Ninja Mania Archives - Pinball Adventures

When did multi-player games appear for pinball?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:17:13 +0000

Originally, machines were all single-player games. It was one player at a time. But starting in 1954, Gottlieb came up with the idea to have two or even four people playing at a time. Player one would play ball one, then player two would play ball one. Then player one would play ball two, and player two would play ball two. Suddenly it was more competitive.

The problem was that with electromechanical architecture, the amount of circuitry needed to support multi-player games came at the expense of game play. Basically, it meant that the games couldn’t be as complicated as far as game play and game features were concerned. So there was always this kind of wresting match—do you have a multi-player game that people can play more or less head to head, or do you have a single-player game where the rule set can be considerably deeper but with only one person playing at a time?

As far as collectors go, most collectors like single-player electromechanical games because the games are more involved and they have a deeper rule set. There’s more to do. With the advent of solid-state microcomputers and microprocessors, all games became multi-player just by default because now the game could remember.

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What were some of the other most popular pinball themes?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:15:08 +0000

Gottlieb was really good at card themes. They were known for that. Card games like poker, you’re trying to get different hands, a royal flush, they used that name a bunch of times—Card Whiz, Royal Flush, Pop-a-Card.

In the 1950s, Gottlieb would run a machine for maybe three or four weeks in their factory and then make anywhere from 500 to 1,500 machines. They would produce maybe 10 different games a year. By the 1960s, production numbers began to bump up. One thousand was now a low production number, and 2,500 to 3,500 was a good run for any particular game. The games were becoming more popular. They were selling more of them.

By the 1970s, some of the machines were breaking sales records, especially the early Bally licensed stuff. They were selling 10,000 machines, 15,000 machines, and this is an incredible number of machines compared to what they were selling just a few years before. But in the mid-’70s, video games were just on the horizon, and by 1979, microprocessor games like Space Invaders, which was a black-and-white game, really started to cut into the pinball market share.

When Pac-Man came out in 1980, pinball really took a dive. Where just a couple years before they had been selling 8,000, 10,000, 12,000, or 15,000 machines, now manufacturers were having a hard time selling 2,000 machines. So the popularity would go down, and pinball would constantly have to reinvent itself. By the late 1980s, Bally was almost out of business, and Williams bought them just to get the name and basically kill a competitor.

By the early 1990s, pinball was on upswing again. Manufacturers were selling boatloads of machines, with the Adam’s Family being the most popular game of all time. And then in the mid-’90s, home-gaming consoles became popular and once again pinball’s popularity started to slide. People weren’t going out so much to be entertained. Arcades were having a hard time, some even closed.

In 1999, Williams/Bally stopped making pinball machines. They just stopped. They said, “We’re just making slot machines.” Remember, Gottlieb had already gone out of business in 1995. So now there was only one pinball manufacturer left, a company called Data East, which in 1995, was bought by Sega.

By 1999, Sega wanted out, so they basically dumped the pinball company. A long-time Data East guy, Gary Stern, picked it up for a very fair price. So now, Gary Stern is running Stern Pinball. There are no stockholders to answer to, it’s just Gary. Because of that autonomy, his pinball machine company has been able to survive. He’s been able to keep his company afloat even during these poor economic times. That’s good because if Stern Pinball goes under, there’s nobody left making any new machines. There almost has to be a new pinball manufacturer out there to keep pinball alive as a pop cultural icon.

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When did movie promotion begin for pinball?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:13:02 +0000

Bally was the first company to do that. They were the first company to get an official licensed theme. During the 1950s, Gottlieb had done some unlicensed themes. They had a game called Guy’s Dolls, and it just happened to come out at the same time as the Broadway play called Guys and Dolls. So they were trying to wrap themselves in the popularity of pop culture at the time without actually having to pay any money for it.

In 1975 Bally was the first company to pay for a license. The game was Wizard, which was based on the Tommy movie by the Who. They paid very little for the licensing at the time, but they were able to promote the machine around the movie. And since it was called Wizard, they actually would go around to different cities and give the machines away at pinball tournaments. They would host pinball tournaments to try and increase the popularity of their brand.

Then all the other companies followed suit. Gottlieb got a license in 1979 for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Williams did it to a much lesser extent. Bally was the key player in licensing themes. They really felt that they could bring new people in to play pinball if they recognized the theme.

Today, the only pinball manufacturer left is Stern out of Chicago. Just about every game they put out, if not every game they put out, is a licensed theme because they are really strong believers in the idea that themes attract new players to pinball. In other words, you can get somebody to play an Indiana Jones pinball machine because they just walked out of the Indiana Jones movie, that sort of thing.

anagement, and the band got a machine. That was the licensing fee, probably 15 machines. Stern did the Ted Nugent deal.

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Did Williams and Gottlieb have their own artists?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:10:34 +0000

Yes, they had preferred artists. During the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, artwork wasn’t always created in house. Williams or another company would design a game, and then they would hand the game over to another company that just did art. This second company had their own staff artists. In the case of Gottlieb, they used one particular artist, Roy Parker.

So the look of each manufacturer’s machines took on a personality based on the artist—the theme was almost irrelevant. The art really didn’t have anything to do with the actual game play. It could be about almost anything. Clearly some games were designed with a card game like poker or blackjack or something like that in mind. But with a lot of the themes, the art could’ve been anything. The art company would often come up with names for the games, and they would do all the artwork based on the actual whitewood, which was the name for the raw prototype game without art on it. They would pretty much do whatever they wanted, but they knew what the companies were expecting, so that’s why the companies used the same artists over and over.

There were different artists in different years. Gottlieb started out with Roy Parker, who died in 1965 of cancer. Art Stenholm took over and did a lot of Gottlieb artwork through the rest of the ’60s. So you had these artists who would do games for a particular manufacturer for years and years. By the ’80s, the games were getting more sophisticated with voice and speech, and the theme of the game was more set in concrete, so an artist couldn’t really re-theme a game. So a lot of the artists were brought in house and actually worked at Williams or Gottlieb or Bally, and the artwork on the games became much more entwined with the theme.

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How did pinball evolve in the United States?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:06:44 +0000

It was a game that morphed from the French game of bagatelle. In the 1930s, it really exploded as a gambling thing, and that’s where pinball got this gambling association.

Coming out of World War II, the gambling laws were changing in the United States. In particular, in 1950, the Johnson Act made it difficult for slot machines or any sort of gambling device to be used in public. It was a federal offense. So, pinball had to shed its gambling association to become a game of skill. In 1947, they came up with this crazy idea of adding flippers to the machine.

