This backglass from Centigrade 37, a late-model EM machine from 1977, is Leiji Matsumoto as hell.

Twinky, a color TV/mod fashion-themed pinball table from 1967.

The “typical” playfield bottom – an outlane then one or more inlanes separated by wireforms, slingshot, flipper, center drain and then mirrored on the other side, an arrangement known as an “Italian bottom” - didn’t become standard until the 1970s; older games feature some pretty funky alternatives.

Had a chance to play this rare exotic Mad Max postapocalyptic(/Wisconsin?)-themed table today.

The upper PF bumper zone gives more points than the lower without enough risk to compensate (it’s an open field game - no modes and multiball has a score multiplier rather than jackpots) but compared to that era it’s pretty solid.

I hear from a brand representative that Pabst Blue Ribbon is planning a pinball machine, which they expect to sell for $5k to… bars with accounts, or perhaps distributors to use as promotional items like neon bar signs.

This is such a hilariously doomed idea it could only have been thought up by someone who has no idea how pinball economics works or what route operators do, my desire to watch the clusterfuck happen is matched only by my concern that such a high-profile fiasco could do real harm to the pinball renaissance.

Ugh the Game of Thrones LE pinball table is trash. Trash! Thing is the base-level table is good! But that fucking upper playfield, that un-fun, flow-killing, orbit-blinding upper playfield.

Also the translite art for all models is crap, hitting the sour spot halfway between promotional stills and fanart. At least Pinside-style “gratuitous tits” fanmade alternates make sense for this brand.

spacetwinks:

oh shit the next Pinball Arcade kickstarter table is the 1992 dr. who table

that’s actually one i’ve played in person and it’s really good

the lifter motor for multiball breaks ALL THE TIME and if the right flipper gets weak you’re screwed, but yeah, that’s a good one.

spacetwinks:

tbh i’m kind of surprised that Monster Energy doesn’t have its own pinball table that’s just an update of this

I’ve wanted a Big Johnson or Coed Naked retheme, but I’m open to an argument for Fox Racing.

They blew a great opportunity not having the Johnny Mnemonic attract mode say “NAS IS REAL, PROTECT YOURSELF”.

Picture 1: Nintendo Magazine System Australia, 1995.

Pictures 2-4: Translites, Stern Pinball “Metallica”, 2013.

So, more than 15 years before the hedgehog mascot made his debut, Sega was making Spanish pinball games under the name “SONIC”. That’s a cute little quirk.

SEGA actually made pinball games for a while in the ‘90s too, after it absorbed the pinball arm of Data East, which it had previously distributed abroad. The Japanese tables aren’t well respected by competitive players - though the playfields were often pretty interesting and they introduced some major technical breakthroughs, the tendency was to have poorly designed rulesets.

Sometimes this meant the “best” move was to ignore all the interesting stuff in favor of doing one boring thing with an unbalanced risk/reward ratio over and over; often it meant that scoring didn’t scale with difficulty of starting features, such that a player that completed numerous intricate maneuvers to start advanced modes would be outscored by someone that started a trivially easy mode and got a few lucky bounces.

This was during the golden age of arcades, though, you could make an argument that the extensive (if competitively worthless) novelty and the front-loaded scoring were reasonably aimed not at the narrow market of pinball theorycrafters but at the broader “children who like flashing lights”. Also helping to draw eyeballs, SEGA/Data East were pioneers in theming their games around big-name licensed properties.

Now, American manufacturers had done licensed tables for a while, and off-brand and ersatz themes were a tradition - Hollywood Heat was really Miami Vice, Black Belt was kinda Karate Kid, No Good Gofers and Teed Off were more or less a competition to pull off a better take on Caddyshack, F-14 Tomcat was Top Gun. The licensed Space Invaders was actually Alien, oddly enough.

(and the Spanish and Italian ones seemed to have the same relationship to IP as t-shirt manufacturers - SONIC [by then independent of SEGA] did a Star Wars that I’m not sure is any more legitimate than Turkish Star Wars)

But those had traditionally been mixed in with original properties or generic themes. Popular subjects were various sports, pool or casino gambling - which were the themes of “last man standing” manufacturer STERN’s last three non-licensed games, complete turds largely dumped on the European market in 2000.

Now that pinball’s in a renaissance new manufacturers are showing up but it’s not clear that’ll break the trend. Jersey Jack, the first people to actually deliver on their “let’s make a pinball game, gang!” mission (this usually goes the same way as “let’s make a retro JRPG, gang!”, there was an Arkh Project thing with a Big Lebowski table last year) are polishing a Hobbit table now, after making their debut in 2013 with, of all things, The Wizard of Oz.

I was going to say that the very newest underdog startup, Spooky Pinball, finally broke the trend with their America’s Most Haunted table. But on further investigation that’s not true - of all things, it’s based on an independent film that’s parodying basic cable “paranormal investigator” docu-reality shows, apparently playing up the fact that they’re a bunch of grown-ass adults running around playing Scooby Doo.

So.

I was in the room for a lot of that article.

pyramidslayer:

this attack is called “laser pool”

spacetwinks:

1. stern pinball tables, generally, blow 2. if I remember correctly, steve ritchie was forced by stern to make this table

The early 2000s were a dark time. If you’ve never come across a Sharkey’s Shootout or High Roller Casino, thank your lucky stars. Or the ‘02 Playboy, Christ, I keep forgetting that even exists.

