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The Continuing Death of Pinball
angkor writes: "To me, the first video games were something like electonic versions of pinball machines, so it's sad to hear that pinball is apparently dying off." I'd really like to see a pinball game based on Zoolander, but I doubt even that would be enough to reverse the current trend.
I grew up on pinball. I play them when ever i see them, when they are in working order...
for me, the graphics just don't cut it anymore
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
One wonders what the attraction of such a game is. Maybe for those with a dislike of Ben Stiller may enjoy bouncing him around. I think that pinball is best enjoyed with a big table that you can hit rather than just a window you control by damaging the shift keys on your keyboard. Maybe it is best that it stays in the arcade. The digital version has been living on borrowed time for too long anyway. Its time has come? Hurrah!
More to the point, however, I think the problem is the loss of ARCADES. Dave and Busters just doesn't do it as far as economy goes (very expensive) and I don't know how many of those charming, cigarette burn covered arcades are still around.
Only one in San Francisco/Oakland that I know of... God I miss the silver bowl. Where the hell are they going to put pinball machines?
And bring back arcade games at 7-11 - that's where I learned how to play!
i don't think a pinball game based on zoolander would help matters much.
sure pinball may be in a bit of a down turn at the moment, but every arcade centre has to have at least one pinball machine, any that didnt would be severely unrounded, they will be elimating those clowns that you shoot rubber balls at their teeth before they take pinball away,.. ooh the local arcade doesnt have one of those tooth shooting clowns anymore........
Oh man!!! First FreeBSD, Linux on the Desktop and now this?! I don't know how much more of this I can take!!
Please someone, tell me this isn't so!!
I have to say, on the cool toy scale, pinball ranks way up there, and it's pretty cheap to get your own machine (well, at least it was a few years ago).
Arcade auctions happen all over the country, and you can still pick up machines at good prices if you know what you're doing.
Got my machine in storage right now. Can't wait to set it up again.
The number of pinball machines nationwide dropped from 1 million in 1989 to 360,000 in 1999 and revenue slid from $2.4 billion to $1.08 billion in the same period, according to the trade publication Vending Times.
No one wants to buy them, and Bally/Midway Doesn't want to make them.
However If all Pin's were as good as Medieval Madness, I would'nt stop playing pinball... EVER!
Van's Arcade in Puyallup has a few good pins, to get directions and for a virtual tour go to.
www.aeigames.com
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Chess is many hundreds (thousands?) years old, and people still play it today in large numbers. If enough people find a game fun/exciting/interesting, it will continue. If pinball can keep up, and can keep people interested, great, pinball forever. If not, so long!
The current computer games in bars are quite stupid. I guess it's more economic to place a small console with some (stupid) games on, than those huge pinball machines.
Luckily we still have table football (at least in Belgium). Do you have it in the states too? (I will try to explain the game if you're interested).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Pinball is not dying off. What I see is that kids think that pinball is too easy and not challenging enough. That really isn't the case, I see that people want to do the cool thing and play those hefty 3d packed video games. I've also realized that a lot of arcades don't keep pinball machines since there is no competition with other players and games can last a long time. If pinball is dying, it is at the hands of the arcade owners, not the customers.
Arcades in general are basically dead.
Games like DDR breathe some life into them, but it's nothing like the Midway/Atari/Namco/Sega days of long ago.
Games are too expensive, they all seem to be 'imitations', and there's no arcade culture anymore.
Why there aren't/never were coin-op iD games.....arcade play against others all over the world.....
now bobby bouchet... it don't want you playin' any of that there foozball, do you hear me? yes momma /.
mechanicos ergo cogito
It's sad really. I own a pool hall in a small town and pinball still registers decent coin drop (I have two machines). The problem is that the industry went a little crazy trying to catch up to video in the early 80s and the designs got too complicated and therefore, more expensive to purchase and maintain. Operators started abandoning them in droves near the end of the last century. When companies such as WMS (Bally/Williams/Atari Games), who owned two of the major pinball manufacturers, bailed out in early 2000, the death knell was sounded for the industry. Stern Pinball is still alive, having bought out Sega's pinball division (originally Data East Pinball), but most of their sales are to overseas distributors. The pins they sell in the US are basically writeoffs. It's a shame really. I think if the industry stuck to innovative, less complicated designs, it might still be thriving, rather than barely surviving.
Click here
It should be re-captioned, "These dorks are playing pinball. They must not know they are in college and should be drinking beer, and having sex with girls!"
It's sad really. I own a pool hall in a small town and pinball still registers decent coin drop (I have two machines). The problem is that the industry went a little crazy trying to catch up to video in the early 80s and the designs got too complicated and therefore, more expensive to purchase and maintain. Operators started abandoning them in droves near the end of the last century. When companies such as WMS (Bally/Williams/Atari Games), who owned two of the major pinball manufacturers, bailed out in early 2000, the death knell was sounded for the industry. Stern Pinball is still alive, having bought out Sega's pinball division (originally Data East Pinball), but most of their sales are to overseas distributors. The pins they sell in the US are basically writeoffs. It's a shame really. I think if the industry stuck to innovative, less complicated designs, it might still be thriving, rather than barely surviving.
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
The Florida Pinball Game!
Election Scoring! Bounce your supporters higher for greater scores! Change the rules! Recount! Recount! Tilt!
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First off, it seems like the last US manufacture stopped production about 3 years ago and there was a story here on /. about it. (I'll let someone else dig up the link).
Secondly, pinball machines couldn't keep evoloution-wise. They are too maintainence intensive compared to video arcade games (which break often enough as it is).
To the point: here at the office where I work, there are about 16 arcade machines: 15-video and one pinball. The video games include Lunar Lander, Space Duel, Assault, Mortal Combat 3, pac man, sinistar, soul edge, virtua fighter 2, xybots, crystal castles, a D&D game, Blitz 99, sinistar, and star wars.
The lone pinball machine is Star Trek: The Next Generation.
When it is working, The Star Trek Pinball machine is the most popular arcade machine we have (followed by Mortal Combat 3).
And that is the problem: It's been in a state of disrepair for more than 6 months.
Over the last couple years we have had it repaired 3 times. I remember watching the first repair sessions and was astounded by the large numbe of individual mechanical repairs that had to be made: Bumpers, solnoids, lights, track alignments, and whatnot. Not to mention the table surface then had to be waxed - which changed the play characteristics (until it was played a lot and worn in again).
And then there was a problem with the plastic ball storage holder underneath the deck. The balls had worn a small groove in it, which caused problems for the ball sensor to report no balls available when there really were. Since that custom molded piece wasn't available from the manufacturer anymore, the repair guy took it and filled in the groove with some substance several time - sanding between coats, to bring it back to new condition.
So my conclusion is that modern pinball machines have too many custom parts, and are too physically demanding on them to have the uptime to compete with video games. And not to mention the knowledgable repairmen are hard to find.