Gottlieb came out with the first flipper machine. Instead of just letting the ball fall into a hole worth points or money, now the player actually had some control over the ball. With flippers, you could steer the ball into different point areas. All the companies jumped on this flipper technology—Gottlieb did not patent it. Soon everybody was using flipper machines, and it made all the pre-flipper machines of the ’30s and early ’40s—the pre-1947 stuff—obsolete.

In the ’60s, games became more technologically advanced, and in the ’70s they were still using the same electromechanical principles of coils (which are magnets), relays, and stepper units, which are, more or less, one-bit memory units, in a mechanical sense.

By about 1977, 1978, the companies all dropped the electromechanical stuff and went to solid state, using microprocessors to control the games as opposed to having everything hardwired with relays and stepper units. I collect the pre-solid state games.

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Are there a lot of pinball machine collectors?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:04:06 +0000

Are there a lot of pinball machine collectors?

It is a fairly small hobby. I’m the co-editor of one of the pinball magazines, and the subscription number is 1,200 people worldwide. Now, I know not every collector subscribes, but that gives you an indication that the hobby is not huge. There are people who own pinball machines, but they’re not collectors. I would say there’s a difference between a pinball collector and a pinball owner.

We categorize collectors by digits: single-digit collectors, one to nine machines, or double-digit collectors, 10 to 99 machines. Well, I’m a three-digit collector, which is just sick. There’s something wrong with me. If you’re a three-digit collector, you’ve got issues. I think the largest collection known is around 1,500 machines. But the problem is that after you get so many machines, it’s hard to keep them all working and operating or even to have them all restored in the first place because they are a huge time suck.

We started a pinball club, a local Detroit pinball club. We call it the Detroit Pinball Collectors Club. We’ve got a little clubhouse, and so I’ve got a bunch of games there, too. And I’ve got games at a friend’s house. I’ve got games all over the place, unfortunately, just because the one single thread in pinball collecting is you can never have just one, and you always run out of room. If you’re a real collector, it seems like you’re just always amassing more games. I have a really great time restoring them and playing them. I’m probably an average pinball player, maybe above average, but I’m not great. But it’s fun. It’s a fun thing, and it doesn’t become old quickly like, say, video games.

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How long does it take to repair the average pinball machine?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:02:12 +0000

The quickest someone can restore a machine is maybe a week, and that would be the best-case scenario. It takes time to tear them down. All the mechanical assemblies have to be taken apart, cleaned, and the parts must be replaced and put back together. A lot of times they’ll touch up the play fields with clear coat so it doesn’t look like it’s been touched up.

Most of the machines are commercial devices designed to make money for an operator, and most operators just ran the games into the ground. They didn’t really maintain them or take care of them. When they got done with them, they sold them at auction, or maybe cleaned them up a little, ran a rag across them, put new rubber on, and sold them to a homeowner, who then played the bejebus out of it. Or their kids did. Most of the games that you end up with tend to be pretty tired by the time you get them.

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Why People Flip Pinball Machines

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 03:59:33 +0000

I didn’t really get into to pinball machine collecting until maybe 15 years ago, but when I was a freshman in college, video games were really big. I went to Purdue University. They had a huge arcade there. I always said that Space Invaders and Pac-Man took so much of my money—money that I really didn’t have—that it would have been cheaper to just buy one of those machines.

So one day I went to an auction of coin-operated video games. They had pinball machines there, too, including a 1980 Spider-Man machine. This is about 1988, so the game’s only eight years old. They started bidding at a hundred dollars, and nobody’s bidding. I drag it home and set it up, and sure enough a few things don’t work on it. And of course I don’t know how to fix it, but I go through it, figure it out, and it’s rewarding.

So I started buying these machines, tried to figure out how to fix them, and started to network with other guys who were buying games. I’d say, “Hey, I have this problem, how do you fix that?” You couldn’t find anybody to repair them. As time progressed, I just started buying more games, figuring out how to fix them, and I would run an ad in the paper—“Buying pinball machines, broken or working.” I would get a zillion calls.

Over the course of talking to people, I was developing this library of repair information. Then, in about 1995, I got a new job, and they had this crazy thing at work called Internet access. I’m like, “Wow, I can post all my repair stuff on the Internet.” I made a database and it just kept growing until I ended up with this huge website called PinRepair.com.

As part of the hobby, I went to the Pinball Expo in Chicago. This was about 1999, and they had all these seminars with people involved in the industry—programmers, game designers, service guys. The next year we presented a demonstration at the show about repairing games. As a joke, we said, “We’re going to make a videotape,” just a goofy, comedy videotape on pinball repair. And so we came up with this Norman-Shaggy thing, where I was Shaggy, the guy with long hair, and Norm was the guy who you never, ever saw, but he talked with a Boston accent. It was loosely based on This Old House, so we called it This Old Pinball. It was a weird morph of a bunch of ideas.

We showed the tape after our repair seminar, and people just went nuts, saying, “Hey, can I get a copy?” And we’re like, “We’re not selling this. It was just a one-time thing.” So then this guy comes up to me and says, “Look, I’m running this pinball hall of fame thing in Las Vegas. I’ll sell your video, and I’ll give some of the money to the Salvation Army and some of the money to our nonprofit pinball hall of fame, and you’ll help a lot of people out.”

So we started making these videos, and we turned them into nine, two-hour DVDs. We’ve sold 5,000 of them, or something. It’s unbelievable.

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The Glory of the Pinball Machine

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 03:55:20 +0000

What is it about the pinball machine that draws us in? Even today in our time of gorgeously illustrated video games, pinball machines continue to have an enchanting quality. In part this is the result ofthe game’s visuals: the lights, colors, and artwork. But it’s also a credit to the game’s simple mechanical brilliance — the fun and challenge of timing the action of two levers to guide the pinball into the machine’s most lucrative spots.The game was not always so simple. Early pinball machines demanded that a player shake the entire table in an effort to guide the ball through the obstacles (pins — hence the name). Later iterations had mechanical flippers like today’s, but more of them — six, which were distributed three on each side up and down the body of the machine. It wasn’t until 1948 that the standard two-flipper version was introduced, designed by Steve Kordek in an effort to save on production costs. But the two-flipper machine was a hit; its use of a direct-current (as opposed to alternating, which other companies were using at the time) meant the flippers were more precise in their motion, and, with only two, the game experience was more streamlined.

