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Games Entertainment

The Continuing Death of Pinball 350

Posted by timothy from the maybe-we-can-still-tilt-the-machine dept.
angkor writes: "To me, the first video games were something like electonic versions of pinball machines, so it's sad to hear that pinball is apparently dying off." I'd really like to see a pinball game based on Zoolander, but I doubt even that would be enough to reverse the current trend.
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The Continuing Death of Pinball More

The Continuing Death of Pinball

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  • wizaaard... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by ender_wiggins ( 81600 )
    I grew up on pinball. I play them when ever i see them, when they are in working order...

    • Re:wizaaard... (Score:2, Funny)

      by WizardX ( 63639 )
      Pinball, what can I say, I would play pinball when I was out with my parents, I still play it now. My new job has me going about 400 miles away every month, for a week at a time, which means the dreaded hotel. Normally I stay at Holiday in, but my first week up there (first day on the job no less) the company made the reservations at the Best Wester. Well, they have the Twilight Zone (a machine I will own one day) and that is where I will be staying on all subsequent trips. I love that game. :)

      Hotel: Thank you for calling how may I help you
      Me: Yes, what pinball games do you have?

  • technological advances (Score:5, Funny)

    by skydude_20 ( 307538 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:13PM (#4009987) Journal
    for me, the graphics just don't cut it anymore
  • One wonders what the attraction of such a game is. Maybe for those with a dislike of Ben Stiller may enjoy bouncing him around. I think that pinball is best enjoyed with a big table that you can hit rather than just a window you control by damaging the shift keys on your keyboard. Maybe it is best that it stays in the arcade. The digital version has been living on borrowed time for too long anyway. Its time has come? Hurrah!
    • I find the biggest problem I have with Ben Stiller is I can't tell the difference between him and Adam Sandler. (I wonder if they're the same person?) Both of these alleged actors annoy the tar out of me.

      They're both obnoxious, loud, low-brow, pillocks, whose only discernible talent is the dubious ability to determine what will appeal most to the average eight year old boy.

      But by far the most annoying thing about them is they both make far more money than me! Sods -- where is the justice?

  • It really is a sad state of affairs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whirred ( 182193 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:14PM (#4009993)
    More to the point, however, I think the problem is the loss of ARCADES. Dave and Busters just doesn't do it as far as economy goes (very expensive) and I don't know how many of those charming, cigarette burn covered arcades are still around.

    Only one in San Francisco/Oakland that I know of... God I miss the silver bowl. Where the hell are they going to put pinball machines?

    And bring back arcade games at 7-11 - that's where I learned how to play!

    • Re:It really is a sad state of affairs (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Issue9mm ( 97360 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:20PM (#4010022)
      It's been a few years since I've been, but Hawai'i (Oahu, Kaneohe area) had TONS of video arcades when I was there. In fact, on the relatively small air force base that we were stationed on, there were at least five decently sized arcades. Granted, they were attached to other things, but at least two of the ATTACHED arcades in Hawai'i were larger than anything I've seen here in Memphis, Tennessee.

      I imagine there's quite a great deal more overseas (China, Japan), but that's strictly a guess, as I've never ventured quite that far.

      The local university has about the biggest selection of games around, and while I don't attend, I was up there with a friend of mine for the day once, and didn't lose once to any of the "hardcore" gamers stationed around it. I was quite pleased with myself, but after I realized that I'd just spent 8 hours in front of a stand up arcade on one quarter, and wasted the entire day away, I made a conscious decision not to go back. I've got real life responsibilities nowadays, and don't have the kinda time that sort of addiction requires.

      -9mm-
    • Only one in San Francisco/Oakland that I know of...

      Which one? I tend to go to the one behind the Emery Bay Public Markey, in Emeryville. Also there's a bar on Shattuck in Berkeley that has Attack From Mars and a few other pinball tables.

    • More to the point, however, I think the problem is the loss of ARCADES. Dave and Busters just doesn't do it as far as economy goes (very expensive) and I don't know how many of those charming, cigarette burn covered arcades are still around.

      I grew up in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire from '72 to '84 and that place was - and still is - Arcade Heaven; at least a half-dozen of the places ranging in size from small to cavernous as you walk along the boardwalk. Lots of pinball machines, too. If pinballs are gasping for air these days, no one's bothered telling the arcades in Hampton Beach, or the people I always see playing the things when I drive up there during the summer.

  • sure pinball may be in a bit of a down turn at the moment, but every arcade centre has to have at least one pinball machine, any that didnt would be severely unrounded, they will be elimating those clowns that you shoot rubber balls at their teeth before they take pinball away,.. ooh the local arcade doesnt have one of those tooth shooting clowns anymore........
    • I have noticed that a lot of the arcades seem to be adjusting the tilt of the pinball machine (using the legs) so that the tilt is a bit extreme and it is harder to play. I guess they want fewer free games.

  • WHAT?! Pinball dead?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:14PM (#4009997) Homepage
    Oh man!!! First FreeBSD, Linux on the Desktop and now this?! I don't know how much more of this I can take!!

    Please someone, tell me this isn't so!!

  • It has been for a while, man... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With Bally getting out of the business a couple of years ago, it looked like the it was gone. Stern picked up some of the more "famous" names in pinball creation since then, but I haven't played any of their tables.

    I have to say, on the cool toy scale, pinball ranks way up there, and it's pretty cheap to get your own machine (well, at least it was a few years ago).

    Arcade auctions happen all over the country, and you can still pick up machines at good prices if you know what you're doing.

    Got my machine in storage right now. Can't wait to set it up again.

