Portrait of The Last Remaining Pinball Wizard

Ant writes "Shacknews posted BusinessWeek's Pinball's Last Remaining Wizard article that is a portrait piece on Gary Stern, president and owner of Stern Pinball, which is the last remaining pinball manufacturer in the world. Yearly, his company produces 10,000 hand-built machines and designs about 3-4 different models. A few of their most recent releases used licensed rights of the Sopranos and The Simpsons."

Comments

Pinball Wizard?

[Dogtanian]

I'm deaf, dumb and blind, you insensitive clod!

Oh, hang on....

Re:Pinball Wizard?

[CSMastermind]

He stands like a statue becomes part of the machine.......God I love the Who

Re:Pinball Wizard?

[SilentChris]

I'm deaf, dumb and blind, you insensitive clod!

Oh, com'on, who are you? Tommy?

Re:Pinball Wizard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you ? ooh ooh, ooh ooh....

Re:Pinball Wizard?

[SamSim]

Can you play by sense of smell?

Re:Pinball Wizard?

[cparisi]

Can't hear no buzzers or bells

Tommy - The Who

[Vamphyri]

I thought the story was going to be about an actual pinball machine player who gets massive highscores, not the CEO of a game corporation. That's one minute of my life I will never get back.

Re:Tommy - The Who

[Anonymous Coward]

actually 2 minutes after you posted

Re:Tommy - The Who

[qewl]

I too was expecting some pinball player profile with mad skills. Like the Billy Mitchell - the all time Pacman champion of the world of pinball. Has society moved past this now? I mean these perfect scores do get you recognition, but still wouldn't you feel you missed achieving other things you could have been doing?

Re:Tommy - The Who

[inKubus]

One things for sure, he's no Bill Budge ;)

Re:Tommy - The Who

[MatW]

Hahaha time is too precious to waste.

Deaf, dumb, blind?

[nacturation]

But the real question is, does he always get the replay?

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen him fall.

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[Tackhead]

> But the real question is, does he always get the replay?

Sits there like a statue, reloads like a machine,
Clicks on the day passes, gets the first post clean,
Smokes crack like he's got mod points, never seen him fall,
That insensitive clod - Slashdotting Stern pinball!

He's a Slashdot wizard, there has to be a twist!
None of my business where he got those supple wrists...

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[iamlucky13]

Reminds me of a story my freshmen physics professor told.

When he was young, he got a big magnet from an old radar that had been scrapped. He snuck it into the arcade in his backpack with the intention of manuevering the ball through the extra life gate with it. Unfortunately, when he moved it over the ball, the ball jumped up and smacked the glass with enough force to break it. He had to refine his technique a little bit and pick a different arcade, but it eventually worked.

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[Koiu Lpoi]

That was awesome, but do you got more? SOMEBODY out there's gotta actually record and release it. I would, but damn do I sing bad.

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[Mister Transistor]

This may or may not have been true.

I worked for Stern back in the 1980's, and I can tell you that pinballs are chrome plated copper! Non-magnetic, and for a reason - the parent tells exactly why.

However, there were a FEW games that used ferrous core balls for "Magna-Save" or other effects (Black Knight, Circus Voltaire, for example). However, those games are multi-level and the glass is waaaay up above the ball, to far for any reasonable-sized magnet to influence.

But those were made in later days, back in the olden days, they used the copper based balls almost exclusively to prevent fraud via magnets.

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[DZign]

hey mr transistor, can you contact me by email please ?

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least some of the pinballs are magnetic since machines like the classic Twilight Zone have magnets as part of the play.

See:
ahref=http://www.ipdb.org/glossary.php%23Playfield %20Magnetshttp://www.ipdb.org/glossary.php%23Playf ield%20Magnets> ahref=http://pinside.com/archive.details.general.a sp?machineid=515http://pinside.com/archive.details .general.asp?machineid=515>

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my day, a pinball machine used a wooden ball... and we LIKED it!

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed links:

First
Second

For some reason I can't make the first one work, so I substituted a tinyurl link. Slashdot changes the # to %23 which doesn't seem to work.

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[dypstick]

I can think of at least 3 pinballs off the top of my head that use magnets for some sort of feature. Austin Powers, Theatre of Magic, Addams Family, and I'm sure there are lots of others. These games don't call for any special pinballs, so I'm pretty sure all modern pinballs are the same, and therefore magnetic.

Star Wars Trilogy is another... There are countless pins with magnets that control the ball in one way or another. I'd say that for at least the last 15-20 years they have been using this kind of ball control.

Dan - Pinball Technician
Marty's Playland,
Ocean City, MD

Re:Deaf, dumb, blind?

[llefler]

Odd, I have a Black Knight and have never had to buy special 'ferrous core' balls. Pinballs are simply polished ball bearings. I use the same balls in my BK('80), Space Invaders ('80), Hurricane('91), and Bad Girls('88).

There were a couple newer machines (90s) that used special pinballs. But otherwise, if someone is trying to sell you special 'pinballs', they think you're a sucker. Do a usenet search for 'Mirror Balls' and Pinball

Shake It!

[INetEngineer]

So, is he allowed to shake his own machines without the TILT going off?

Re:Shake It!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny story, the "Viper" game was in the UIC bowling alley five or six years ago. Apparently it was a test machine and the tilt mechanism was turned off. You could play that game forever if you were quick enough to lift the front end of the machine when your ball was headed down the drain.

Re:Shake It!

[Joe123456]

I have seen game with no or very low tilt that are not test games. I once saw some one at a bowling alley to get free hits on the Boxer.

Tommy can you hear me?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That deaf, dumb and blind kid..." - I still listen to it ever so often

Haven't played pinball in some time

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what, do you need like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 points to get a free game these days? Ah, the olden days of THOCK!

Re:Haven't played pinball in some time

[nolife]

you need like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 points to get a free game these days?

Na..
All it normally takes is one multiball session and 1 or 2 trips up the ramps during the multiball.

I do miss pinball. I know of several places that still have them but I am getting bored playing the same machines over and over again, even more so when one of the flippers is weak and I know they will never get it fixed.

I remember in the early/mid 90's I used to go to a local gameroom the game room several times a week and play pinball, they had at least 20 different machines. It got to the point where my wife thought something fishy was going on.
I actually "flipped" the score playing Rollerball, It gave me another credit for exceeding the free game score a second time but it did not register as a high score when I was done playing. I had 137 million and the previous high score was 40 million. It was very frustrating to beat the previous 1st place score by just under 100 million and only get to leave my initial under second place.

Re:Haven't played pinball in some time

[nolife]

Correction.. It was Rollergames, not Rollerball.

Re:Haven't played pinball in some time

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

Dude how long did that take to get 137 million points? :)

Biggie.

Re:Haven't played pinball in some time

[nolife]

I believe just over an hour maybe. Speaking of time but getting off topic.. I remember two very specific arcade games that I could play for well over two hours on a single game, Donkey Kong and Excitebike. Donkey Kong was still challenging the whole way through and I actually would lose at some point but only due to the random falling barrels. Excitebike was just flat out boring and I had hit a point where the game was getting no harder and I would just walk away (and probably never played it again). I remember people playing Dragonslayer (the laser disc based game) and completing the game after an extremely long time. I never really got into that game because it was nothing but remembering which way to move, kind of like a glorified Simon game.

I hate to say it....

[ZosX]

But the Stern machines are not nearly as nice or as well designed as the old Bally/Williams machines. Pinball is a dying form of entertainment (along with the arcades) and while its great to see one lone survivor still out there, it would be even better if they were up to the quality of late Williams machines. Attack from Mars, Addams Family (BRUTAL!), and Medieval Madness all come to mind. Revenge from Mars was gimmicky along with Episode 1, and as a result I see very few of those machines still around. While Stern makes competetent machines, the Simpsons cannot hold a candle to the sheer genius that Attack From Mars was.

Oh FP btw!

Re:I hate to say it....

[Threni]

I find pinball games too hard, and the apparant need to rely on luck is just tedious. I'm sure there are good players out there, but I guess not enough to make it worthwhile producing new tables. Perhaps in the future someone will produce a table that's actually fun to play if you're not obsessed with pinball?

Re:I hate to say it....

[mbadolato]

I couldn't agree more. Stern, Data East and Gottleib machines never felt right. Bally and WIlliams machines always had the right feel. They were usually great games too.

I recently gave up my arcade in order to keep from having to throw everything in storage and then move it, when our new house is finished being built (a lot needed work so wasn't that big a deal to dump em). The only part that really hurt was the selling of my High Speed and Pinbot machines. I miss them.

But, when I move into my new place later this year, I'll be persuing an Attack From Mars.

Re:I hate to say it....

[hedley]

Williams rocked.

Funhouse (It's getting....*late*)
Whirlwind (for those hot summer nights)
Earthshaker (don't sit your drink on here, do sit your gf on it tho).

*sigh* They wont be like that again.

Hedley

Re:I hate to say it....

[mwa]

I find pinball games too hard, and the apparant need to rely on luck is just tedious. I'm sure there are good players out there, but I guess not enough to make it worthwhile producing new tables.

Actually, I think you've got it backwards. My friends and I used to play at lunch every day. The more you play, luck becomes less and less of a factor. Which means the more good players there are out there, the less $$ the tables produce. For about $1, 3 or 4 of us got a good hour or more entertainment.

It's frustrating as hell when the game isn't working right though, and that's the state of most machines these days. I think it's half "too much maintenance required" and half "if it works, people start beating it."

Re:I hate to say it....

[TheHawke]

I kicked Whirlwind's ass on more than one occassion. There were two in my town at the time. One's gravity was set too low, which allowed me to kick its ass royally. The other one was set just right but the fan's bearings were going out. When that fan came on, i'd get distracted by the dammed thing's loud rattling and the ball would go down the drain.

Ahh, there was two more on my list of good pins. The Comet, which I made jump and rattle like it was going out of style. And The Cyclone, which had great mechanicals. Both were in restaurants (separate places) and i'd get them dancing and dinging away, have folks leaving their pizzas and come over wondering what in the world was I doing to the poor things.

Re:I hate to say it....

[immovable_object]

I beg to differ. I purchased the Lord of the Rings pinball last year, and I am VERY impressed by the play. The construction feels solid, and I am never tired of the game. I highly recommend the game.

After all, hearing Gimli say "Extra Ball!" and Frodo "We go through Moria!" is really fun.

Re:I hate to say it....

[British]

As a pinball enthusiast since '91, I agree with you. Bally and Williams have been king.

Case in point. I once played "Hook"(based off the movie). It was indeed a non-bally/williams machine. Got so bored with it I left the machine after 15 mins with 4 credits on it.

Pinball 2000 was a dud though.

Re:I hate to say it....

[Anonymous Coward]

"hey you! With the face!"

Earthshaker was too much fun. i'd about give a nut for one of those machines now.

Re:I hate to say it....

[klui]

I haven't played new pins for a long time, but I grew up on pinball where Williams and Bally had the most variety and fun. These titles may not resonate with a lot of younger folk, but... Flash (the strobe, the increasing pitch of the hum makes it my all time favorite), Silverball, Fireball, Firepower, Firepower II, Black Knight (1st multi-level), Space Invaders, Hyperball (too bad the gun always overheated), Joust (head-to-head).

Re:I hate to say it....

[MilenCent]

I agree, I started to get rather good at pinball after playing a few games. It almost got to the point where Tour The Mansion (Addams Family) was a foregone conclusion with me. (Even so, I only ever got Rule The Universe on Attack From Mars once.)

These days, pinball is much more interesting than arcade video games for me. I'd rather play a mediocre pin table than any fighting game....

Re:I hate to say it....

[Creedo]

Medieval Madness requires a nod, as it is one of the best ever. But you left out Elvira Scared Stiff and Circus Voltaire, two extraordinary games. Never felt as tense in a game as getting to the last few goals in the Stiff-o-meter. And Sneakylock on CV is just too cool.

Re:I hate to say it....

[Gogo Dodo]

I really miss the Whirlwind at the local arcade that has since moved to almost all those fighting games (how the heck do those guys even follow what they're doing?). I wasn't all that good at it (never got the top score), but I was good enough to enjoy it.

That and Bubble Bobble. No, not Puzzle Bobble. Bubble Bobble.

Re:I hate to say it....

[dbIII]

But the Stern machines are not nearly as nice or as well designed as the old Bally/Williams machines

They must be utter crap then if you like Bally more - I really hated the Bally machines, blew bulbs or other bits daily, looked like they were soldered up by someone deaf, dumb and blind and really weren't that much fun to play. This was over ten years ago though, when there were a few other companies putting machines together.