Kordek passed away in 2014 at the age of 100 in Park Ridge, Illinois. In his career, he moved on from mechanical games to video games, but the double-flipper pinball machine was “perhaps his most significant contribution.” Its success is a testament to the basic importance of getting the hardware right: Without Kordek’s innovation, pinball would be an overdecorated gambling machine. But together, the marriage of artistry and tech provides that particular pinball allure.pinhead, pinball, pinball-playing addict, backbox, Pinball Machine, BIFF, flipper, panic flip, Lazarus ball, Nudging, machine, ball, pinball video games, nudge, shake, bumpers, thumper, jet, pop, kick-out hole, ,gobble hole, drain, Ability, Achievement, Action, Arcade, Arrangement, Art, Artist, Artwork, Attempt, American Pinball, Chicago Gaming Company. Dutch Pinball, Haggis Pinball. HomePin. Jersey Jack Pinball. Multimorphic Inc. Penny K Pinball. Quetzal Pinball, Pinball Avdentures, Punny Factory, Ninja Mania, Sushi Mania, That’s Wack, Canada, Vancouver , Spooky Pinball, Stern Pinball, SunCoast Pinball, Team Pinball, Allied Leisure, Alvin G, Atari, Bally Manufacturing, Bill Port, Capcom, Centro Matic, Coffee-Mat, Chicago Coin, Data East, Exhibit Supply Company, Fascination Int., Inc, Game Plan, Genco, Gottlieb, Hankin, Heighway Pinball, Inder, InterFlip/Recreativos Franco, Jennings & Company, Jeutel pinball, Nordamatic, Nuova Bell/Bell Games, Maresa, Mirco Games, Midway Games, Pinstar, Mr. Game, Peyper, Playmatic, Rally Play, Recel/Petaco, Sega Pinball, Sega, S.A. SONIC, Spinball, Taito, Tecnoplay, The Valley Company, Viza, Wico, Williams Electronics / WMS Industries, Zaccaria, Zidware, Back-glass, Ball, Ban, Bells, Bing, Bonus, Brand name, Bumper, Business, Buyer, Cabinet, Challenge, Chicago, Circuit, Coin-operated, Colorful, Company, Competition, Compression, Computer, Concept, Configuration, Control, Coordination, Cost, Count, Craze, Creativity, Culture, Damage, Degree, Design, Development, Dexterity, Digits, Direction, Display, Elaborate, Electric, Electronic, Elimination, Entertainment, Enthusiastic, Era, Execute, Eye-catching, Fancy, Features, Field, Flipper, Forward,

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artist modifies a pinball machine to make art prints

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:26:49 +0000

Dutch graphic designer Sam van Doorn has modified a pinball machine so that it uses lithographic ink to make prints. Calling his machine STYN, the device makes messy modern art on poster board with six flippers and the ball. van Doorn doesn’t call the resulting works art, rather he thinks of them as design pieces which are the product of “fun and play.” The modified pinball machine was a part of van Doorn’s graduation project. The machine itself will be appearing at different parties where people can use it to make their own designs, but posters are also available for sale in van Doorn’s website for 50 Euros.

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Pinball Cafe closes doors for having more than two pinball machines

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:22:28 +0000

The Pinball Cafe opened its doors in February, on the strip of Queen West between Roncesvalles Ave. and Dufferin St. It was a family place where one could buy ice cream, eat a sandwich and play a few rounds of an old arcade favourite.

When it closed on Monday, after eight months of operating illegally without a licence, the owners posted the following to their website and Facebook page: “The Pinball Cafe is CLOSED by order of The City of Toronto based on 1) Zoning By-law No. 438-86 and 2) Interim control By-law #2012.”

The first zoning bylaw referenced states that only two pinball machines or other electronic games are permitted in a restaurant or amusement establishment — a limit that Jason Hazzard describes as “outdated.”

The second reference, the interim control bylaw, was introduced to council on Oct. 31. It states that no restaurants can be opened on the strip of Queen West between Roncesvalles Ave. and Dufferin St. for one year.

“We put a lot of time and money into this little business and we’re sad to see it go,” said Mr. Hazzard, 39, who opened The Pinball Cafe with his wife, Rachel.

Local councillor Gord Perks did not take kindly to that version of events.

“It attempts to lay blame on the city,” he said. “They’re trying to blame someone else for their mistakes.”

The Hazzards met with Mr. Perks in February, when they were seeking a business licence. They were having trouble obtaining one because of their excess of pinball machines. The councillor said he gave the business owners three options: reduce the number of machines to operate within the limit of two; go to the committee of adjustments for a variance on the zoning rules; or ask the city to change the zoning of the property.

Mr. Perks didn’t hear from the business owners again until the summer, when they were having trouble obtaining a liquor licence.

“If you want to get a liquor licence, then you have to get a business licence. And if you want a business licence, you have to get your zoning stuff figured out,” Mr. Perks said.

But the Hazzards didn’t act quickly enough. By the time they decided to reduce the number of pinball machines to obtain a licence, they were turned down because of the interim control bylaw.

Mr. Perks defends the bylaw, saying it addresses a zoning imbalance in the neighbourhood.

“All of the sudden, what was supposed to be a neighbourhood shopping area has turned into an entertainment area,” he said. “The streets are packed all night and empty all day.”

Frank Horgan, who has worked at Amico’s Pizza Restaurant on Queen West for eight years, has noticed the change.

“The area is getting saturated,” he said, noting that there used to be a few restaurants on the street. “And now you need both hands to count them.”

Although the interim bylaw took blame on the website post, Mr. Perks says it has nothing to do with the closure. If the necessary routes to obtain a business licence had been taken last February, they wouldn’t have had to close.

“They never opened legally, and they decided to close themselves,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to lose a business, but it’s not right to blame the city.”

“We didn’t do our due diligence,” Mr. Hazzard admits.

“We wanted to do something that was fun and interesting and different. There wasn’t anything like it in Toronto.…

“It was a lot of fun. And unfortunately, it was illegal.”

Source

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National Pinball Museum to close

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:18:42 +0000

Just five months after opening its doors to delighted pinheads and wizards across the D.C. region, Georgetown’s National Pinball Museum is being forced to close.

David Silverman, the Silver Spring man whose dream it was to share his pinball collection with the masses, said Monday that he has received a letter informing him that he will have to vacate his third-floor space at the Shops at Georgetown Park in mid-July.