  • figures (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:14PM (#4009999)
    The number of pinball machines nationwide dropped from 1 million in 1989 to 360,000 in 1999 and revenue slid from $2.4 billion to $1.08 billion in the same period, according to the trade publication Vending Times.
    • That's it? That's not bad, only a 50% drop. I figured the pinball revenue would have been almost totally wiped out in that time period.
  • No one wants to buy them, and Bally/Midway Doesn't want to make them.

    However If all Pin's were as good as Medieval Madness, I would'nt stop playing pinball... EVER!

    Van's Arcade in Puyallup has a few good pins, to get directions and for a virtual tour go to.
    www.aeigames.com

  • Good games endure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:16PM (#4010005)
    Chess is many hundreds (thousands?) years old, and people still play it today in large numbers. If enough people find a game fun/exciting/interesting, it will continue. If pinball can keep up, and can keep people interested, great, pinball forever. If not, so long!
    • You are a cruel person.

      And stop comparing apples and oranges: Chess boards and pieces are cheap and easy to make, pinball machines are big expensive things. Chess is a game of thought, pinball is a game of dexterity. Pinball is a BALL game, like baseball or football, except that there's no running, and you play alone. Chess is not a ball game.

      Pinball is not a living entity either, so lay off the darwinianism a bit.

    • Interesting point. Other than solitaire, which is primarily a way to kill time, are there any one-person "games" that have endured in the same manner as chess?

      Perhaps one of the problems pinball faces is the lack of a true competitive element--sure, people take turns and compare scores, but it's typically more engaging to pit yourself against another player (even if that player is virtual). New games recognize that, and the trend is to pit players against players.

      I've never seen a competitive two-player pinball game (but then I've never really looked).

  • It's a pitty.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 )
    The current computer games in bars are quite stupid. I guess it's more economic to place a small console with some (stupid) games on, than those huge pinball machines.
    Luckily we still have table football (at least in Belgium). Do you have it in the states too? (I will try to explain the game if you're interested).
    • We have it... although I think we call it fooseball.
    • >Luckily we still have table football (at least
      >in Belgium). Do you have it in the states too?

      We call it "foosball".

      And my favorite pool hall yanked out their only pinball machine to put in a foosball table. Reeeally annoying.

      -l
    • now bobby bouchet... it don't want you playin' any of that there foozball, do you hear me? yes momma /.
    • Do any of you know how it is really spelled? So far there are 4 replies, and they are:
      "We have it... although I think we call it fooseball."
      "We call it "foosball"."
      "...playin' any of that there foozball..."
      "Well, we're familiar with it as "fussball""
    • Luckily we still have table football (at least in Belgium). Do you have it in the states too?

      Over here, we call it foozball.

      And I suck at it.

  • I don't think so... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Critical_ ( 25211 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:17PM (#4010011) Homepage
    Pinball is not dying off. What I see is that kids think that pinball is too easy and not challenging enough. That really isn't the case, I see that people want to do the cool thing and play those hefty 3d packed video games. I've also realized that a lot of arcades don't keep pinball machines since there is no competition with other players and games can last a long time. If pinball is dying, it is at the hands of the arcade owners, not the customers.

    • Re:I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)

      by realgone ( 147744 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:32PM (#4010061)
      If pinball is dying, it is at the hands of the arcade owners, not the customers.

      Agreed... but for a slightly different reason. The excuse I've always heard from arcade/bar/etc owners is that the cost of keeping a pinball machine in good working order is just way too high: frequent maintenance, hard-to-find parts -- you name it. It's become purely a labor of love thing these days.

      And I say this quite sadly, mind you -- pinball kept me sane all through college. Nothing like a quick hour or two of Addams Family or Pinbot after a long night of studying.

      P.S. - If anyone knows a place in NYC that still has well-maintained pinball machines, I'll gladly name my first-born after you. (Keep in mind that the more time I spend playing pinball on your advice, the less chance there is of there actually *being* a first-born -- so weigh your options carefully...)

  • It's not just pinball (Score:4, Interesting)

    by qurob ( 543434 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:17PM (#4010012) Homepage
    Arcades in general are basically dead.

    Games like DDR breathe some life into them, but it's nothing like the Midway/Atari/Namco/Sega days of long ago.

    Games are too expensive, they all seem to be 'imitations', and there's no arcade culture anymore.

    Why there aren't/never were coin-op iD games.....arcade play against others all over the world.....

    • Re:It's not just pinball (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Saige ( 53303 ) <evil.angelaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday August 05, 2002 @10:40AM (#4012221) Journal
      The point is that with the incredible advances in technology, arcade games no longer have that large graphical "edge" over home consoles and computers that they once did. Think of the differences between Gauntlet at the arcade, and on the Nintendo, back in like 1986. Compare that to now - name one arcade game that is graphically significantly beyond anything at home - there isn't anything.

      The arcade games need something else then to attract people in. The various shooting games can do that, especially those with unusual equipment, like Silent Scope. Huge moving racing consoles like Daytona 2 and Indianapolis 500 offer unique features - building a moving platform at home would be way too expensive. Fighting games still have some of the social aspect, though not nearly as much as they used. For me, there's really only even one game that gets me to trek down to my local Gameworks on a regular basis - DDR. Beause it creates an experience not easily duplicated at home, especially when there's a crowd on the machine.

      Arcades won't die for a long time, since there are plenty of people that grew up with them enough to keep going. But if they don't find more games with unique features to bring people in, they will get more and more sparse.

