Sushi 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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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.

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 m

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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Who were the major manufacturers for pinball?

Andrew MacBain — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:08:46 +0000

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.

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.

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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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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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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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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!”

Source

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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.

Source

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First Solid-State Pinball

Andrew MacBain — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:31:05 +0000

Until the 1970s, no pinball machine had any sort of computerization. Instead, the electromechanical games ran on a precarious balance of moving parts, with their guts resembling giant Rube Goldberg machines.

But beginning in 1977, manufacturers began running their games off of computer chips, and the machines became far less prone to mechanical failure. (Engineers could also take advantage of the chips to put in more intelligent and complex features.) Oddly, when the first so-called solid-state pinball machines came out, Williams was worried that customers used to the familiar feel of churning gears and ringing bells would be scared away by the high-tech new machines. To protect against this, the company filled the games with spinning gears that did nothing except make familiar noise.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly identified Hot Tip as the first solid-state pinball machine. It was the first solid-state machine manufactured by Williams, but not the first in the industry.

First Dot-Matrix Display

Checkpoint /// 1991 /// Data East

In many ways, the early 90s were the last and greatest golden age of pinball. Even though video games were wildly popular by that point, pinball machines saw their best sales ever–and some of their best and most creative incarnations. This was the direct result of a single innovation: the dot-matrix display.

Before the dot-matrix display, pinball machines showed their scores on spinning reels and, later, simple digital displays. But the dot-matrix display was flexible enough to show more than mere numbers–they could display animations. As a result, programmers could add an unparalleled number of new features and new game modes (such as mini video games that took place entirely on the tiny screens), and even immerse the player in a narrative of sorts.

Checkpoint used a so-called “half-height” dot-matrix display, as opposed to the full-size one used in later machines. It was also the first game to allow a player to select the music they wanted to listen to during their game, with six different musical genres on the menu.

Best Selling

The Addams Family /// 1992 /// Bally

After the advent of dot-matrix display, pinball saw a rush of now classic games. But The Addams Family is perhaps the era’s most iconic. It also sold more than 20,000 units, making it the best-selling pinball game of all time.

The game featured plenty of next-gen features, such as a moving mechanical hand (Thing) that picked up balls, an enormous number of scoring modes and new dialogue recorded by the film’s stars specifically for the game. But the real reason for its success was that it had great game play. With well-placed ramps and shots leading into each other naturally, The Addams Family avoided some of the all-too-common pratfalls of the pinball machine. This game nailed the simple things, and virtually every game since has taken design cues from it.

Most Feature-Filled/User-Modded

The Twilight Zone /// 1993 /// Bally

Following the success of The Addams Family, designer Pat Lawlor was given carte blanche to make the game of his dreams. The result: The Twilight Zone, a messy, complex, frustrating and immensely enjoyable machine. Never before had a designer attempted to stuff so many toys and features into a single game. Some of Twilight‘s wilder features included a working gum-ball machine that would spit balls onto the playing field, a miniature upper play field with invisible magnetic flippers, and a working clock that would count down the time of different game modes. The game was so ambitious that it had to be built as a “wide-body” machine in order to fit all its features onto the playing field.

But because the machine was so mechanically complex and filled with so many moving parts, it was also extremely prone to mechanical problems. The clock, in particular, would frequently break down, and machines still in perfect working order are very rare and remain sought after by collectors.

Recently, The Twilight Zone has developed a reputation as the most-modded machine, with collectors using the Internet to buy and sell even more toys for the game’s already crowded playing field. Common mods include filling the gum-ball machine with colorful plastic gum balls, hacking the game to play updated firmware that adds more game features, and even surgically installing magnets to the playing field to make game play more exciting.

Most High-Tech

Revenge From Mars /// 1999 /// Bally

Williams Electronics was perhaps history’s most legendary pinball manufacturer. By the late 1990s, it had gobbled up the pinball operations of Bally and Midway to make itself one of only two pinball companies left on the planet (and by far the larger of the two, accounting for more than 80 percent of the market). But Williams’s pinball operation was also just one small division of what was then a large, publicly traded corporation, WMS Gaming, that saw greater profits from slot-machine sales than from complex, low-volume pinball games. The company had made moves to shut down the pinball operation, but not before giving its engineers one last-ditch effort to redefine the game for a new millennium–and save their jobs.

The result: Pinball 2000, a high-tech pinball/video-game hybrid in which players would aim the ball at projected holographic targets (click here to see the game in action). Because much of the playing field was built from projected video, the games for Pinball 2000 were designed to be easily converted between themes as future games were released. But that never happened. Only two Pinball 2000 games were ever produced: Revenge From Mars and the not-quite-as-fun Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Although the new games sold moderately well, it wasn’t enough for WMS, which closed the door on its entire pinball operation in 1999, leaving the much-smaller Stern Pinball as the world’s sole manufacturer of pinball machines.

Pinball Buzz is a North American manufacturing company producing fresh and unique Pinball machines, as well as a series of Pinball related regalia. Using all original artwork and created to the highest standards, our machines spark the same joy we found as gamers when we rolled our first quarter into that coin slot so many years ago. Stemming from a lifelong passion, Pinball Buzz is created by gamers, for gamers. We strive to bring high quality, innovative, and captivating experiences for all to enjoy.