Re:I hate to say it....

[NonSequor]

I think my favorite pinball table of all time is Cirqus Voltaire which also was from Williams.

Re:I hate to say it....

[DZign]

You're talking about the Bally machines from the 80ies. Bally was a seperate company then and in the end (85-88) their games were very cheap produced.

He's talking about bally/williams games from the 90ies. Williams bought Bally's pinball division in 88 and continued to make games with the Bally name on them. Quality of Bally in the 90ies was identical to Williams (same factory, same people, ..)

Re:I hate to say it....

[CastrTroy]

But fighting games are the base level of video games right now. See how much blood, tits, and ass you can put on a single frame. This appeals to the lowest common denominator, without having to put any real thought into your game. You really shouldn't compare pinball to this. Instead look for original games. Things like Animal Crossing. Any game that can provide 3 solid months of everyday play to my girlfriend, who never really played that many video games before, has got to be a good game.

Re:I hate to say it....

[tableplay]

Actually the rule set on Simpson's Pinball Party is way deeper than Attack from Mars -- while AFM certainly has better flow, the rules on SPP more than make up for not having as much flow as AFM.

Re:I hate to say it....

[MilenCent]

But fighting games are the base level of video games right now.

They're still one of the primary attractions in *arcades*, which was my point. Animal Crossing is cool in a good number of ways, but it's not an arcade game. Pinball is uniquely arcade-suited.

Re:I hate to say it....

[CastrTroy]

The thing about pinball is you can't limit how long someone will play on 1 quarter. With most arcade games out now, they limit the amount of play you can get out of a single quarter. With pinball, this is impossible, since you could in theory keep a single ball alive for hours. This doesn't get the arcade very much money.

Re:I hate to say it....

[MilenCent]

You can't impose a hard *limit* on ball length, but pinball tends to be quite tough with how long games last. This is the entertainment that gave us tilts, SDTM ("straight down the middle") drains, and outlanes. There are advanced defenses against all of these things (slap saves, bang backs, deathsaves), but they're usually not completely reliable, or easy to perform (I've never accomplished any of them). Overall, with pinball, there are far more ultra-short games than ultra-long ones. That's why many machines have "ball savers," grace periods during which if you lose a ball it's immediately returned. (Pat Lawlor games by the way, like Addams Family, Twilight Zone and Monopoly, tend to *not* have this feature turned on by default.)

And pinball machines also tend to have their own ways of reducing play length when in the hands of a gifted player -- decreasing or eliminating ball savers as the game continues, activating playfield toys that make drains more likely, and restricting available extra balls are old favorites.

Remember, earnings on a for-pay amusement machine are only decreased from long games if they preclude another person from putting money in, that is, if it results in fewer coins being inserted that day than otherwise. Too short games actually *decrease* earnings because the player doesn't feel like he's been given his money's worth. In my opinion, *that's* one of the reasons arcades are ailing as of late, not the opposite.

Re:I hate to say it....

[Anonymous Coward]

Bally/Williams just got bought by an Australian investor.
http://pinballnews.com/news/bally.html

Competition?

[dshaw858]

[...] which is the last remaining pinball manufacturer in the world.

You'd think that with a lot of arcades around the world using pinball machines, some other companies would want to compete with these guys... or perhaps there's such a huge monopoly that everyone else just gives up. Makes you wonder about monopoly laws, though...

- dshaw

Re:Competition?

[-kertrats-]

They actually sell their monopoly, so I don't think that laws apply.

Re:Competition?

[0racle]

What arcades?

Re:Competition?

[evolutionaryLawyer]

Anti-trust laws really only affect collusion among supposed competitors or aquisition of competitors. If your competition drops out of the game or goes bankrupt, you can't be held for violating anti-trust law.

Re:Competition?

[temojen]

Or it could be that pinball machines are so well made and timeless that few customers are buying new ones rather than repairing or buying used.

Re:Competition?

[swv3752]

They only make 10,000 machines a year. Their break even is 65%-75% of that and if you read between the lines, they are struggling to sell all those machines. It seems that there is just not a big market.

Re:Competition?

[yotto]

The problem isn't that they're quashing competition, it's that the worldwide demand for pinball machines is 10,000.
Think about it. Would you want to devote all the time, money, and resources into building a company that will only produce 5,000 units a year?

Re:Competition?

[CSMastermind]

I can think of four acrades within driving distance of my house, one at each mall around here, one by itself downtown and another that's kind of an unoffical hangout...I guess it's a pizza place but every goes there to play video games. We have a pinball machine down at the bar too.

Re:Competition?

[Fizzog]

"some other companies would want to compete with these guys"

As a matter of fact just a few days ago an Australian company bought the rights to the Bally name and to reproduce most of Williams' parts.

They are also developing their first pinball machine which should be out later this year.

There's life in the silver ball yet!

(and for you RGP'ers out there: TZ, CFTBL, Farfalla, Firepower, Gameshow, Zac Circus)

Re:Competition?

[murderlegendre]

As someone who builds hand-wired analog electronics, I can understand fully the lack of competition. Not only are electronics of this ilk difficult to build from the start, but finding people with the required skills to execute a given design is becoming more difficult by the day. And even when properly built, these units require maintenence and repair - when's the last time you met anyone who fixes pinball machines for a living? An even better question: When's the last time you met anyone who is training to do any of the jobs mentioned?

And of course, no two designs are the same.. not only do they have different logic (for scoring, etc) but this logic has to translate into solenoids, bumpers, magnets, springs, switches, etc etc. The complexity is astonishing, especially for something that is a (relatively) low-production item.

My hat is off to the folks who can design, build and then keep these machines running - sometimes for 20+ years.

Re:Competition?

[Desert Raven]

It is not illegal to be a monopoly.

It is illegal to use your position as a monopoly to stifle competition.

Re:Competition?

[CmdrTostado]

Yes, a small company, perhaps. 5000 a year with about 250 working days a year is 20 units per day or 2.5 units per hour @ about $4000.00 per unit equals $400,000 gross per week ($2,000,000.00 a year) Build this number (1/2 his volume) with 1/2 the employees (he has 56) and you have 28 full time employees and 75 temps. It seems to work out OK, if you can survive the startup expenses. I would assume this product would be low liability. Perhaps the mechanical arcade games will outlast the digital ones, because you just can't reproduce the whole pinball experience on a video screen.

Re:Competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's life in the silver ball yet!

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned these guys yet.

Rumor has it the guy in Australia may move production of cabinets and associated hardware to China & surrounding areas. This should result in massive savings since putting a cabinet together is extremely hand-labor intensive, since it's made of tons of components.

But moving to video takes care of the tremendous maintenance required after purchase, which affects both operators (guys who have to run around constantly maintaining the machine) and players (who won't play a game that breaks down).

It's shaping up to be an interesting time for pinball.

Re:Competition?

[cocotoni]

Do you have any link to back this up please? (Oh, and MB, SS) :)

Re:Competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.pinballnews.com/news/bally.html

Re:Competition?

[joew]

the First news post on the subjecthttp://www.pinballnews.com/news/bally.html

Followed by Gary Stern's Reply http://www.pinballnews.com/news/bally2.html


As well as some pictures http://http//www.pinballnews.com/news/australia6.h tml of the whitewood Wayne is working on

Re:Competition?

[cocotoni]

OK, thanks for the info.

Re:Competition?

[Mr. No Skills]

I believe a lot in what your saying, the effort to build and keep them running correctly is amazing. Those of us old enough probably remember knowing what day of the month the maintenance guy came around and you knew the flippers would work again and all the rubber would be fixed.

I do think there has been a tremendous amount of consolidation of parts or development of "tool kits" over the years. The old machines (I started playing as a kid in the 70s) were definately all analog, tons of relays, and tons of custom mechanisms to create various scoring/bonus opportunities. With the coming of the video games (which were also originally very custom, with specific circuit boards for each game), common components came into being, I believe. The newer games I've looked in seem to have a common logic component and an OS type environment for defining the scoring and the (generally) video display on the backglass. The playing surface, art work, and layout is all specific to the game, but I think the logic and primary controller is probably a common unit across games and maybe across manufacturers at this point.

There is tremendous design and probably trial and error to the creation of a game, but I think there are a lot of common components now and the building of a game is probably like other things: design and engineering by the experienced specialists, art work by the artists, and construction is probably a furniture building like process.

The older machines though -- ahh there is magic under them. We had an old "Centigrade 37" machine in my frat house that a couple guys got together and fixed (some EE students -- a cool project for them), and it was quite a playable thing and all electro-mechanical (with a babe stuck in a test tube theme, if I remember correctly). This was probably a late 60s early 70s Williams machine I think.

Later, we got a hold of a machine through a vending company - a Bally "Silverball Mania" machine. This was a next generation machine with electronic scoring and electronic sounds. Wonderful play - could keep you up all night. Had a neat building background sound that really built tension as you kept the ball in play.

When I do come across a machine these days they all seem to have a movie/TV tie-in of some kind. Maybe the royalties drives up the cost a bit, also. Pinball is like darts -- an old thing to a lot of people and not worth the time to master the skill.

The market for this stuff mostly has disappeared because "hang outs" have mostly disappeared. Dave and Buster's/Dreamworks aside, who hangs out to play a game when your basic home computer does such a great job on the video games. I'd love to find a machine for the home, but its going to take some bizarre retro-fad thing to happen for lots of machines to be sold that way. These machines new cost more than a piano, and no one buys pianos anymore because the household budget going to the "need for school" of home computers.

Re:Competition?

[klui]

A long time ago (20 years ago or thereabouts) I spoke with the owner of an arcade about buying some of his machines (video games as well as pinball). He didn't recommend me buying a pinball because the maintenance is very high. A lot of parts are mechanical--they wear out and require constant tuning. The most time-consuming part was that the playfield need to be waxed on a regular basis. When I first visited the arcade there were a 50-50 ratio between video games and pinballs. When it came time for me to buy, it was maybe 80-20 in favor of video games. Several years afterward, it was 100% video games.

I'm sure other posters are correct--demand is low. But I think the demand is low because of required high maintenance.

Re:Competition?

[msgregory@earthlink.]

I really doubt that the maintenance would be high for a machine in your home, though. It's not going to get nearly as much use as being in a public arcade. My family had a Spirit of 76 machine when I was growing up and it never needed repair or anything. It's still working today, actually, in else's home.

Re:Competition?

[Phleg]

Unfortunately, the numbers don't always work out that evenly. Even if you make half the units, you'd still probably make the same number of models, which would require similar numbers of designers. Since I presume they would be more expensive than people manufacturing, you're probably going to have higher costs.

Re:Competition?

[Lehk228]

Blasphemy

Re:Competition?

[CmdrTostado]

$2,000,000.00 a year

correction $20,000,000.00 a year

Re:Competition?

[dubl-u]

Yes, a small company, perhaps. It seems to work out OK, if you can survive the startup expenses.

Don't forget the risk of a bomb or a recall. He does 3-4 models a year; do half that and you're depending for the year on one or two models. It's much more likely that a surprise problem will bring you to your knees.

Re:Competition?

[mbourgon]

You're kidding. The market has been tiny since, well, Space War/Pong/Space Invaders. The arcade games had a couple big pulls for the Operators - (1) they last forever. You can still see 20 year old games in play. Solid state, baby. (2) They draw as much, if not more, money than the pinball machine. Video games ate the pinball game. Fortunately, adults like Pinball games - you're not fighting a computer, you're fighting yourself. And there's nostalgia factor. Go to superauctions.com, they auction off old pins pretty regularly.

But... go to a local arcade. You're lucky if theyhave ONE pin, much less more. There are some places that have several. And I'm willing to bet one's a South Park, maybe a Monopoly, and possibly a Star Wars Episode One.

And as for Europe - the strong dollar killed that market, for years. Maybe it's back these days, I hope so.

Anyhow, pins are finicky. I love going to a pinball festival (yay DFW! www.texaspinball.com), but there's always a couple machines that either don't work or are being worked on by the owner. I wished they survived better, but they don't.

Speaking of which, time to go wax (yes, wax) my 1981 Bally Vector. "I am your PAC - Play Analysis Computer for your Vector Gameplan".

Re:Competition?

[slycer]

4 or so years ago I used to hang out at a place near my work.

Mars Attacks
Medeival Madness
Junkyard Dog
Star Trek NG
The Adams Family
Elvira
Stargate
Rock'n'Roll something or other??? (newer game, can't remember the name, had "creatures/vampires/etc" in it)

And a couple others.. it was a pretty fun place to go. Sadly I moved locations and don't have the chance to get over there any more.

