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Pinball: a Resurgence In Retro Gaming From an Unlikely Place
woohoodonuts writes "The Professional & Amateur Pinball Association is creating a webchannel that will livestream content from their national circuit of tournaments ranging from Southern California to New York City. The most recent circuit tournament in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sold out of all 400 tournament openings in less than three weeks, months in advance of the event. With several new companies in the process of creating machines and hundreds of new competitive events springing up worldwide at a record pace, is the retro silverball rising to prominence once again?"
>> Pinball...Resurgence...From an Unlikely Place
Um...what's the "unlikely place"?
i love pinball, but finding a machine is rare! let's hope bars/arcades start stocking them instead of that stupid bowling/golf thingy
There's a big event happening in Toronto soon as well with ties to The Who's Tommy. They put together a decent HTML game as well - http://tommypinball.com/
pinball is something you really can't do at home, it's the epitome of actual physical input and tactile response, the opposite of all the wishy washy motion controls and touchscreens we're being force-fed elsewhere.
Will be interesting if this takes off more, especially outside the US, what it will do to the current collections in market. I have a friend with about 150 machines where even a new machines cost an extra premium due to the shipping costs to get it out of the US.
As long as they much quarters and not dollars
You know what killed arcades for me? Having to spend $1 per play and 50 cents for a continue.
I appreciate that it costs more to make fancier games but way to price yourself out of the market
...sure plays a mean pinball. However, he doesn't seem to be able to explain what the "unlikely place" is.
It's just more hipsterism. These dbags are a scourge on modern American culture, with their PBR, artisan pickles, Instagram and crochet.
Not that pinball isn't totally awesome - but its only getting a resurgence because there's a bunch of high disposable income millenials who think they discovered it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Still made in the usa!
"is the retro silverball rising to prominence once again?"
No. Neither is vinyl or buggy whips. An increase in the number of enthusiasts is not a "resurgence" or "rise to prominence."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Microsoft's Space Cadet pinball game still works on Windows 7. And all you have to do is to copy the folder from your old machine to the new one (in Program Files, of course)...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's always been big, but recently they've secured deals to televise the last of the remaining championships on other markets besides PPV. There's also a reality show about pinball players in the works.
to play pinball.
and old guys love pinball. We grew up with it. I'm 66, and I've got 14 machines, a whole room full, all digital. Fun to play, fun to maintain. My kids love 'em too, but they prefer their MMO's.
Is the cost to maintain the machine. They are much more expensive to maintain than a stand up arcade; even games like DDR are cheaper. With the shift of gaming from arcades to consoles pinball has naturally also declined as you can't get an authentic pinball experience from a virtual display. Now, if there was a rise to bring arcades back, then you would see games that have a unique advantage in the arcade over a home console rise in popularity within the arcade.
P.S. If you like virtual pinball games check out little wing
Do you play the silver ball?
From Soho down to Brighton?
Have you played them all?
Have you played them all, in any amusement hall?
I have played them all, I do play them all
I like to play and play I must, in any amusement hall.
Thirty years I outgrew video games while in college because I recognized early that they were addictive and they burned a hole in your pocket. But I never outgrew pinball machines. I always preferred the arcade games that relied on predictable real life attributes such as gravity and inertia, and video games don't offer that. With pinball machines you didn't burn a hole in your pocket trying to decipher patterns like you did with video games. But video games drew better money because of the addiction so the arcade owners gradually displaced pinball machines. There aren't many pinball machines around anymore, but when I cross paths with one I just have to play them.
The old pinball machines from 1960 onward are really easy to fix. When I was in high school I completely restored one that belonged to a neighbor and didn't have to spend one dime on parts - most of the work was restoring mechanical parts such as solenoids, relays, springs, contacts, etc. Projects like that were the impetus to my earning an engineering degree from college.
There are resellers making good money from scavenging parts to resell to pinball enthusiasts. Many pinball machines survive from as far back as the 1950s. With a few exceptions, you don't see that kind of loyalty with video games because the effort isn't worth it and spare parts are an issue. Replacing a CRT in today's flat screen world? Forget it. Video game computer flaking out? You need expensive test equipment and good diagnostic skills to fix them. Many video games from the 1970s and 1980s used ICs whose substrates suffered from chemical reactions over time that ultimately rendered a dead chip. Fixing a video game quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns because with their lower market value you will never recover the restoration costs.