  • lament (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's sad really. I own a pool hall in a small town and pinball still registers decent coin drop (I have two machines). The problem is that the industry went a little crazy trying to catch up to video in the early 80s and the designs got too complicated and therefore, more expensive to purchase and maintain. Operators started abandoning them in droves near the end of the last century. When companies such as WMS (Bally/Williams/Atari Games) [wms.com], who owned two of the major pinball manufacturers, bailed out in early 2000, the death knell was sounded for the industry. Stern Pinball [sternpinball.com] is still alive, having bought out Sega's pinball division (originally Data East Pinball), but most of their sales are to overseas distributors. The pins they sell in the US are basically writeoffs. It's a shame really. I think if the industry stuck to innovative, less complicated designs, it might still be thriving, rather than barely surviving.

  • Lament (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AtariKee ( 455870 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:24PM (#4010037)
    It's sad really. I own a pool hall in a small town and pinball still registers decent coin drop (I have two machines). The problem is that the industry went a little crazy trying to catch up to video in the early 80s and the designs got too complicated and therefore, more expensive to purchase and maintain. Operators started abandoning them in droves near the end of the last century. When companies such as WMS (Bally/Williams/Atari Games) [wms.com], who owned two of the major pinball manufacturers, bailed out in early 2000, the death knell was sounded for the industry. Stern Pinball [sternpinball.com] is still alive, having bought out Sega's pinball division (originally Data East Pinball), but most of their sales are to overseas distributors. The pins they sell in the US are basically writeoffs. It's a shame really. I think if the industry stuck to innovative, less complicated designs, it might still be thriving, rather than barely surviving.

    • Re:Lament (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @01:36AM (#4010635)
      This was exactly my intuition when I saw the article, glad to see my guess confirmed. There IS a market for pinball, it's a fundamentally solid game. But, pinball machines should be cheap, and built as much as possible with standardized parts for ease of repair, not have everything customized.

      It's not like pool table manufacturers are trying to find ways to shove expensive computerized components into a pool table, and pinball has reached a level of maturity where they ought to start acting similarly.

    • Operators started abandoning them in droves near the end of the last century.
      You mean back in the 1890s? Oops, sorry, slow today!

      Please be kind to us slow-witted types. The 21st century is only a couple years old. Refering to events of 10 years ago as "in the last century" is pretentious and confusing.

  • Old News, and unavoidable economics. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Optimizer ( 14168 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:26PM (#4010044)
    First off, it seems like the last US manufacture stopped production about 3 years ago and there was a story here on /. about it. (I'll let someone else dig up the link).

    Secondly, pinball machines couldn't keep evoloution-wise. They are too maintainence intensive compared to video arcade games (which break often enough as it is).

    To the point: here at the office where I work, there are about 16 arcade machines: 15-video and one pinball. The video games include Lunar Lander, Space Duel, Assault, Mortal Combat 3, pac man, sinistar, soul edge, virtua fighter 2, xybots, crystal castles, a D&D game, Blitz 99, sinistar, and star wars.

    The lone pinball machine is Star Trek: The Next Generation.

    When it is working, The Star Trek Pinball machine is the most popular arcade machine we have (followed by Mortal Combat 3).

    And that is the problem: It's been in a state of disrepair for more than 6 months.

    Over the last couple years we have had it repaired 3 times. I remember watching the first repair sessions and was astounded by the large numbe of individual mechanical repairs that had to be made: Bumpers, solnoids, lights, track alignments, and whatnot. Not to mention the table surface then had to be waxed - which changed the play characteristics (until it was played a lot and worn in again).

    And then there was a problem with the plastic ball storage holder underneath the deck. The balls had worn a small groove in it, which caused problems for the ball sensor to report no balls available when there really were. Since that custom molded piece wasn't available from the manufacturer anymore, the repair guy took it and filled in the groove with some substance several time - sanding between coats, to bring it back to new condition.

    So my conclusion is that modern pinball machines have too many custom parts, and are too physically demanding on them to have the uptime to compete with video games. And not to mention the knowledgable repairmen are hard to find.

    And that was in a private setting. In an arcade setting, the operator can not afford for the machine to be down half the time, producing no revenue, and requiring him to spend $$$ on repair guys. The economics just don't work today.

    -Mp
    • William and Mary had this problem. The refurbished the student union, and one of the new additions was two FREE pinball machines. To many people, myself included, this was manna from heaven. But because people used the machines so much, they started failing at a ridiculous rate. Eventually, they started charging a quarter to play the games. I don't think this was to recoupe the repair costs, but to reduce the usage of the games to a point where they weren't breaking weekly.

    • As An Owner... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrMetlHed ( 518539 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @11:19PM (#4010325) Homepage
      My father owns a number of video games and pinball machines located throughout the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. It's a small business, but after revenue sharing with the locations he puts the games in, we make about $200 a week on about 20 games. Not a bad deal when it costs very little to operate them except in time.

      The problem with many new pinball machines is flawed design. We've got a Goldeneye pinball in our basement and there are a number of spots where balls constantly get stuck or where pieces break. We've been wires countless times just to keep the top ramp operating properly.

      But for the most part, our pinball machines don't require too much attention. Not nearly as much as the Toy Crane we have (which once had wire problems almost weekly). Much of the pinball work is having a ball stuck or a wire break (coin mechanism problems are the norm in all of our machines, mostly because kids decide to jam dimes and pennies in the things to see if it works), we occasionally have a flipper coil go bad or a bumper break. Those problems aren't many. Granted, this could be because people aren't playing them frequently (everyone seems to gravitate towards the 3 Ms. Pacman machines we've got set up on Turbo speed), but maybe it's because many of our pinballs are older and more simple. We've got a Spiderman machine that sits in our basement and works fine except that the soundcard died a few years ago.