“This has been a dream of mine for over 30 years and to have it whittled down . . . ,” Silverman said.

Officials at Vornado Realty Trust declined to talk about the lease agreement. “As a policy, we don’t comment on tenant matters,” said Wendi Kopsick, spokeswoman for Vornado.

Silverman said that although his lease extends though December, the landlords are exercising a clause that allows them to terminate the agreement with 60 days’ notice. Silverman said he’s being asked to leave to make way for mall renovations.

For more than three decades, Silverman dreamed of opening a museum to showcase his collection of more than 800 pinball machines and to share the history of a game that was first played by French aristocrats. After a story about Silverman appeared in The Washington Post, a leasing agent at the Georgetown center approached him with the idea of opening the museum at the mall. Silverman spent six months renovating a third-floor space that once housed an FAO Schwarz toy store and put up $300,000 of his own money to make the project happen. The National Pinball Museum opened in December.

The museum features 200 pinball machines, some of which were available for visitors to play, as well as displays detailing the art and history of the game. Silverman also highlighted the work of game designers and artists.

Pinball’s heyday was in the 1960s and 1970s; the arrival of video games marked the end of its reign. Only one company, Illinois-based Stern Pinball, still makes pinball machines, and some collectors pay upward of $5,000 for machines at conventions or on Web sites such as eBay.

Silverman said he remains committed to keeping the museum alive.

Right now he’s focused on making lists: lists of supporters, lists of places where he might be able to move his vast collection, lists of spaces where he might be able to temporarily house his collection.

“I’m not willing to throw in the towel,’’ he said. “I’m not going to shut down. I’m going to find someplace.’’

Source

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This is serious business for 9-year-old Caine Monroy

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:14:56 +0000

Nine-year-old Caine Monroy is totally nonplussed by the attention his homemade cardboard arcade received this week after the short film “Caine’s Arcade” went viral on the Internet.

The documentary was directed by Nirvan Mullick, an L.A. filmmaker who happened upon Caine’s cardboard arcade when he tried to buy a car handle for his ’96 Corolla from Caine’s dad’s auto parts shop.

The heartwarming 11-minute film got a combined 3.5 million views on Vimeo and YouTube in just four days. That led to hundreds of online articles about the video, which led to television stories about the cardboard arcade by Fox, NBC and CNN.

A scholarship fund for Caine, set up by Mullick, got $140,000 in online donations from people moved by the film, and TMZ reported that Caine made such an impression on the owner of the pinball machine store Pins and Needles that she gave him a pinball machine worth thousands of dollars for free.

But by Friday, the whirlwind had started to die down. No television crews were lined up outside Caine’s dad’s auto parts shop in Boyle Heights, where Caine built the arcade last summer. It was the first time that had happened in days.

Still, Caine, dressed in his custom-made Caine’s Arcade sweatshirt, wasn’t feeling blue now that his 15 minutes had started to fade. After all, fame was never the point. Caine is interested in customers.

Paying customers.

Caine’s dad, George, said Caine has always had a knack for spotting money making opportunities — buying trendy rubber bracelets for 99 cents on eBay and selling them for $5 at swap meets, or turning an old skateboard and a cardboard box into a roaming vending machine where he sold Kit Kats, bottled water and potato chips for a dollar.

Despite the rain and the cold, and the fact that there is no heat in the front of his dad’s store, Caine had seven paying customers at his arcade at 3 on a Friday afternoon, including a father and daughter who heard about the arcade via Facebook, an artist who lives in the neighborhood who heard Brian Williams talking about it on NBC and two college students who found the video on Tumblr.

Caine was running two games at a time — audibly counting off the 20 seconds he gives players to play each game, calculator in hand to keep track of how many turns one player had left on his 500-turn fun pass.

Devon Gomez, a 20-year-old college student who was battling the homemade claw machine, asked how many tickets he’d need to win a box of four Angry Birds stuffed animals sitting on the counter.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Caine. “20,000 tickets. You’d need 5,000 tickets for just one.”

“You have to watch your wallet with this kid,” Gomez said.

Caine just grinned and asked if he wanted another turn.

Source

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Simpsons Arcade Game Finally Released for Consoles After 21 Years

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:11:17 +0000

It’s been a long time since you could pump quarters into The Simpsons Arcade Game, gleefully mashing buttons with a can of Mountain Dew by your side. Well, prepare to seriously embiggen your gaming library because the Simpsons are coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Today, Konami’s classic game hits Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network for download. There have been many Simpsons-branded video games over the years, from Krusty’s Fun House to the oddly fun Simpsons: Hit & Run, but this is the only one most people remember.

There really isn’t much to it. You choose either Homer, Marge, Lisa or Bart and then rampage around Springfield hitting wave after wave of hired goons over the course of eight levels. The story has something to do with Smithers kidnapping Maggie for Mr. Burns but, as with almost every game of its time, the story really isn’t that important.

Is it the most challenging or interesting game? Meh. But it’s a fun trip down memory lane to an era when: a) The Simpsons was still considered edgy and subversive, and b) a true test of skill was how quickly you could repeatedly hit a big red button without injuring your finger.

The new version includes some fun extras like four-player online cooperative play and access to the Japanese version of the game. There are three modes of play: one with unlimited lives, one with a single life and “Quarters” mode where you have 10 virtual quarters to get through the whole game. If you’re not a Simpsons fan, there’s really no reason to download this game. If you are, however, I say to you “Up and at them!”

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Disney film explores secret world within arcade games

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:08:42 +0000

Any classic video gamers who still remember the good days of arcade tokens and joysticks may want to prepare themselves for a nostalgic moment or two. Disney’s newest animated film Wreck-It Ralph hit theaters on Nov. 2. Boasting an all-star cast of video game characters like never before seen (and some that have never been seen at all), this film promises to load up on ammo, step on the turbo and blast beyond viewer expectations.

