than the eye-candy video games of today.
The great thing about a pinball machine is that you can play a game for ten minutes on one quarter. Can you say that about any video arcade game?
The words "Ride the Cyclone!" and "Hey you, with the face!" will forever stay in my mind. If I had the space in my apartment, I would go out and get a Cyclone pinball machine today.
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
I've alway dug the miniworld under glass that pinball machines are! Physical mechanics at play, under my control, rule.
There is a direct link to this and the attraction of the various Sim products. The difference is the real nature of it and the direct interaction.
Analog at it's best! (even some of the recent "enhanced" ones are okay).
Anyone remember the first multi-level machines? Yeah, I'm old, but they were as cool as Doom II and Marathon!
I never understood the appeal of pinball, however... I am looking for a good price on a Standup version of Raiden if anybody has it! :)
it's quite obvious that pinball is agonizing. Today everything which occupies too much room or does something which could be done in less space is considered old, unfashionable, "out", uncomfortable, annoying.
Today you can see technology in the palm of your hand. In 1945 a computer filled a place equivalent of a big New York loft. Now it stands on your desk, not bigger than a tv set. Now we have mobile phones with video games in them. The idea of MICRO is cool, comfortable, portable, economic, handy.
Who wants pinballs? Too big, too heavy, not precise, hard to manipulate, too simple, etc. etc.
Too human?
I know exatcly which machine you are referring to, but the name escapes me at the moment. FUN machine though! I played it at the 1997 Wild West Pinball Fest in Phoenix, and it was a blast.
I don't recall who the manufacturer is. If I could remember the name, I could look it up in one of the pinball databases.
--Mark
Unfortunatly, Williams owns Bally and Midway so there is no chance of those companies picking up the designers.
Gottlieb had been sold off to someone else, but may be back on their own now. I don't recall.
Williams always had great games (some under the Bally name though). In the last few years, Medievil Madness, Monster Bash, Attack From Mars, and Tales of The Arabian Nights
Classics from the 90's also included Addams Family and Twightlight Zone.
And of course, others like High Speed, Pin*bot (and the 2 sequals), Fun House, Cyclone, Comet, etc. They made GREAT machines.
My next house I buy will have sufficent room for me to make a massive gameroom, which will have at least 10 pins...
--mark
It was almost cultish... I haven't seen the game around in a few years, but I still have many of the sound FX embedded in my brain (ya can't beat Star Trek for cheesy melodrama):
Q:  Bonjour mon capitan!
Picard:  Q, what are you doing here?!
Q:  Let's play a little game!
Angsty Riker:  Q! We don't have time for your games!
Ah, those were the days...
I believe there was an article in Wired magazine about three or four issues ago. They discussed how Pinball just can't hold a candle up to the lure of modern video games in terms of young children/teens/adults entertainment, maintenance costs, upgrade costs, etc...
--- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
Exactly, the Digital Illusions (site down?) pinball games (Dreams, Illusions, Fantasies...) simply rocked (for being computerized pinball games that is)!
---
Tip: Sick and tired of these tips? Type "set tips 0" any time.
> set tips 0
Error: Unknown option name "tips."
Ner lbh sebz gur HFN? Gura lbh'ir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN!
Theater of Magic. nuff said.
sig this
Well, if you can't afford to buy/maintain your own table, there's always the computer version...
Pinball page at Softseek: List of a whole bunch of downloadable pinball games.
Epic MegaGames Pinball: My personal favorite. Especially the Android table.
so yer sayin' you haven't been in a bar in a real city in over 20 years....
tell me, do they still do horse-shoe tossin' in Hoeboken, NJ?
What the hell is pinball? ;-)
Pinball is always fun. There is no such thing as a bad game of pinball. Even if you do get a rare bad game or something, there is always the knowledge that you are in full control of something real and something physical and not something made of infinite polygons.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
I don't think the arcade operators have really helped the cause.. how often have I dumped $1 into a machine to find a lame flipper or something like that. On top of that the 50 cents and up per game have conspired against it.
Gotta say though recently finally had a chance to play Martain Attack & the new Star Wars pinball games on that new Cyrix PC platform and was quite impressed.
I think the entire arcade industry is hurting pretty badly. These days a coin op arcade is an arena of sameness, with the same coin op game cliches that haven't evolved since the late '80s. At least the pinball tables were trying to innovate to stay alive. Here's to hoping the rest of the industry finds itself in this position pretty soon. Maybe we'll actually start seeing some creative games appear on the market again if that happens. Until them, well I'll just stick to Lokisoft games and save my quarters for the ravenous mountain dew machine (of traal.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If a deaf, dumb and blind kid can sure play a mean pinball...why, I think its obvious that the game is dying! :)
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I remember reading in EGM about a year ago that Midway has decided to stop making Pinball machines. They said that left like only one company left in the US that makes 'em.