      It's a shame that most arcades are dying and that it's nearly impossible to keep updated machines in an area where people will play them enough for you to pay for the machines. With pinballs costing over $3000 a piece nowadays, it's more wise to buy a number of older machines and put them in laundramats, pizza places, and convinience stores. The older games (Ms. Pacman, Police Trainer, Galaga) amazingly outperform our newer ones (Mortal Kombat 2, Tekken 3, South Park Pinball) regularly... Perhaps because many people see them as a novelty. But no machines make as much as the Toy Cranes and a prize vendor we have called "Sports Arena" that my dad sticks Zippo lighters and Laser Pens in. Those make fortunes.

      Just my two cents.

      Charlie

      ps. Best Pinball of all time? I loved the Guns N' Roses Machine... perfect flipper balance (you weren't always using one of them like in Goldeneye and others).

      • ps. Best Pinball of all time? I loved the Guns N' Roses Machine... perfect flipper balance (you weren't always using one of them like in Goldeneye and others).

        Oh, definitely! The Guns N' Roses board was one of the two best I've ever played. The difficulties of the various challenges on Axel's(sp?) self-designed machine were tuned to perfection. That was a really, really smooth game. --My other favorite was the Indiana Jones board. That was not only a fantastic game, but it was filled with a ton of Indy memorabilia and sound-bite treasures. While I respect Axel Rose's love of pinball, I never much cared for his brand of music. But Indy. . . Now there's a pop-culture icon which still makes me want to have adventures and fight nazis and feel ten years old.

        Cool post. Thanks for bringing up those old memories!

        -Fantastic Lad

      • I'm also in GR. I've tried, half-heartedly, a couple of times to get a Ms. Pacman for my father. Do you know where I might pick one up and for how much?

        b r y a n g @ n e w v i e w m e d i a . c o m
    • First off, it seems like the last US manufacture stopped production about 3 years ago and there was a story here on /. about it. (I'll let someone else dig up the link).

      That's WMS, who made games under both the Williams and Bally labels, you're thinking of. But they weren't the last manufacturer in the U.S., Stern is still putting 10,000 new machines out each year, 2/3 of which are sold overseas.

      I learned all of that by actually reading the linked article.

      I played the Star Trek: TNG machine once. I got cheated by it, it sent multiple balls into play (no manual plunger, it's automatic), then told me my game was over while there were still about 3 balls going. So I can certainly believe that that machine needs a lot of maintenance.

  • Pinball Is Dying (Score:4, Funny)

    by MrHat ( 102062 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:27PM (#4010047)
    Netcraft has now confirmed: Pinball is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Pinball community when recently IDC confirmed that Pinball accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all arcade machines. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Pinball has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Pinball is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last the recent Sys Admin comprehensive gaming test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Pinball's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Pinball faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Pinball because Pinball is dying. Things are looking very bad for Pinball. As many of us are already aware, Pinball continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Non-computer Pinball is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core players.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    Computerized Pinball leaders state that there are 7000 users of Pinball. How many users of non-electronic Pinball are there? Let's see. The number of computerized Pinball users versus Pinball posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 computerized Pinball users. Pinball posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of non-computerized Pinball posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of non-computerized Pinball. A recent article put computerized Pinball at about 80 percent of the Pinball market. Therefore there are 7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Pinball users. This is consistent with the number of Pinball Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Midway, abysmal sales and so on, non-computerized Pinball went out of business and was taken over by Sega, who sells another troubled arcade machine. Now Sega is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that Pinball has steadily declined in market share. Pinball is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Pinball is to survive at all it will be among arcade hobbyist dabblers. Pinball continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Pinball is dead.

    (This has been a test of the moderation system. We now return to your regular geek whining, already in progress.)

  • Economics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jethro_troll ( 596531 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:27PM (#4010049) Journal
    Pinball machines are expensive and time consuming to maintain, with all the moving parts to be cleaned and replaced - not so for video games. Arcades have been trying to wean us from pinball, and seem to have pretty much succeeded.

  • Auctions (Score:2, Informative)

    by ekephart ( 256467 )
    A video/arcade game auction is a good place to get pinball machines. A buddy of mine lucked out and got a Simpsons one for a few hundred dollars. It's godly.

  • Been goin' a long time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:32PM (#4010060) Homepage Journal
    Pinball began dying when they started artificially inflating the scoring systems.

    1000 points for a bumper?? What the heck is that about?

    The best pinball machines have only 4-digit scoring systems.

    • I think that coincides with 3 balls per game and super-tilted playfields.

      Does anyone remember when 5-ball games were the norm?

      • Re:Been goin' a long time (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Polo ( 30659 )
        ...actually, I'll take part of that back. The machine makers helped a little by introducing the "shoot again if you lose your ball quick" feature, and that made things a little more fun...

  • Five words: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:34PM (#4010067) Homepage Journal
    The Pinball Of The Dead.

    It's a GBA game. Rocks real hard. Doesn't quite give you the same experience as a pinball machine, but fun nonetheless.
  • I for one would like to see some pachinko parlors or at least pachinko machines show up in the US. I remember a friend of the family had one imported from Japan a while back and I loved using it for hours on end... until he moved away.

  • Holographic Pinball! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nobley ( 598336 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:40PM (#4010085) Journal
    they should make holographic pinball, they have the technology, transparant sheets of organic light emiting diodes,.. would be the first real use for holographic arcade game, would fix the repairage problem of real pinball and let them do cool ultra impossible stuff that'd be too fragile and all that, not to mention you could load in any table you wanted.

