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Pinball Wizards on the Internet
cecil36 writes "Pinball wizards are now turning to the Internet for their needed support. With WMS Industries (Williams/Bally) no longer in existence,
owners of Williams/Bally pinball games are turning to online communities (such as the news group rec.games.pinball) to find sources for parts to maintain their games. It could use a little more detail, as the article failed to mention Stern Pinball. Lots of useful links contained within if you are looking for those few parts to fix your games." I need to order new
Rubber for my Jack Bot sometime too.
Whatever happened to the proliferance of pinball games for the computer? I used to love EPIC pinball for dos. I'm saddened that I haven't been able to find any good pinball games under X :(
They're probably focusing on Bally / Williams machines because they were the only ones worth playing.
Stern machines just felt cheap and unresponsive compared to the tight, well-made feel of Bally and Williams.
Go play Rocky & Bullwinkle and tell me it had as nice a feel as Addam's Family or Funhouse or whatnot..
-l
(... dying to find an original High Speed
with all the new new games with the pretty graphics, and the big guns to frag all your friends with... it seems that pinball games are still the most entertaining... if you can find them anywhere.
Hope I can turn some people on to pinball via Virtual Pinball and PinMAME. Most of your favorite games are available. It really has come a LONG way.
Cheers!
Visual Pinball Forums>
Tables and more>
There has been awesome work done--the tables and electronics are emulated to the point that they all work together and are as close to the real thing as you can get without stepping into the arcade.
The downside is that this stuff is very much Windows-centric. So that means I have to reboot to get my fix of Circus Voltaire.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
I wish I could find some old school games.. I would LOVE to find a working "Sinistar" game.
:P
I used to feed that game so many quarters.. at least it was fun, unlike Gauntlet that just ripped me off. I was only 9yrs old and it took me until level 96 before I realized that it was never going to end until it had driven me into the poorhouse...
Stupid game.
Don't fret, pin owners. A cottage industry of scum and villany (actually people who used to be owner/operators) yet again springs up on eBay for all of your overinflated needs.Need chrome legs for your 1993 Indiana Jones (like I do?) That'll be $200, please.Fortunately the games I bought were as a result of eBay transactions, but not directly through eBay itself. Words of advice, though, for those who want to go to rec.games.pinball:1. Never mention Popeye.2. Avoid John Shields. He'll break every machine's flippers without even touching them.3. Don't admit you own a shopped BK2K or TZ. You'll get hounded with lines of people wanting to play it.
A winner is you!
I can understand how the popularity of pinball dropped in favor of video arcade games, but it is unfortunate that the manufacturers are no longer producing spare parts. I guess there just isn't any profit in it.
Here's an idea: buy a couple old pinball machines that no longer work and strip them for the parts. Go online to http://www.xmission.com/daina/pinball.html, which (as the article mentioned) has "334 parts for sale ads, but more than 1200 parts wanted ads", and sell replacement parts. If you can get the broken pinball machines cheap, you can make some money and make a lot of people happy. I might do this myself if I had the money--but unfortunately, I spent everything on university tuition.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Over 30 years in fact. Back in the dark ages, I was addicted to the mechnaical pinball machines. A virtual "pinball" machine will never cut it as far as I am concerned. Doesn't have the feel of a real pinball machine. I do hope lots of folks keep the real thing alive.
Yeah, TNT Amusements near Phila, PA is the same way. They actually rent out their showroom for birthday parties and stuff, too.
For a while I was trading in my cabinet games for others every couple of years. I'd always bring a few friends and spend a couple hours in their showroom playing "trying to decide" what I wanted (though it was already decided days before we got there). Heheheh.
The first time I went, nobody was in the showroom and all the machines were powered down. The whole room's power was controlled by about 8 wall switches in a row. Using both forearms, the owner flipped them all on at once. The sound of all those classic machines firing up simultaneously damn near brought tears of nostalgia to my eyes.
~Philly
Quoted directly from the article on Yahoo (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020120/wr/colum n_livewire_dc.html) :
"Only one firm, privately-held Stern Pinball (http://www.sternpinball.com/), is still making pinball machines. The Melrose Park, Ill.-based company was spun off from gaming giant Sega Enterprises Ltd (7964.T) when the company left the pinball industry in the late 1990s."
so, the article DOES mention Stern pinball... Though whether it was edited later to add the fact or not, I don't know...