And that was in a private setting. In an arcade setting, the operator can not afford for the machine to be down half the time, producing no revenue, and requiring him to spend $$$ on repair guys. The economics just don't work today.
-Mp
Netcraft has now confirmed: Pinball is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Pinball community when recently IDC confirmed that Pinball accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all arcade machines. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Pinball has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Pinball is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last the recent Sys Admin comprehensive gaming test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Pinball's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Pinball faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Pinball because Pinball is dying. Things are looking very bad for Pinball. As many of us are already aware, Pinball continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Non-computer Pinball is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core players.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Computerized Pinball leaders state that there are 7000 users of Pinball. How many users of non-electronic Pinball are there? Let's see. The number of computerized Pinball users versus Pinball posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 computerized Pinball users. Pinball posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of non-computerized Pinball posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of non-computerized Pinball. A recent article put computerized Pinball at about 80 percent of the Pinball market. Therefore there are 7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Pinball users. This is consistent with the number of Pinball Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Midway, abysmal sales and so on, non-computerized Pinball went out of business and was taken over by Sega, who sells another troubled arcade machine. Now Sega is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Pinball has steadily declined in market share. Pinball is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Pinball is to survive at all it will be among arcade hobbyist dabblers. Pinball continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Pinball is dead.
(This has been a test of the moderation system. We now return to your regular geek whining, already in progress.)
Pinball machines are expensive and time consuming to maintain, with all the moving parts to be cleaned and replaced - not so for video games. Arcades have been trying to wean us from pinball, and seem to have pretty much succeeded.
The boss was constantly fixing the pinball machines. How many Jurassic Park pinball machines have you seen where the T-Rex actually eats the pinball successfully? Not to mention mushy flippers. Too many moving (expensive) parts. I doubt they'll ever stop making them though, because they are always popular (every time I'm in the arcade someone is playing pinball). Redemption games are what makes the money. Kids love to get tickets and pick prizes. They just eat that stuff up.
A video/arcade game auction is a good place to get pinball machines. A buddy of mine lucked out and got a Simpsons one for a few hundred dollars. It's godly.
sig
1000 points for a bumper?? What the heck is that about?
The best pinball machines have only 4-digit scoring systems.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
they should make holographic pinball, they have the technology, transparant sheets of organic light emiting diodes,.. would be the first real use for holographic arcade game, would fix the repairage problem of real pinball and let them do cool ultra impossible stuff that'd be too fragile and all that, not to mention you could load in any table you wanted.
Too late in life I rediscovered pinball.
:^)
As a kid, I used to accompany my granddad or my mom to the store to get groceries and occasionally I'd get a dime (that's right, 10) to play a pinball game that sat near the front, near the magazine rack. That machine had a mechanical scoreboard, unlike the LED boards I saw later in life. I recall being absorbed by the lights and the idea of trying to keep the ball in play with those little bumpers (hey, I was easily amused). After a while my mom stopped going to that store and pinball just about left my life for good.
Flash forward 20+ years and a fellow grad student, Joerg, started going to get pizza at a little college-quality Italian place over by the campus. The great arcade next door had closed, mostly, but some of the games had stayed to soak up quarters from the pizza eating patrons. As it turns out Joerg was a real fan of pinball and he enticed me into playing and I got hooked. It was really cool to finally be a bit coordinated and to have the cash to spend to actually get to know a machine. In this case, it was The Addams Family, with little audio clips from the movie. ("The Mamushka!" was my favorite.) Although I never measured up to Joerg's mastery of the game, I found truly irresistible the tactile feedback and use of real, honest-to-physics english that goes into working the table. Sure, feeling the kickback of the gun in Time Crisis is cool, but not like pinball.
Now, that Italian place is gone and the games are gone for good. While I still plan to get a Robotron machine first, I'm thinking of adding a pinball machine to my computer and work room when we finally get time to get a real home. They really are awesome.
If you haven't ever played a pinball machine and you get the chance, just remember that those quarters are pretty well-spent, even if just to say that you played pinball for a bit. I bet you'll find you enjoy it, to boot.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Personally, I think one of the big reasons pinball has become unpopular is because the tables are so obviously rigged. I used to play a lot when I was just a tyke, but modern pinball tables have become the equivalent of slot machines - constructed to extract as much money as possible in the shortest period of time. Basically, they suck.
I still enjoy playing on older tables when I have the chance, and I nearly always give any new table I stumble upon at least 3 games worth of opportunity, but it's very rare I stumble across a new table I consider to be a fair challenge.
I love pinball machines. They're great. However, the arcades I visit either end up ripping you off or the machines are in such a state of disrepair that well, it's not fun to play.
The main reason is probably because arcade machines, tend to be generic. Short of the special-equipment games like those from Konami (DDR, etc), all an arcade operator needed was to replace the CPU module, or even just the ROM cartridge. Whereas for pinballs, they have to ship the entire thing around (Pinball2000 attempted to resolve this, but ultimately, died because Williams decided to get out of the pinball business). So instead of a relatively simple job on putting in a new game up, you have to ship this $5000 pinball machine around (shipping $200 typically), rather than order a $100-$500 ROM cartridge (shipping trivial), or a hard drive...
Now, there are recreations of various pins around - thanks to Visual Pinball. Combine it with VPinMAME, and you can play some damn close reproductions to the real machines. (Hint to those interested: avoid the forums, or just read them. There's so much pettiness and egotism and selfishness on them that it's not worth it. Just leech. Your mind will thank you. I was on the forums back when WPCMAME was novel and everyone "played" them, and 2002 was nothing but a disaster for pinball emulation. Plus, you gotta register, and if you want to post, you better not register using a hotmail account - they want *real* email addresses).
However, check out ShivaSite (www.shivasite.com) for some of the best pin info ont he web!
There's only one company (Stern Pinball, Inc.) making pinball machines today.
You could always build one yourself.
Steven King, gone too. I just heard it on NPR. A real shame. He will be truly missed.
Stern is an interesting company by the way. Stern stopped producing pinball machines in the early eighties, whereupon the company sat dormant for almost two decades. Only recently did they resume pinball production once again. A pinball phoenix if you will.
Here is a great links for anyone interested in pinball:
The Internet Pinball Database.
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
really? She told me his ass tastes just like their father's cock. Go figure
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Who needs pinball when ...
you've got MANBALL!!!!!
Whatever you liar. I just checked NPR (audio and website) no mention of it.
... that really, really, really, incredibly good-looking people like me made you feel so bad about yourself.
