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What Pinball Looks Like When the Stakes Are High
siobHan writes "The PAPA World Pinball Championships recently concluded in Scott, PA (near Pittsburgh), as covered on Slashdot already. The organizers recorded full 1080p/60 HD video of the playfield during the final games, and have uploaded the entirety of the crucial deciding game, with commentary (direct link to just the video). The winner of this game received $10,000 for his skillful play."
Tilt: The battle to save pinball is a great documentary to watch.
There were two:
The arcade at Dixie Landings in Walt Disney World. They had an entire wall that was nothing but pinball machines...at least 20-30 in a row. The second was at a place in Gaithersburg, MD that shut down about 12 years or so ago, called Sportland America. They too had an entire wall of just pinball machines, although they had closer to 40 or 50 of them.
Such good times. I miss pinball machines :(
Living With a Nerd
If you are in the twin cities area, go to the MN State fair. There's a room with nothing but pins. This is a welcome change from the increasing numbers of shooting gallery & ticket redemption machines invading the fair.
It's hard to reproduce pinball in a video game, but Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection on the Wii comes really close. The Wiimote and nun-chuck are perfect for the flippers and nudging the table, and the physics are lifelike.
Gottlieb electromechanical (EM) machines were #1 from the beginning of the flipper period (Humpty Dumpty - 1948), but lagged in features and complexity around the early 70's. But the latter EMs of that decade were unmatched - with classics like El Dorado. But once the games transitioned to solid state(SS) in the latter part of the 70's, Gottlieb never found their way back, and faded slowly from the scene until Barb Wire - their last pinball machine. Until the EM/SS transition, Gottlieb games had a well-deserved reputation for quality of components and reliability. This was all lost in the SS transition with the horrible System 1 platform, designed by Rockwell of all places. And even though they did bring up quality by the 90's it was too late for Gottlieb by then and they faded into obscurity.