It's also the only arcade in the city that *I* know of that still keeps pins running, and actually gets them serviced fairly often as well.

Re:Competition?

[oyvindmo]

Rock'n'Roll something or other??? (newer game, can't remember the name, had "creatures/vampires/etc" in it)

That was probably Monster Bash.

(Insert funny /bin/monsterbash joke here.)

Re:Competition?

[tableplay]

Actually a company called Mr. Pinball, based in Australia will begin producing pinball machines soon -- they acquired the rights to make Bally machines as well . . .

Re:Competition?

[llefler]

Pinball is all about the feel of the game. Williams tried adding video components to their Pin2000 machines. In case you didn't know, Williams doesn't make pinballs any more.

It's all about the mechanics. (who wants to play a pinball that doesn't 'knock' when you win a game?) If they want to cut down on maintenance, use off the shelf ITX motherboards, change the bulbs to LEDs, and something like hall effect sensors for the rollovers.

Re:Competition?

[llefler]

I'd love to find a machine for the home, but its going to take some bizarre retro-fad thing to happen for lots of machines to be sold that way.

You can buy a new machine from a Stern dealer. Or, depending on where you live, there are auctions you can go to for older games.

Super Auctions

US Amusement Auctions

Re:Competition?

[Tofino]

I loved RGP back in the day.

Back in the days when the mere words "Road Show" would start a holy war :). Fun game, IMO.

Pinball helped me nab my wife!

[jkeegan]

Man, I hope they keep making machines. Pinball was a large part of how I proposed to my wife (indirectly):

The Birthday/Proposal Story

Of course, Theatre of Magic is a Bally machine, amd they're already gone. :(

Re:Pinball helped me nab my wife!

[kanotspell]

Theatre of Magic was a signifigant contributer to my dropping out of college. "The magic is within you"

Re:Pinball helped me nab my wife!

[Anonymous Coward]

I helped me "Nab" your wife too. Beefore you were dating of course. A friend of mine also head a "stab"

Re:Pinball helped me nab my wife!

[fuzzhead]

Loved the story :) What perfect luck you had with the weather, too!

Makes me want to figure out something like that for my girlfriend.

-fuzzy

Re:Pinball helped me nab my wife!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe, that is a pretty good story.

Theatre of Magic is what got me started really drinking in university, as the only machine we knew of moved to a pub. And well, when you're there you might as well.

Re:Pinball helped me nab my wife!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Well done. I salute you!

You lucky bastard.

Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns?

[RiotXIX]

They cost loads...

Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns?

[VaxRat]

http://www.superauctions.com/ They have some pretty big shows, bring your own truck, etc.

Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns?

[Valiss]

Have you tried here?

Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are too tight to afford a few vowels, you can do with mltrs!

Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns?

[SydShamino]

Nearly new ones? They are way way expensive. Older ones, though, can be had for much less.

We have a Galahad and a Friendship 7, from 1969 and 1962, respectively. The first we bought at an auction in Tennessee for $75 in 2000; the second I paid $150 for in Texas last year. (The market seems to be cheapest on the East Coast; auctions around here from places like Super Auctions are too expensive.

Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns?

[Life2Short]

Probably not much help to you but sometimes you can catch the odd table at your local auction. I got my Williams "Space Odyssey" circa 1974 a few years back for $65. Had to fix the right flipper, but somebody had left some old parts in the coin box and the soldering was so simple on those old machines that even with my weak solder fu I was able to get it working.

Re:Any one have a cheap source for pinball mchns?

[bVork]

Your best bet is probably checking the newsgroup rec.games.pinball, or the Mr Pinball classifieds at http://www.xmission.com/~daina/classified/.

It also helps to be looking for older pins. A Twilight Zone will still cost a couple thousand. Medieval Madness seems to stay at about $5000. But go back 15 or 20 years, and pins are around $500.

So whose with me?

[CSMastermind]

All right I see a market that's ripe for the picking, anybody else want to post the captial to get my new company off the ground?

Re:So whose with me?

[Dogtanian]

All right I see a market that's ripe for the picking, anybody else want to post the captial to get my new company off the ground?

If it were that simple, the market wouldn't be so empty. That's not to say there isn't an opportunity that others have missed (or perhaps they followed the mantra that any business that "merely" turns a decent profit isn't profitable enough *cough*).

But frankly, I'd want to investigate the market further before I threw money at it.

Re:So whose with me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put me down for it, I've got 25 cents.

Re:So whose with me?

[CSMastermind]

:-) I meant that in a sort of joking way, I know that the market is far from "ripe for the picking". Personally I wish that weren't the case. But I do think it would be neat to see maybe some smaller computerized pinball machines, with lcd screens and small buttons on either side to use the paddles. You could set them on the coners of bars ect. I don't really plan on going into business :).

Re:So whose with me?

[Fizzog]

"perhaps they followed the mantra that any business that "merely" turns a decent profit isn't profitable enough"

Actually that is what happened to Williams. They were only making a small profit from their pinball division, but their slot machine division was a license to print money.

So they closed the pinball side because it wasn't profitable enough in comparison.

Re:So whose with me?

[Dogtanian]

Actually that is what happened to Williams. They were only making a small profit from their pinball division, but their slot machine division was a license to print money. So they closed the pinball side because it wasn't profitable enough in comparison.

It's a fair move if (for example) the pinball division's sales were having an adverse effect on the slot machine division's. Or if, say, continued profits made by the pinball division would have involved high risk, or required investment that could have been better used elsewhere.

Or it could all be bullshit image-mongering by those at the top, who don't feel that "moderately profitable" reflects well on them. I suspect this may be the case quite often.

It's often been a criticism of western- and particularly American businesses that "merely" making a respectable profit is seen as failure. Macho bullshit from the same business cultures that don't give a damn about anything beyond the next quarter's profits.

Re:So whose with me?

[Autobahn]

I know a nice Nigerian man who can help you out...

Re:So whose with me?

[mutterc]

This is because of the way our stock market is structured, and the fact that those at the top are largely compensated in stock options.

The price of a share of stock represents the potential for earnings growth in the future. Therefore, to keep the share price going up, your earnings must keep growing at an ever-increasing rate.

Mature businesses that have decent profits could give some of that profit back to shareholders in the form of dividends (and some, of course, do). So it could be good for an individual investor to have a steady-state profitable company. However, execs are in it to keep the share price going up (since they have a discount on the shares, through the options).

Unless or until there are some restrictions on stock option compensation for executives (e.g. long required holding periods, heavy capital-gains taxes for stuff held for a short term with the rate reducing as time goes on, etc.), expect this short-term-profit-increase-at-all-costs mentality to continue.

Virtual pinball, use for PPUs

[dameron]

The first thing I though of when I heard about physics processing units was that you might be able to make a realistic pinball simulation on the pc.

The 3d effects and models have been around for a while, but what makes most computerized pinball games lame to me is their arbitrary and clunky "feel" when the ball interacts with the environment.

Physics processing units might add that extra kick of realism and make it easier to stomach the dwindling population of real pinball machines. Lot of room for force feedback pinbabll controllers here.

-dameron

Re:Virtual pinball, use for PPUs

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I've had with most electronic pinball game is the perspective. You either have a top-down view, which makes all of the targets and artwork very small, or a 3/4 perspective where you can't see the entire table at once and constanly lose your ball down the drain because the screen doesn't scroll quickly enough.

Re:Virtual pinball, use for PPUs

[SB5]

Nothing beats the real thing, in 3 dimensions, not the 2d you see on your monitor. You can move your head and you can see the ball or whatever better.

Re:Virtual pinball, use for PPUs

[Cthefuture]

vpinball has a pretty good physics model. Coupled with VpinMAME and you get something close to the real machine.

However, last I heard vpinball is no longer being developed and is a closed-source Windows-only application. Ah well...

I occasionally fire it up on my home-built arcade machine that has pinball flipper buttons on the sides of the machine.

Nothing beats the real thing though. There is just so much "stuff" in a pinball machine. The real ones are much easier to see what's going on. A 2D pinball game can't replicated the complexity of the real machines and a 3D model is difficult to see.

Re:Virtual pinball, use for PPUs

[kidgenius]

I've only played one decent/fun pinball game, and it was Crystal Caliburn (iirc). It was a king arthur thing, and it rocked. Only on the Mac though....sigh.

Lord of the Rings

[Anonymous Coward]

The Simpsons and Sopranos games are OK, but the best new pinball game of the last several years in my mind is definitely Lord of the Rings. I hated that movie (I only saw the first one... boring!) but even without really knowing the story, the game is just amazing.

Get to an arcade and play it! Highly reccomended!

Greatest Pinball Machine of all time

[tcd004]

Theatre of Magic

AMAZING!!!

Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time

[The-Bus]

Yes, one is currently for sale. Auction ends on 4/13 I believe.

Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time

[k98sven]

Bah, too easy to get the Theatre Multiball.

I'd go with Scared Stiff!

Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time

[Anonymous Coward]

Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts has one in its campus center near the mail room. Just FYI. ;)

Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say Funhouse or Medievel Madness.

"They took our gruel,

They took our wives,

They took our pinball machines!"

Riot Incited!

Re:Greatest Pinball Machine of all time

[kneel]

Wrong! The best pinball game ever is Whirlwind. It had a fucking cool fan that blew on you, and these awesome magnetic things that blew your pinball around. ingenious!

Tommy?

[adolfojp]

Pinball Wizzard? The Who? got nothing

Re:Tommy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wizzard? Who is this, Rincewind?

Re: FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh FP btw!

Is that First Pinball? Otherwise, you fucking fail it!

Why I stopped playing pinball

[LordOfYourPants]

The price went up to $0.50 to play and I stopped there. Cold. Actually, I stopped going to the arcades in general at that point.

Once every couple of years I'll go to play a pinball game and reconfirm why I stopped: the game never seems to work properly. A flipper will be half dead, the ball will get stuck in some bizarre part of the board, or the game itself will be dead. I'm sure it's because the games don't get a lot of play and therefore see less maintenance, but it's a vicious cycle that, for me, started with the game costing $0.50.

Nowadays I see machines set to $1 to play. I'm not going to risk $1 on a machine that, these days, seems to have a 90% chance of being broken.

It's a shame to see that there's only one pinball machine manufacturer left, but I'm unwilling to pay $1 each time to help them out.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Greyfox]

For as long as I can recall, it was a pretty good bet that pinball machines would not work quite correctly. Even when they were just competing against space invaders and galaga, the pinball machines always took a back seat to the video games. Not that a there were a lot of arcades that were particularly concerned with keeping their video games working correctly either.

These days I'd just as soon spend my money on a playstation game and not have to deal with the poorly kept up games and the lack of creativity of the current generation of arcade games. They can all go out of business for all I care. I do miss the pinball though...

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[RFC959]

Yeah, well, that was the problem. Pinball machines are physically complex and require a lot of routine maintenance - at least relative to video games, with nothing to clean beyond wiping down the front and no moving parts beyond a joystick and a few buttons. That's part of what mortally wounded pinball. No arcade operator wants to do that kind of work when he could get the same money for much less work with video machines. I play pinball now and then when I get a chance, but I hardly ever even see one these days.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Jebediah21]

Wise move. I still play one now and again (PinBot \m/) but I will not pay anything more than 50 on a game. Most are 3 balls with a wide gaping space between the flippers. I'd rather gamble, at least I have a chance then.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Qrlx]

PINBOT CIRCUITS ACTIVATED

I learned the game on that table. Get to Earth, Special, and just two planets away is the Sun for another Special. Good times.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Knara]

Nowadays I see machines set to $1 to play. I'm not going to risk $1 on a machine that, these days, seems to have a 90% chance of being broken.

Tis a sad thing. Used to be that you could figure out what arcades had techs that cared, and took care of their machines (I know, I used to spend a disproportionate amount of time keeping pinball machines in good condition vs. the video uprights). Now if you can even find a good arcade, you almost never see one that is really well maintained.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Joe123456]

All most all game near me are max 0.50 per game some offer 5 for $2 some even 3 for $1

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[IronChef]

I'd rather gamble, at least I have a chance then.

Learn to play better. :)

There is some luck in pinball, but skill is the determining factor. There's a reason the same guys keep winning tournaments.

Hey, you could always get a UK pinball machine. They have a player-controlled post between the flippers; without one they are considered a game of chance. Silly Britons!

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[neil.pearce]

I'm not going to risk $1 on a machine

Most modern pinball machines display a period/full-stop after the number of credits to indicate that it has detected a fault.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[IronChef]

I love pinball. The funny thing is that until a couple of years ago, I never played it. Well, I played it when I was a little kid. But now I am 33 and I am way into it.