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Top 8 Most Innovative Pinball Machines of All Time

Andrew MacBain — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:24:31 +0000

Seth Porges

Aug 5, 2008

First With a Mechanical “Tilt”

Brokers Tip /// 1933 /// D. Gottlieb & Co.

Early pinball machines, which became immensely popular in a Depression-scourged America looking for cheap entertainment, were built without flippers. Instead of the now-standard paddles, users pulled a plunger to shoot balls onto the playing field, aiming for holes that were worth various point values. Of course, players would try to influence the outcome by shoving the machines themselves, and game operators were less than pleased with the potential for damage. This Wall Street-themed game was the first to feature the now-standard “tilt” mechanism, which punishes players for physically abusing their low-tech gaming console.

The tilt is the brainchild of pinball pioneer Harry Williams, who founded the legendary Williams Manufacturing and designed the first electrical pinball machine. Various types of mechanical tilts have been used over the years, but the first was known as the Stool Pigeon. In it, a small ball stood on a pedestal above a metal ring. When a player pushed the machine too hard, the ball fell off the pedestal and hit the metal ring, activating an electrical circuit that would end the round.

Today, tilt mechanisms are standard in all machines, and mastering gently pushing a machine just hard enough to manipulate the ball without activating the tilt sensor has become an integral part of game play.

First With Flippers

Humpty Dumpty /// 1947 /// D. Gottlieb & Co.

Beginning in the early 1940s, a large anti-pinball movement gained steam across the country, resulting in its banning in a number of locations, including New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago (where most of the machines were manufactured). Much of the opposition to pinball stemmed from the belief that it was a game of chance, and thus a form of gambling. The introduction of the flipper in the late 1940s was important not just as a key component of what people today think of as pinball, but also because it brought a new level of control and skill to pinball. (Although it would be another three decades before most of the pinball bans were lifted).

Humpty Dumpty had six flippers–all facing outward, away from the center of the playing field. It wasn’t until a 1950 game called Spot Bowler that the key hardware for game play took on its now common incarnation at the bottom of the playing field, facing inward.

First Licensed Movie Theme

Wizard /// 1975 /// Bally

Today, Illinois-based Stern Pinball is the only company in the world still making pinball machines, and every single one of its new games is based on a licensed theme (recent games include The Family Guy and NASCAR). But it wasn’t until a movie about pinball was released that a game took its theme from a film.

Wizard was based on the 1975 movie version of The Who’s Tommy rock opera (which was, of course, about that “deaf, dumb and blind kid” who sure played a mean pinball). The game, which featured depictions of Roger Daltry and Ann-Margret on its back glass, proved a hit, and another Tommy-based game came out the following year (Captain Fantastic, which featured Elton John in full pinball-wizard garb). Today’s pinball designers use themes to give their games a narrative and structure, and to bring in a built-in customer base.

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Chicago: Pinball’s capital and last best hope

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 08:38:29 +0000

Roger Sharpe’s two sons, Joshua and Zachary, are ranked among the world’s top five pinball players, and, like their father, they collect vintage games, which they display in Joshua’s basement arcade.

It’s a surprising link with the city’s past—the pinball machine, the bumpers-and-flippers bar game that entertained generations of proto-slackers and inspired a rock opera, owes much of its history to Chicago. For most of the 20th century, North Side factories turned out the majority of the world’s machines, and today the last pinball manufacturer anywhere operates out of a building in Melrose Park. “Certainly we have to make a living,” says Gary Stern, the owner of Stern Pinball, “but we also have a purpose: to keep the art of pinball alive. If pinball disappears, the world will continue to exist, but a little bit of the American fabric of life would be gone.”

During the game’s heyday in the sixties and seventies, a handful of Chicago companies churned out dozens of new models a year. Most found their way into smoky bars and strip-mall arcades, where pinball fanatics obsessed over the competition and, in many instances, delighted in the machines themselves. Throughout that era, each game was designed with an original theme, such as Queen of Hearts and Grand Slam. Even today, when new games include digital bells and whistles and the themes are licensed from movies and video games, pinball machines are assembled by hand, with their own illuminated backglass and silk-screened “play fields.”

Gottlieb & Co., based on Addison Street near Ashland Avenue, was once considered the “Cadillac of pinball.” The company is no longer in business, but from the late forties through the age of bell-bottoms and disco, Gottlieb and a Chicago outfit called Williams Electronics Games had the lion’s share of the pinball market. Before World War II halted production, pinball machines were, to a large degree, games of chance: A player pulled back the plunger and then watched as the ball wove and bounced its way through a series of obstacles. In 1947, the late Harry Mabs, Gottlieb’s chief engineer, added the first flippers to the game board, allowing the player to participate and keeping the ball active longer.