Just for that, I won't be reading *your* eugoogolie!
timothy
p.s. Errr, just kidding. I just really liked that movie; it deserves repeated viewings. If you didn't like it once, by the 5th or 6th time you might have changed your mind. Even if you hated it it has many great soundbites to pull for a pinball game.
p.p.s. Even better, as my brother suggested, might be a video game, complete with walk-off, gasoline fight, cemetery shoot out, etc.
p.p.p.s. "what is this, a post for *ants!?*"
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Production will just move to hand assembly. I think that anyone with some skill and love for the machines could make a living building these things. You'd need a machine shop, and some wood tools too, but suppose you built 10 of these every year, and sold them for 5 grand. It would be a pretty nice living.
Of course, 10 grand isn't the going rate right now, but eventually the prices for a new custom built machine might get that high.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
What is pinball?
;-)
just testing
THE WHO LYRICS
"Pinball Wizard"
[Local Lad:]
Ever since I was a young boy,
I've played the silver ball.
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all.
But I ain't seen nothing like him
In any amusement hall...
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pin ball !
He stands like a statue,
Becomes part of the machine.
Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean.
He plays by intuition,
The digit counters fall.
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pin ball !
He's a pin ball wizard
There has got to be a twist.
A pin ball wizard,
S'got such a supple wrist.
'How do you think he does it? I don't know!
What makes him so good?'
He ain't got no distractions
Can't hear those buzzers and bells,
Don't see lights a flashin'
Plays by sense of smell.
Always has a replay,
'n' never tilts at all...
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pin ball.
I thought I was
The Bally table king.
But I just handed
My pin ball crown to him.
Even my usual table
He can beat my best.
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest.
He's got crazy flipper fingers
Never seen him fall...
That deaf dumb and blind kind
Sure plays a mean pin ball.!!!!!
Too bad pinball sux ass.
was "Theatre of Magic" which you can still buy on ebay. (wish I had 3 grand laying around.
Second might be the twilight zone.
Just my thoughts.
tcd004
Have you seen them? Huge arcades for adults (with alcohol!) Lots of fun/new multi-player games and such. Easy to blow through money though, but I suppose that's always been true. ESPN Sportszone is similar, but more sports-game oriented.
Have you seen a recent pinball machine??? They are terrible. The middle of the table is barren. No bumpers... no drop down targets... I think these were the high maintenance items, so to save money the manufacturers got rid of them. For me, however, bumpers and drop down targets are the best part of pinball. Anyone have an "Eight Ball Deluxe" or "dark Knight" in mint condition???
That may be true and I think the best pinball games ever were Terminator 2 and The Adams Family!
If I was to save a 'Pinny' (.au slang maybe) I would certainly choose one of those two. =)
Pixels keep you awake!
I think it's dying not because the regular games are getting so advanced, but because the regular games are getting more and more like better versions of pinball, for example if you go to dave and buster's in atlanta or philly you can simulate riding a canoe, or a horse, motorbike, mac truck etc.... the games are interactive, before you had video games and pinball, or skeeball....Now even 10 percent of the video games are just as interactive as pinball
just my 25 cents, sorry bad joke hehe
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
One thing I haven't heard much of is that fact that while kids these days can hone their videogame skills at home (often with versions as good as those in the arcades), there's no easy way to do that with pinball games, save actually playing them in the arcade.
Now, at the arcade, what are you going to put your quarters down on. when you're playing your freinds... one that you know pretty well, and are cokpetitive at, or one you don't really know?
whenever a pinball machine is spoiled (or outdated), it is usually scrapped? by outdated I mean that nobody bothers to play it anymore, thus making it economically unfeasible for the operator to keep it plugged.
Compared to a video game machine, whenever there's a new game released, the operator could buy the game's ROM chip (or whatever kind of media the boxes use) and just plug it in any of the unpopular/older machines.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Lol. I used to work for said arcade. I hade to think of creative reasons to "clean" the machine so I could play it.
Pin's like that are worth buying for home use.
"They Stole our Shrubbery! YEah woo yeahhh"
DW
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
OH YEAH! ;)
Set up a pinball machine with the theme of Slackware GNU/Linux.
Oh wait, you don't want something that's dying...
But I never play it, because of the absurd costs of games in play centers/whatever you might call it in Brazil. I'd pay a quarter for a go at Pinball, but any game will cost you at least a buck.
It's also worth noting that almost everybody calls these places (GameWorks-like places with lots of arcades) fliperamas here.
If pinball is dying, I am proud to be one of the last few who play pinball regularly. At the student union here we have a south park pinball machine that on average eats about $3.00 of my money a week (at $0.50 a game, which these days usually includes a replay or two).
I got suckered into this about a year ago and never looked back, plus it is a lot less embarassing than the DDR machine which I have given up on for the moment.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Stearn pinball still makes them .. and while some of their more recent ones were not that good .. .. but prone to breakage.
.. most machines are neglected by their operators .. so they have to dum them down to the operators only have to take 5 seconds to clean them.
.. and they make good money.
.. or whatever game.
.. and would rather spend 10 mins emptying quarters from a bucket under streetfighter alpha-omeaga-zeta-jones than to spend 10 mins cleaning a pinball machine off.
.. where a broken one makes crap .. its kinda like a well kempt retail store makes good money .. and a dirty one makes cockroaches.
0 00 8 is my basement pinball santuary.
monopoly was very good. Austin powers was ok
of course
Where pinball is dying is a crock really, i know several operators who still operate pinball machines on location
they also dont cost as much as a silent scope
the real issue is operators are lazy
A well kempt pinball will make a lot of $$
http://www.remsbox.com/index.php?content=000000
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
So sorry that you missed it.
I'd really like to see a pinball game based on Zoolander
I would pay good money to play such a game, but only if it was really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking.
Is your browser retarded?
The story is rife with biassed comments like this...
If this article is a true reflection of the industry's opinion then the operators are ignoring a major cause of the decline in pinball machines, and it's not a decline in popularity.
My local arcade has 4 pinballs and 3 of those have been broken and unplayable for weeks. I went to play the last remaining pinball machine last night and it died too: looks like the ball eject has finally failed. Wherever I go it's the same story. The pinball machines are typically broken and unusable. No wonder the arcade managers aren't showing any interest in buying them.
But it's not a lack of popularity from the consumers. Where there is working pinball you'll find hordes of people crowded around it with dozens of dollar coins lined up along the table top. And it's not just 20-somethings. Younger kids and teenagers are just as interested. It's difficult to find a working pinball, and it's even harder to fight your way through the crowd to play on one.
But the article only focusses on the elitist "People don't understand pinball" or the defeatist "Nobody wants to play pinball anymore". I think the article should have at least mentioned "Arcade managers don't like pinball because they're always broken".
I know the real reason pinball is dying
All the main manufacturers (Williams, Konami and more) found something else.
Poker machines (or slot machines in U.S.).
Look at the brand names in the arcade. Then go to the casino. Same brands.
Now count the coins/notes that get pumped in.
Do the math.
It's not hard to see why they're focussing their attentions elsewhere....
Johnny Carson: it's what you drink to recover from a bad election. I said 'bad election'.