One of the lesser-talked-about problems in the pinball industry has been the competitiveness and use of patents. Williams had a trademark on the name 'multi-ball' for a while, which is why games like Jurassic Park (a Data East machine) had to use the silly name 'Tri-Ball'. Williams has patents outstanding on pinball features like software switch compensation (if the machine detects that a switch is dead, then it'll still credit the shot if a nearby switch or another on the same ramp is triggered), and use of magnets such as Magna-Save (Black Knight, Pharoah, Black Knight 2000) or the 'magnetic flippers' on Twilight Zone. Perhaps Stern could try to get away with using something like this on one of their games, but Williams is still doing quite well and has lawyers, so don't expect to see those features on another pinball machine for a long time, if ever.
As far as pinball in the future goes, if any of you have a little extra cash, I'd highly recommend getting a pinball machine of your own. Check out rec.games.pinball (it's still one of the best signal/noise ratio Usenet groups out there), or various webpages like Mr. Pinball, who is not only a good source of repair tips and general information, but also has an excellent pinball classifieds section, with over 1000 machines listed presently. Pinball machines aren't as hard to keep going as you'd might think-- many can be bought for $500-1000 (cheaper than a new gaming computer, and it holds its value!), and isn't that hard to maintain for home use-- remember that these machines are built to withstand drunk people in bars beating the crap out of them; home use is an easy life for them.
In short, if you like pinball, get involved-- either by owning a machine or checking out and playing the games out on the street now.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I quote:
You may want to take a look at this, it's has some insights on pinball history and it's of course very well written.
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
Well, once, late at night, I was using Windows 98, and during a particularly long file copy process, I got the Blue Screen of Death, but it said, "TILT"! I think I was desperately in need of sleep at the time...
My favourite pinball machines are Doctor Who (being a big Who fan, myself) and Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (yes, there was a Street Fighter II pinball game). The Dr. Who pinball game is really hard to find, since I live in North America where One Is Supposed To Like Star Trek instead of Who. Hell, I can't even get Who on TV anymore.
The Street Fighter II: Champion Edition pinball was pretty cool. There was even a little bonus stage where you beat the crap out a car (just like in the video game) by hitting the ball against a small model car with a third flipper.
I like pinball games that have loads of ramps, holes, and traps and other cool stuff on the board and look really complicated. The more the better. The digital dot-matrix displays on the newer ones are pretty cool, too. The older pinball machines with seven-segment LED displays and fairly simple boards are quite bland, by comparison.
Now, I don't know how many of you had this... When I was about 6 or 7 years old, in the early '80s, I got a miniature pinball game for my birthday called "Arcade Action Pinball". It was a little pinball game, about 20cm across and 40cm long that took 5D-cell batteries. It had all sorts of cool sounds and action. The board design was pretty simple, just a trigger to launch the ball, some magnetic targets that throbbed when ball hit them, and some plastic channels and ramps and roll-over score digits. But I loved it. I still have it today. I'm not sure if it still works, as I haven't played it in a while. I have never allowed my parents to throw it out, even though they tried many times. It's pretty old (it says "copyright 1979" on the bottom), but it was a lot of fun to play...
I've never been a fan of video pinball games. They completely lack the feel of a real machine, regardless of how precise they get the physics.
One thing I don't like is that because pinball requires such a physical presence, it can't be emulated. I can grab an emulator and the ROMs for Trog, World Heroes 2 or any video game that's been out of the arcade for years, and play it at home on my PC, whenever I want, but with pinball, I'm at the mercy of the arcade. That's why (again) I'm pissed that I can't find Doctor Who pinball anywhere. It's a game I really want to play, but I can't because the arcades won't carry it, and since it can't be emulated, I'm S.O.L. for it.
I'm not in the habit of nudging or bumping the machine a lot, since everytime I do, it goes "TILT". I'm also afraid some uneducated and uncultured arcade owner will think I'm beating up the machine.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this has been asked before, but does anyone know what the ball is made of? The way it rolls around so freely and lightly, it can't be steel. That would be too heavy. Someone once told me it was filled with mercury (and presumably made of...glass?). Can anyone confirm or deny this?
I think one of the best of the really old ones was Fireball. It was one of the first (if not the first) multi-ball pinball machine. It had a spinning wheel in the middle, which would fling the ball in various directions. It was pretty advanced for being fully-mechanical. It was eventually remade as an electronic unit in the 80s.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I really did like the Star Wars Phantom Menace pinball game. The holographic visuals were great, and of course, computer generated (with video capture). Fun to play.
Also in the fun category for me was the South Park pinball game. It was the very first pinball game ever to make me and my friends laugh our ass off. If I ever get into buying pins, I'm going to get this one. (But it'll be a stretch for me. Pins easily cost $1000+ apiece.... I like to stick to classic vids which mostly run $100-1000.)