...this is getting out of hand
For all your pinball needs.
MS note: All other pinball is in violation of Microsoft pinball IP.
:)
I can recommend Steve Young's The Pinball Resource very much.
They bought a bunch of spare inventory when Gottlieb went out of business, although you can get parts, manuals, and kits for all other kinds of brands too.
I was surprised and relieved they had in stock a miniature cue stick for the Cue Ball Wizard pinball my wife got me for Christmas last year. I didn't figure I would be able to find a specialized part like that easily. Cheap, too.
Anyway, highly recommended. Good prices, quick turnaround and easy to deal with.
TILT!
"Using both forearms, the owner flipped them all on at once. The sound of all those classic machines firing up simultaneously damn near brought tears of nostalgia to my eyes"
;)
If you did that in California, it would bring tears of "Oh crap, another rolling blackout!" to the eyes of millions.
There was a pinball construction set, IIRC, for the C-64, maybe someone's done like for the PC? With the speed of processors this should be a piece of cake, these days.
Now I know I missed something, what happened to Bally/Williams? Bust, buyout, or restructure?
Last, very OT, but if you want any of those cool shrunken coins, check out eBay some are up, including the new Tenn. quarter. Bet it doesn't work in the pinball machine, now.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I remember using this program and making my own pinballs on Apple II computers. I remember it lets you make a binary file to give to others. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The guys who made Epic Pinball (Digital Extremes) released a new Pinball game a few months ago, built with the Unreal Engine. Its pretty cool and look great as well. You can find more about it here: http://www.pinball.ea.com/
There's also a free demo available.
Digital Extremes is now working on Unreal Championship and Unreal Tournament 2.
You can't get your Jack Bot pregnant, so there's no need to order a new Rubber.
WTF get over it look busch said (i am not who usually listens to him) to go back to our regular lives and we are so go fuck a dog
You know you've had too much beer when it starts telling you to get back to your regular life.
I remember once seeing a program on television about modern pinball machines. I was surprised that they actually used a 486 in the pinball machine, with a special "video" card to display stuff on the LED grid display.
Why in the world is a whole 486 needed? I don't see why they couldn't implement the thing using a few cheap 8 bit processors. Oh well.
I need to order new Rubber for my Jack Bot sometime too.
We don't wanna know that you wore out the "rubber" on your "Jack Bot". That's just plain sick.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
www.nycpinball.org
Or simply email me.
I actually maintain a pinball machine at a local bar to ensure that our company has decent pinball at local bar-- a rarity. The machine is Creature from the Black Lagoon @ The Village Idiot, 9th Ave and 14th Street in Manhattan.
Our company-- CodeFab-- has 7 pinball machines in house. Four currently working, three in restoration mode.
Among the employees we have a bunch more. Personally, I own Dr. Who, Addams Family Gold, Gilligan's Island, Pinbot, and Game Show. A sys admin has a Twighlight Zone and Dracula [awesome game, that].
Just got done rebuilding all four flippers on the Addams Family at the office. Including replacing all bridge rectifiers on the power driver board.
Pinball is an excellent way to take a break from work. It is a digital system-- all machines after 1990 are computer controlled (including the flippers)-- but behaves in a very analog / real world fashion.
BTW: The new Stern machine-- Monopoly-- was *designed* by the same guy who built Addams Family, Monster Bash, and numerous other Williams/Bally classics. Go play it. It is a worthy machine.
Again, anyone in NYC-- check out www.nycpinball.org, sign up on the very low volume mailing list, and join us for the next PinBall BarCrawl!!
b.bum
My wife's mother owns an old machine called "Wild Side", which dates from the early-70s (can't remember who made it, or exact date) - it still plays, but it needs some work (sometimes the ball gets stuck, etc). I am sure it uses ladder logic or some such for control.
After playing it a few times, I started thinking "pinball machines are simple in scope - most of it is a state machine, an inclined plane, and a ball - how hard would it be to build one?"