Pretty much every time I see a place that might have pinball, I stop and take a look. I have never seen one set to $1/play. Factory settings these days are $0.50/play, and there are often deals like 3 plays for $1 or 5 plays for $2. Of course you can price it however you want, but I've never seen $1/play.

That aside -- yes, they are all frickin' broken. As another poster correctly pointed out, they require some maintenance, and the operators, spoiled by no-maintenance video games, don't take the time to do it. Lazy, stupid, inbred operators helped kill this fine industry! Finding a game that works well enough to really enjoy is rare.

So what do I do? I buy my own games. :) It's a greay hobby that I have really enjoyed for the last couple of years.

- Playing is fun, and well suits my short attention span. I can't stand a Final Fantasy RPG, but a game of pinball--that suits me fine.
- Keeping the machines running and looking good is fun in its own right, like tinkering with a classic car.
- They are a neat piece of American history (FINE, they were invented in France, but the modern form with flippers is an American innovation.)
- When you get tired of a game, it's usually easy to flip it to another collector and make your money back. I currently have about $7500 worth of games, and if I wanted I could recover all that cost in a month.

A pinball is kinetic art with lots of blinkenlights. There are simulators, sure, but the only way to really experience pinball is to play a real game. Emulated pac-man, on the other hand, is still pac-man.

Pinball as an industry is nigh dead and I don't expect it to return. But it makes a great hobby anyway.

All you video-game snobs... try to find a good, working pinball game and play it. I think you will be surprised at how much fun it really is if you give it a chance. Plus, it's more retro-cool than any old Nintendo!

Oh, for the curious: you can get a failry modern game for around $1200 if you get lucky, but the A-list games are usually $2k and up, with some stable around $3500, and a couple of super-popular games at $5-6k. I'm talking used Bally/Williams classics here.

A new-in-box Stern game can be had from a distrubutor for about $3700 if you look around. Lot of people pan Stern, and it is true they have many duds, but they have a couple of really solid recent games like Simpsons and Lord of the Rings. Stern's current best stand up quite well to the best of the classics, IMHO.

Shipping is about $250 for any kind of pinball, so the best way to buy is from a private collector (no tax) within driving distance (no shipping and you can fully evaluate before you buy).

Anyone who buys a $5k Stern from Sharper Image needs to be punched for extreme silliness.

Anyone in Seattle who wants to play my games is welcome to come by. :)

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha. Your place is going to be slashdotted.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're ever in San Francisco, stop by "Riptide Arcade" at Pier 39. They've managed to find techs and staff that really care! (i.e. you can actually get to know whoever's working there) Not much pin due to space/monetary considerations, but all of the video, even the high-maintainence stuff like DDR, tends to be fixed within a day or two of something breaking.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[mr. methane]

I'm probably a little over the average age here, but I started playing when it was two games for a quarter and you got five balls per game. This was on a machine with mechanical reels for scorekeeping, and when you got a free game, a solenoid would fire off inside the case with a noise not unlike a .22 gunshot.

I can understand the economics of it, there's a hell of a lot of hand labor that goes into assembling a machine, and they need regular adjustments from a skilled mechanic, and have a lot of finicky ramps, switches, and rebound pads that break. For those of you under 40, just think of a severely overclocked P4 with a fan controller posessed by demons, and you'll get the idea. :-)

Still, I do miss the very mechanical, "real" feeling of a good pinball machine, and I hope some company carves out a nice niche market making them.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[mnbjhguyt]

Now that's the very same reason why I bought my own pinball (whitewater)!
I do the maintenance and with those prices per play it pays itself in a couple of months...

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[dypstick]

I am a technician at an arcade where we have the largest collection of pinballs of any other arcade in this area (Ocean City, MD). At the moment we have 12 machines, ranging from a prototype for the original Star Trek (1978) to the newest Stern Soprano's pin. When I first started here, we had over 20! But bigger, newer video games bring in more money, so we've had to cut back.

Pinballs are NOT hard to maintain. If the machines you play are constantly broken- find different machines! Broken pinballs are caused by lazy or incompetent service personel. Most arcade technicians are hacks anyway.

I agree with some other posters in that Stern's machines aren't as nice (mechanically or theme-wise) as some older williams/bally games, but they are the only ones making them anymore.

If any of you care to come check out my pinball machines, come to Marty's Playland on the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD ahref=http://www.martysplayland.com/http://www.mar tysplayland.com/> (sorry, our website is horribly out of date) and ask for Dan. Mention the slashdot pinball post and I'll give you a couple free games.

dypstick

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Jebediah21]

It's the first pinball game I can claim addiction too. Found it camping in Duluth and pumped a lot of quarters into it. Now I have to play any I see. Good times indeed.

Re:Why I stopped playing pinball

[Jebediah21]

O, I'm well aware about jolting the machine to change to path of the ball, hold the ball in the paddle, etc. But how much would it cost me to learn? At 3 balls for 50 cents gambling would indeed be cheaper for me. I'd like a table but that's an unrealistic goal at this point.

Addams Family

[frankthechicken]

Without doubt one of my favorite machines made.

Pat Lawlor's finest creation in my opinion. That man was so damn prolific, and passionate about his machines. One of the defining quotes of his, which sort of sums him up:-

"Anyone in this business who designs something looks at that product like it is one of their children. You take a year to create this thing, put your own personality into it, and heaven forbid something should happen when you release it because it's like your child is misbehaving. You become attached to the games and they are important to you."

A true craftsman.

Re:Addams Family

[SpaceLifeForm]

Truly an excellent game. It always gave me good workout taking over an hour to play one game, scoring over 2,000,000,000 points usually in the process. After you got your 100 Super Bear Kicks, there was little left to do as the big electromagnet underneath the playing surface would eventually kick the last ball down the drain. Sometimes the magnet would grab the ball and hold it in the center and you had to reset. After a while, that would fail, and the electromagnet would have to be replaced. But, that was the only problem I ever experienced with that game.

Re:Addams Family

[MilenCent]

Yeah, Addams Family was cool, though for my money his next game, Twilight Zone, was even cooler.

Have you seen Monopoly yet? Lawlor designed that one for Stern. Pretty nifty design, though Stern's relatively low production values are a problem.

Re:Addams Family

[dubl-u]

Without doubt one of my favorite machines made.

The thing is truly a joy. There are so many beautiful little touches, things that one person in a hundred would never notice, but that add up to a great experience.

For example, take a look at the backglass artwork. You can see that all of the windows (which are individually lit by bulbs behind them) have little scenes in them. Except the top-left one looks dark and empty. But really, it has a bulb that comes on occasionally to show the silhouette of Cousin It. How does it work? On the back of the backglass art, which is normally blank, they did another printing run with just the Cousin It silhouette in an opaque metallic ink.

The same care extends into the software. One of the objects of the game is to open a bookcase so you can shoot the ball into the Vault, a hole behind the bookcase. But maybe one game in a hundred, you'll hit the ball in some weird way where it flies through the air, bounces off the glass, and ends up in the vault even when the bookcase is closed. Most games would just decide that it was an error and spit the ball back out. But Addams Family has Gomez say, "Dirty pool, old man. I like it!" Then it skips you ahead in the game, opening the bookcase and locking the ball for multiball.

Just from playing it, it's clear that the makers of it were masters of their craft, and that they loved what they did. The Addams Family pinball machine has always been an inspiration to me in the stuff I make, even when it's something much less sexy, like business software.

Re:Addams Family

[Fizzog]

I really like Monopoly but I just find the playfield to be too cluttered. There's just too much stuff crammed into too small an area for me. I feel the same about TSPP (The Simpsons Pinball Party).

If they had made it as a widebody (Twilight Zone, Addams Family, etc. width) then it would be an awesome machine.

Re:Addams Family

[Anonymous Coward]

When i was real young I always wanted a pinball machine and 1 or more arcade systems in my house (like in the movie Big).

If you have the money, you can buy Addams Family Pinball for only £2995.00 or £4195.00 for the extra mint condition! Yikes!

They also have Attack from Mars and alot of the other Bally machines. Its sad that pinball is dying off.

Re:Addams Family

[ZosX]

Man, you just brought back so many memories. I remember the dirty old man line. Definately one of pinballs finest moments. I remember the first time I played that game and learned all too quickly that there was to be no ball return if you fumbled out of the gates. I don't know if all the machines lacked the ball saving feature (you know, when you lose a ball immediately upon firing, it gives one back) but this machine never had it. Definately like only the best pinball machine evah!

Re:Addams Family

[tableplay]

Well at least when he was working at Williams he was a true craftsman-- but I thought most of his Stern offerings were mediocre at best (Rollercoaster Tycoon and Monopoly for example). I think the best machine he ever designed was Funhouse.

Note to moderators:

[Anonymous Coward]

Pinball Wizard by the Who.

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 pinball

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 pinball

He's a pinball wizard
There's got to be a twist
A pinball wizard
He'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 gets a replay
Never tilts at all
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

I thought I was
The Bally table king
But I just handed
My pinball crown to him

Even on 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 kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

Re:Note to moderators:

[grozzie2]

/. can say what they want, but, there was only one pinball wizard, and the one in the headline was not it Problem is, most here are to young to remember the real one quoted in the parent.

Re:Note to moderators:

[Anonymous Coward]

Lyric correction:

"Even on my FAVORITE table"

emulate most pinball games

[havaloc]

You can download various tables and emulate most pinball games, including many favorite Williams tables, such as Indiana Jones, and Star Trek the Next Generation, and Addams Family. These were classics, and the emulation is very good.

You need Vpinmame and Visual Pinball working together. It's a little complicated to get setup, but it works well. You then need to download table files.

There are some good sites on how to make them work together, but I don't want to slashdot them.

Re:emulate most pinball games

[un4given]

You can download various tables and emulate most pinball games

Anyone who talks of emulating a pinball machine is obviously not a pinball player.
Pinball is all about feel: The bumpers, the angle of the table, how easily the machine tilts,
how 'fast' it plays and how tight the out lanes are on both sides.
A good pinball player can slide, shake, and bump a machine to keep the ball in play. You can't emulate that.

Re:emulate most pinball games

[Martin Blank]

Couldn't do that at the local arcade when I was growing up. They were bolted to the floor.

Still, I think it helped me improve my timing somewhat, as I was forced to do without that and still keep the ball in play. Addams Family was the best I had available to me at the time, though I also loved Twilight Zone -- except for what seemed to be the unnecessarily large gap between the flippers. I lost more quarters to that gap than I should have. I guess the concept worked, though -- I kept playing.

Re:emulate most pinball games

[Joe123456]

Have you ever bean to www.shivasite.com or www.vpforums.com/

Re:emulate most pinball games

[Anonymous Coward]

The people associated with those sites are extremely NOT friendly , I'm not the first to say it.

Basically they are jerk assholes.

I say just burn up their bandwidth , never give them a dime , and try not to speak to any of them LOL.

One of the worst places on the net without a doubt.

Memories...

[Huxley_Dunsany]

When I was a kid (late '80s, early '90s), for a couple years my family lived just a couple blocks away from "The Pinball Place", an old warehouse in Berkeley, CA, which had been converted to a repair shop / museum / arcade for pinball machines and memorabilia. I was young enough that my memories are a little hazy, but I recall that on a certain Saturday or Sunday of every month, the management would throw open the doors to the local kids and let everyone play for free on any of the dozens (hundreds?) of machines that were currently functional. I have so many fond memories of playing tons of antique pinball games - "The World's Largest Pinball Machine" ("Hercules"?) seemed to my child-eyes to use chrome bowling-balls, and required one person on each side to push the dinner-plate sized buttons. I also clearly remember playing a pinball machine based on the original Star Trek series...

Anyway, enough wallowing in nostalgia for me - I'm still an avid pinball fan, and look forward to the day when I can own my own machine. It's nice to see such dedication to a wonderful form of electro-mechanical art.

Huxley

Re:Memories...

[TheHawke]

Yup, Atari's attempt to breach the pinball market was the ole Hercules. It actually used a pool cueball as it's playing ball. It didn't do well on the market and atari soon closed it's pinball department and moved on.

The best one that i've ever played, and got my ass kicked left and right was the Addams Family pinball. They had the gravity cranked up just a little higher than usual, making for some interesting situations. We broke it on more than a couple of occasions.

Re:Memories...

[Mister Transistor]

Heheh... I played a Hercules once too. The balls were actually Pool cueballs painted silver! You'll be glad to know that the game IS one of the ones emulated by Visual Pinball/VpinMAME!!

