There are over 100,000 iPhone apps out now. According to you, this would mean there are one million Windows Mobile apps (your 10 times). Do you honestly believe that?? I sure as hell don't:)
That looked a lot like the handmade crossbows fabricated by "Iolo the Bard," a well-known SCA figure in Austin circa 1990 (and inspiration for the character of Iolo in the Ultima games.)
Except that Iolo-the-Ultima-character was around back in 1980. Ultima (the original game - not sure if he appeared in Akalabeth).
Perhaps that inspiration went the other way? Or is your date off?
Another method that requires no source-scrounging: simply go File -> Edit Page (Mozilla). This loads the page into Composer, where the image can be easily accessed, saved, copy/pasted, etc. If you need to save a page for future perusal, this is the easiest method.
Well let's see.. It's been around for over 5 years, has dozens (hundreds?) of developers, has been ported to nearly every device capable of running it (PC, mac, camera, dreamcast, xbox, amiga, etc), it emulates nearly every CPU and boardset used in arcades for the past 25 years... (the technical info gleaned from the source alone is amazing)..
There are easter eggs in most recent WMS pinball games.. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head.. there are definitly more:
On No Good Gofers, While in attract mode, press the flipper buttons in this order: Both simultaneously, then right 16 times, left once, right 13 times, left once, right 12 times. Behold the game design credits
Tales of the Arabian Nights: In attract mode, hold in the left flipper button while pressing the right button 5 times - Game design credits!
(if you have a monetary credit on the game when you do either of those tricks, you get music to accompany the display.)
On Scared Stiff, get a high score or Scared Stiff, then put in your initials as MOO..
On Arabian Nights, do the same thing (MOO for a high score)
On Arabian Nights, while playing, hit the Bazaar scoop 3 times.. all three times hitting the flippers to skip the animation. On the 4th time you'll get a New Cow!
On Star Trek, The Next Generation, when the chice between video mode (shuttle sim) or 25 million is lit, hold in the GUN TRIGGER and select video mode.. you'll get to play poker against Riker.
On ST:TNG, when you light the video mode (shuttle ramp) - if the display says Holodeck *3* is lit, pull the trigger 3 times quickly and you'll get a hidden Frenzy mode.
On Scared Stiff, when you hit the spider hole and the guy says "Look up.. stop the spider!" WATCH the display carefully.. every once in a while it'll show a "3" instead of a spider crawling up the web.. if you hit something (right flipper button I think) you get 2 spins instead of one.
Also, Scared Stiff has some hidden "Happy Birthday!" messages that will show up when the game is first powered up on the days in question.
ST:TNG has a flipper code (similar to the 1st No God Gofers code) that will display on the dot-matrix display logos for every game Steve Ritchie had designed.. I forget the flipper sequence though.. ask on rec.games.pinball.
Revenge from Mars (Pinball2000) has a flipper code that will display a color picture of most of the design team.. again, the exact code escapes me.. ask on r.g.p.
These are just the codes from the games we own.. I know Addams Family has some.. many of the other games certainly do as well.. most involving cows..:)
I remember reading about this.. Basically what was happening was that you could search a clipart archive based on keywords.. Searching on "monkey" returned various images of monkeys, and one image of *monkey bars* (playground equipment) with black children playing on them. Some black people were offended by this and raised hell, even though it was pretty obvious that it was just a search engine returning perfectly valid results. Ahh well...
Videogames will never replace the magic of pinball. I've been playing since the mid 1970's (my uncle's Captain Fantastic and Fireball tables).. between my roommate and I, we own 7 tables, ranging from Earthshaker to Revenge from Mars (Pinball2000). I would like to post a few clarifications to thing's I've seen in this thread..
1. Currently, the only pinball company still making games is Stern Pinball (formerly Sega). I have heard of another startup company being formed, but no games have been announced from them. Stern's newest game is Striker Xtreme (soccer theme).. find one and give it a shot.
2. WMS was the leading manufacturer of pinballs up until their exit from the market on Oct. 25, 1999. Their newest idea, Pinball 2000 (www.pinball2000.com) was a revolutionary step forward in pinball design, and was selling quite well.. unfortunately not well enough for WMS upper management, who pulled the plug to concentrate solely on gambling devices.
3. Pinball 2000 games are driven by a MediaGX-based PC to drive the graphics and DCS-2 stereo sound. TCP/IP support was included in the last revision of the Revenge from Mars software, with a small webserver and telnet capabilities (for a screenshot of the webpage generated by the server, go to www.frpg.org/p2k.gif).
4. Some people think pinball died in the early 80's when video games became popular, however, pinball enjoyed a resurgence in the early 90's, with The Addams Family setting a modern sales record with over 20,000 units sold. Sales began to drop off after '92 and culminated in the shutdown last year.
5. Finally, I don't care how good computers get, they will never be a good enough substitute for a steel ball, wooden playfield and flippers.