The first flipper games had six flippers. The world has Steve Kordek to thank for the two-flipper phenomenon. Kordek, who is 98, was a veteran pinball designer as the 1948 gaming show approached. Working at a company called Genco and assigned the task of designing a new game on a tight budget, Kordek created a machine with only two flippers. “I put ’em on the bottom,” he says, “and that’s where they’ve been ever since.”

If you look hard enough, you can still spot a classic machine in a handful of Chicago’s neighborhood bars, such as the Empty Bottle in Ukrainian Village or the Beachwood Inn in Wicker Park. But the majority of the most collectible games wound up in the rec rooms of collectors all over the world. Roger Sharpe, 56, the managing editor of GQ magazine in the mid-seventies and now the world’s foremost pinball historian, has five antique games in his Arlington Heights home. His sons, Joshua and Zachary, have a dozen in Joshua’s Palatine basement, which resembles a speakeasy arcade.

Sharpe, a Chicago native, wrote the definitive book on the game, Pinball!, in 1977, and his sons are ranked among the top five players in the world. “The fact that pinball’s history is centralized in my hometown gives me an enormous amount of personal and civic pride,” says Sharpe. “We were able to entertain not only generations of people domestically but internationally, and it all coalesced in Chicago.”

Visit our website at pinballadventures.com.

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Law Banning Pinball Shuts Down Retro Arcade

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 08:35:43 +0000

An ancient pinball ban was actually enforced in the town of Beacon, New York, shutting down a local business.

Fred Bobrow’s Retro Arcade Museum in Beacon, New York seems like an awesome place. He’s got hundreds of pinball and arcade games that date back to as early as the 1950s, from Pong to Frogger, on display and on free play (assuming you’ve rented the place). It’s so cool in fact, that’s it’s been completely shut down due to a law in Beacon that bans pinball arcades. What year is it again?

Bobrow told CNN: “It turns out that they were able to prevent me from operating by enforcing an arcane law that bans pinball arcades in the town of Beacon. The fine is $1,000 a day, or jail.”

The Retro Arcade Museum was shut down by a bunch of squares after being open for only 18 months. The pings, pongs, and squeals of delight must have really annoyed someone on the Beacon City Council. The law, like other well documented bans on pinball over the years, came about because lawmakers at one point thought pinball was run by the mafia, encouraged gambling, corrupted innocent youth, and attracted a bad element (i.e. people that enjoy fun).

Despite some local officials saying that Bobrow’s museum is a “good fit” with Beacon, and that it could even be a tourist attraction, the Beacon City Council is dragging their heels to change the pinball law. It’s been under discussion for over two months. Beacon’s mayor explains: “The legislative process really does take its time … It’s a process that really can’t be done very quickly because we want to do it right rather than right away.” Somebody must have forgotten to tell him that they’re discussing a law banning pinball, for goodness sake.

If officials take too much longer, Bobrow could be in trouble. “The town is on their own timeline that doesn’t coincide with business,” he says. “In business, you have the be open everyday.”

Let’s hope the city council is able to see that the banning of metal balls hit with flippers for fun is completely moronic. Bobrow’s outfit isn’t even the type that attracts a seedy crowd, it’s well maintained and more of a museum on free play. Sorry everyone, this situation combined with the outrage over Marvel Happy Meals has made me decide to find a new planet to live on. I’ll miss you all.

Visit our website at pinballadventures.com.

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Turn an Old Pinball Machine Into a Badass Coffee Table

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 08:31:37 +0000

Turn an Old Pinball Machine Into a Badass Coffee Table

Love pinball? Looking for a new coffee table? Well, why not combine your love of pinball with your need for new living room furniture? If you’ve got a non-functioning pinball machine available to you, Instructables will show you how to turn it into the sweetest coffee table you’ve ever seen.

It’s not the most simple process in the world, and in the end you won’t be able to actually play pinball on the table. And sure, it might not fit in all that well with your modern decor. But really, it looks so sweet all lit up, it seems well worth the effort.

Visit our website at pinballadventures.com.

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Ben Heck chose to make his Bill Paxton pinball machine

Andrew MacBain — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 08:25:29 +0000

Ben Heck chose to make his Bill Paxton pinball machine the old fashioned way, using actual flippers and tunnels and whatnot. But there’s also another, less complicated way to make a pinball machine – by running an emulator on a computer. But “less complicated” doesn’t mean easy, especially if you choose to give your emulator an authentic-looking cabinet, like what Ryan O’Horo did with his 1/3-scale pinball machine, the Hot Touch Arcade.

At the heart of O’Horo’s machine is an Intel Atom motherboard and an NVIDIA graphics card, with Windows XP as its OS. The pinball’s playing field is digitally rendered on a 19″ 16:9 LCD display that’s been installed sideways. O’Horo also installed lots of analog touches, including a shooter, flipper buttons (with solenoid feedback), and even a coin acceptor. The graphics and the LED marquee also add to the authentic look. But I think the most important part of the Hot Touch Arcade is the emulator itself – the fantastic looking free software, Future Pinball.

Now that I think about it, this is actually the Ben Heckish way of making a pinball machine. Check out Ryan O’Horo’s Crave DIY page for more pics and info.

Visit our website at pinballadventures.com.

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