You gotta love those secondary markets!
Pinball dies every decade. In the late 1970s, when video games really took off, the end was predicted for pinball, but it hung on. In the late 80s it looked bad once again, only to be followed by a wave of some of the greatest pins ever: Black Knight 2000, Terminator 2, Bride of Pinbot, FunHouse, Fish Tales, Addam's Family, etc. Of course this time around things look worse than ever, because Williams is out of the pinball business.
I don't care what ANYONE says if you live in any large city were theres a good Rock N Roll/indie/garage scene those kids LOVE Pinball. I have a friend who writes a 'zine and has a section devoted to PINBALL!(if you interested E-mail me and I can mail a copy for ya) But basically I think as long as we have Rock N Roll Pinball will never die! or maybe i'm just way to hardcore Pinball junkie and bad grammar user.
The early 90's brought us the advent of a new boom in pinball. I remember reading a Smithsonian article on the pinball craze of the early 90's.
Pinball will always exist, but as another poster stated, the new ones are just so damn lame. The downhill started when you could buy extra balls. It shifted from a contest of skill to the contest of the moderately skilled rich kids.
If you want some advice on the best pinball games ever then checkout:
The Getaway II (My favorite of all time)
Adams Family (Close 2nd and still today found in bars and parlors)
Terminator II
Whitewater
Bram Stokers Dracula
Twilight Zone
And lets not forget the classic that turned me onto pinball in the first place Fun House.
Fuck Ajit Pai
My Pinball heritage began before I was born. One fateful day at Cornell University, the man and woman who would later become my parents first met at a pinball machine.
Around the time I was a toddler, my Grandfather owned a vending-repair shop, and he routinely repaired pinball games. Somehow, he acquired one, and it ended up in the basement of our townhouse. I used to spend many hours of my toddler-life downstairs on that machine. I'd need to use a stool, because I was still too short.
The summer camp I went to for five years straight (7th through 11th grades) always had a pinball machine in its collection of three or four arcade games. Not a day would go by that I wouldn't play it once. I had bad days, and good days. I also had days when I would play for about a half-hour on end because I got so many replays. There were a couple times that a crowd of people, from little fourth-graders to people my age, would gather to watch me beat the heck out of that little metal ball. I frequently had to leave a replay for someone else because I had to be somewhere, and was still playing on the same quarters.
I'm sure there are many people out there, for whom pinball is such a part of them. Pinball is in my blood. For me, and the others like me, Pinball will never die. It'll just become, as some others said, a niche market.
For those doubters out there, let me offer this: Pinball is the only truly 3D arcade game. You can have all your fancy 3D-lookalike games, but Pinball is true-to-life 3D. Beat that.
nonono... pinball is in the need of an industry change.... it has to keep up to keep interest. so it's laggin a bit right now....pinball is far from dead... is air hockey dying? pool? table soccor? i think not. one of the most interesting and enjoyable things about these games are that they ask more of you than to sit behind some damn screen. the level of interaction cannot be simulated with computers. even so...populaur trends go in cycles... they will be a fad again soon...thing is will it be a new type of pinball or same old same old? we'll see...
end of line.
Videogames will never replace the magic of pinball. I've been playing since the mid 1970's (my uncle's Captain Fantastic and Fireball tables) .. between my roommate and I, we own 7 tables, ranging from Earthshaker to Revenge from Mars (Pinball2000). I would like to post a few clarifications to thing's I've seen in this thread..
.. find one and give it a shot.
1. Currently, the only pinball company still making games is Stern Pinball (formerly Sega). I have heard of another startup company being formed, but no games have been announced from them. Stern's newest game is Striker Xtreme (soccer theme)
2. WMS was the leading manufacturer of pinballs up until their exit from the market on Oct. 25, 1999. Their newest idea, Pinball 2000 (www.pinball2000.com) was a revolutionary step forward in pinball design, and was selling quite well.. unfortunately not well enough for WMS upper management, who pulled the plug to concentrate solely on gambling devices.
3. Pinball 2000 games are driven by a MediaGX-based PC to drive the graphics and DCS-2 stereo sound. TCP/IP support was included in the last revision of the Revenge from Mars software, with a small webserver and telnet capabilities (for a screenshot of the webpage generated by the server, go to www.frpg.org/p2k.gif).
4. Some people think pinball died in the early 80's when video games became popular, however, pinball enjoyed a resurgence in the early 90's, with The Addams Family setting a modern sales record with over 20,000 units sold. Sales began to drop off after '92 and culminated in the shutdown last year.
5. Finally, I don't care how good computers get, they will never be a good enough substitute for a steel ball, wooden playfield and flippers.
-Keep on flipping!