The story takes place in a small arcade that is home to several classic, quarter-eating video games. However, in the spirit of Toy Story, the characters in these video games come to life every night when no one is watching. With the ability to travel between games using a subway-like extension cord system, the characters eat, drink, talk, and socialize with each other. One such character named Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly, Step Brothers), despite being reasonably well-mannered and friendly, has the job of being the bad guy for the game Fix-It Felix Jr. For 30 years, the giant, gorilla-shaped Ralph has been shunned by his “co-workers” and generally feared by everyone due to his villainous status. All he really wants is to be accepted and taste some of the love and admiration that is shown in the game to Felix (Jack McBrayer, 30 Rock), the popular and ever-optimistic hero. In a desperate bid to change how people think of him, Ralph abandons his own game and ventures out into the world of the arcade in search of a way to prove his heroism. Throughout his journey, Ralph crosses paths with the battle-hardened, professionally animated heroin of an alien shoot-‘em-up game (Jane Lynch, Glee) and the cute but annoying glitch character of a go-kart racing game (Sarah Silverman, School of Rock), both of whom give Ralph a completely new outlook on life. Travelling from one game to the next while making both friends and enemies along the way, Ralph discovers that his true destiny may not be what he intended.

In terms of story and emotional connection with the audience, Wreck-It Ralph is not an instant Disney classic, but its characters are memorable and the quality of animation is spot-on. The film is about video games and nothing else, so many classic video game tropes are included in a manner that should bring at least a few fond memories to anyone born in the arcade generation. For instance, one of the long-running jokes throughout the film is the cameos by classic video game characters in situations that are slightly different than what most audience members will remember. Sonic the Hedgehog gives safety advice to travelers as they journey between games, Q*bert and Coily are homeless on the streets, and Clyde the Ghost from Pac-Man runs a group therapy session for arcade villains. Even a certain moustached plumber gets a shout-out once or twice. Ultimately, it is these little “special moments” that make Wreck-It Ralph not just another animated film, but rather a salute to an era that was and is an enormous part of countless childhoods.

If there is anything bad to say about Ralph, it is that the story may come off as a little too under-ambitious at points. But this fact could be either a pro or a con based on the viewer. Younger audience members will certainly enjoy the wacky characters and truly vibrant animation, but older viewers may feel that the film does not reach its potential in terms of both laughs and storylines. The idea of a plot taking place in the coded and pixelated world of a video game, where mushrooms grant the power to shoot fists of fire and regeneration is an everyday occurrence, is an interesting one and always worthy of exploration. However, it will be up to the audience to decide if Wreck-It Ralph takes advantage of this idea and offers a fresh and interesting story, or if the film decides to go easy and play it safe in the arcade room.

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Simpsons Arcade Game rated

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:04:24 +0000

The Simpsons Arcade Game may finally be in line for its first console port. As reported by XBLA Fans, the Australian government’s Classification Board has updated its database with a listing for The Simpsons Arcade Game on multiple platforms.

The Simpsons Arcade Game is retro, but the TV show never went away.

Originally released in 1991, The Simpsons Arcade Game was a four-player beat-’em-up from Konami. The game allowed players to plow through side-scrolling levels as Bart, Lisa, Homer, and Marge, pummeling generic suit-wearing bad guys, Matt Groening Life is Hell extras, and recognizable residents of Springfield alike. The arcade game was ported to the PC and Commodore 64 the same year, but never made it to the consoles of the time.

In 2009, Electronic Arts released a mobile phone game called The Simpsons Arcade, but the new classification suggests that the project is unrelated. Handed down yesterday, the listing details Konami as the publisher and retro specialist Backbone Entertainment as the developer. The Emeryville, California-based studio has previously released downloadable versions of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. It also developed Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, a compilation of 40 games from Sega’s 16-bit system, for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

The Simpsons is another in a line of downloadable console ports for Konami’s licensed coin-op games of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Last year, Konami and Backbone teamed up to release X-Men: The Arcade Game on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The publisher also worked with Ubisoft for 2007’s Xbox 360 release of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game and in 2009 saw the French publisher remake the game’s arcade sequel, Turtles in Time.

Despite the classification, there are still a handful of licensed Konami arcade games of the era still awaiting a modern rerelease. Notably, the publisher’s 1992 arcade games Bucky O’Hare and Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa have yet to find their way to contemporary consoles.

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Why People Flip Over Vintage Pinball Machines

Andrew MacBain — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:55:13 +0000

Why People Flip Over Vintage Pinball Machines

By Maribeth Keane and Ben Marks — September 16th, 2009

Clay Harrell talks about collecting vintage pinball machines, and his personal road to pinball wizardry, from Gottlieb to Williams to Stern. He can be reached via his website, PinballHQ.com, or check out some of his personal collection.

Detail of back glass, Gottlieb Grand Slam, 1953.

I didn’t really get into to pinball machine collecting until maybe 15 years ago, but when I was a freshman in college, video games were really big. I went to Purdue University. They had a huge arcade there. I always said that Space Invaders and Pac-Man took so much of my money—money that I really didn’t have—that it would have been cheaper to just buy one of those machines.

So one day I went to an auction of coin-operated video games. They had pinball machines there, too, including a 1980 Spider-Man machine. This is about 1988, so the game’s only eight years old. They started bidding at a hundred dollars, and nobody’s bidding. I drag it home and set it up, and sure enough a few things don’t work on it. And of course I don’t know how to fix it, but I go through it, figure it out, and it’s rewarding.

So we started making these videos, and we turned them into nine, two-hour DVDs. We’ve sold 5,000 of them, or something. It’s unbelievable.

Collectors Weekly: How long does it take to repair the average pinball machine?

Harrell: The quickest I can restore a machine is maybe a week, and that would be the best-case scenario. It takes time to tear them down. All the mechanical assemblies have to be taken apart, cleaned, and the parts must be replaced and put back together. A lot of times I’ll touch up the play fields with clear coat so it doesn’t look like it’s been touched up.

Collectors Weekly: Are there a lot of pinball machine collectors?

Detail of back glass by Roy Parker, Gottlieb Flipper Cowboy, 1962.

Harrell: It is a fairly small hobby. I’m the co-editor of one of the pinball magazines, and the subscription number is 1,200 people worldwide. Now, I know not every collector subscribes, but that gives you an indication that the hobby is not huge. There are people who own pinball machines, but they’re not collectors. I would say there’s a difference between a pinball collector and a pinball owner.

Collectors Weekly: How did pinball evolve in the United States?

Detail of back glass, Williams Wonderland, 1955.

Harrell: It was a game that morphed from the French game of bagatelle. In the 1930s, it really exploded as a gambling thing, and that’s where pinball got this gambling association.

Collectors Weekly: Who were the major manufacturers?

Harrell: During the 1930s, there were literally hundreds of companies making pinball machines. After World War II, though, there was only a handful. The key players were Gottlieb—the biggest, and pretty much the Cadillac of pinball—and Williams, which was substantially smaller but still an up-and-coming game company. They were the two prime manufacturers. There were smaller players like Chicago Coin, Keeney, and United that made pinball. But really, it was Gottlieb and Williams. Even Bally only made a handful of pinball machines during the 1950s. They made mostly bingos. They looked like pinball machines, but they were really gambling devices. They didn’t have flippers.