I have a real Flight 2000 (Stern) and a Fireball (Bally) both real classics, Fireball was the first multi-level machine (small upper table but, hey...) and Flight 2000 was one of the first "wide body" style games.

I highly recommend owning one. It's a cool piece of history, an excellent conversation piece, a nice bit of furniture, an auxilliary cocktail table, a home bank/safe, and a launching pad for all sorts of interesting things ;)

Re:Memories...

[mr.dreadful]

I know exactly the place you are talking about -- I don't remember the guys name, but he was an avid collector who ran a route (people who put machines in bars, etc and split the money) and the warehouse was where he kept his stock, as well as some favorites. He partnered briefly with a good friend of mine who had brought out a very large collection from the midwest. They had monthly parties that were awesome for pinball fans, but not exactly open to the public. There was another guy who was part of that scene who also had monthly parties at his home, which was *packed* with pins...

good times, good times....

Not the way I know it...

[MikeXpop]

That blind, deaf, and dumb boy,
Sure runs a successful pinball-producing company.
*riff*

Gone with arcades

[Telastyn]

The problem with pinball machines is they were tied to the old style arcades. Arcades would have a guy come out every 3 months or so and bring them new games in exchange for old ones.

Since pinball machines break down [damned mechanical beasties] pretty often, the guy would often spruce them up, and/or replace the little broken bits here and there.

With arcades moving to smaller, less dedicated areas [in movie theatres for example] they don't replace the machines as often. If the machine breaks a little after 2 months, suddenly it's less desirable for maybe 4 months rather than 1.

Futher the larger, less complex video games meant the video game guy turned into more of a mover rather than a mechanic. Pinball machines stay broken longer, or aren't fixed as well. They make less money.

A shame. Pat Lawlor should be as famous as Sid Meier or Will Wright or Chris Sawyer.

Re:Gone with arcades

[Anonymous Coward]

Pat Lawlor should be as famous as Sid Meier or Will Wright or Chris Sawyer

Uhm, he is, at least to me. I ain't never heard of none of em!

(Well, I have heard of Sid Meier, but the point still stands...)

Re:Gone with arcades

[Kiryat Malachi]

Pat Lawlor - without question the single best pinball table designer in history. Designed the Addams Family, the finest pinball table in history, amongst other classics.

Sid Meier - Civilization. 'nuff said.

Will Wright - Maxis. Sim City. The Sims. Some of the most popular video games, ever.

Chris Sawyer - Transport Tycoon, Roller Coaster Tycoon. I'll forgive you if you didn't know him, he isn't quite on the same plane. I would personally have gone with Chris Roberts (Wing Commander) or Peter Molyneux (Black and White, Populous) or Richard Garriott (Ultima).

Re:Gone with arcades

[david_costanzo]

While we're already off-topic...

I'd also put Pat Lawlor on the same level as Shigeru Miyamoto (Zelda, Mario) for his innovative game designs and attention to the overall user experience.

Pinball Wizard?

[ajlitt]

No The Who reference in the From * Dept. line? Timmy, Taco will beat you with lead pipes when he finds out.

Slot machines are much more profitable to make.

[johndierks]

It's sad to see such a great pasttime die out. With the advent of super slick console gaming systems the industry has really fallen apart. It doesn't help that the best pinball manufacturers make a lot more money developing slot machines than pinball machines.

Re:Slot machines are much more profitable to make.

[mikael]

With the advent of super slick console gaming systems the industry has really fallen apart.

It's not just that there are super slick console systems. It's that the places where the arcades were located (if not the arcades themselves) were seen by parents to be rather dodgy. Invariably, they would be dimly lit (due to the burnt out screens), and would be relatively expensive (2-3 minutes = 50 pence/cents). For several weekends worth of gaming you could have your own arcade centre, and in the safety of your own home, along with the drinks and snacks of your choice, and without the hassle from any of the 'regulars'.

Re:Slot machines are much more profitable to make.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Arcades are leeches." I can't remember who said that one(probably an owner since I see them post online), but it's been true for a long time now. They don't really offer anything novel and entertaining enough by themselves to just exist anywhere, so they tend to stick around as a complement to other attractions.

There are some signs of how this could be turned around, of course; games that lock the player in with long-term saves on cards, like Initial D and Derby Owner's Club have proven to be extremely successful - they make the game the *destination*.

And games that are somewhat gimmicky or rely heavily on face-to-face work too; DDR draws crowds, fighting games need competitors...

Pinball could probably still be competitive in the new arcade environment except for its great upkeep costs. If one did a virtualized version with today's display technology, using LCDs for the surface, and keeping in some mechanics to monitor nudging and tilting, and got all of it RIGHT, it would probably be a decent success.

You can always play old pinball in Windows...

[antdude]

I know it is not like the real thing with the physical units, but it is better than losing all of pinballs!

PinballSim.com

Visual PinMame Guide

VPForums

Cost?

[ed271828]

Anyone have a ballpark figure about what ones of these babies cost new?.. (one day!)

Re:Cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyone have a ballpark figure about what ones of these babies cost new?"

A new Stern pinball is typically around the $4000 mark. Retailers charge a lot more (like $5.5k) but if you shop around you can get them for $3700 - $4000.

Seen lack of playability imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest machine I played "Star Wars - Episode I" failed to even qualify as a semi-OK machine.

It had three things to hit:
1. Center top playfield targer - hidden by a video screen which cycled through scenes in the movie
2. Top left ramp
3. Top right ramp

The entire game had 1 objective, hit center top playfield target, then hit it again or hit a ramp.

Everything else did nothing special.

Skip the video screen BS it is not any good.

Use decent machines like Addams Family, Count Down, Jungle Queen, Eight Ball Delux, plyboy.

Recreate the better 1970s machines and skip the gimmics.

I've been a pinball fan since playing machines in the early 1970s - maybe about 1/2 or more of the ones pictured in the book 'Lure of the Silver Ball'.

Re:Seen lack of playability imagination

[Woody77]

Addams Family is my all-time favorite machine. So much fun to play.

Re:Seen lack of playability imagination

[bigman2003]

There are tons of other games out there, but for me the 'golden age' of pinball ended in the '90's.

High Speed
Guns N Roses
and my all-time favorite:
Theatre of Magic

I've owned a few pinball machines, and loved them literally to death. That's the problem with these things, they break too easily. I love to find an arcade that has a few machines- they don't even have to be good- as long as the flippers are strong, and the targets all work.

Re:Seen lack of playability imagination

[nofx_3]

Twilight Zone? YES!!! Are You Ready To Fight The POWER! Best pinball machine ever, had to collect all the door panels, and there were gumballs and the power magnents and the piano and all kinda of good stuff.

Re:Seen lack of playability imagination

[jazman]

> I've owned a few pinball machines, and loved them literally to death.

Ewww...

Re:Seen lack of playability imagination

[AkiraBakaBaka]

Episode I was the final (I believe) pinball machine manufactured by Midway, as part of the ill-fated Pinball 2000 series, and it was easily the worst of them. Play some newer games man! Stern has made some awesome fields, most notably the Simpsons game which is fantastic.

Too bad it's so hard to find them to play, unless of course you live in Chicago ;)

Slashdot Pinball

[jd]

Ah, now a Slashdot pinball machine would be a game worth playing. Knock over webservers and destroy bandwidth to get the bonus. Multiplay after three first-posts in a row.

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[MyLongNickName]

But the drain would be a goatse rendition...

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[Joe123456]

Hear is a cool net theamed pinball game needs Visual Pinball http://www.shivasite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2 438

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of "SHOOT AGAIN" you get "DUPE"

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[Patrick Mannion]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v412/AutisticPsy cho/slashdotpinball.jpg You mean like this?

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[msgregory@earthlink.]

Or Natalie Portman's warm gritbowl.

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but just don't rock or tilt it too much or the DUPE! light will cause you to lose your high score.

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[Jedi Alec]

and if you do something really stupid you get to see the goatse guy? Think I'll pass. Then again, imagine a Beowulf of....oh nevermind.

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[HTH NE1]

Multiplay after three first-posts in a row.

Except multiball is instead a Beowulf Cluster.

A three-step skill shot where you must skip step 2.

A special IN SOVIET RUSSIA mode where the machine takes over the flippers and launches a special pinball with mechanical parts inside which you can influence with a trackball.

And recovering a ball that went out an outlane is deemed a Slashback.

Re:Slashdot Pinball

[llefler]

Ok, I have an old Timeline cabinet that I was going to use for a custom game, but never could decide on a theme..... Maybe this is a thread worth capturing. (On slashdot? couldn't be)

Hey, this machine ate my token

[michelcultivo]

I remembered when the machines eaten all of my tokens and I can't play anymore.

Best machines evar!!

[ImaLamer]

Jurassic Park - DataEast
Star Wars - DataEast

The best machines, from DataEast, were the movie machines because they had all of your favorite lines.

"Shoot the Death Star", "Ian Freeze!", ah that was fun. It was like being part of the movie (not really, but fun!)

Internet Pinball Database:
http://www.ipdb.org/

Re:Best machines evar!!

[Qrlx]

Jurassic Park -

Letting Timmy fry on the electric fence was one of my favorites. It was pretty hard to get 30 jet bumper hits too... so I was glad he died.

SYSTEM FAILURE was what made that game great.

Re:Best machines evar!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I didnt care about that crap. GAME PLAY was what mattered.

Best pinball machine ever - Cyclone by WIlliams

"Swords of Fury" was good.

[jd]

Five ball multiplay. The paddles were so powerful, you could actually launch balls over the walls and onto the next layer up. The paddles at the base were close enough together that you could catch anything if you were good enough. There was a bug in the software that allowed you infinite lives.

Ah, now those were the days.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[Luigi30]

If you think five balls is enough, try Apollo 13. 13-ball multiball in that one. Yes, you read 13 correctly.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[Joe123456]

Swords of Fury only has 3 ball at the same time aslo in Apollo 13 13 balls is too much for the game to handle at times.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[kidgenius]

I remember playing the Apollo 13 machine once, in an airport. I got the 13 ball multiball and it was awesome.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[Phleg]

It would be funny if you replied to this message saying, "Oops, I meant 12."

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[MilenCent]

Now you sound to me like a man who would like the wizard mode on Twilight Zone. Six pinballs on the table at once, one made of ceramic instead of metal, almost every award on the table on at once, a small magnet-flip playfield on the site is also active, and for 45 seconds, infinite balls. Perhaps the most brain-burning thing ever seen on a pinball machine.

(For the record: the Apollo 13 pinball machine had a 13 ball multiball.)

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[ZosX]

What's the deal with the ceramic ball? I never played Twighlight long enough to get wizard mode. Was the ball supposed to break or something or was it there just to look cool? I'd imagine a broken ceramic ball would break a lot of the delicate mechanics of a complex modern pinball machine, so I doubt that having the ball break was part of the strategy.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[DZign]

It's lighter than a normal pinball, which makes it much faster in gameplay..

If you get it in the game then the machine will say 'give it back' and you have to shoot it in the right orbit to put it back into the gumball machine (which starts a multiball).

And no the ceramic ball doesn't break, it's very strong.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[MilenCent]

Here's the details about the ceramic pinball found in most Twilight Zone machines.

First thing, it doesn't have to have one. The operator can adjust the game so that it doesn't require one. This is good because the ceramic pinball has become a rather expensive part, going, I've been told, for over a hundred dollars on eBay. It's bad because many of the game's features rely upon this ball, and turning it off in settings will disable one or two of its special features, and result in arbitrary metal balls being labeled the Powerball for purposes of Powerball Mania.

The primary physical effects of the ball upon the game are:
* It's lighter than a standard pinball, and thus tends to be shot around a bit faster and is thus a little more difficult to react to, and is more likely to go down the outlanes.
* It's very slightly larger than a standard pinball, and thus it's a tiny bit more difficult to make some shots with it, including the Slot Machine.
* Most importantly, since it's not made of metal, magnets do not affect it, and the game can use its different electromagnetic characteristics to detect when it's in one of the holes on the board, and thus it knows when it's in play or when a certain shot (Piano) has been made with it.

The magnets thing is important because Twilight Zone, like Addams Family, has magnets beneath the table that turn on at special times in order to influence the ball. But while the magnets in Addams Family are there to mess up the player during multiball ("Feeeeeel the power!"), all the magnets in Twilight Zone help the player. The magnets in the orbits stop the ball when the Camera is lit or a Piano shot is ready, allowing the ball to slowly fall down over an upper flipper, greatly increasing the chances of making those difficult shots. They also turn on during multiball, where these shots are of even greater importance. And since orbit shots are the ones that get stopped, the ball is rarely sent blasting around and down towards the lower flippers at full speed, resulting in fewer drains on an otherwise drain-happy table. (Also, the ceramic ball is useless on the mini playfield, with the magnetic flippers, so the game will try to keep it out of there.)

