So a thing about Houdini is that like golf courses, there were traditionally few enough pinball course designers that they were all “in conversation” with each other, picking up and adapting/improving each others’ layout innovations

And into the ‘90s as dot matrix screens and digital sample audio got common they got to name-checking each other’s *thematic concepts* (as pinball got kinda hyperconcentrated)

And an interesting thing about Houdini I get it trying to place itself in The Tradition by riffing on some thematic concepts, while being pretty pattern-breaking mechanically

It’s kinda like Wizard of Oz, clearly someone stuffed too many decades’ worth of Pinball Ideas into a single table, but they’re good ideas and I hope they dribble out

Stern Pinball “Iron Maiden”
American Pinball “Houdini”

The 1994 Popeye pinball table (“Popeye Saves the Earth”) is this great document from the Captain Planet era where they were seriously trying out environmentalism as the moral equivalent of war

It’s also testament to Data East’s license-happiness, like who was asking for this?

Just saw a pinball-themed Tic Tacs TV ad that framed machines as signal of hip late-2010s urban bars and thus young adult courtship

that’s… something

So many pinball tables coming out these days I can’t keep up to find and play all of them, not sure how to take that

Anglo-American solidarity

Total Nuclear Annihilation is as wide and simple as Rob Zombie but single-level without ramps,

Blunt and thick-plasticked like ‘80s Gottleib but more than RZ or America’s Most Haunted it’s now In The Conversation

Like the plastics and the playfield it’s almost an ‘80s throwback, Embryon especially, but the way the upper playfield feeds sideways to a mystery scoop Lawlor-style

::chef kiss::

And the way they reenvision a drop alley so the drops WORK AS LOCKS, holy shit!

Ok the backglass girl is kinda Tracer and the sound is kinda Daft Punk Alive ripoffs but that only makes it more authentic retro

Bram Stoker’s Dracula has a secret Tom Waits bonus, like if you put a ball into this one spot

(“The Asylum”, which is maybe a side-effect of supporting the magnet-dragged “Mist Multiball” effect)

and it gives you 5m and if you hit the plunger button during it plays a little LED video clip of Tom Waits trying to escape and gives you another 5m

Was at a bar playing pinball with some friends and the bartender put on Pinball Wizard

Which honestly pinballers hate because it’s like the ONE song, we get that all the time, can’t you find something else?

(I mean, I guess one of us had a monkey paw when we said that, ‘cause the Barenaked Ladies released a pinball concept album a few years ago)

But then it ended… and came back again… but different, and it turned out he queued up like 4 different versions/covers, and actually? That was kinda neat.

It’s the exact same KISS/Aerosmith modes matched to a reuse of every second-tier design feature since Iron Man, with shots as narrow and ramps as steep as Avengers

maybe it’ll get better with software updates but there’s too much lock-in from all those feature lights on every shot

So “Tales from the Crypt” was the respected early ‘50s horror comic from EC that got squashed in the “Seduction of the Innocent” scare

In 1989 HBO used the brand for a horror anthology series, at the same time Sandman was recasting that comics era as deep myth

It was kinda Twilight Zone in its irony but more visceral, with gore and tits. HBO’s premium cable original programming brand was always “with gore and tits”, before SatC they had an aging boomer sitcom called “Dream On” where the conceit was his retro-themed sexual fantasies were shot as part of the plot

won this zombie for knowing that while Williams copyrighted the term “multiball” rivals labeled it “Tri-Ball” and “M-Ball”

argumate:

kontextmaschine:

Just realized the reason why mansion driveways end in those weird little loops is because horse-drawn carriages didn’t have a reverse gear

surely you could have worked in a reference to pinball here

I can’t think of a time “mansion” theming coexisted with “tight loop” layout

You’d think maybe Haunted House but no, it had a bit of a jughandle above the R flippers at best, if you’d swapped in the Black Hole lower playfield maybe

Addams Family, the mansionest table there is, didn’t have any loop smaller than the orbit through the bumpers (or I guess L flipper to R ramp back to inlanes)

Simpsons Pinball Party had a perfectly small loop they coulda themed as Burns’ Mansion but made it Kwik-E-Mart instead

So after nigh-on two decades of having only one pinball manufacturer suddenly there are three regularly producing tables - stalwart Stern; cutting-edge technologists Jersey Jack; and these guys, Spooky Pinball.

Spooky has the weakest reputation - of their two previous tables America’s Most Haunted House did some interesting things replacing coil kickers with mini-motor pistons but elements broke and the ball got stuck somewhere so often you could tell they shorted on playtesting, while maybe in compensation Rob Zombie was chintzy and basic. But it’s an ongoing concern at all (inheriting the Wisconsin role from Wico), that’s something.

But, one of the nice thing about the boom is we’re seeing original themes again. (Dialed In!’s theme is “Pat Lawlor’s other games”, which if you know how inside-jokey pinball gets, like no, more than that, plus a touch of SimCity)

So, I give to you: Outrun, the Pinball

Pinball is happening too fast for me to keep up now & this is a good thing

Gottlieb “Target Pool“ (1969)

pffff

I am pretty sure that Aerosmith pinball is making fun of the idea of “Aerosmith pinball” in a bunch of subtle ways that only make sense in context of the pinball tradition

man look at these Jokerz