*ba-dum crash!*
seriously, get a spell-checker
I found the article to be slightly off. As I remember it, when Space Invaders came on the scene half of the pinball machines went silent from lack of use. When BATTLEZONE came into the arcade you lost another half then the owners started pulling out the dead weight. They brought in more videogames to satisfy the need. It was obvious with the huge lines for anything video..
The problem with many new pinball machines is flawed design. We've got a Goldeneye pinball in our basement and there are a number of spots where balls constantly get stuck or where pieces break. We've been wires countless times just to keep the top ramp operating properly.
But for the most part, our pinball machines don't require too much attention. Not nearly as much as the Toy Crane we have (which once had wire problems almost weekly). Much of the pinball work is having a ball stuck or a wire break (coin mechanism problems are the norm in all of our machines, mostly because kids decide to jam dimes and pennies in the things to see if it works), we occasionally have a flipper coil go bad or a bumper break. Those problems aren't many. Granted, this could be because people aren't playing them frequently (everyone seems to gravitate towards the 3 Ms. Pacman machines we've got set up on Turbo speed), but maybe it's because many of our pinballs are older and more simple. We've got a Spiderman machine that sits in our basement and works fine except that the soundcard died a few years ago.
It's a shame that most arcades are dying and that it's nearly impossible to keep updated machines in an area where people will play them enough for you to pay for the machines. With pinballs costing over $3000 a piece nowadays, it's more wise to buy a number of older machines and put them in laundramats, pizza places, and convinience stores. The older games (Ms. Pacman, Police Trainer, Galaga) amazingly outperform our newer ones (Mortal Kombat 2, Tekken 3, South Park Pinball) regularly... Perhaps because many people see them as a novelty. But no machines make as much as the Toy Cranes and a prize vendor we have called "Sports Arena" that my dad sticks Zippo lighters and Laser Pens in. Those make fortunes.
Just my two cents.
Charlie
ps. Best Pinball of all time? I loved the Guns N' Roses Machine... perfect flipper balance (you weren't always using one of them like in Goldeneye and others).
You all obviously haven't played pinball of the dead for GBA... neither have I, but I hear its good.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With only one manufacturer of pinball tables remaining, pinball is really in a sad state. I've always been a fan of pinball, but in the last year, I doubt that I have gone more than a week without playing a game of pinball. Fortunately, a local college arcade (Playland, downtown State College, Pa) has 9 tables, and the local arcade vendor usually keeps a few on campus in commons areas. I'm darn sure I've spent nearly $1000 in the last year playing, and my skill has been rapidly improving (I have many of the top score / Grand Master scores on the tables). I just can't get enough. I'm fortunate to have good arcade ops who keep the tables in good working condition, but many do not have such luck. I am desperately awaiting the release of Roller Coaster Tycoon, Stern's next table. They are still using the WhiteStar pinball MPU, which by now is quite dated.
I plan to soon start a Pinball enthusiast's club here at Penn State, but rather than being a club solely for playing / competing, I would much rather build a table. To save costs, many off-the-shelf compents will be used, and the game would be controlled by a PC (most likely running linux or the such) with custom interface hardware. The backglass could feature a full-color LCD for score and animations, and all playfield lamps would be LEDs. I think this would be a fun project, and anyone who is interested should email me. Of course, it would help the most if you lived near Penn State. I need not only computer/hardware people other than myself, but also artists, musicians, and people good with woodworking and metal crafts. Any suggestions?
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
And rather relevant, considering I was just out at the local bar/grille mastering a slightly broken "Attack from Mars". I actually had the 10 other people in the bar around the machine by the time I was done racking up free games, and handed the machine off to someone else.
:)
This is old news, though. Williams and Gottlieb closed their pinball manufacturng in 2000. Stern is the final company, though they made Playboy and most of the other games mentioned in the article long before they were the last company left. And they didn't make South Park, Sega did. Though Stern is sort of what Sega Pinball was... Stern was sold to Sega many years ago, and Sega pawned them back off into their own company when they no longer wanted to do pinball.
Pinball is wonderful.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Ask any operator about the go-go early 80s "golden age" of video arcades, and they'll tell you that they're glad it's over. Operators had to spend so much money to keep up with the latest games that they ended up in debt in the end. They're much happier operating the scant equipment choices they have these days.
The real money these days is in coin-op pool tables and juke boxes. Videos are too expensive and the kids won't play them, and pinball machines are just too much maintenance. Pool tables and jukes are guaranteed moneymakers, and don't require nearly the amount of maintenance.
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
I had some idea it was dying when I started keeping track of how many I've broken instead of my highest score.
How to break:
Harley-Davidsion: Hit three balls into the same hole in the front. It'll convulse like crazy then start tilting itself forever.
Last Action Hero: Hit the far back right crane launch thing really hard with a pinball. It'll get stuck for about a minute every time you hit the crane launcher.
Pegasus: Just keep playing. It lights on fire. The smoke coming through the holes is a neat effect until the power goes down.
Jurassic Park: Land a pinball on top of the truck-grabber thing when it's down. It won't be able to close. It will launch out balls saying one is lost and they will hit the truck-grabber and bounce straight down the hole. This continues forever.
~Ben
All I have to say is look at the resurgence of vinyl. People love vinyl -- whether its punk rock or house music, there is definitely a nitch to be filled.
There will be a cult-ure, and the industry will survive in some small(er) sense.
black night 2000 and three more. magna save rules
While we're on this topic, does anyone know of any decent pinball game that runs well on Linux?
The Death to 2D games. Y'know-- Just because the hardware is bigger and better we gotta make 3D games out of 2D classics! What does this have to do with pinball? Those damn LED video displays that have been popping up with increasing annoyance. "Am I a video game or am I a pinball machine? Video game or pinball!? Keep your eyes on both as you play! Weeee!" Like 3D graphics, the LED displays use in a game can greatly enhance the play, but most of them cross the line and instead of the table itself being the primary attraction, the display takes center stage. It becomes the conveyance of the action with the table taking a backseat, ultimately failing in both realms. You might as well walk over to "Crisis Zone" or "Street Fighter 12" at that point. As a "raised on arcade games" guy, I actually like pinball machines here and there. The table is entertainment in it's own right, but fails miserably once it tries to cross over into "gotta split my freakin' attention in two spots at once so I can watch the stupid video and bounce the ball at the same time" style gameplay. YMMV, but it annoys the piss out of me and I could easily see THAT as being a contributer to the death of pinball.
My favorite Pinball game: Fun House (with the Chucky style character)
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I belong to a local pinball league BAPA in the bay area. Quite fun for those of us who like pinball. There are leagues in most major metropolitan areas. So if you truely want to play, you can find like minded people pretty easily. Google is your friend.
We've actually had a larger turnout recently, but I don't think it's due to pinball coming back. It's definately harder to find places that have them (and then to find them in good working order).