    • Re:Holographic Pinball! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Quikah ( 14419 )
      The appeal of pinball for me and many/most others is that it is a physical game. The ball follows the laws of physics not the laws programmed into its computer chips. Video pinball is fun but nothing like the real thing.
    • They actually tried something sort of like this -- the Pinball 2000 system relesed right before Williams canned the Pinball division had a semi-reflective playfield glass, and the top half of the playfield reflected images from a monitor above. It was an interesting idea, since you could draw whatever on there, and they had some ramps and bumpers and whatnot darkend underneath it so it seemed like you hitting the images. Pretty cool, and it was a bid to keep up with the video game industry, but fell short. (On another note, they also started using x86 based hardware in those machines to cut development costs). Star Wars Episode 1 was the very last machine produced by williams, and it used this system: http://www.pinball.com/games/starwars/ [pinball.com]

  • Too late for me...sappy memories... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:42PM (#4010090) Homepage
    Too late in life I rediscovered pinball.

    As a kid, I used to accompany my granddad or my mom to the store to get groceries and occasionally I'd get a dime (that's right, 10) to play a pinball game that sat near the front, near the magazine rack. That machine had a mechanical scoreboard, unlike the LED boards I saw later in life. I recall being absorbed by the lights and the idea of trying to keep the ball in play with those little bumpers (hey, I was easily amused). After a while my mom stopped going to that store and pinball just about left my life for good.

    Flash forward 20+ years and a fellow grad student, Joerg, started going to get pizza at a little college-quality Italian place over by the campus. The great arcade next door had closed, mostly, but some of the games had stayed to soak up quarters from the pizza eating patrons. As it turns out Joerg was a real fan of pinball and he enticed me into playing and I got hooked. It was really cool to finally be a bit coordinated and to have the cash to spend to actually get to know a machine. In this case, it was The Addams Family, with little audio clips from the movie. ("The Mamushka!" was my favorite.) Although I never measured up to Joerg's mastery of the game, I found truly irresistible the tactile feedback and use of real, honest-to-physics english that goes into working the table. Sure, feeling the kickback of the gun in Time Crisis is cool, but not like pinball.

    Now, that Italian place is gone and the games are gone for good. While I still plan to get a Robotron machine first [linuxgames.com], I'm thinking of adding a pinball machine to my computer and work room when we finally get time to get a real home. They really are awesome.

    If you haven't ever played a pinball machine and you get the chance, just remember that those quarters are pretty well-spent, even if just to say that you played pinball for a bit. I bet you'll find you enjoy it, to boot. :^)

  • Rigged (Score:2, Insightful)

    by drsmithy ( 35869 )
    Personally, I think one of the big reasons pinball has become unpopular is because the tables are so obviously rigged. I used to play a lot when I was just a tyke, but modern pinball tables have become the equivalent of slot machines - constructed to extract as much money as possible in the shortest period of time. Basically, they suck.
    I still enjoy playing on older tables when I have the chance, and I nearly always give any new table I stumble upon at least 3 games worth of opportunity, but it's very rare I stumble across a new table I consider to be a fair challenge.
    • The pinball game in the Roger Williams University game room (sorry, I forget the name) gives you FIVE balls per game, lots of bonus balls, and has great flipper balance. This is not a slot machine - I've played games that lasted a half-hour, and I'm only a "good" player.

  • Well.. my opinion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Sunday August 04, 2002 @09:46PM (#4010102)
    I love pinball machines. They're great. However, the arcades I visit either end up ripping you off or the machines are in such a state of disrepair that well, it's not fun to play.

    The main reason is probably because arcade machines, tend to be generic. Short of the special-equipment games like those from Konami (DDR, etc), all an arcade operator needed was to replace the CPU module, or even just the ROM cartridge. Whereas for pinballs, they have to ship the entire thing around (Pinball2000 attempted to resolve this, but ultimately, died because Williams decided to get out of the pinball business). So instead of a relatively simple job on putting in a new game up, you have to ship this $5000 pinball machine around (shipping $200 typically), rather than order a $100-$500 ROM cartridge (shipping trivial), or a hard drive...

    Now, there are recreations of various pins around - thanks to Visual Pinball. Combine it with VPinMAME, and you can play some damn close reproductions to the real machines. (Hint to those interested: avoid the forums, or just read them. There's so much pettiness and egotism and selfishness on them that it's not worth it. Just leech. Your mind will thank you. I was on the forums back when WPCMAME was novel and everyone "played" them, and 2002 was nothing but a disaster for pinball emulation. Plus, you gotta register, and if you want to post, you better not register using a hotmail account - they want *real* email addresses).

    However, check out ShivaSite (www.shivasite.com) for some of the best pin info ont he web!

  • more info (Score:2, Interesting)

    by loomis ( 141922 )
    Stern is an interesting company by the way. Stern stopped producing pinball machines in the early eighties, whereupon the company sat dormant for almost two decades. Only recently did they resume pinball production once again. A pinball phoenix if you will.

    Here is a great links for anyone interested in pinball:

    The Internet Pinball Database [lysator.liu.se].

    Loomis

  • Production will just move to hand assembly. I think that anyone with some skill and love for the machines could make a living building these things. You'd need a machine shop, and some wood tools too, but suppose you built 10 of these every year, and sold them for 5 grand. It would be a pretty nice living.

    Of course, 10 grand isn't the going rate right now, but eventually the prices for a new custom built machine might get that high.
  • One thing I haven't heard much of is that fact that while kids these days can hone their videogame skills at home (often with versions as good as those in the arcades), there's no easy way to do that with pinball games, save actually playing them in the arcade.

    Now, at the arcade, what are you going to put your quarters down on. when you're playing your freinds... one that you know pretty well, and are cokpetitive at, or one you don't really know?