The ceramic pinball, also known as the "Powerball," is subject to none of these effects. Because of this, left orbit shots are worth extra points, and a shot to the right orbit loads it into the gumball machine, starting "Powerball Mania," one of the more lucretive modes in the game. Powerball Mania takes one ball out of the gumball machine (guarenteed not to be the powerball since it just went in) and two out of the trough and challenges players to win the mini playfield *during* multiball.

More interestingly, it's possible to lock the Powerball for multiball, and start it too. If a jackpot is made with the powerball (rather difficult because the player doesn't get the benefit of the magnet setting him up for a Piano shot), the game "knows" it, and doubles the jackpot award for doing so!

But from a design stance, the most interesting thing about the Powerball is that it's a special pinball that the game can identify. At the start of a game it can either be in the gumball machine, in the trough, or even up in the lock. It's one more non-deterministic element for the game, one more aspect that carries over from game to game, like progressive jackpots. These features are part of what gives pinball its enduring charm, the idea that games are part of a larger continuity instead of starting completely over from an unvarying initial state each time.

The ceramic pinball, it should be said, isn't hollow like a teacup but solid, and is not at all fragile. It can take about as much punishment as the metal balls in the table.

That's about it. Any questions?

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[Voxus]

Any questions?

No, but I love you for knowing all this.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[PateraSilk]

"Lion Man! Lion Man!"

I was never much into pinball but Swords of Fury really did it for me. Me and some friends would pump quarters into that thing late Fridays during high school--in 1989.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[Pope]

I was going to mention this one! I played it a few times and got the 13 ball multiball every game. Seemed like more of a gimmick than a real usefull multiball, but was fun nontheless when I first had it happen.

Personally I'm not fond of the video-game included pinball games, with their 20 million bonus points and billion point scores. The last really good pinball IMO was the first Simpsons one by Data East. It appealed to me as a fan of both the game and the show, and didn't have all the ridiculous gimmicks attached.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[ZosX]

Wow, fascinating!

I'm kinda sad I never got to play Twilight Zone more than just once in my life now.

Thanks for the long explanation!

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[HTH NE1]

The ceramic ball was detected with a Hall effect sensor (named after EH Hall). The ferric balls would induce a current as they passed over the loop sensor; the ceramic ball would not. In the case of a launch at the start of the game, if that sensor got out of alignment, it would never see a current and thus register every ball as the Powerball.

Re:"Swords of Fury" was good.

[Krellan]

I have a Swords Of Fury machine. It only has 3 balls installed, for a 3-ball multiball.

The flippers at the bottom aren't unusually close. Maybe what you're thinking of is the post that's placed dead center to protect balls from draining straight down the middle (as often they drop from the center ramp).

Never did find an infinite-life bug, if there was one, and the flippers never were powerful enough to actually get over the walls (I've never heard of this happening).

Swords Of Fury is considered a very easy game, though, and it's fairly easy to play for as long as you want (if you can keep getting multiballs)....

Maybe you were thinking of another game?

Trade

[fishmasta]

When my dad was first starting out his dental practice, he used to sometimes take trades in return for dental work. One time we got a classic style pinball machine (I forget which company, but it was about a circus). We've had that machine for the last 20 years and it's needed to be repaired several times. Hopefully with all the pinball manufacturers going out of business, it won't become hard to find a repair shop for it. I hope to have that thing for another 20 years.

Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when was "the world" defined only as the english speaking folk?

http://www.commerce.com.tw/products/EN/P/Pinball_M achine.htm

Re:Since when...

[cocotoni]

None of those "pins" would really qualify as a pin in the eyes of anyone that grew up playing WMS, Bally, Gottlieb, DataEast or any other "western" pins.

There are no flippers, there is little or no interaction of the player once the ball is launched, so they are not games of skill.

These are just pachinko machines.

Pinball -- Rules

[doon]

Being a die hard pinhead (no not that pinhead), i can Say pinball rules. I miss the old days of being able to go into an arcade and merrily drop quarters into machines. Now that pinball is being removed from most arcades (the ones that are left are mostly redemption machines and DDR), it is getting harder and harder to play, a lot of us are starting to collect them. There is a pretty active discussion on all things pinball at Rec.games.pinball . Where all of the things in this article and the resulting discussion have be brought up and beat to death.

That being said here is a picture of my humble collection, once we upgrade from apartment 0.5 to house 1.0, we are building a pinball arcade in the basement and this number will grow. My Machines One skill that reading rec.games.pinball has shown me is important is fixing them. Part of the reason pins are leaving arcades it that they require maintenance. Changing balls, new rubbers, waxing. Whereas regular games you windex the screen and empty the coin box. I guess it is the engineer in me, and my sucking really bad at video games, that says I hope pinball never dies.

Re:Pinball -- Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.lyonspinball.com/ in Colorado is damned cool. I went to this place a few weeks ago for the first time. I've never been into pinball, but now i might be. Like a pinball museum where you can play on the machines. highly recommended (no affiliation, just cool).

Re:Pinball -- Rules

[doon]

Yeah i would love to get out that way, but based on the fact that I live on the east coast the commute was killing me. My wife and I used to drive down to Video Video IN morristown, NJ to play there. 25 games, all in great condtion, run by the nicest guy around. Too bad it had to close down.. I miss that place already..

I worked for Atari Games

[RayDude]

I worked for Atari Games in the 90s. They were ultimately bought by Williams at about the same time Williams started seriously considering killing their Pin Ball development.

The big problem with Pin Ball and Video Games is supporting the hardware. Kids are brutal with the hardware and it breaks down a lot. That support costs a lot of money and the arcade owners don't want to pay for it. Pin Ball is much more brutal than Video Games, maintenance wise and that's why Williams stopped producing more than a few models of the things per year while I worked for them.

They thought the future was in Video Games, and they were right, what they didn't know is that the video games would be in the home, not at the arcade.

Coin op video game hardware was out paced by the home computer and eventually the home video game. Coin op volumes and gross margins were so low, that not much could be spent on research and that removed the graphic advantage that coin op had originally used to bring in kids.

They could still make better interfaces (steering wheels, joysticks, track balls etc) but kids were dumbed down by their Nintendo controllers, they didn't need the fancy / different controllers anymore and maybe they didn't want them either.

Pin still exists because its a physical challenge with real physics, a real ball and real flippers. Its simply fun no matter how its put together and you don't have to spend six million dollars to model people and cars, etc like 3D video games, so the development overhead is controllable.

I imagine maintenance is still high, but Stern is the only game left in town, so he can charge the right amount and the remaining operators have to pay it, they have no choice.

I didn't know he still made new pins (that's how long its been since I went to an arcade) and I think its awesome he's still going.

Raydude

Re:I worked for Atari Games

[tobe]

I;m currently working for WMS Gaming.. the company Williams became... turns out video slot machines (the gambling variety) are *way* more lucrative than pinball machines which is a *real* shame because *my* 10p's invariably end up in the pin tables no matter what's new fangled video game is sitting next to them..

Re:I worked for Atari Games

[RayDude]

Yep. Thanks for reminding me. WMS makes tons O money from Slots, Video Poker, etc... Pins are just not as lucrative because they are not as addictive, heh.

From the pinhead's perspective...

[MrPerfekt]

It's truly amusing to see this come up on slashdot. Being both a computer and pinball aficionado, it's interesting to see that the slashdot crowd knows very little about pinball.

Lets clear up some misconceptions that I've seen in some posts thus far:

1) Why isn't there another manufacturer to compete with Stern? Monopolies are evil. Well, the problem with that is that the pinball market is very small. 10,000 units is pretty small for a global market. The article mentions that it takes about 6,500 to 7,000 units for Stern to just breakeven. Said another way, the 7,001st machine is where they start to make profit. This is because...

2) Pinballs are very expensive. Expensive to design, expensive to make and difficult to sell a decent quantity of. All told, a new-in-box machine goes for about $4,000. Damn near impossible to sell to a consumer and getting harder to sell to operators in the waning coin-op market. I suppose that there may be some ways for them to cut corners and churn out a slightly cheaper machine but if anyone has seen a Bally/Williams machine from the 90s and compared it with a current Stern product, the difference in quality is noticable. That is because...

3) In the heyday of Williams/Bally, the market was much bigger. Then it wasn't unusual to pump out 30,000 machines of the same model instead of the under 10,000 of current models. More sales equal more profit equals more development funds. The more money available general leads to better development of "toys" and new technologies (optical switches, new hardware platforms, etc). Most Williams machines have several unique "toys" in each model and added a great amount of excitement. Stern usually only puts one "toy" in a machine and isn't exceptionally exciting. That just comes from having to shave back the cost of each machine to try and make a profit easier. It's simple business math and I can't really blame them since the slack between profit and loss is very thin.

All-in-all, hopefully Stern will keep pinball alive for many many years to come. On most "pinhead's" wishlists though is for Stern to be a little bit more innovative and make machines that are a bit more complex like old Williams/Bally machines. But undoubtedly, we'll continue to keep cheering Stern on regardless because he's keeping the dream alive.

Re:From the pinhead's perspective...

[xkenny13]

Then it wasn't unusual to pump out 30,000 machines of the same model instead of the under 10,000 of current models.

Not quite. The Addams Family shipped about 20,000 units, and is the all-time record holder for most pins shipped. Specific models typically shipped 10,000 to 15,000 for a good run.

What Stern is shipping right now is approaching 10,000 total games for the year, not 10,000 of a specific model.

At no time did 30,000 units of any specific model ship.

Re:From the pinhead's perspective...

[Joe123456]

have you ever played The Simpsons Pinball Party or The Lord of the Rings?

Re:From the pinhead's perspective...

[MrPerfekt]

Yeah, it appears my numbers were a bit inflated. IPD says The Addams Family production run was 20,270 machines plus an extra 1,000 for the gold edition.

Twilight Zone was around 15,000..

In any case, the ratio was about right since current titles like Lord of the Rings had 4,017 machines made.

Re:From the pinhead's perspective...

[oyvindmo]

All told, a new-in-box machine goes for about $4,000. Damn near impossible to sell to a consumer [...]

Last I heard, the home market was actually up to about 20% of Stern's sales. Considering how much larger the entertainment budget for this generation is compared to earlier, we might very well see this rise, and not only because of less pinballs in commercial operation.

I'd say the fact that the beasts weigh 250 pounds and demand semi-frequent service is a bigger hurdle to growing home sales.

Then it wasn't unusual to pump out 30,000 machines of the same model [...]

I believe the sales record for a pinball machine is The Addams Family, with just over 21,000 units produced (including the Gold edition). Your point is valid, though.

It is actually worth noting a not-player-visible but still groundbreaking thing Stern have accomplished: organizing the production line to be able to profitably do even small (250-500 units) re-runs of previous models. This lets them do a pretty conservative first production run, and then produce more later if the demand for a particular title is high enough. We've seen multiple re-runs of TSPP, LotR and Harley Davidson already, producing only as many machines as the distributors put in an order for. No close-out sale losses, and less need for operators or distributors to take risks when considering how many to buy of a brand new model.

...and to stick my neck out properly for any Bally/Williams lovers in the audience, it is my personal opinion is that LotR is right up there with Attack From Mars, Theatre of Magic and the other classic 90s models. Very good looking, above-average layout and sound, and insanely-much-above-average rules/software.

(..speaking as a happy owner of AFM, ToM, LotR, CftBL, IJ, Shadow and (too many) more.)

Waiting for the newest pinball machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Software which uses Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor on the Powerbooks.

last wmp for linux manufaturer

[Anonymous Coward]

from the tour: http://www.sternpinball.com/tour.shtml

" Linux users click here to download Windows Media Players.: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/down load/default.asp

I still have an arcade

[Anonymous Coward]

A real one. One where they take extremely GOOD care of all the machines, including the 6 Pinball machines there. They allow smoking inside but they keep the cigarette burns off the machines. We have nice, metal, padded stools to sit on, if you like and tables between all the machines to put your food and beer on. Yes, the sell beer. The place is very well ran. The pinball machines are all Stern machines but, since thats all there are these days, thats all the owner can buy. There are no redemption machines here, its not part of a bowling alley, this is just a new version of the old-school arcade and it works! The owner had made money on the place since they opened and plans to be around for a long, long time.

.A loyal Rockys Customer

Re:I still have an arcade

[Joe123456]

Where is it ?