The number of companies who are making pinball games has pretty much dwindled down to 1. The replacement parts for the older games are no longer being made. All the parts you get now are usually older ones people stockpiled. Hopefully someone will pick up the ball on that one.
Pinball is definately dwindling, but for those of us who like it, I'm sure we will always be able to find it. I personally own 3 pins and those will probably last me a long time even if they are scarce to find out in the public.
Maybe if someone could come up with DDR Pinball there would be renewed interest...
-Alex
And since you reminded me, is ther anyone out there can run Linux on their Pinball Table? And consoles... And toasters... And washing machines...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
It was tres cool last year.
www.caextreme.org coming up on Sept. 7-8!
here is a list of my favorite Pinball games of all Time.. Roughly in order..
1. Black Knight 2000.. Need i say more?
2. WaterWorld.. One of the best(horrible movie thoe)
3. Terminator 2.. lots of maggots(magnets) but still a great game
4. Bride of PinBot.. Sexist & a good play...
5. can't remember the name but ya got to hit the ball into the vertical area and little rc looking trucks would drive around up there.. stupendous!
just my list...
We've got a 1986 Pinbot at our house, and the neighborhood kids love it. Great for hand eye-coordination, and an amazing time sink for 3-4 year old energy.
Maybe if we indoctrinate our kids, we'll save the genre?
A very cool pinball table I played is tucked in the back of the largest arcade in Cedar Point (Ohio). I have no idea how old it is, probably pre-70s era. Anyway, it's twice the size of a normal table and uses a cue ball instead of the standard pinball.
If you ever go to Cedar Point, check it out. It's name is Hercules btw.
But the death thing, think of it - people declare Linux dead on a daily basis, and ZDNet has been known for going so far as to state that IBM was rescinding all support for OS/2 as of this past January. (They're not.)
With that in mind, Pinball is very much the classic game. Never mind the more feature-encrufted games (the Star Wars episode 1 game comes to mind), in general the idea of knocking a ball around a board is just fun - it requires high reflexes and major hand-eye coordination, and who here hasn't gotten jazzed when they heard the familiar "snap!" that indicated you got a free game?
Just my opinions. I could be wrong.
This sig no verb.
The reason I never took up the "sport" is two-fold; I don't have the money, and I don't like the fact that I have to bend over so much to see the danged things properly. (I slouch enough in front of a computer as it is.)
That having been said, I was a big fan of the computer versions of pinball when they first came out. I remember Epic Pinball as being a ton of fun, and I think there was another called Silver Ball Pinball? In any event, they were a real blast to play, and almost made me wish I had a table of my own. Almost.
The problem is that there is no actual end to the game. Sure, there's the goal of getting a higher score, but people today don't play something to perfect it; they play it to beat it! It's this change in the goal of the player that's got people buying video games that have stories, variety... RPGs like Final Fantasy.. rather than playing pinball, imo.
That having been said, my favorite game ever is actually Puyo Puyo, and I'm currently working to double my high score, so I don't exactly fit well into the RPG-lover category, even though I profess the teachings of it.. : ) So take this all with a huge, honkin grain of salt.
I figure all video gamers, though, will eventually end up at a point where the video games just aren't all that interesting anymore, and they'll want something that poses a good, repeatable challenge. In other words, I think we just need to wait for people to grow bored of these linear video games, and then pinball may end up making a comeback. (If the.. uh.. arcade owners want it to..) Either that, or people give up on arcade games, and go out and play a good 'ol game of softball.. : )
In all honesty, it is a pity to see the game of pinball fade into obscurity along with Acid Wash jeans and Cammeros. I do understand why bars would want to put in more "successful" video games, however...has anyone else ever waited in line all night to play GoldenTee only to drop $5 and get mocked for not being a frat boy?
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
By trying to raise profits, they shot themselves in the foot by eliminating a greater percentage of business that would would have been made back on the price. Rather than making 4 million people paying $0.25, they got 1 million paying $0.50. Sound like advise from the recording industry.
It's either that, or the increase in pinball piracy.
And why are they so bloody complicated? A pinball machine should be intuitive so that it is immediate, nbot so complicated that you need to read an instruction manaul to know how things work.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Funny how nostalgia moves forwards... I remeber when I was a student/pinball fn in the 80s we used to be nostlgic for the all-mechanic pinball machines from the past... On the pier at Scheveningen they used to have an arcade/selling place where you could still play those (or buy one for a few hundred guilders... which I never had)..
I especially remember one called 'Cowpoke'.
I mean , "that auditory, articulatory and visually
challenged kid" just doesn't have the same
kind of rhythm, know what I mean?
Time to resurrect Tommy.
What the hell, I'm sure the Who [-2] could use a shot in the arm on this tour.
'That deaf, dumb and blind kid
sure plays a mean pin ball'.
There used to be a big arcade (Circus Circus) about 20 minutes from my house but it closed down completely 5-7 years ago. I used to go down there and waste 50-60 bucks in one sitting when I was a kid, playing TMNT, WWF Wrestlemania, table hockey, etc.
Sooner or later I sort of grew out of the whole scene (helped out with the fact that the entire atmosphere of that particular place went south) and moved more into the SNES and then quickly into computer gaming.
Even back then I was never really into pinball, probably because it was still the era of 25 cent arcade games (now it seems everything is 50 cents or more) and pinball machines were usually 50 cents and I was never naturally good at them. Whereas I could last 30 minutes or longer on some other games using the same 50 cents.
Now if I want to go back to the past I resort to emulators.
I think there will always be a niche for arcades and pinball will be a part of it, but it'll likely never be what it once was.
-- Scientist: You aren't going to leave me here, are you? Boagh! Thump...
I really enjoyed this game too, back in its day. It's been years since I've seen one. Come to think of it, I might have only ever played one of these, but it rocked. Certainly most of my GnR play was on one single machine.
"Ain't goin' down, ain't goin' down, ain't goin' down no more!" Loved how they played this song when you had a long ball.
yo d00ds who'd want to play some steel bawls rolling around??? I saw one once in a museum - it suXor
When I first started playing pinball (I'm 46) a game was 5 cents. You got 5 balls for that and a free game at 200 points.
The free game notifier was a loud "pop" that everyone in the place could hear. Each time you scored a point, the bell would ring and you could tell when someone was "racking-up" a big score by the constantly ringging bell and the loud pop indicating a free game.
This would draw on-lookers like mad...they would crowd the machine...sometimes, a younger fellow would put his hands on the table and he would be quietly admonished by the onlookers...the player too entranced with keeping the ball alive.
The game was about precision flipping...it was about gently pushing the table so that a ball bounced off a bumper just right - avoiding a potentially hazardous trip down the side...and also...it was about luck.