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There are over 100,000 iPhone apps out now. According to you, this would mean there are one million Windows Mobile apps (your 10 times). Do you honestly believe that?? I sure as hell don't :)
That looked a lot like the handmade crossbows fabricated by "Iolo the Bard," a well-known SCA figure in Austin circa 1990 (and inspiration for the character of Iolo in the Ultima games.)
Except that Iolo-the-Ultima-character was around back in 1980. Ultima (the original game - not sure if he appeared in Akalabeth).
Perhaps that inspiration went the other way? Or is your date off?
Another method that requires no source-scrounging: simply go File -> Edit Page (Mozilla). This loads the page into Composer, where the image can be easily accessed, saved, copy/pasted, etc. If you need to save a page for future perusal, this is the easiest method.
Well let's see.. It's been around for over 5 years, has dozens (hundreds?) of developers, has been ported to nearly every device capable of running it (PC, mac, camera, dreamcast, xbox, amiga, etc), it emulates nearly every CPU and boardset used in arcades for the past 25 years... (the technical info gleaned from the source alone is amazing)..
Yep, I'd say successful is a good term.
There are easter eggs in most recent WMS pinball games.. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head.. there are definitly more:
:)
On No Good Gofers, While in attract mode, press the flipper buttons in this order: Both simultaneously, then right 16 times, left once, right 13 times, left once, right 12 times. Behold the game design credits
Tales of the Arabian Nights: In attract mode, hold in the left flipper button while pressing the right button 5 times - Game design credits!
(if you have a monetary credit on the game when you do either of those tricks, you get music to accompany the display.)
On Scared Stiff, get a high score or Scared Stiff, then put in your initials as MOO..
On Arabian Nights, do the same thing (MOO for a high score)
On Arabian Nights, while playing, hit the Bazaar scoop 3 times.. all three times hitting the flippers to skip the animation. On the 4th time you'll get a New Cow!
On Star Trek, The Next Generation, when the chice between video mode (shuttle sim) or 25 million is lit, hold in the GUN TRIGGER and select video mode.. you'll get to play poker against Riker.
On ST:TNG, when you light the video mode (shuttle ramp) - if the display says Holodeck *3* is lit, pull the trigger 3 times quickly and you'll get a hidden Frenzy mode.
On Scared Stiff, when you hit the spider hole and the guy says "Look up.. stop the spider!" WATCH the display carefully.. every once in a while it'll show a "3" instead of a spider crawling up the web.. if you hit something (right flipper button I think) you get 2 spins instead of one.
Also, Scared Stiff has some hidden "Happy Birthday!" messages that will show up when the game is first powered up on the days in question.
ST:TNG has a flipper code (similar to the 1st No God Gofers code) that will display on the dot-matrix display logos for every game Steve Ritchie had designed.. I forget the flipper sequence though.. ask on rec.games.pinball.
Revenge from Mars (Pinball2000) has a flipper code that will display a color picture of most of the design team.. again, the exact code escapes me.. ask on r.g.p.
These are just the codes from the games we own.. I know Addams Family has some.. many of the other games certainly do as well.. most involving cows..
I remember reading about this.. Basically what was happening was that you could search a clipart archive based on keywords.. Searching on "monkey" returned various images of monkeys, and one image of *monkey bars* (playground equipment) with black children playing on them. Some black people were offended by this and raised hell, even though it was pretty obvious that it was just a search engine returning perfectly valid results. Ahh well...
Videogames will never replace the magic of pinball. I've been playing since the mid 1970's (my uncle's Captain Fantastic and Fireball tables) .. between my roommate and I, we own 7 tables, ranging from Earthshaker to Revenge from Mars (Pinball2000). I would like to post a few clarifications to thing's I've seen in this thread..
.. find one and give it a shot.
1. Currently, the only pinball company still making games is Stern Pinball (formerly Sega). I have heard of another startup company being formed, but no games have been announced from them. Stern's newest game is Striker Xtreme (soccer theme)
2. WMS was the leading manufacturer of pinballs up until their exit from the market on Oct. 25, 1999. Their newest idea, Pinball 2000 (www.pinball2000.com) was a revolutionary step forward in pinball design, and was selling quite well.. unfortunately not well enough for WMS upper management, who pulled the plug to concentrate solely on gambling devices.
3. Pinball 2000 games are driven by a MediaGX-based PC to drive the graphics and DCS-2 stereo sound. TCP/IP support was included in the last revision of the Revenge from Mars software, with a small webserver and telnet capabilities (for a screenshot of the webpage generated by the server, go to www.frpg.org/p2k.gif).
4. Some people think pinball died in the early 80's when video games became popular, however, pinball enjoyed a resurgence in the early 90's, with The Addams Family setting a modern sales record with over 20,000 units sold. Sales began to drop off after '92 and culminated in the shutdown last year.
5. Finally, I don't care how good computers get, they will never be a good enough substitute for a steel ball, wooden playfield and flippers.
-Keep on flipping!