Gottlieb Skee-Ball-Ette, 1940.

The artwork on pinball machines, especially in the ’50s, was fairly racy because the players they were attracting were mostly male bar patrons, ages 20 to 50. There were always lightly clad, well-endowed women on the back glass. The general thought is that Gottlieb had the best artwork. There are some people who collect the machines just because they like the artwork. For them, Gottlieb is pretty much the king.

In the 1960s, Williams started making more machines, and Bally started to get into the market more aggressively. As the bingo machines became clearly illegal, Bally shifted its production over to pinball, and by the mid-1960s, it was starting to make a lot more pinball machines. So now the big three players were Gottlieb, Williams, and Bally, with Chicago Coin as a runner-up. United was bought out by Williams, and Keeney was out of business.

By the 1970s, Gottlieb was still the leader because of its artwork, game play, and quality. Williams was second. But Bally began pushing the envelope as far as artwork was concerned. The company hired a new artist named Dave Christensen, a guy who had been doing slot-machine art in the Bally slot-machine department. They shifted him over to pinball and he really brought Bally pinball machines to the forefront because of his racy artwork, which was much more realistic than the cartoony art that Williams and Gottlieb were creating. The women Christensen drew looked almost real, maybe a bit super-human.

For a while, Bally was up-and-coming, but as soon as the crossover to solid state happened, when companies dumped electromechanical technology for microprocessors, Bally and Williams really took over. Gottlieb fell behind because the operators didn’t view their system as being reliable. Gottlieb’s approach to game design also lagged, but the company eventually went out of business in 1995 because they could never get past the reliability issue.

Collectors Weekly: Did Williams and Gottlieb have their own artists?

Harrell: Yes, they had preferred artists. During the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, artwork wasn’t always created in house. Williams or another company would design a game, and then they would hand the game over to another company that just did art. This second company had their own staff artists. In the case of Gottlieb, they used one particular artist, Roy Parker.

“Gottlieb came out with the first flipper machine.”

Collectors Weekly: When did movie promotion begin?

Detail of gobble hole in playfield of Gottlieb World Champ, 1957.

Harrell: Bally was the first company to do that. They were the first company to get an official licensed theme. During the 1950s, Gottlieb had done some unlicensed themes. They had a game called Guy’s Dolls, and it just happened to come out at the same time as the Broadway play called Guys and Dolls. So they were trying to wrap themselves in the popularity of pop culture at the time without actually having to pay any money for it.

In 1975 Bally was the first company to pay for a license. The game was Wizard, which was based on the Tommy movie by the Who. They paid very little for the licensing at the time, but they were able to promote the machine around the movie. And since it was called Wizard, they actually would go around to different cities and give the machines away at pinball tournaments. They would host pinball tournaments to try and increase the popularity of their brand.

Then all the other companies followed suit. Gottlieb got a license in 1979 for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Williams did it to a much lesser extent. Bally was the key player in licensing themes. They really felt that they could bring new people in to play pinball if they recognized the theme.

Bally also did a lot of games based on rock groups. They did a KISS machine, which was hugely popular, and one with Ted Nugent. The payments to these guys were so small. For the Ted Nugent game, everybody on the road crew, the management, and the band got a machine. That was the licensing fee, probably 15 machines. Stern did the Ted Nugent deal.

Collectors Weekly: What were some of the other most popular themes?

Harrell: Gottlieb was really good at card themes. They were known for that. Card games like poker, you’re trying to get different hands, a royal flush, they used that name a bunch of times—Card Whiz, Royal Flush, Pop-a-Card.

Exterior paint on Gottlieb Harbor Lites, 1956.

Collectors Weekly: When did multi-player games appear?

Detail of animated metal umpire and pitcher from Williams Official Baseball, 1960.

Harrell: Originally, machines were all single-player games. It was one player at a time. But starting in 1954, Gottlieb came up with the idea to have two or even four people playing at a time. Player one would play ball one, then player two would play ball one. Then player one would play ball two, and player two would play ball two. Suddenly it was more competitive.

Collectors Weekly: Did the transition from wood rail to metal rail change game play, or was that just the frame?

Harrell: No, it was purely aesthetics. At first the games didn’t have a lot of security. There was a coin box. The coin doors were wooden. The legs were wooden. The side rails that held the top glass in place were wooden, and that’s why they call those games wood rails. Most games from the 1950s cost a nickel to play. So you only had a few bucks worth of nickels in the coin box. By 1960 the price of games had gone up to a dime, so now there’s more money in the coin boxes and they just felt that they needed more security. Also the cost of wood was going up. Metal was actually cheaper to produce. It’s also harder to pry them off, to get the glass up, and then get to the coin box.

Collectors Weekly: How do you choose new games to collect?

Harrell: There are games that I’m looking for, clearly. The one thing that’s very interesting about this hobby is it doesn’t have to be expensive. You can buy machines off Craigslist or out of the want ads, or wherever, for anywhere from $50 to $500. These are decent games that are restorable; something to work on and have fun with. And when you’re done, you got a game to play.

I tend to try and look for things that I can afford, that seem interesting and that maybe I don’t have a lot of experience with because it is a huge learning experience, the whole thing, working on the different games and learning their ins and outs.

Collectors Weekly: What do you look for in game play?

The bingo machines, Wonderland Arcade, Kansas City, 1968.

Harrell: I’ve never played a pinball machine that didn’t have some sort of objective. The game play always has an objective. With pool themes, those are pretty generic. You need to try to get all the stripes or all the solids. And once you get all the stripes or all the solids, in some games, anyway, then you want to get the 8-ball. Some Games are actually called 8 Ball or the 8-ball is an important part of the theme. But there’s always some objective, and sometimes there’s an order to the objective.

One thing that’s unusual about pinball compared to a lot of other amusement games is that you can actually win something from playing it. This goes back to that 1930s gambling association. The machines couldn’t pay out, but they could award a free game. So what’s a free game? I guess some people thought it was something of value, but really it’s just another game you get to play for free. So in a lot of games like Flipper Pool or Bank-a-Ball, both 1965 Gottlieb games, if you had hit all the targets associated with all the solids or all the stripes, you would get what’s called a replay. You would basically win a free game. And on some machines, you can win multiple free games if you accomplished enough things.