Truthfully, I walk past those pinball machines most of the time now. It's not the same with all the exotic stuff on the table - at least for me. I think a simpler game was a better game. Maybe I'm just getting older. Oh well...
I want to be alone with the sandwich
I was at a Video Game Trade Show in Vegas last year. Happened to go to a Pinball repair Mini class hosted by Stern I think. He basically said that the reason that pinball is losing popularity is that the maint is not being done on schedule. Hence the machinces break down (especially the older ones) and it upsets the consumers when the game doesn't work. It costs more to operate the pinball versus an ordinary video game. So they are less profitable. Bottom line they just don't net as much cash.
come over here to France. They love pinball over here. You can find a pinball machine in every single brasserie (French bar). Of course, they're all old American machines, but the love is there....
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
It's just not limited to those with mechanical knowhow and the money to create tables in bricks and mortar anymore, programs like VpinMAME and Visual Pinball make it possible to create tables from scratch without needing a workshop or space. There are some pretty professional results, though Medieval Madness forever holds my heart :)
A-C: DC
I am one of the ten girls i know who know who play pinball. Mind you, i'm no steel wizard, and that little ball eludes me enough of the time that i don't win many free games. I think that the reason pinball itself seems beyond the modern kid's immediate attention span is this: pinball is a bewildering game, at first glance. Not only are you trying to get the hand/eye co-ordination down, there is a plot to most games, whichmeans that you not only have to take in what you're doing, you also have to figure out the flashing lights and the flags and bumbers- and then try to hit them. The net result is a lot more that a video screen, it's deciphering an environment at the same time that you try to interact with it, much like the first time you use linux, or an immersion course in a foreign language. Now, this does not mean that pinball is not for modern kids. It just means that it's an entirely different approach. And a little bit of footwork will turn up a few good machines- they tend to put them in the corners of bars, pool halls, and arcades. If you want to avoid the death of pinball, go out and play. A steady stream of quarters once every two weeks or three weeks will remind the owners that this is still a moneymaker, and what's more, a two or three minute conversation with the manatger or owner- "you know, i really come here just because you have a pinball machine," will do even more to make sure it stays. I used to have a bunch of friends with whom i'd go play pinball. Lately, mostly because we all did the relocation shuffle, i'm on my own (and if you think folks look at you strange when you're a girl asking for parts for an '86 audi, you should see the looks they give you when you're a girl playing pinball!) It's one of those things where there's still, in spite of our best efforts to change things, a percieved gender gap. Also- about the electronic versions- like email, it's great for the stripped down concept, but you lose the texture. Somethin' nice about having the real thing. Electronic is for getting the feel of the flags- you have to have the real to get the co-ordination down. My point: pinball is still cool, and if you think so, you need to be out playing it, just to keep it from going out of style. And don't believe the doubters: pinball will never be gone completely. We will open retro underground pinball halls, and be passing out free drinks at the million marks, before we ever let that happen. And i might just pick up one of the old machines, just to have a head start... hmmm.... *back to the planning lair for further consideration*
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
I'm of the opinion that the cost of games is the biggest problem. At some point in the late 80's or early 90's, when most arcade games lost a little popularity (this would be about when Street Fighter came out), arcade owners started increasing the price of *all* their games, rather than just the most common games (the whole 2 credits to start, one to continue thing). I mean, come on, a dollar a game? That's the big reason why *I* don't play anything but pinball anymore. Well pinball was always my favorite, but I'm not paying a buck to play anything.
Drop the price of basic games and pinball back down to $0.25, and more popular or larger games down to $0.50, and I bet there will be an increase in number of games played.
There's a fairly intereting article article in the most recent issue of the Pittsburgh City Paper about the local pinball scene, its competitions, and the decline of pinball culture.
I'll give a few reasons for pinball being less popular now. Most of which have been already said in various posts. Many arcades have closed(mostly because kids can play high quality video games at home for less money). Pinball machines are expensive to ship and will break fairly often if they are used a lot(especially the newer ones and this makes it a crap shoot when you decide to play a pinball machine because it may or may not work properly). Many pinballs added pathetic video game elements to the pinball which annoyed serious pinball players and looked like crap compared to real video games, so it never impressed the people who liked video games either.
;)
;) One interesting thing about the ProPinball games is that you could actually make all of them in real life if a company was so inclined, they don't feature any impossible ramps or anything that couldn't be built on a real pinball table. I think the ProPinball Timeshock game is one of the greatest pinball machines ever made.
Pinball shouldn't have tried to put video games in the pinball, they should have focused on the things that pinball has and video games don't, like allowing you to shake the table more to control the ball instead of making the tilt more and more sensitive for most games. What good is a pinball machine if you can't give it a good shake while you are playing to try and save the ball? Pinball used to be a very physical game, I'm not kidding, my arms would get tired from shaking the machine when I would play for a few hours.
Then they raised the price to 50 cents and many machines won't even give you free games anymore, just a free ball for getting high scores unless you get a match(the digit of your final score matching a randomly genrated number at the end of the game). What good is a pinball machine if you can't win free games on it with high scores and specials?
Also many of the newer pinball machines are too hard and have too many friggin rules. I'm not spending a ton of money learning a new game before I can have a decent game. I'm a decent pinball player, but many new machines just don't give me 50 cents worth of play for my money.
Now there are still plenty of pinball games to play for most people if you really want to play them. I had an idea for a website(or an addition to a pinball website) a while ago. I've looked at a lot of pinball sites, but haven't seen anything like this yet. I think that serious pinball players should document all of the pinball machines in their area and give ratings on the condition of the games and maybe a brief decription of the places they are in. Then pinball enthusiasts could look up their city or town on the site and find all or at least most of the decent machines worth playing in their area pretty easily. Sure this is a lot of work, but I'm sure there are many pinball fans who would be glad to help make a database like this. For example, in my area, all the arcades have closed except for the ones at the two shopping malls, but there are pinball machines all over the place if you know where to look. The local poolhall has
several of them and many bars also still carry them. I'm sure I could find hundreds of them if I put any effort into it, but I'd rather see someone start a pinball database and save me the trouble
My last comments are about computer sims. I've been playing pinball since I was about four(I had to stand on a box to play then because I was too short to reach the table) because my father bought a used pinball machine and put it in our basement. He knew how to fix it and where to get parts, so it was always in great playing condition. I've also wasted a good deal of my life playing pinball in arcades, bars poolhalls etc... So I was pretty surprised when I bought a couple of pinball simms and really enjoyed them. I bought Microsoft Pinball Arcade which has 8 classic Gottleib tables. The graphics are good and the sounds sound exactly like the real games, I've played most of the real versions of these games so I know what they sound like. I really enjoy playing most of these games and I can even shake the table instantly while I am playing just like on a real pinball machine. I mean it's not exactly the same of course, but it's pretty damn good. I use my middle fingers to hit the flippers with the shift keys and my index fingers to shake the game right or left with the z and ?/ keys. This allows me to instantly shake the game while I am playing it, to save balls. I use the enter key to shake the table up and I can also hit that pretty fast, but not instantly like the right and left shake buttons. I only use the right and left shakes on all of the games except one. On that game I reconfigure the shake keys, so the ?/ is the up shake key.
