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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.
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!
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!
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
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.
1000 points for a bumper?? What the heck is that about?
The best pinball machines have only 4-digit scoring systems.
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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.
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!
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".
The appeal of pinball for me and many/most others is that it is a physical game. The ball follows the laws of physics not the laws programmed into its computer chips. Video pinball is fun but nothing like the real thing.
Q.
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).
It's not like pool table manufacturers are trying to find ways to shove expensive computerized components into a pool table, and pinball has reached a level of maturity where they ought to start acting similarly.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
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...
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.
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?