  • pinball is not dead.- i hope (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RembrandtX ( 240864 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @10:28PM (#4010200) Homepage Journal
    Stearn pinball still makes them .. and while some of their more recent ones were not that good ..
    monopoly was very good. Austin powers was ok .. but prone to breakage.

    of course .. most machines are neglected by their operators .. so they have to dum them down to the operators only have to take 5 seconds to clean them.

    Where pinball is dying is a crock really, i know several operators who still operate pinball machines on location .. and they make good money.

    they also dont cost as much as a silent scope .. or whatever game.

    the real issue is operators are lazy .. and would rather spend 10 mins emptying quarters from a bucket under streetfighter alpha-omeaga-zeta-jones than to spend 10 mins cleaning a pinball machine off.

    A well kempt pinball will make a lot of $$ .. where a broken one makes crap .. its kinda like a well kempt retail store makes good money .. and a dirty one makes cockroaches.

    http://www.remsbox.com/index.php?content=0000000 00 8 is my basement pinball santuary.

  • Good call (Score:2, Funny)

    by Clue4All ( 580842 )
    I'd really like to see a pinball game based on Zoolander

    I would pay good money to play such a game, but only if it was really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking.

  • Completely One-Sided (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Sunday August 04, 2002 @10:49PM (#4010256) Homepage

    The story is rife with biassed comments like this...

    The new generation of gamers, by natural selection, has banished pinball as too old, too difficult and too boring.

    A lot of kids feel pinball is nowhere near as stimulating as Doom, Quake or a lot of games they are playing these days

    I think pinball is going out because it is not really understood by most people.

    Arcade operators say youngsters like to master a game and move on. They don't like games like pinball that are impossible to defeat.

    If this article is a true reflection of the industry's opinion then the operators are ignoring a major cause of the decline in pinball machines, and it's not a decline in popularity.

    My local arcade has 4 pinballs and 3 of those have been broken and unplayable for weeks. I went to play the last remaining pinball machine last night and it died too: looks like the ball eject has finally failed. Wherever I go it's the same story. The pinball machines are typically broken and unusable. No wonder the arcade managers aren't showing any interest in buying them.

    But it's not a lack of popularity from the consumers. Where there is working pinball you'll find hordes of people crowded around it with dozens of dollar coins lined up along the table top. And it's not just 20-somethings. Younger kids and teenagers are just as interested. It's difficult to find a working pinball, and it's even harder to fight your way through the crowd to play on one.

    But the article only focusses on the elitist "People don't understand pinball" or the defeatist "Nobody wants to play pinball anymore". I think the article should have at least mentioned "Arcade managers don't like pinball because they're always broken".

  • With only one [sternpinball.com] manufacturer of pinball tables remaining, pinball is really in a sad state. I've always been a fan of pinball, but in the last year, I doubt that I have gone more than a week without playing a game of pinball. Fortunately, a local college arcade (Playland, downtown State College, Pa) has 9 tables, and the local arcade vendor usually keeps a few on campus in commons areas. I'm darn sure I've spent nearly $1000 in the last year playing, and my skill has been rapidly improving (I have many of the top score / Grand Master scores on the tables). I just can't get enough. I'm fortunate to have good arcade ops who keep the tables in good working condition, but many do not have such luck. I am desperately awaiting the release of Roller Coaster Tycoon, Stern's next table. They are still using the WhiteStar pinball MPU, which by now is quite dated.

    I plan to soon start a Pinball enthusiast's club here at Penn State, but rather than being a club solely for playing / competing, I would much rather build a table. To save costs, many off-the-shelf compents will be used, and the game would be controlled by a PC (most likely running linux or the such) with custom interface hardware. The backglass could feature a full-color LCD for score and animations, and all playfield lamps would be LEDs. I think this would be a fun project, and anyone who is interested should email me. Of course, it would help the most if you lived near Penn State. I need not only computer/hardware people other than myself, but also artists, musicians, and people good with woodworking and metal crafts. Any suggestions?
    • Ah, another Penn Stater- I was wondering if anyone would mention Playland. I was there from '93-97, and Playland sucked much money from me, and it didn't help that I lived in Atherton hall for the first 2 years! My favorite was Theatre of Magic- that particular machine was just set up perfectly, since the other arcade down the street (above the used CD shop) also had a Theatre table but the right flipper was so misaligned that I couldn't do any of special moves. Not hard, just impossible!
      Meh.
  • While we're on this topic, does anyone know of any decent pinball game that runs well on Linux?
  • The Death to 2D games. Y'know-- Just because the hardware is bigger and better we gotta make 3D games out of 2D classics! What does this have to do with pinball? Those damn LED video displays that have been popping up with increasing annoyance. "Am I a video game or am I a pinball machine? Video game or pinball!? Keep your eyes on both as you play! Weeee!" Like 3D graphics, the LED displays use in a game can greatly enhance the play, but most of them cross the line and instead of the table itself being the primary attraction, the display takes center stage. It becomes the conveyance of the action with the table taking a backseat, ultimately failing in both realms. You might as well walk over to "Crisis Zone" or "Street Fighter 12" at that point. As a "raised on arcade games" guy, I actually like pinball machines here and there. The table is entertainment in it's own right, but fails miserably once it tries to cross over into "gotta split my freakin' attention in two spots at once so I can watch the stupid video and bounce the ball at the same time" style gameplay. YMMV, but it annoys the piss out of me and I could easily see THAT as being a contributer to the death of pinball.

    My favorite Pinball game: Fun House (with the Chucky style character)
  • don't forget there's CALIFORNIA EXTREME - a classic pinball and arcade show coming up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    It was tres cool last year.

    www.caextreme.org [caextreme.org] coming up on Sept. 7-8!