After thinking a little bit longer, I realized that it wouldn't exactly be easy to build one, and a little research showed it wouldn't be cheap to custom build one, and that it would take a lot of time, but that it was possible.
So, if you can't find or afford your fix, maybe it is time for the pinball hackers to start building the tables themselves. For a start, here is a site I found, but it hasn't been updated in a long while:
Pin-It-Yourself Project
I know there are people out there who have built their own boards and systems - these people should take this site, and expand on it - create a true "build-it-yourself" site and FAQ for pinball table building.
Me? I don't have the room, money, or time to build a pinball table on my own. My restoration time will, someday, go into the refurbishment of a TOMY Atomic Pinball - arguably the smallest "true" pinball table ever made (ok, there may be another, but hey, it's TOMY!)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I wonder if there is any value in the knowledge stored in the brains of us soon-to-be-geezers pinball wizards. Not only did I mis-spend my youth playing pinball machines, I worked my way through school repairing them. 200 violently moving parts + abusive players = job security.
I started working on them in 1978 when stuff like Pong and Space Invaders was high-tech. The control circuitry has changed radically over the years - from relays, solenoid steppers, and cams - to sophisticated multi-processor systems. However, the playfields are still filled with precision mechanisms that get bashed with little cannon balls.
Every machine used to come with a little kit of spare parts you could expect to break in the first week, along with a COMPLETE SET OF SCHEMATICS! Really! They were right there in the bottom of the machine. A complete 30+ page large format book of prints with long fold outs for the complex stuff. No "black box" block diagrams - every wire and resistor was shown. They expected you to repair to the component level - not just swap modules. I am getting misty eyed just thinking about how I had all the info I needed to do the job. In these "modern" times, you don't even get a clear diagram of how to hook up the power LED in your new computer case.
In my opinion, the only people truly qualified to repair pinball machines are the addicts themselves. We used to stay late after work the day a new model was delivered. We would put the first one together (these things used to come in lots of pieces and were not trivial to assemble) on our own time. 3 or 4 of us would then play the machine until dawn - stopping now and then to make tweaks. By morning we were completely fried, but had a supreme knowledge of how to tune the machine for playability. More importantly, we could kick ass in the pinball tournaments the bars would sponsor. The bucks we won would more than pay us back for the sleep we lost. Some of the customers would bitch about "professionals" playing in the tournaments, but the bar owners liked the idea of having somebody around who could unlock the machine and unstick a ball or unjam a coin slot.
smoke-filled VFW halls
quart bottles of playfield wax
a giant canvas bank bag full of rubbers
the smell of stale beer and burnt solenoid drivers
soldering iron burns
you: 685,370 everybody else: under 85,000
It was a simpler time...when carpal tunnel syndrome was just "pinball wrist"
"Reality is independent from perception." - RDH
All they make anymore is slot machines. See www.wmsgaming.com
I have built a couple of them.
It is very simple if you just get yourself a keyboard encoder to hook up the joysticks (I recommend the I-Pac).
The best compromise for a display is to get a VGA arcade monitor. As standard PC monitors look too good, while standard res arcade monitors are hard to deal with. I got mine for $100 on Ebay.
Your cabinet is as good as free. Wait for the next amusement industry auction to come to town (www.superauctions.com) and then buy a dead machine ($25 to $50 will be enough). The take that machine home, and sell all the inside parts on ebay. You will recoup your purchase price nearly every time.
I know this is a little offtopic, but its about as on topic as it will ever be. ;)
A friend of my father once had a pinball machine that he had built from a kit - sometime in the 70's or 80's I think. From what I've been told, a company used to sell these kits (along with kits for other various electronic things) complete, and you would assemble them. I'd love to have my own pinball machine, and I'd really like to build it, but I have been unable to find such a kit.
Can anyone out there tell me if such a thing exists, or verify that the company who created these kits is long gone? Thanks for any leads you can give.
_sig_ is away
So arcades are turning more and more floor space over to those stupid games of chance. They are also trying to move to bigger and bigger video games to try to get people more involved in the game (sitting inside, bad VR implementations, etc...)