Playing a pinball machine gives you physical feedback. You can't feel the bumpers kick or the solenoids advancing the score counters on a video game. Bells and tonebars sound much more natural than electronic blips and bleeps. The playfields and backglass on many pinball machines are works of art, further highlighted by flashing lights. Video games are no match for the visual impact of a chrome plated ball dashing around bumpers, ramps, dropholes, et al with lights which react to impacts from the ball. Some of the later pinball machines did integrate sound effects but nothing corny like video games. And some of the themed pinball machines are downright excellent - you haven't played pinball until you played The Simpsons themed pinball machine.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Service: unskilled labour can pull and replace a control in most video games; few other problems exist these days. Pinball machines break. A lot. Fixing them requires lots of parts and lots of skill. There is only one person in the world able to reliably repair major problems on boards which haven't been made for the past 15-30 years (he bought the equipment from Williams when they shut down).
Machines: There is only one manufacturer now: Stern. New machines run around $5500 plus shipping.
Parts: There are hundreds of standard parts (though half of them differ by manufacturer) and a shitton of specialised pieces. All of them are expensive, as is the time of the guy who can reliably repair/replace them.
Personal: I restore pins as a hobby. General parts come from only a couple of suppliers and specialised/unique pieces mainly from old stock from eBay. There are some modern replacement items such as redesigned power driver boards and LED replacements for lighting (bulbs always burn out) but it's a niche resurgence which won't bring around a renaissance because...
Economics: a 50-50 split with the location on the 50-75Â per game max, on a machine which costs $5500 plus at least $100 in time and delivery costs and can be expected to require skilled service at least once a month, on-call and available within 48 hours with at least 300 parts on-hand. After 6-9 months the machine will have to be rotated out and after a couple of years, you can sell it for around $1000 to a collector if it's not lame and completely blown, in which case you might get $500 from a salvager. The no-service $4000 golf game will have turned a profit within a year.
...where the narrator tries to find an old machine that he used to play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball,_1973
Not hard to get a copy online, just google for pinball murakami pdf
factor 966971: 966971
If you live close to Central Jersey, there's an arcade called 8 on the Break in Dunellen that has about 10 pinball tables. They have old and new pinball tables, very well maintained, and the price per game is really cheap. Most are $0.50 a game. There's also a pinball league that's currently active and run tournaments there every Wednesday night.
When you have finished this cup of coffee your adventure will begin again.
I never cared for pinball on the PC or consoles; it just felt "wrong". But I recently tried Pinball Arcade on my Android tablet and I'm hooked. It must be the way you can lay the tablet flat the way a real pinball table is oriented instead of looking up at a vertical screen.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
.
Hope that helps,
Floyd Maxwell
I come here for the love
I live in San Francisco, and I'm a non hip 40+ old fart. All of a sudden the hipster bars are full of 20 something hipsters playing perfectly maintained pinball ,machines and drinking beer. There's 2 to 7 machines in each place. One snap of the finger and a repairman is there within an hour, even at 10pm!
As a 40+ old fart, I never thought I would see the day where I could relive my college excesses of drinking and playing pinball but that day has arrived. It is even better in places where real estate is cheaper like in Denver. I went there for work and happily stumbled upon the "1up" (http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-1up-denver )which blew my mind with the sheer quantity and quality of games. At that point I knew this phenomena has gone nationwide!
Sure the hipsters have the annoying habit of calling them "pinball tables" instead of "pinball machines" like we 80s college kids did (they like old timey names I guess) and sure they don't really know the etiquitte (such as keeping an eye for when it is your turn to play and not keep people waiting and honoring quarters waiting a turn).. but in the end, these are decent kids, who enjoy playing... and the benefits to me are huge. When I play pinball I am in another zone and I do not care if I an the old, non-hip guy in the bar. It is sheer enjoyment!
As any hipster fad, this will only last a little while, and I will be sad when it ends.
For free emailed daily classifieds all over North America, sign up:
https://user.xmission.com/~daina/classified/search_for_sale.html
A veritable insane bible of search-able databased photos and info of all things pinball:
http://www.ipdb.org/search.pl
Pinball News:
http://www.pinballnews.com/
USENET:
rec.games.pinball
There are many weekend-long pinball shows across the US. You definitely will want to go to one near you. Matter of fact, this weekend marks the Allentown Pin show (3rd and 4th), and people travel from Florida to Canada to attend this one:
http://www.pinfestival.com/
Go to Usenet's "rgp" and post any questions. Likely there's someone in your very neighborhood that will invite you over to play their machines.