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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Pinball!

19:26 / 03.11.05

We've discussed video games, roleplaying games, real-world professional sports, but how about some love for the twentieth century's greatest gaming invention, Pinball? Long before today's immersive video games, pinball tables offered miniature worlds built on real, mechanical physics where you controlled the narrative. Like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels on acid, a pinball table is a story with a constantly shifting, non-linear narrative shaped completely by your control of a magic silver ball rolling around on a table slanted at three to seven degrees.

The game's accessibility has declined drastically over the past decade, as all but one manufacturer left the business and arcades closed under the stress of competing with home video gaming. Does anyone else here still play? What are or were your favourite games?

The first table I ever played was a Gottlieb table from the mid-1970s called "Top Score." It was bowling-themed and as far as I know it's still sitting in my uncle and aunt's basement, albeit not in working order. I've a mind to convince them to let me take it and repair it, as it's a pretty fun game that holds up to repeat playing.

I've recently gotten hooked on the stuff again, playing whatever I can find. There's not many public tables left from manufacturers other than Stern, but some of their current models are pretty fun, especially their Elvis game which I double-replayed on one of the first times I played it. But the game that got me hooked on this stuff is one of Gottlieb's last tables, Stargate, which takes up most of the key elements of the movie and sticks them into a fast, dense playfield with a pretty hot-looking pyramid at the back and a mechanical glidercraft that pops out of it and swings back and forth while you try to shoot at it. Sadly, the one I've been playing needs some serious service and isn't a joy to play at the moment.

Well, is this up anybody else's alley?

19:39 / 03.11.05

Oh, I love pinball. I used to spend hours in the Union mastering the new ones. My favourite table ever has to be the Star Wars one that was around in the early 1990s. I loved the little animations of the Death Star firing before multiball. I would have thought that the profit on a good table must have been pretty good for pubs, so I've often wondered why they disappeared. The increase in casual vandalism and the amount people drink, perhaps?

20:55 / 03.11.05

In public settings like pubs and arcades, the machines take a lot of abuse and are far more complicated to repair than your average video game terminal. Generally they were owned and maintained by independent operators that paid to place their games in the location. Many of these operators disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s. The machines that owned by the individual establishments have tended to not receive regular maintenance on account of none of the day-to-day staff taking responsibility for looking after them or of local technicians no longer being available. I agree with you that the things should be immensely profitable when maintained effectively, unfortunately that seems to be a lot less likely these days.

00:16 / 06.11.05

used to luuurve pinnies; never really got into video games, so didn't do space invaders and don't at all understand doom and all the others... ('casionally a bit of 'puter golf, or chicken cannon)

used to love 'twilight zone', with the white powerball. haven't seen a lot of new machines about (i still see the same ones i stopped playing ten years ago) but sigh with regret for a bygonbe era when i pass the neon noise of modern 'pinnie parlours' to find nary a table top machine in sight. what is it with these dance machines and shit?

17:29 / 07.11.05

"Time is a one-way street.. except in the Twilight Zone."

The Twilight Zone is such a great pin, I wish someone would just start remanufacturing old Williams/Bally tables. The license on all those tables is now owned by the Pinball Factory of Australia, whose first offering next year is going to be a five-years-too-late Crocodile Hunter table.

Now if I could just manage to hit the player piano when the super jackpot is available and there's three balls rolling around that ultra-cluttered playfield...

lonely as a cloud...

07:48 / 09.11.05

Ah, yes...they had the Twilight Zone in the bar in my old college. As well as a Star Trek: The Next Generation themed table, which was pretty cool. But what I really loved was Pinball Dreams, a pinball game on the Commodore Amiga. Four tables - wild west, rock star, horror and space themes - beautiful graphics and physics, very smooth scrolling (the tables were about three screens high)...excellent stuff.

09:43 / 09.11.05

Pinball Dreams & its sequel (Pinball Fantasies) was an absolutely excellent game. Brilliantly designed tables, perfect physics, just top-notch stuff all the way.
I have to say I've not had much experience with real-life pinball, apart from a few drunken evenings in the student union.

15:00 / 09.11.05

one really lovely table i remember fondly was the KISS pinball machine that a record shop in newcastle used to have until the mid-90s, a real 70s monster, outdated even then, you used to have to get special coins from the counter for it then you were away with Gene Simmons and the boys, fairly clunky gameplay but just so goddam rock n roll.
the recent ones seemed to ahve tried to compete with video games with extra digital mini-games as bonuses but there is just something very satisfying about the sheer mechanics of it all

02:25 / 10.11.05

but there is just something very satisfying about the sheer mechanics of it all

spot on! it is the tactile nature that makes you feel you are in control that makes pinnies special. i always hated the electronic games where the missile thing seemed to go right through the thing you shot at and nothing happened! shite things they are... bring back hands-on fun, i say!

i remember the kiss machine, but also the addams family machine was pretty neat, with its magnetic whizzbangmiddle special, and thing's hand coming out and picking out the ball before multi-ball rocked and rolled... ahh, the old days.

semioticrobotic

01:21 / 25.11.05

the addams family machine was pretty neat

Yes, but loud as all fuck. You can here voices from the machine in all nooks of the arcade.