Arcades should go back to pinball. Pinball is something one can't enjoy in the home without great expense. Computer pinball simulators don't quite cut it (although I gotta admit the vpin implementation of black night 2000 comes damn close). An arcade must offer the customer something they can't get at home. Pinball fits the bill.
All they need to do is do some maintenance on the things. The arcade I used to go to in Christiana Mall in Delaware started out with an entire two walls of pinball games, about 40. Now it's mostly 10 year olds playing "flip to win" and a few fighting games that one can play at home....
Then maybe when Stern starts selling a lot of games, they'll hire better designers and/or some better competition will start back up...
I love pinball, always have. Been playing it since the 70's when arcades were dimly lit, grungy holes in the side hallways of malls [or the basements of bowling alleys] where the walls were covered in carpet to cut the noise.
The silverball has always won my heart, because - if your good . you can play for hours. Robotron, great game - but I remember overhearing an operator at my local arcade say 'Yeah .. crank that difficulty up .. all the way' on saturday. At least with a pinball machine .. you saw what you were up against.
As for their demise .. well .. Cleaning and maintaing them really is a labor of love. As more and more arcades became huge chains, with corporate # employees, they cared less and less about the machines. The individual arcade operator had to buy their own machines, so they took care of their investment. The kids making $4.25 an hour in the 80's couldn't be bothered.
And lets face it .. I own five machines (kept in my basement) all mid 90's games .. and they are a PAIN to keep clean sometimes. My Attack from mars EATS bulbs.
But two real kickers helped put the nail in the coffin I think :
Street Fighter II, and WMS' reaction to it.
Street Fighter II was a phenenomon (With mortal Kombat on its heels). A $3000 arcade machine (about the same price as a new Pin at the time) was making $2000-$3000 in coins a week, EASY ! Never before had a machine been able to pay for *ITSELF* in a single week of operation .. when you included in the costs of 2 new joysticks a month (and 2-3 buttons) your still WELL into the black.
This put a lot of $$ in a lot of operator's pockets .. whom .. I must say .. probally didn't deserve it. Business wise i mean. If 'bill's arcade' is run by Bill , a guy who pays for his girlfriend's car out of the till - then wonders why he cant pay rent - we'll its no surprise when he goes out of business. Now all the Bill's of the world have 1/2 a dozen street fighter machines that are giving them phat cash every week- and can hold on. Do they buy different machines, and revitalize their arcades ? no .. they buy more Street Fighter Machines .. after all THATS their cash cow. [forgetting the pinball machines that kept them afloat before SF II came along]
[this same phenonomin happened with Comic Book shops in the early 90's with Magic Cards - Many hole in the wall shops that should have died - we're given free 'fad' $$ .. and did stupid things .. like 50% discounts, or whatever to try to keep up with all the idiots making a quick buck out of their garage because the $$ was good. The closest example today would be the folks on E-Bay that were selling X-Box Boxes, easy $$ .. once one managed it .. about 60 other people jumped on the bandwagon in about 10 mins.]
WMS' reaction to this was 'we gotta make pinball machines *MORE* fun !! Twilight zone, the ungodly beast that it is .. has MORE stuff stuck on it (breakable stuff mind you!) than almost any other pin. They made GREAT $$ for operators, while they worked. Thats the key phraze, while they worked. As Bally,Williams and Bally/Williams put more and more 'gimmics' on the machines (talking heads anyone?) they broke easier and easier.
Of course that cost more .. so pin prices went up, thats one of the REAL kickers, to compeate with cheap video games .. pins started to cost more. Mid - late 90's .. running out of cash .. they got back to the basics. Compeating on price
of machine rather than interest level. and *POW* they started making $$ again. Attack from Mars was HUGELY successful [just TRY to find one with a decent playfield .. i was damn lucky with mine.] and it was a stripped (narrow) playfield.
The end all though .. was a business decision. Do you manufature 'fruit' machines ? [for casinos] that you can sell for $12-15k a pop by the hundred ? or pinball machines where the manufacture count is 1,000-2,000 machines that sell for under $4k each ?.
At least we still got Stern pinball .. trying .. Hopefully Monopoly will dig them out of the hole their last few games put them in. [it plays more like a bally/williams machine than any of their previous tries.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Ah... well... past times and memories....