  • here is a list of my favorite Pinball games of all Time.. Roughly in order..

    1. Black Knight 2000.. Need i say more?
    2. WaterWorld.. One of the best(horrible movie thoe)
    3. Terminator 2.. lots of maggots(magnets) but still a great game
    4. Bride of PinBot.. Sexist & a good play...
    5. can't remember the name but ya got to hit the ball into the vertical area and little rc looking trucks would drive around up there.. stupendous!

    just my list...

  • Software is to blame. . ! (Score:3)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @01:30AM (#4010620)
    This is exactly why I hate computers.

    Video games were cool and hip and new, but I said it then, and I'll say it again; "Space Invaders and Defender may be flashy when new, but they will never be as cool as the raw physics of true random Newtonian chaos in the real world. Pixels are for chumps."

    And aren't we all just so very chumpalicious! Mmm. Chumpy. . !

    I just finished responding to another fellow who brought up one of the two best pinball boards ever; the Guns N' Roses pinball game; Axle(sp?) supposely being a huge pinball fan himself, had a hand in the design of that board, which is probably why it offered one of the most balanced & smooth pachinko-on-acid game challenges ever. But I was never fond of Axle and Co's musical stylings. Not my thing. --But a board about as good, and with a more accessible and beloved pop-culture icon, was the Indiana Jones pinball game. Now that was a good pinball game! One of the few times intellectual property licensing actually made something good even better.

    "Indiana! I am so pleased you are not dead!"

    Computers have sucked the life out of everything, replacing the intoxicating randomness and intrinsic hard-fucking-work of physical reality with perfectly repeatable ones and freaking zeros. Comics have been fucked. Special effects in films are no longer interesting. Music is now an exercise in bloated hard drives of 1000 or more MP3's and a feeling of gassy instant gratification. And video games are the most amazing and obvious form of vampirism currently in existence.

    And just like a powerful vampire, you bare your neck by choice. It's just so easy, and it feels so good. Even though you can also feel your life spilling away and your world turning grey.

    John Carmack's EM tanned pasty face is what happens when you look into a computer screen for too long. That souless realm of data is cold and cold and cold. . .

    -Fantastic Lad

  • I've said for years that the death of pinball was raising the price from a single quarter. It's not that 50 cents is a ton of money, but the whole mental aspect of a 100% raise in price was too much for me.

    By trying to raise profits, they shot themselves in the foot by eliminating a greater percentage of business that would would have been made back on the price. Rather than making 4 million people paying $0.25, they got 1 million paying $0.50. Sound like advise from the recording industry.

    It's either that, or the increase in pinball piracy.

    • umm .. prices are determined by the operators .. not the manufacturers.

      And honestly, pinball is still cheaper than a video game .. at the same time pinball maches went up to 50 cents a play .. streetfighter II was commonly set to 50cents to start, 25 to continue.

      I can play a pinball machine for 20-30 mins easy .. a game of Streetfighter 2 lasts 3:00 mins TOPS .. and thats only if the 2 players don't actually try to hit each other.

      this anology is like saying the death of the automobile is caused by increased gas prices. Or the death of broadcast tv is caused by an increase in PBS telethons.

      Inflation sucks, but there is no reason to expect an industry to keep its prices the same over a 20 year period.
  • come over here to France. They love pinball over here. You can find a pinball machine in every single brasserie (French bar). Of course, they're all old American machines, but the love is there....
  • I love the death of pinball. At least to a point. All of the great games were made, in my opinion, between 1990 and 1999. Bally/Williams games are the only things worth buying, period. And by buying, I mean for my house. I've got around a dozen.

    Here is how the death of pinball works:

    1. Operators used to make a lot of money off their pinball machines. Buckets and buckets of it.

    2. In the 90's, kids decided video games were cool.

    3. Operators make less and less money on pinball machines.

    4. Bally/Williams, the biggest pinball producer decides they can't financially justify manufacturing pinball machines. They close their pinball division.

    5. Operators start pulling games from locations when they break down, or are worn out.

    That's where I come in. Calling all of my local operators. Calling all of the old-school operators from the 60's. Just hoping that somebody has a warehouse full of pinball machines that I can buy, repair, restore, and resell. It's a hobby that I have really grown to love in the past year.

    There is an amazing amount of pinball information on the internet, which has allowed me to do this.

    Like the Marvin 3m Repair Guides [marvin3m.com] or the rec.games.pinball newsgroup (try groups.google.com). If you are looking to buy a pinball machine, try the Mr. Pinball Classifieds [mrpinball.com]. You can also have a look at most of the pinball machines manufactured in the past decade at the Internet Pinball Database [ipdb.org]

    Or you can email me, I can set you up ;-)

    And don't worry... if you want a game bad enough, and don't live close enough to go pick one up... most sellers of pinball games ship them these days.

    Oh, and here is a list of my games:

    Medieval Madness - Williams Funhouse - Williams Whitewater - Williams No Good Gofers - Williams Star Trek: The Next Generation World Cup Soccer 94 - Bally Hook - Data East

    They are lots of fun :-)

    -S

  • "I'm not dead yet." (Score:3, Informative)

    by glenmark ( 446320 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @09:13AM (#4011663) Homepage

    While pingames certainly aren't doing as well as they once were, reports of the death of pinball are certainly premature. There is still a big pinball market outside of the US, which Stern [sternpinball.com] (the only remaining manufacturer) is happy to serve.

    Domestically, the market is shifting from arcades (where the games are seldom adequately maintained) to collectors, and the folks at Stern have realized that, modifying their design efforts to appeal more to collectors. One of their latest games, "Monopoly" [sternpinball.com] (designed by the legendary Pat Lawlor [patlawlordesign.com], who also designed "Fun House," "Addams Family," and "Twilight Zone," among others), has been a tremendous success, to the point of extending its productions run...