The ProPinball games are amazing. They are by far the best computer sims and I bought all 4 of them in a set for I think it was $6.98 at http:www.gamestop.com They are really complicated games and take a long time to get good at, but unlike playing a real pinball machine it doesn't cost a lot of money to play them
You can also get sims of some older games like Eight Ball Deluxe and Royal Flush, but they are out of print, so you need to go to fleabay for them. When I get around to putting in a bigger harddrive on this computer, I am going to add every decent pinball sim that exists. Beware though, many pinball sims suck. You best bet is to read reviews of them before you buy one. I'm too lazy to do it now and can't remember the sites, but just do a search for "computer pinball" and review on Google and you will find the review sites pretty quickly. And if you don't have the four ProPinball games, go and buy them! The only problem with these computer sims is that
I play less "real" pinball now. They satisfy most of my pinball addiction and I only own a few games. Once in a while I still go and play real pinball, but I can't see spending a lot of money on it anymore.
The good ol' WP made a nice little article featuring one of our leagues, but failed to provide even a lowly link to our web site. We currently have leagues in Maryland and Virginia, including the one noted in the article.
--- What?
1: This story got posted at fark.com
2: If you need a pinball fix, go get Visual Pinball Yet another reason to dual-boot your pc to Linux/Windoze.
I love the death of pinball. At least to a point. All of the great games were made, in my opinion, between 1990 and 1999. Bally/Williams games are the only things worth buying, period. And by buying, I mean for my house. I've got around a dozen.
;-)
:-)
Here is how the death of pinball works:
1. Operators used to make a lot of money off their pinball machines. Buckets and buckets of it.
2. In the 90's, kids decided video games were cool.
3. Operators make less and less money on pinball machines.
4. Bally/Williams, the biggest pinball producer decides they can't financially justify manufacturing pinball machines. They close their pinball division.
5. Operators start pulling games from locations when they break down, or are worn out.
That's where I come in. Calling all of my local operators. Calling all of the old-school operators from the 60's. Just hoping that somebody has a warehouse full of pinball machines that I can buy, repair, restore, and resell. It's a hobby that I have really grown to love in the past year.
There is an amazing amount of pinball information on the internet, which has allowed me to do this.
Like the Marvin 3m Repair Guides or the rec.games.pinball newsgroup (try groups.google.com). If you are looking to buy a pinball machine, try the Mr. Pinball Classifieds. You can also have a look at most of the pinball machines manufactured in the past decade at the Internet Pinball Database
Or you can email me, I can set you up
And don't worry... if you want a game bad enough, and don't live close enough to go pick one up... most sellers of pinball games ship them these days.
Oh, and here is a list of my games:
Medieval Madness - Williams Funhouse - Williams Whitewater - Williams No Good Gofers - Williams Star Trek: The Next Generation World Cup Soccer 94 - Bally Hook - Data East
They are lots of fun
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
While pingames certainly aren't doing as well as they once were, reports of the death of pinball are certainly premature. There is still a big pinball market outside of the US, which Stern (the only remaining manufacturer) is happy to serve.
Domestically, the market is shifting from arcades (where the games are seldom adequately maintained) to collectors, and the folks at Stern have realized that, modifying their design efforts to appeal more to collectors. One of their latest games, "Monopoly" (designed by the legendary Pat Lawlor, who also designed "Fun House," "Addams Family," and "Twilight Zone," among others), has been a tremendous success, to the point of extending its productions run...
"The robots can't help you..."*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
I find it surpriising that no one has mentioned this: Pinball machines are emulated.
Well, sort of. They're simulated, anyway. The scoreboards are emulated.
The two programs to get are Visual Pinball and Visual PinMAME. Visual Pinball simulates the table, sounds, and rules of the machine, while Visual PinMAME does the dot matrix scoreboard.
The machine is simulated in lovely 3D, which you can zoom and rotate.
A vast majority of Pinball machines are simulated in this manner, including Dr. Who, Star Trek TNG, Theatre of Magic, Jurassic Park and a number of others.
In order to simulate a table, you must download VPinball and VPinMAME, as well as the table files for the machine you want, and the rom files for the scoreboard.
I'm not sure as to the legality of distributing the scoreboard romfiles: Bally was allowing people to download them from their website some time back.
Enjoy.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
It's that every pinball game is exactly the same. There's a ball which rolls at you, you have the flippers, etc. Ok, perhaps they can change things up, put some flippers up top, maybe have some complicated bonus scoring, but the bottom line is, a ball rolls at you, and you hit it up. Repeatedly.
Ok, maybe some people really dig this concept, so they're all over it. But these people are insane.
If you could design a pinball machine that was somehow radically different from others, then you'd have a market for it. But it wouldn't really be a pinball machine then.
Come on, give it up, that's
Play pinball and support the FSF at the Full Tilt For Software Freedom in San Francisco during LinuxWorld.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
I own a Williams pinball machine called Cyclone. I just love playing on it, there is something about the mechanical responses that is more satisfying than a video game. I also find that when it breaks fixing it is an incredible amount of fun. When you open up the maching it always amazes me how complicated it is. The fact is being the geek I am fixing it is as much fun as playing it.
GnR pinball was one of the greatest pinball games ever next to Playboy pinball. The pistol shaped ball shooter, the sound clips, Axl SCREAMING at you when you screw up! You rocked the arcade even by just putting quarters into that baby. Almost fun as having the synthoid voice from Gorf yell at you for trying to play without inserting a quarter.
As soon as the last of the "old" bosses was gone (Gotti) the new mobsters couldn't even get the arcade industry right, let alone garbage and building contracting.
That said, I hardly ever play pinball any more, even though there are a number of machines within easy travel distances. Why? Most arcades I see ratchet up the "score required for replay" so high as to be nearly unattainable, set the tilt detection so that it darn near responds to vibrations of passing trucks and jets, and set the down angle of the machines toward the drains at unreasonable angles, presumably with the goal of making more money by forcing the player to pay more often.
Instead they make nothing, because I won't play a game that is rigged too heavily against me. (Same reason I don't do casino gambling, BTW)
So what about the few arcades which set the machines more fairly? Instead of being near empty, I notice that folks gather to the pinball, and while waiting for a chance to play, patrons play the other games. I would venture a guess the increased business in the other machines would probably more than pay for any more frequent repairs if that statistic is true.
The best arcade I knew of limited how long one player could stay on the pinball instead of rigging the game, and were ALWAYS busy.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
There is something far more elegant about losing ones money to a pinball machine rather than a video game. The sensuality of hip and hand action beats any video game hands down :-). As for popping a pinnie, I am sorry but clocking a video game just won't cut it.