Re:I still have an arcade

[Kiryat Malachi]

Shit, advertise for the owner! There are plenty of us out here who would kill for a place like that. (Ain't enough room in Chicago apartments for me to put a table in at home.)

Supply and demand

[phorm]

Well, it seems to me that if this is one of the last few companies producing machines, then eventually you'll find and good condition+working machines will climb in value.

After all, as it gets harder to find a machine, those that really want one will pay more...

World Pinball Championships

[siobHan]

The reigning pinball champion is Lyman Sheats, winner of the PAPA 7 World Pinball Championships in September 2004. The next championships are August 11-14, 2005, same location.

http://www.papa.org/papa8/

Lyman works at Stern, incidentally - many of the former Bally/Williams designers and programmers either work at Stern or do contract work for them. Quality has improved considerably as a result.

K

Re:World Pinball Championships

[Sandor at the Zoo]

I used to work with Lyman before he left the military-industrial complex to design pinball machines.

At the arcade in Tewksbury MA, he'd play a single game for a couple of hours, then take a break to smoke while me and a friend disposed of some of his free credits. :-)

He is absolutely an incredible player to watch; it really is art in motion.

Ah, the days of Terminator 2 and Addams Family. Those were good machines.

Re: FP

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHA! He sure did, my friend. He sure did. :D

farfetched

[Anonymous Coward]

what about sega, they still make pinballs

Sega Does not make pinballs

[Anonymous Coward]

You are mistaken. Gary Stern bought the business back from them. Interesting to note that the old Stern Pinball was sold to Data East, which was then sold to Sega which then sold it back to Gary Stern. This happened over a period of years.

Ah, the great cirlce of (pinball) life.

-The Anonymous Bastard

Re:Sega Does not make pinballs

[siobHan]

No, Data East Pinball was created more or less from scratch. It just happened to be founded by Gary Stern and Joe Kaminkow, with the financial backing of Data East Japan.

K

Pinball Mods

[xkenny13]

the Simpsons cannot hold a candle to the sheer genius that Attack From Mars was.

If you like Attack from Mars, you should see the cool LED mod kit someone put together for it.

As a Pinball Junkie

[CitznFish]

Gary Stern is not the last pinball mfg. He's the most successful (just barely) and his own stupidity will ruin his company. Mr Pinball Australia just bought the rights to Williams and Bally and will be producing new pinballs, parts, remakes, who knows for sure. Good? Bad? Who knows, but Gary Stern will no longer be the only game in town. Gary Sterns arrogance clearly shows in that interview. Maybe if Stern were more forward thinking and not relying on multi-million dollar licensing deals, they could bring some originality back to pinball.

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[CitznFish]

Stern might do better if they ADVANCED teh game of pinball instead of reproducing the same old tables. the DMD display has been out how many years now? 15? Why no color LCD screens? Adaptive play rules? changing tables? You could easily have a rule set that flips a portion of the table over revealing a new playfield, or lifting one up into a 2-tier playfield. Pinball isn't dead, the makers imagination is....

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[Joe123456]

It real easy to say put in a filping over playfleld but a lot harder to make it work in a game.

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[nolife]

You really think it is imagination that is missing? I think it is more a lack of people interested in playing pinball and maybe even the game rooms that do not want to use space for the machines. With the latest video games, action, excitement and the $1-$2 to play them seems like a better choice for them to have.

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't mean crap until Mr Aussie has a game in a showroom taking quarters. Want to place bets on when that will happen?

Gary's stupidity may ruin his company, as you say, but that stupidity has let him outlast all the other manufacturer implosions in the past decade. He also has the only people left in the world with a clue how to make these things.

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[Zelatrix]

I used to repair these things for a living. It's not that players don't love them; it's the arcades who hate them. A pinball needs regular and frequent maintenance. Without that, the machine's gameplay suffers and the players go away. Then the arcade sees that the machine is making no money - they rarely seem to notice the link with not maintaining it.

Arcades would rather stick two video cabinets in the same spot that need practically no maintenance. I could never have made a living repairing those!

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[CitznFish]

Not hard at all, but then again I'm not Gary Stern. Besides i was just throwing out quick imaginative examples.....

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[DZign]

Stern was in the past always the 2nd (or 3rd) on the market, never the market leader.

The company started as Data East, and their hardware was almost an identical copy of Williams boards at the time. (and if you read back on rec.games.pinball, there were some lawsuits going on about this). Later Sega took over DE, and Stern took over the pinball division from Sega.

But they were always 2nd on the market, behing Williams, and generally making cheaper (less innovative, less fun, less reliable games)
btw I'm generalising now, so don't complain that game X is more fun or more reliable. OK reliability was maybe better for electronics, but when you see beneath the playfield or look at some assemblies, some things are just cheap plastic whilst Williams used metal parts for them.

Anyway, Stern became market leader because WMS closed it's pinball division in 1999. Stern did not become market leader because they did an effort to, or because they were that good.
Improvements came from Williams, and Stern copied if they needed to.

And the last 5 years, Stern has still kept going on the way they did the 10 previous years: just keep going on the way they do, don't innovate, as long as they produce games that are 'just good enough' they sell them and make a profit.

In 2000 most operators said there were no pins for sale. Stern only had Striker Extreme and that pin just was awful. No fun to play at all and playfield-wise it looked as it was 15 years old.

Only the last 2 years this has changed, when Stern started to hire designers which worked previously at Williams. But those guys also clearly said to not expect a game like Twilight Zone, as there just wasn't any budget at Stern for this.

So don't expect large technological innovations from Stern. They never did, don't have the mentality/need to do so, and probably don't have the budget.

Now Mr Pinball Australia will start making his own pins which are based on a modern hardware system (software updates through something like sd-cards instead of burning eproms i.e.), Stern will have to do something.

It's know that Stern is working for about a year now on a new hardware platform (with better sound as the Sterns sound system has awful quality) but there's no news about that. Don't know if it's because there's no budget or they don't want to rush things. Personally I now think they will wait a little longer and see what Mr Pinball Australia comes up with (ie color dmd/lcd ?) and how this
does on the market. So they can come up with their own improved hardware not long after that (and again become the follower and not the leader on the market for innovative improvements).

btw for those interested in pins, check the newbie guide on my website :)

Re:As a Pinball Junkie

[CitznFish]

Mr Pinball has his white wood... I think he's well on his way. The pessimists can keep complaining until the cows come home.

Wow, where is this place?

[T1girl]

I used to play a lot of pinball and learned from it a few lessons of life, such as:

1) You can rack up every feature and score and have all the lights lit up, but if you tilt before you collect, you're still busted.
2) If you can light a match from a foldover matchbook with one hand, you are sober enough to play for money.
3) There is a great satisfaction in the crr-rack sound of the slot dropping down to give you a free game.

I used to have a couple of pinball machines and a shuffle bowling-alley machine in my basement, but eventually the maintenance got to be too much, and I sold them.

Flipper pinball is a great game to play by yourself or with friends, or to make new friends.

Re:Wow, where is this place?

[3waygeek]

I used to have a couple of pinball machines and a shuffle bowling-alley machine in my basement, but eventually the maintenance got to be too much, and I sold them.

Back in the 70s, my dad used to collect vintage arcade machines from the 40s, 50s & 60s. At one time we had two bowling machines -- one shuffle machine where you used a puck, and a larger one (about 4 meters long) where you rolled softball-sized plastic/rubber balls. Both machines "knocked down" the pins when the puck/ball ran over wire contacts embedded in the alley.

Dad & I used to spend a lot of weekends maintaining those machines; they had miles of cloth-insulated wire and dozens of solenoids & relays, so there were always contacts to be cleaned and adjusted. Since we got these machines second-hand, usually from bars/taverns, there'd be no schematics, which allowed us to hone our diagnostic skills, something that has come in very handy in my engineering career.

Your post is the first mention I've seen of bowling machines in almost 25 years -- it brings back many memories of a misspent youth. You've made my day.

Re:Wow, where is this place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dad & I used to spend a lot of weekends maintaining those machines; they had miles of cloth-insulated wire and dozens of solenoids & relays, so there were always contacts to be cleaned and adjusted. Since we got these machines second-hand, usually from bars/taverns, there'd be no schematics, which allowed us to hone our diagnostic skills, something that has come in very handy in my engineering career.

I'd hardly call that a misspent youth buddy, a lot of us don't have the luxury of having fond memories as such.

Stern folks are wizards!

[Anonymous Coward]

They can even put out press releases in the future!

http://www.sternpinball.com/PR_210405.shtml

Refurbished machines

[niola]

Just an FYI if you want an old-school pinball machine you can try TNT Amusements in Pennsylvania. They restore and refurbish the machines by hand and when you buy a machine from them they even give you a warranty.

Hopefully when the wife and I buy a bigger house she will let me get another :)

Dr Who?

[ArmorFiend]

I'm not a wizard, but boy I sure liked "Dr Who". I've tried some other tables (none that you list), and they just couldn't hold a candle to the good Doctor. Has anyone else ever played it? Did you think it exceptional?

Re:Dr Who?

[wing03]

It was a good machine to come across during the tv episode drought of the 90s... Other than being mesmerized by all the elements of the story, I don't remember too much about it.

My favourite is the Gotlieb table, Haunted House.

3 levels; basement, main and upstairs. Freaky haunted house noises to draw your attention and fun game play.

Re:Dr Who?

[ZosX]

My best friend in grade school (who committed suicide a few years ago unfortunately) owned Haunted House. When his Dad sold that machine it was a really sad day. The 3 levels were so innovative back then. Not my favorite of all time, but certainly, as you say, a fun game with really cool haunted house noises. I can just hear them now....

Thanks for the memories!

Re:Dr Who?

[MrNiCeGUi]

I played it. I found a machine while I was on vacation once in a very smoky bar (the best place to play pinball in my opinion) and played it to death. When I came back, in about a week or so, I found another one in a bar that just opened near my home. They just got the machine and it was their only one, and the employees didn't really know what to do with it. I inserted a coin and showed all the really cool stuff the machine could do. I must say I felt a million bucks looking at their faces:) (Of course I didn't tell them I had played the same machine for hours every day for the past week)

Re:Dr Who?

[llefler]

I remember when Haunted House came out. It's the first one I remember with the lower playfield. Unfortunately, they had a tendancy to break a lot. Particularly the kicker from the basement. As a result, I spent a lot more time on Space Invaders. A friend of mine could consistantly hit the loop in the middle of the SI table, and we could play for hours on a quarter.

Hercules

[magicsquid]

There's still a perfectly functional Hercules machine at Cedar Point in Sandusky Ohio. They've got it in the back of their main arcade, along with hundreds of other machines from the 80's. You can go in there with a roll of quarters and not come out for hours.

Addams Family

[Anonymous Coward]

It is amongst my top 5 machines ever. This is given that I started playing arcade machines the year that pong came out (1972) and managed to play for 8 years until 1980 when pinball machines outnumbered video games 5 to 1 or more.

Ah the good old days when our local arcade had 20+ pinball machines and 3 video games (space invaders, space war, and pong).

Good old days when mechanical counters only went to 99,999.

Ripped off Bally

[Rixel]

Bah!

Stern is only around because they cloned Bally's circuit boards.

They didn't even try to obscure it, either. The things were identical, save for a couple of resistors here and there.

Microsoft of Pinball manufacturers, I say.

Re:Ripped off Bally

[Mister Transistor]

Ummm... They were licenced rip-offs. Don't you think if you figured it out that Bally wouldn't have too? That's why they didn't obscure it. FYI, I used to analyze / repair production failures of those MPU , SDA, and LDA boards for a living at Stern in the 1980's...

Re:Ripped off Bally

[Rixel]

After caught, they were licensed.

Litigation prevailed.

Pinball story (not Tommy)

[brodin]

My son was talking about his favorite things in kindergarten class and one of the first things on the list was his pinball machine (a Simpsons). His classmates all asked him "What's a pinball machine?".

Sad, but true!

Reminds me of that movie "other peoples money"

[voss]

"You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best g--damn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? "

The point is Pinball machines are the horse and buggy of the gaming era.

Re:Reminds me of that movie "other peoples money"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone who has never plahed a game. There is a tactile feel that you will never have in video games.

Re:Reminds me of that movie "other peoples money"

[voss]

The problem is the pinball machine makers are targeting the wrong market. They need to make smaller more compact ones for the home nostalgists instead of huge honkin ones for the video arcades.

As a matter of fact I did play Pinball, it is sad to see them go. However I can say the same thing about the Atari 2600. The newer controllers are way too complicated there is something elegantly simple about a joystick with only one button.