    "The robots can't help you..."
  • Ok, maybe it's just me, but there's one reason I don't like playing pinball, and it hasn't been mentioned yet.

    It's that every pinball game is exactly the same. There's a ball which rolls at you, you have the flippers, etc. Ok, perhaps they can change things up, put some flippers up top, maybe have some complicated bonus scoring, but the bottom line is, a ball rolls at you, and you hit it up. Repeatedly.

    Ok, maybe some people really dig this concept, so they're all over it. But these people are insane.

    If you could design a pinball machine that was somehow radically different from others, then you'd have a market for it. But it wouldn't really be a pinball machine then.

  • Play pinball and support the FSF at the Full Tilt For Software Freedom [fsf.org] in San Francisco during LinuxWorld.
  • I for one would rather plan pinball than nearly any video game in the past few years, because the shoot-em-ups and mortal combats are mostly just variations on a common theme involving spending the cash to figure out the "fast twitch muscle" timing to shoot, kick, etc. While to some degree the same is true for pinball, I find it more fun to have to control a real world object (the ball, of course), and account for game variations based on belt tightness, bumper conditions (how long since the last repair, etc.).

    That said, I hardly ever play pinball any more, even though there are a number of machines within easy travel distances. Why? Most arcades I see ratchet up the "score required for replay" so high as to be nearly unattainable, set the tilt detection so that it darn near responds to vibrations of passing trucks and jets, and set the down angle of the machines toward the drains at unreasonable angles, presumably with the goal of making more money by forcing the player to pay more often.

    Instead they make nothing, because I won't play a game that is rigged too heavily against me. (Same reason I don't do casino gambling, BTW)

    So what about the few arcades which set the machines more fairly? Instead of being near empty, I notice that folks gather to the pinball, and while waiting for a chance to play, patrons play the other games. I would venture a guess the increased business in the other machines would probably more than pay for any more frequent repairs if that statistic is true.

    The best arcade I knew of limited how long one player could stay on the pinball instead of rigging the game, and were ALWAYS busy.

  • There is something far more elegant about losing ones money to a pinball machine rather than a video game. The sensuality of hip and hand action beats any video game hands down :-). As for popping a pinnie, I am sorry but clocking a video game just won't cut it.

    I quite like some of the modern pinball machines, but give me an open playfield and the cool physics of some late eighties old school anyday. It is truly sad about the decline of pinball. I think that they will come back, they just have to become cool again.

    Maybe we just need to get them into a few cool films, can you imagine the irony of sliding some well placed pinnies into the Matrix sequels. Delicious.

    Ob. Fav.: Black Rose - Queen of the Seven Seas. The cannon was superb.

  • Dead? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 )
    Only in America can something that generates $1.07 Billion in revenue be considered dead. Gotta love it!

  • Simplify things (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kstumpf ( 218897 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @01:32PM (#4013469)
    The trouble with arcades these days is they are generally just not much fun. The games are too expensive and/or too complex. I miss the days when I could drop a single quarter in a machine and get a decent ten minutes out of it.

    Pinball machines got more complex then they needed to be in order to be fun. The cost of developing them went up, and so did the amount of custom parts, rate of failure, and cost of maintenance. I think the pinball manufacturers really went awry here. If they had stuck with affordable, sturdy machines that focused on what makes pinball great, maybe they'd still be making them.

    Every pinball machine seems to have to have a licensed franchise plastered on the front of it. What's up with that?!

    Of the more modern machines, the ST:TNG machine was one of my favorites. I used to love Pinbot too. :)

    Maybe some day some pinball-building vets will get together and realize that pinball machines could be profitable if they trim the fat.

  • Don't forget, if you are in the SF Bay Area and like pinball (and classic video games):

    California Extreme! [caextreme.org]

    It's 9/7-9/8 in San Jose, and they have tons of good restored pinball and video games on free play for the entire weekend. So get in your chance to play pinball on machines that are [b]not[/b] broken :-)

  • If you ask me, there's nothing like seeing the little silvery steel ball fall square between the two flippers when your friend goes for the game. I don't care how much technology advances, you cannot capture REAL pinball on a screen. They can get close, but it's impossible. One can't play Pinball by squinting one's eyes at a 15" screen! They have to gaze upon a foot-and-a-half minimum slanted table! The game isn't the game unless I can see my grinning face look back at me in that little ball once I hit 100,000,000 points. And then there's the lost art of nudging the machine slightly enough so you don't set off the Tilt alarm, but enough to move the ball in the direction you choose! The main loss in Computer Pinball is the size of the screen. You'd need a Two-Foot-Tall screen to be able to get a good view, and then there's the controlls. Pushing "z" and "/" just arn't good enough, they need to be on the side! Pinball needs to be played while standing too. May Pinball never truly die!

    ===---===

  • The silly parody responses are missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @03:36PM (#4014312)
    This isn't an empty proclamation in the vein of "Usenet is dying" or "Linux on the desktop is dying." Pinball really is dying, and has been for the last four years or so. For the longest time, the two big pinball makers were Williams and Bally. Then Bally/Midway bought Williams, but Williams kept on as the number one name in pinball. Relatively late, Sega and Data East got into pinball. And now of those companies are not producing pinball machines *at all*. The only remaining maker is Stern, which hasn't been any kind of force in pinball or video games for twenty years.

    It's as if all TV stations and cable channels folded, except for Lifetime. Would you laugh that off or consider it to be the impending death of television?

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