Some people remember playing that game. They’d put in a dime, rack up 10 credits, and play the rest of the afternoon for free. There are a lot of people who have that sort of recollection from their youth. Even today, if you get to a certain replay score, you can still win a free game. In some states, pinball machines were outlawed because winning a game was viewed as winning something of value. It felt too much like gambling. So Gottlieb figured that instead of rewarding the player with an extra game, they’d just reward the player by making the current game last longer. So you would win additional balls instead of winning free games.

Collectors Weekly: Finally, what was a conversion machine?

Harrell: There were really three types. Back in 1947, when flippers were invented, a lot of the non-flipper machines were converted to flippers with a kit. That was one style of conversion machine. Then in the 1970s, there were a couple experiments where you could buy a machine, say a Bally Mata Hari, and you could flip a different playfield into it. They would sell just the playfield, which is the wood portion that the ball rolls on, plus a different score glass and a different set of chips for the computer. It let you convert a base machine into an entirely different game.

The idea didn’t go over so well. Bally/Williams tried it again in 1999 with Pinball 2000. Again, you would buy a base machine, and in order to make it into a different game, you could basically flip in a new playfield, some new memory cards, and the new back glass art. None of these ideas seemed to work all that well. Pinball 2001 took this idea further and probably was the one format that could have worked, but Bally/Williams closed its pinball division in 1999, so it never really took off. So there you go, three different types of conversion machines.

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History of pinball

Andrew MacBain — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:51:03 +0000

The origins of pinball are intertwined with the history of many other games. Games played outdoors by rolling balls or stones on a grass course, such as Bocce or Bowls , eventually evolved into games played by hitting the balls with sticks and propelling them at targets. Croquet and Shuffleboard are examples of these games.

These games led to indoor versions that could be played on a table, such as Billiards or Carrom , or on the floor of a pub like Bowling . The tabletop versions of these games became the ancestor of the modern pinball machine.

Bagatelle

The existence of table-based games dates back to the 15th century. While some games took the wickets and balls of Croquet and turned them into the pockets of modern billiards, some tables became smaller and had the holes placed in strategic areas in the middle of the table.

In France, during the reign of King Louis XIV, someone took a billiard table and narrowed it, placing pins at one end of the table while making the player shoot balls with a stick or cue from the other end. Pins took too long to reset when knocked down, so the pins eventually were fixed to the table and holes took the place of targets. Players could ricochet the ball off the pins to achieve the harder scoring holes.

In 1777, a party was thrown in honor of the King and his wife at the Château de Bagatelle , owned by the brother of the king. The highlight of the party was a new table game featuring the slender table and cue sticks, which players used to shoot ivory balls up an inclined playfield. The table game was dubbed Bagatelle by the King’s brother and shortly after swept through France. Some French soldiers carried their favorite bagatelle tables with them to America while helping to fight the British in the American Revolutionary War. Bagatelle spread and became so popular in America as well that a political cartoon from 1863 even depicts President Abraham Lincoln playing a tabletop bagatelle game.

The birth of pinball

In 1869, a British inventor named Montague Redgrave settled in America and manufactured bagatelle tables out of his factory in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1871 Redgrave was granted US Patent #115,357 for his “Improvements in Bagatelle”,[1] which replaced the cue at the player’s end of the table with a coiled spring and a plunger. The player shot balls up the inclined playfield using this plunger, a device that remains in pinball to this day. This innovation made the game friendlier to players. The game also shrank in size and began to fit on top of a bar or counter. The balls became marbles and the wickets became small “pins”. Redgrave’s innovations in game design are acknowledged as the birth of pinball in its modern form.

Pinball machines, like many other mechanical games, were sometimes used as gambling devices.[2] Some pinball machines, such as Bally’s “bingos “, featured a grid on the backglass scoring area with spaces corresponding to targets or holes on the playfield. Free games could be won if the player was able to get the balls to land in a winning pattern, however, doing this was nearly random, and a common use for such machines was for gambling. Other machines allowed a player to win and accumulate large numbers of “free games” which could then be cashed-out for money with the location owner. Later, this type of feature was discontinued in an effort to legitimize the machines, and to avoid legal problems in areas where awarding free games was considered illegal, some games — called Add-A-Ball games — did away with the free game feature, instead giving players extra balls to play (between 5 and 25 in most cases). These extra balls were indicated via lighted graphics in the backglass or by a ball count wheel, but in some areas even that was disallowed and so some games came with a sticker to cover over the counters.

One important and notable area where pinball games have been regulated or banned was in New York City, beginning in the 1940s and continuing until 1976. The ban ended when Roger Sharpe (a star witness for the Music and Amusement Association) testified in April 1976 before a committee in a Manhattan courtroom that pinball games had become games of skill and were no longer games of chance (i.e. gambling). He began to play one of two games set up in the courtroom, and — in a move he compares to Babe Ruth’s home run in the 1932 World Series — called out precisely what he was going to shoot for, and then proceeded to do exactly so. Astonished committee members reportedly then voted to remove the ban, a result which was then followed in many other cities.

Like New York, Los Angeles banned pinball machines in 1939. The ban was overturned by the Supreme Court of California in 1974 because (1) if pinball machines were games of chance, the ordinance was preempted by state law governing games of chance in general, and (2) if they were games of skill, the ordinance was unconstitutional as a denial of the equal protection of the laws.[3]

Regardless of these events, some towns in America still have such bans on the law books over fifty years later, and several countries still ban the games and their rewards. (Sharpe reportedly acknowledges his courtroom shot was lucky.)[4]

More recent games are clearly labeled “FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY” in an attempt to emphasize their legitimate, legal nature.

Another close but distinct relative of pinball is Pachinko , a gambling game played in Japan. Although they share a common ancestry, the games are very different, in that pachinko simply involves shooting many small balls one after the other into a nearly-vertical playfield, while pinball is about the manipulation of the small number of balls currently in play.

Depression era

By the 1930s, manufacturers were producing coin-operated versions of bagatelles, now known as “marble games” or “pin games”. The table was under glass and used Redgrave’s plunger device to propel the ball into the upper playfield. In 1931 David Gottlieb ‘s Baffle Ball became the first overnight hit of the coin-operated era. Selling for $17.50, the game dispensed five balls for a penny. The game struck a chord with a public eager for cheap entertainment in a depression-era economy. Most drugstores and taverns in America operated pinball machines, with many locations making back the cost of the game in a matter of days. Baffle Ball sold over 50,000 units and established Gottlieb as the first major manufacturer of pinball machines.