Re:Reminds me of that movie "other peoples money"

[DZign]

Yes and no.. smaller/compact games are most of the time less fun (less things can be put on the playfield, game must be cheaper to produce) and mechanically they may still fail as much.

Furthermore, almost every pinball collector looks down on 'home games'.
Pins have been made especially for home use (2 years ago still, a 'Vacation America' pin).
Not a lot information is known about them (no repair info as i.e. IC's used are specific, no schematics are released, ..), so broken they are really worthless.

People who really want to play, only buy the real thing, as that's more fun. Only people who just want something for the kids buy the home games.

Inefficient production

[Game Genie]

I wonder if the high cost of production cited (~70% production is break even point) could be reduced by more efficient munufacturing. There is a video on Stern's site that shows the machines being built. There is a rat's nest of wireing that is all cut, run, and tested by hand below the play feild and a slew of PCB's. I can't imagine that those PCB's could not be significantly reduced in phisical complexity in extange for a bit more work in software, and I would think that much of the hand wireing could be reduced to a PCB. There would still be manual labor required in assembly, but it would be massively reduced.

OTOH, I would also tend to think that if such changes were possible they would have been made, but you never know.

Re:Inefficient production

[Mister Transistor]

There really isn't a much better way to do it. There are two wiring harnesses, one extends from the back box to the main body, and another goes from the box out to the playfield.

About the only thing you might be able to do is use a gigantic flex circut to replace some of the harnesses, but the other factor with that is current. The solenoids get a 3-5A kick at 50 VDC. That's a lot of power to run through a thin trace on a flex circuit, hence the use of good 'ol round-type wires.

That, and the spaghetti-like topology of the playfield would be a PCB designer's worst M.C. Escher nightmare!

Love it while it's still here...

[Zathras26]

I've been a huge pinball fan for many years but hardly play anymore because it's become so difficult to find machines. There are still places here in the DC area that have them, but you often have to go out of your way (then deal with the depression of seeing one forlorn pin off in the corner in the midst of swarms of video games). Also, you often find that the machines aren't being properly maintained (as others have commented). It's a real shame. Once, just a couple of weeks ago, I even had to walk away from a machine because all the balls were captured, then didn't release for the multiball, and I couldn't find anyone in the arcade to help.

There have been a lot of great games over the years... two of my favorites were Scared Stiff and Demolition Man. Terminator 2 was a real turkey, though.

I dream of the day when I can buy one or two machines for my own home and maintain them myself. No more hunting for machines, no more having to deal with lousy maintenance, and no more fretting about what I'll do if and when Stern closes up shop, since it's unlikely they'd ever be replaced. Pinball, I think, is going the way of the nickelodeon... it's been on its way out for many years, and I don't see the trend reversing. The best we can probably hope for is that the trend will bottom out and stop, but I don't see pinball ever becoming popular again.

Re:Love it while it's still here...

[Zog The Undeniable]

There have been a lot of great games over the years... two of my favorites were Scared Stiff and Demolition Man.

Good Head! Mmmmm...my favorite!

Stern was also creator of classic video games

[brocktune]

...including the immortal Berzerk.

Chicken, fight like a robot!

Re:Stern was also creator of classic video games

[Mister Transistor]

I'll never forget my first day at work at the Stern factory in 1980. Berzerk was in full production, and all the games being burned in, plus the 40 or so being tested and analyzed were all jabbering away:

Get the Humanoid! Intruder Alert! etc. etc.

Hearing the voice x 100 was frickn hilarious! I could barely keep a straight face all day!

By the way if your'e a real fan you may have heard the rare line from it:

"Quarter Detected in Pocket"

The best game audio experience there was we were in production on a game called Moonwars (based on the Scramble hardware set) and me and a buddy tech figured out how to get the game to play it's highscore theme, a full synthesized 6-voice rendition of "Thus Sprach Zarathustra", better known as the theme from "2001: A Space Odessey". Well, we talked all the techs into shorting a particular set of pins on the microprocessor just as the break bell rang, and 40 game board sets all went off in unison and played the theme! It was magnificent!

Ahh, Memories. Great days...

If you are thinking about buying a pinball machine

[mutewinter]

You can check out this pinball message board for any specific technical repair questions. There are experts on there that will help you out for free.

Video & PC games are really have pushed pinball machines to the wayside. I know I'm not the only person who would be happy to see a resurgance of their popularity.

i've always wanted to get a pinball machine

[Hohlraum]

are there companies out there that offer in home maintenance programs for them? or are they not as breaky as they used to be? :)

BUT NOT FOR LINUX!

[Anonymous Coward]

pinmame is NOT available for Linux. ergo, not available for alot of /.

Flow and Nuance

[EEBaum]

I think the decline of pinball reflects a general abandonment of flow and nuance in video games. A pinball machine has its own character. Some flow very well, and many have a rhythm. It's not even so much about "get that many points" or "pass the level" as much as orchestrating delightful combinations. It's a shame that such concepts have to be largely foisted upon the user (a la the instruction-following DDR) rather than allowing them to happen naturally with a well-designed game. That, and games that have nuance are generally more difficult to make than the latest pretty-looking shoot-em-up.

Pinball machines last forever...

[evilviper]

I'm not too surprised the demand for pinball machines is low... The demand has dropped-off, and the machines already in-use can be kept going with a little bit of maintenance.

I know my neighborhood arcade had one single pinball machine going for over FIFTY YEARS, with very little downtime. The machine was retired about 10 years ago, for fear it might be seriously damaged or stolen. Now a collectable.

I moved away years ago, and shortly after, all the pinball machines were removed. Coincidence, or was I single-handedly keeping those machines profitable? ;-)

It's really a shame too. MAME can keep all the old arcade games alive, and though I do admit to enjoying a couple different pinball videogames, it really can't replace a real pinball machine. At about $4,000 new, it would be completely worth it, if I could try a few out, and find one I would be sure to enjoy playing, and not some junky gimmicky box.

The Addams Family and Twilight Zone and Pat Lawlor

[spage]

There are so many beautiful little touches, things that one person in a hundred would never notice, but that add up to a great experience.

And Pat Lawlor's genius continued with Twilight Zone, which quotes his previous games. E.g. if you keep hitting the clock target during Clock Chaos, "Rudy" from Funhouse says "Quit playing with the clock". During Fast Lock, during the countdown the machine quotes "The Addams Family", "Whirlwind", and "Banzai Run".

I own a TZ, the moment I finally got Lost in the Zone 6-ball multiball as the arcade was closing and the machine went insane I bought it. It seemed crazy but I've never regretted it, and I've met enthusiasts with 6 or more machines.

It's a matter of taste whether you prefer TAF or TZ, or indeed the more hard-edged Steve Ritchie games. Pat Lawlor now has his own company, Pat Lawlor Design and has done several fine designs for Stern.

"Thought I was the Bally table king..."

[Zhe Mappel]

Bless Mr. Stern, but what an irony! In all the years of blowing my paper route money back in the 70s, his would have been the last company I'd have expected to still be standing. Gottlieb had the precision tables, Bally and Williams the style and speed. The Data East-Sega-Stern corner--machines unimaginatively designed that felt clunky--was easy to ignore. Go figure. But here we are, on the very last ball, and I wish Stern all the luck in the world.

Sorry to learn, though, that all his machines now are tie-ins to movies and TV shows. Half the beauty of pinball in its heyday was its aesthetic, which ranged voraciously across Americana as each table assembled a kind of comic book on glass and wood: you got legends and history and fantasy, blue collar pasttimes, pool and racing and cards, techno festishism, social trends, anatomically impossible chicks, and just plain weird and self-referential stuff about pinball. The backglass and table designs were a unique form not without their masterpieces (look up the artist Jerry Kelly--the form's Picasso--on the delightful Internet Pinball Machine Database).

self proclaimed....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like me....

Arcade Cheating!

[Chordonblue]

OH man that brought back a bad memory from my yoot.

A buddy of mine showed me how to use an anti-static record cleaner on the coin mech. The spark jumping across would often fool the machine in question (at that time usually a pinball machine) into giving you a credit.

Well one fine day I decide to try it on a vintage Stratovox ("Help me!" "Very good!") down at the local Circle K. So I reach in my jacket and pull out this gun-shaped thing, aim it at the mech, and pull the trigger.

BLAM! BEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeP! Then.. Nothing. The screen went totally dead. I felt horrible (I KILLED a video game!) My guess is that poor old Stratovox used some sensitive RAM and I totally blew it away. The next day they put in a 'Nibbler' machine, but of course I'd had enough of the anti-static free game method to actually pay to play it.

Dumb anyway

[lilmouse]

--LWM

why not go to an arcade auction

[ProfBooty]

There are 2 this month in NJ (one this weekend) or wait for the next balitmore one

you can pick up an 80's machine for maybe 300-500 bucks.

Re:why not go to an arcade auction

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey where are the jersey ones occurring?

Re:why not go to an arcade auction

[ProfBooty]

around cherry hill, one is at a NJ national guard place, and the other is in camden, or at least it usually is.

www.basementarcade.com usually has links to all the info you need

Littlewing

[rjung2k]

Hie ye over to Littlewing's web site -- not only do they have Crystal Caliburn for Windows, but they continue to make new, ass-kickin' pinball games today. And you can certainly try before you buy, which is a big plus.

I recently picked up Jinni Zeala over Monster Fair because, really, who doesn't want to play a game where the goal is to assemble a harem of scantily-clad women? ;-)

Pinball Memories

[pnice]

My family owned an old school Firepower pinball machine. The most fun I ever had was when we took the glass off the machine and played. You could push the ball around through everything and finally see what would happen when you did exactly like you were supposed to.

Some of my favorite pinball machines:
Timewarp "More pinball, shoot again!!"
Hook
Back to the future
Guns N Roses
Theater of Magic
Addams Family
Funhouse

We need a pinball revival

[nothingtodo]

I love playing it. Like most said, any still out in arcades never play right. They're either unlevel, or flippers are weak or stuck which makes playing them truly suck. I remember working in an arcade in 1986 and remember when HIGH SPEED was brought in. I loved that game and would enjoy having my own to play. I remember all the sounds, and running the red light and if you were good, you could run up the ramp again as you looped around and make a quick getaway. I loved Williams games. CYCLONE was fun too. I think there was another similar to it, but cannot remember its name.

I always hated pinball.

[sootman]

I could never stand to play a game where a fundamental force of nature (i.e., gravity) was working against me. And that little rail on the side that whisks the ball safely past your flippers--what the fuck, do they put magnets in there?

Bride of Pinbot/Mousin Around

[Comrade64]

My favortie pinball machines in college, also led to me leaving my first college without a degree. I can't believe no one has mentioned Bride of Pinbot or Mousin' Around!

Bride of Pinbot was always faithful, in that it performed well, not the other way. I skipped Calc IV so many times because of this machine. Pinball just seemed too much like applied math to me. Unfortunately the teacher didn't see it that way.

Mousin' Around was fun, but broke every week, and then they stopped fixxing it. And I knew the guy who did maintenance on them. I couldn't pay him enough of my laundry money to get him to fix it. Maybe he thought I needed the laundry money more than he needed the dough? hmmm....

One of my dreams is to retire and set up an old-fashioned arcade with lots of pinball machines. /sigh

okay..back to work...

I am the Duke of Burbon! I think...

[DG]

Medieval Madness is pure genius. I love that game.

Ditto Adams Family.

I'm also a big fan of... I can't remember the name; it has a 50's movie theme. Open snack bar. buy ticket, get kiss... etc.

DG

Re:I am the Duke of Burbon! I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Creature from the Black Lagoon

You know what I *really* miss?

[Trixter]

I miss the *experience* of playing pinball (or coin-op video games). I can put a pinball in my house, or emulate a video game on my PC/console, but none of that can reproduce:

Having a crowd slowly form around you as you outperform most people who normally play the game. (And the crowd makes you play even better!)

Putting a quarter or two on the glass to reserve your place in line.

Good times with friends, especially 2- or 4-player games.

Setting a score on a game, coming back a week later and seeing it still there.

Same, only seeing it BEATEN and then striving to do better :-)

I miss the experience most of all. Once a year, I'll set up my arcade stick, put it on a table, put a monitor at eye level, dim the lights, play some Journey or Yaz at loud levels -- even go so far as playing a sound loop of what an arcade used to sound like. But it's still not the same.

Thanks for reading my story!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently writing another story on Pinball that deals much more with the game's history.

And yes, I would have liked to write a story about a high-scoring wizard... but this is BusinessWeek people -- what do you expect? (My next story is not for BW, and will be more encompassing)

Seth
sethporges at gmail.com