Now that pinball’s making a comeback and they actually have the budget for development it’s a little better. I’m definitely in the minority in liking Wrestlemania, I think Mustang’s a bit underrated too, and Avengers was an abortion but other than that they’re pretty solid lately, and it’s nice that they’re polishing and releasing code updates in response to experience and feedback now.

KISS’s layout works shockingly well, and when the code catches up it’s got potential to be a classic.

I seem to be the only person in Portland or like anywhere pinball who doesn’t actively hate this table. Wevs, there are a lot of ‘90s DMDs that only recently got “rediscovered”, just wait for the operators to start unloading them, pick one up cheap, and flip it when the time comes.

I think it’s a cute callback to the late pre-ramp era where so much of the action involved a diamond-shaped upper playfield w/saucer fed by orbit shots (dig those bonus count lights too).

Also it’s got interesting tradeoffs between downhill elements that progress towards modes or advance scoring, uphill during a match for those millions, and uphill without a match to advance the bonus and multiplier.

Not saying it’s perfect - those tradeoffs right now are too weighted in favor of bonus and thus uphill no-match, I don’t really try anything else until I’ve got the multiplier maxed, which is at least what, 12 shots to the upper playfield, and however long bouncing around the ring.

(It would be nice if outside a match the ring would be some “cut a promo” feature which gave you 2-3 flips to make the saucer or a particular lit target then went dead.)

The last code update buffed the matches a bit, with enough hits you can get a pin leaving the upper PF without a saucer, it would be nice if the championship belts actually did something, whether modes like after Champion Pub fights, bonus, maybe a permanent +1X multiplier.

And the central horseshoe/bumpers, fuck only knows why they’re even there.

flatluigi:

prostheticknowledge:

Galactic Dimension

Maker installation project by royrobotiks is a huge pinball machine made with familiar everyday objects:

Galactic Dimension is a supersized pinball machine which I’ve built for Phæno – an amazing science center in the German city of Wolfsburg. The pinball was built on a steep ramp in the exhibition hall and has a gigantic playfield, which measures 3×6 meters in total.
Styled with UFO’s and other cosmic references, the pinball fits perfectly into the futuristic building designed by the star architect Zaha Hadid.

As a science center should stimulate creativity and inventiveness, I repurposed everyday items like hair dryers and office fans for the playfield elements, giving the visitors the idea that they could also build such a contraption at home.
The result is a fully playable machine, operated via a control desk where the score is displayed on a jumbo calculator. Needless to say – hunting the high score is galactic fun! Watch the video above to see the machine in action!

More about how the project was put together can be found here

spacetwinks

Holy shit

Fuckin’ A, the Walking Dead code update is solid (aside from the whole thing where it bricks some machines, I guess). It’s like that Metallica update, taking high scores from 100 to 350.

In Portland we play HARD

pinballforever:

tron-a-thon:

So, I got to play the WHOA NELLIE! BIG JUICY MELONS pinball table and it left me with mixed feelings.

The distressed-wood cabinet is actually lovely, both visually and tactilely. The game itself is a throwback to the old electromechanical pinball tables - no ramps or additional playfields here. The art is lively, well-executed, and bursting with vivid color, and really fucking stupid. Same with the sound design - abundant and executed with care, but all the vocal bits I heard were unfunny variations on “BOOBS LOL”.

Was it fun? It was OK. Didn’t remotely come close to any of the other super-new tables at the Midwest Gaming Classic - I got to play THE BIG LEBOWSKI, AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED, and THE HOBBIT - or, honestly, most of the older tables (it was hard to not buy the SPANISH EYES table one guy was selling, but I don’t have a place for it right now).

My understanding is that this machine will be selling for around $6K. For $6K you can get a hell of a lot better pinball table, and it probably won’t have the wince-inducing, backward, sexist imagery of WHOA NELLIE!. Hopefully the next time Stern makes a table without a licensed theme, it’ll be something I don’t feel embarrassed playing, not just for myself but for the hobby and industry as a whole.

(So, nerkles informs me the design is from Whiz Bang Pinball, and Stern’s just manufacturing it)

Stern getting a black eye over this machine and it doesn’t matter that they didn’t design it. My guess is 90-95% of sales will go directly to the collector market. Nobody in their right mind would display this in public for commercial use unless the venue was a strip club or XXX bookstore.

As far as hubba-hubba-ha-ha it doesn’t strike me as far off from Scared Stiff, honestly. (Also, I live in Portland, so strip clubs and sex shops seem like reasonable locations for a table.)

That said you’re right about it being a collector table, between the theme and the old-school styling. But that’s just why I think it’s a clever move for Stern to pick up and distribute it - they can use otherwise idle production capacity without cannibalizing sales from their 2-a-year operator market, while building a relationship with Whiz Bang that might see them becoming a designer stable and “imprint” for neo-retro tables (like how Buell was Harley-Davidson’s imprint for streetbike styling, say).

Stern’s clearly trying to figure out how to balance collector and operator markets, I think that’s why they alternate themes between midlife crisis brands (Harley, Mustang, Metallica, AC/DC) and brands with high youth recognition (superhero movies, WWE, Walking Dead).

I think this fits the strategy, I suspect the kind of guy who wants retro style but would rather shell out 6k than learn to fix a $500 EM won’t be put off by the theme. I mean, have you seen the Pinside forums?