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."

Comments

Monitor

[Dan East]

I knew I had my 20" monitor oriented vertically all this time for an eventual reason - to play this video optimally.

When high

[delirium of disorder]

What Pinball Looks like When...High:

BEEB BEEB BEEB...LIKE WH0A...NOM NOM NOM NOM...O NOES...

o....when stakes are high...

"I mean if Pacman affected our generation as kids, we would all run around in darkened rooms eating pills and listening to repetitive music."

Re:When high

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that was called a rave?

Careful there, you are dangerously close to actually getting the joke.

Re:Pinball Fantasies

[xororand]

Pinball Fantasies is the best software pinball game that I've ever played. Stones'n'Bones kept me busy for weeks in all its 320x400 pixel glory, scrolling with silky smoothness on a 386 CPU, and awesome tracker music that never got old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Fantasies

Some brazilian guy is currently building a full size replica of the "Party Land" table. It looks pretty good already!

I would not want to see the breakdown by hour

[Shivetya]

Granted the time at the tournament would make it look good but if you average all the time spent getting there. The payoff is recognition amongst your peers more than monetary rewards.

Pinball is in a sad state.

[Majik Sheff]

There is only one pinball manufacturer in the world right now, and they didn't get there by being the best engineers, artists or designers. They got there by being/having the scummiest lawyers. Now we're stuck with horrible designs, bad gameplay, and most of the best IP buried in an unmarked grave in wrigley field.

Re:Pinball is in a sad state.

[0100010001010011]

Tilt: The battle to save pinball is a great documentary to watch.

Re:Pinball is in a sad state.

[Majik Sheff]

You've obviously never had to service any of them. Stern has a nasty tendency to release their designs before fully testing them. For an entertaining read check out the code revisions and dates for Pirates of the Caribbean.

Back EMF is a recurring issue on several modern Stern designs; due to things like poor wire routing choices and underspec'ing diodes on larger coils.

Want a nightmare? Check out the membrane switches under the motorcycle toy on Harley Davidson.

I could literally rant for hours about Stern and never repeat myself. They are garbage whose horribleness is only eclipsed by the complete shite rolling off the lines of Gottlieb starting in the early 70's and culminating with Water World.

Re:Pinball is in a sad state.

[S-100]

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.

Re:Where are the women?

[east coast]

It's not all men. It's just that the women who are hardcore into pinball look like men.

What Pinball Looks Like When the Stakes Are High

[hamburger lady]

looks pretty much the same as when the stakes are low.