I quite like some of the modern pinball machines, but give me an open playfield and the cool physics of some late eighties old school anyday. It is truly sad about the decline of pinball. I think that they will come back, they just have to become cool again.
Maybe we just need to get them into a few cool films, can you imagine the irony of sliding some well placed pinnies into the Matrix sequels. Delicious.
Ob. Fav.: Black Rose - Queen of the Seven Seas. The cannon was superb.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Only in America can something that generates $1.07 Billion in revenue be considered dead. Gotta love it!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
In Re: It's a pitty...[sic] by mother_superius
Occaisionally you'll see one in a fancy bar
later in his own grandchild:
Sorry, I don't go to many bars as I am not of age
Well then technically you shouldn't see any jittoni tables in any bars, should you?
"I propose we just make a moderation called 'Stupid'"
-- Volsu
Why, so we can tag you with it?
The Bally's machines were the last ones that I liked to play. The plunger is the only way to go. I'm not gonna hit the ball up the ramp with a button unless I have no chioce.
The pinball game in the Roger Williams University game room (sorry, I forget the name) gives you FIVE balls per game, lots of bonus balls, and has great flipper balance. This is not a slot machine - I've played games that lasted a half-hour, and I'm only a "good" player.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Compare that to a video game. It's programmed to end, and get harder and harder to knock you down if you're a better player. Ka-ching! Please feed the coin slot to continue.
Of course, the operators had their ways even in the old days of non-digital pinball. Just let the maintainance slide, and the slow, dirty playing surface will bring those high scores to earth in a hurry. Maintain only when they complain. This is first hand knowledge, I paid my way through school minding and mending pinball machines.
Slashdot poll suggestion: What's your favorite machine? My vote is for Bally's Fireball. I guess that's tantamount to admitting my age...
The trouble with arcades these days is they are generally just not much fun. The games are too expensive and/or too complex. I miss the days when I could drop a single quarter in a machine and get a decent ten minutes out of it.
:)
Pinball machines got more complex then they needed to be in order to be fun. The cost of developing them went up, and so did the amount of custom parts, rate of failure, and cost of maintenance. I think the pinball manufacturers really went awry here. If they had stuck with affordable, sturdy machines that focused on what makes pinball great, maybe they'd still be making them.
Every pinball machine seems to have to have a licensed franchise plastered on the front of it. What's up with that?!
Of the more modern machines, the ST:TNG machine was one of my favorites. I used to love Pinbot too.
Maybe some day some pinball-building vets will get together and realize that pinball machines could be profitable if they trim the fat.
Don't forget, if you are in the SF Bay Area and like pinball (and classic video games):
California Extreme!
It's 9/7-9/8 in San Jose, and they have tons of good restored pinball and video games on free play for the entire weekend. So get in your chance to play pinball on machines that are [b]not[/b] broken :-)
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
I forgot just how bad and lame the who were.
Don't get me started about the Rolling 'kidney' Stones lameness
Back in the 1970s, I played a crossover game that was pinball, but on a blocky video screen. The unit was set up exactly like a pinball game, where the screen was laid flat in front of the player, at an angle, even.
The best part was that one time we played it, we managed to knock the "ball" into a part of the playing area where there was a perfect rebound from one bumper to one exactly opposite it. The ball got stuck there, and we racked up a bunch of free games as the ball went back and forth. Someone got the bright idea to press the button to launch another ball, and the game reset on us. We did get to keep the free games, though.
I really still enjoy pinball, but most games I have played recently have sucked.
I REALLY wish to buy the original Black Knight game (the sequel was not as great), but for play not collector's value.
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Rawr
That was *the* great arcade on "The Ave." (Durant). Up the long, narrow staircase - what a great place that was.
... Create an open standart for manufacturing pinball machines.
Forget looking for big arcades to find good pinball machines. Most small buisnesses like ice cream stores and pizza places have five or six of the realy good pinball machines. The ones that were'nt captured by large markets.
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
This isn't an empty proclamation in the vein of "Usenet is dying" or "Linux on the desktop is dying." Pinball really is dying, and has been for the last four years or so. For the longest time, the two big pinball makers were Williams and Bally. Then Bally/Midway bought Williams, but Williams kept on as the number one name in pinball. Relatively late, Sega and Data East got into pinball. And now of those companies are not producing pinball machines *at all*. The only remaining maker is Stern, which hasn't been any kind of force in pinball or video games for twenty years.
It's as if all TV stations and cable channels folded, except for Lifetime. Would you laugh that off or consider it to be the impending death of television?
I guess you all know why we're here My name is Tommy...
C|N>K
Ahh, I remember the days back when I was avoiding studying Solid State Physics in any way that I could when I would rack up 20 or so free games on the local pinball machine and then walk away, leaving all the credits there for some poor sap who also should have been doing homework to waste his evening away.
Lottery: a tax on those bad at math.
For my money, if you _are_ going to play PC pinball, the only game in town is the now-defunct Pro Pinball series (you can still find them in the bargain bin at Empire Interactive in the U.K.--like $15 a pop.) I can't say that all of the four tables are good (I couldn't get The Web to work under XP (lol!) but Big Race USA is quite good. Timeshock! is excellent--drop targets, video mode, some ramps, etc.--and the score is excellent.
Otherwise, I really liked the Jurassic Park and (original) Star Wars table. Episode I, of course, was crap.
9th mix? You sure? DDR MAX2 (7th mix) is the latest, and MAX 3 isnt due out for a while, I think..
Yeah, we get screwed in the US in terms of domestic DDR machines.. it mostly boils down to song licensing issues.. they can't afford to licence the songs in America 'cause there's not as large a following.. if they did licence all the songs that are in the Japanese version, the domestic machine would end up being more expensive than the import.. and why buy domestic when there's a more popular, cheaper import?
slashdot!=valid HTML
I speak as one who repairs pinballs for a living. I hate to see it die, because I love the game. It thrives in peoples' home game rooms, but not in the arcades. The pinball game that generated the most revenue for operators was The Addams Family, which came out in 1989. Revenue has been sliding ever since. Many arcades have gone out of business as they became unprofitable. Home video games took most of the profit from the arcades, and the pinball and other games declined due to lack of traffic.
no big sig
Well..I would certainly hate to see pinball go away completely, but it does seem inevitable.
Perhaps to avoid this, changes need to be made to update the game.
How about a multiple player version of the game. By that I mean, have two or more players playing at the same time. Then you can either have them all trying to prevent the ball from going out of play, or to try and force the ball (almost like a air hockey type game) to go down the other players side.
Just a suggestion.
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
Please be kind to us slow-witted types. The 21st century is only a couple years old. Refering to events of 10 years ago as "in the last century" is pretentious and confusing.