I love me some pinball. My girlfriend and I have pinball dates, which include nothing but pinball and water to stay hydrated. Any money we'd spend on dinner, movies, etc., gets turned into quarters and fed to machines.

Only problem: the number of places we can go to play is dwindling. With Stern putting out only a handful of new machines a year, variety is also (relatively) a thing of the past.

But oh, the visceral nature of it all. I have been playing tons of pinball to work out some graduate school stress. The arcade here has Austin Powers (a new Stern one), so I've been racking up the replays on that sucker pretty consistently over the last few months.

06:38 / 04.12.05

Thomas Pynchon seems to be a fan of pinball. This is from Vineland:

Downtown, in the Greyhound station, Zoyd put Prairie on top of a pinball machine with a psychedelic motif, called Hip Trip, and was able to keep winning free games till the Vineland bus got in from L.A. This baby was a great fan of the game, liked to lie face down on the glass, kick her feet, and squeal at the full sensuous effect, especially when bumbers got into prolonged cycling or when her father got manic with the flippers, plus the gongs and lights and colors always going off. "Enjoy it while you can," he muttered at his innocent child, "while you're light enough for that glass to hold you."

I remember reading a passage in V about a girl playing pinball, decribing what a physical game it is, almost sexual, the way you manipulate the machine with your hip area, but I can't find that right now.

A google for pynchon + pinball reveals that there are passages about pinball in Gravity's Rainbow as well, but I haven't read that one.

Anyway, I used to love pinball games, I believe it all began when we were on holiday in Mallorca in 1978.
Those were stricty mechanical monsters, of course, but I've liked some of the newer, fancier ones as well.

Star Wars and Addams Family were good ones, I think there was a Terminator one at about the same time.

I've only had one occasion to try the massive Harley Davidson machine, but sadly it wasn't fully functional then as I recall.

The oldest one I recall playing at the moment was a Rolling Stone one.

I never was very systematic, my strategy was just to keep the ball in play and hope for things to happen, barely keeping an eye on whatever arrows or lights were flashing at the time.

Funny how some of the balls seemed cursed, while others gave you hordes of points, and it seemed like you could play them forever.

06:44 / 04.12.05

Ooh, sorry for the double post, but I found this from Gravity's Rainbow:

The pebbled beach is crowded with families: shoeless fathers in lounge suits and high white collars, mothers in blouses and skirts startled out of war-long camphor sleep, kids running all over in sunsuits, nappies, rompers, short pants, knee socks, Eton hats. There are ice cream, sweets, Cokes, cockles, oysters and shrimps with salt and sauce. The pinball machines writhe under the handling of fanatical servicemen and their girls, throwing body-english, cursing, groaning as the bright balls drum down the wood obstacle courses through ka-chungs, flashing lights, thudding flippers....

19:22 / 04.12.05

wow, pinnies and pynchon - two of my favourite 'p' things! thanks, j.a.w.

semioticrobotic

22:45 / 28.04.06

Okay. I need help from the Barbelith pinball gurus.

I need to know the art of shaking the table.

I think my pinball skills have progressed sufficiently (and I've mastered the nuances of one particular table) that I can throw in a few jolts and jostles. In fact, I think the jolts and jostles are the only things that will help increase my score at this point.

I just don't feel the shake. I'm too wary of tilting the table and losing a ball. I don't know whether to shift left or bump right when I want the silver sphere to properly perform my bidding.

How does the tilt mechanism in pinball machines really work? And how can I make a few nudges work to my advantage?

05:42 / 29.04.06

i never quite understood the whole shake the table thing, until i was introduced to a subtle balls-of-the-palm nudge technique; basically it is just a quick push forward of the forearms already in position with the hands wrapped around the front corner of the table with fingers on flippers - a nudge as the ball is dropping onto a slot to move the table under the ball slightly can effect some good to ensure you lose it down the side alley, or middle, as little as possible.

as for how the mechanism works, it is sensitive by degrees and you have to spend some time [and coins] top work out how sensitive a given machine is. the really old ones are almost so non-sensitive that you can pick the thing up and guide the ball at will!! sadly, these are far and few bewteen [or few and far?] and most modern tables are pretty sensitive to tilt. sucks that. tilt - even sounds bad. don't tilt. 'specially machines that delete your free game if you tilt after you've popped

..popped, boy i miss that sound! thwock-pp! going on a mission soon to find me some more pinnies.

have fun bryan - do report results and any new techniques you invent.