In 1932, Gottlieb distributor Ray Moloney found it hard to obtain more Baffle Ball units to sell. In his frustration he founded Lion Manufacturing to produce a game of his own design, Ballyhoo , named after a popular magazine of the day. The game became a smash hit as well, its larger playfield and ten pockets making it more of a challenge than Baffle Ball, selling 50,000 units in 7 months.[5] Moloney eventually changed the name of his company to Bally to reflect the success of this game. These early machines were relatively small, mechanically simple and originally designed to sit on a counter or bar top.

The 1930s saw a leap forward in innovation in pinball design and devices with the introduction of electrification. A company called Pacific Amusements in Los Angeles, California, USA produced a game called Contact in 1933. Contact had an electrically powered solenoid to propel the ball out of a bonus hole in the middle of the playfield. Another solenoid rang a bell to reward the player.[6] The designer of Contact, Harry Williams , would eventually form his own company, Williams Manufacturing , in 1944. Other manufacturers quickly followed suit with similar features. In addition, electric lights soon became a standard feature of all subsequent pinball games, designed to attract people to the game.

By the end of 1932 there were approximately 150 companies manufacturing pinball machines, most of them in the city of Chicago. Chicago has been the center of pinball manufacturing ever since. Competition between the companies was brutal, however, and by 1934 there were only 14 companies left.

Post-war boom

During World War II all of the major manufacturing companies in coin-operated games were put into use manufacturing equipment for the American war effort. Some companies like Williams bought old games from operators and refurbished them, adding new artwork with a patriotic theme.

By the end of the war, a generation of Americans looked for amusement in their bars and malt shops. Pinball saw another golden age of growth. Innovations such as the tilt mechanism and free games (known as replays) appeared.

The post-war era was dominated by Gottlieb . Game designer Wayne Neyens along with artist Leroy Parker turned out game after game that collectors consider some of the most classic pinball machines ever designed. The most famous were designed by James Rider, the man behind the epitomized catchphrase “I’ve got it”, amongst others.

Gottlieb’s Humpty Dumpty , introduced in 1947, was the first game to add player-controlled flippers to keep the ball in play longer and added a skill factor to the game. The low power of the Humpty Dumpty flippers necessitated that three pairs be placed around the playfield in order to get the ball to the top. But the addition of a DC power supply enabled the flippers on Humpty Dumpty to become only two, more powerful ones at the bottom of the Triple Action playfield — one of many innovations by designer Steve Kordek , who is also credited with introducing the very first “drop target” (1962 on Vagabond ) and “multiball” (1963 on Beat the Clock ) concepts to the game.

Solid-state era

The advent of the microprocessor brought another new age for pinball as it entered into the realm of electronic gaming. The electromechanical relays and scoring reels that drove games in the 1950s and 1960s were replaced in the 1970s with circuit boards and digital displays. Williams introduced their first solid-state electronic game, Hot Tip , in 1977,[7] and because of this new technology, they and Bally thrived in this era as they both sold large amounts of games with fancy sound effects, speech, and game features that only a computer could make possible.

The video game boom of the 1980s, however, signaled the end of the boom for pinball. Arcades quickly replaced rows of pinball machines with games like Asteroids and Pac-Man, which earned incredible amounts of money compared to the pinballs of the day. Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb continued to quietly make pinballs while they also manufactured video games in much higher numbers. Many of the larger companies were acquired by corporations or merged with other companies. Chicago Coin was purchased by the Stern family who brought the company into the digital era as Stern Electronics , which closed its doors in the mid-1980s. Bally exited the pinball business in 1988 and sold their assets to Williams, who subsequently used the Bally trademark on about half of their pinball releases from then on.

Pinball in the digital age

After the collapse of the coin-operated video game industry, pinball saw another comeback in the 1990s. Some new manufacturers entered the field such as Capcom Pinball and Alvin G. and Company , founded by Alvin Gottlieb , son of David Gottlieb. Gary Stern, the son of Williams co-founder Sam Stern , founded Data East Pinball with funding from Data East Japan .

The games from Williams now dominated the industry, with complicated mechanical devices and more elaborate display and sound systems attracting new players to the game. Licensing popular movies and icons of the day became a staple for pinball, with Bally/Williams’ The Addams Family hitting an all-time modern sales record of 20,270 machines. Two years later, Williams commemorated this benchmark with a limited edition of 1,000 Addams Family Gold pinball machines, featuring gold-colored trim and updated software with new game features. Other notable popular licenses included Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure and Star Trek: The Next Generation . Expanding markets in Europe and Asia helped fuel the boom. Pat Lawlor was a designer, working for Williams up until their closure in 1999. About a year after, Lawlor announced a return to the industry, starting his own company[8] working in conjunction with Stern Pinball to produce new games into the new millennium.

The end of the 1990s saw another downturn in the industry, with Gottlieb, Capcom, and Alvin G. all closing their doors by the end of 1996. Data East was acquired by Sega and became Sega Pinball for a few years. By 1997 there were only two companies left: Sega Pinball and Williams. In 1999 Sega sold their pinball division to Gary Stern (President of Sega Pinball at the time) who called his company Stern Pinball.[9] By this time, Williams had shrunk its production runs significantly and reduced the manufacturing cost of their machines by incorporating fewer playfield toys than in earlier games. In 1999 Williams attempted to revive sales with the Pinball 2000 line of games, merging a video display into the pinball playfield. The reception was lukewarm and Williams exited the pinball business to focus on making gaming equipment for casinos, licensing the rights to Bally/Williams parts to Illinois Pinball and names to The Pinball Factory . Stern Pinball is the only current manufacturer of original pinball machines. Almost all members of the design teams for Stern Pinball are former employees of Williams.

Rebirth

In November 2005 The Pinball Factory (TPF), based in Melbourne, Australia, announced that they would be producing a new Crocodile Hunter-themed pinball machine under the Bally label. However, with the death of Steve Irwin , it was announced that the future of this game has become uncertain.[10] In 2006 TPF announced that they would be reproducing two popular 90’s era Williams machines, Medieval Madness and Cactus Canyon .[11] To date The Pinball Factory has produced no machines. Illinois pinball company PinBall Manufacturing Inc. has produced several reproductions of Capcom’s Big Bang Bar for the European market and continues to build machines for the U.S.[12] [13]

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