Pinball Machines

#26
#26
wounded mullet said:
I always said I would invest in some darts of my own. Yet didn't want to be "that guy" who showed up with their own darts.Not knocking it, we just sort of had a unspoken rule of playing with house darts. Made it more interesting..
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haha understandable. From what I've seen, places with cork boards also have plastic boards. The plastic one will have house plastic-tipped darts. If you want to play on the cork one, you have to have your own (as they won't provide those to people who aren't used to using sharp metal darts). Plus, I have an electric board at home that has a kind of cork to receive the darts, if that makes sense
 
#27
#27
JTrainDavis said:
Pretty certain pinball was dead in bars before I was hitting them up.

Wouldn't be surprised if they made a comeback. I saw one on tv, they were restoring it, holy crap they're a mess on the inside.
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Pinball will never make a real comeback because the machines cost too much to maintain. The guy who works on them has to be half engineer, half electrician. And to keep a table playing well, somebody's got to come out and service it all the time. That's way too much expense for most bars to take on when they can just buy a Golden Tee machine and plug it in. If something goes wrong, they unplug it and plug it in again, and the problem is fixed. The complexity of a classic Williams pinball machine is just insane.
 
#28
#28
crusse10 said:
haha understandable. From what I've seen, places with cork boards also have plastic boards. The plastic one will have house plastic-tipped darts. If you want to play on the cork one, you have to have your own (as they won't provide those to people who aren't used to using sharp metal darts). Plus, I have an electric board at home that has a kind of cork to receive the darts, if that makes sense
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I mainly played on the plastic ones. After you are deep into multiple pitchers its nice to have a machine keep score just as long as you remember to sometimes hit the advance button.
I did play on cork boards as well and have alot of respect for them, it's defiantly a more authentic feel when you toss the dart.
 
#29
#29
Vercingetorix said:
Pinball will never make a real comeback because the machines cost too much to maintain. The guy who works on them has to be half engineer, half electrician. And to keep a table playing well, somebody's got to come out and service it all the time. That's way too much expense for most bars to take on when they can just buy a Golden Tee machine and plug it in. If something goes wrong, they unplug it and plug it in again, and the problem is fixed. The complexity of a classic Williams pinball machine is just insane.
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Had you not said this, I'd have never known that. That's pretty cool. Too bad. But cool nonetheless.
 
#30
#30
All this pinball talk has me wanting to play. Anyone played any of the iPad pinball apps?
 
#31
#31
Ulysees E. McGill said:
There are two crappy ones (T2 and Indiana Jones) at the local theater here. Every time I go watch a movie me and my kids end up spending 5 bucks on pinball though. My teenagers think they are the funnest arcade games to play. I told them that those games don't hold a candle to the old ones.
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The only recent pinball machines are made by Stern, and they're almost all movie licenses, and they all suck compared to the classic machines. They're better than nothing, and I play them when I see them, but it's obviously not the same.

I need to just knuckle under and buy a damn machine. Surely I can pay somebody in Atlanta to service it. I need my son to grow up playing pinball.
 
#32
#32
You'd think that with technological advances that a pinball machine could be made on a much simpler platform without losing too much of the traditional feel.
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#34
#34
Vercingetorix said:
The only recent pinball machines are made by Stern, and they're almost all movie licenses, and they all suck compared to the classic machines. They're better than nothing, and I play them when I see them, but it's obviously not the same.

I need to just knuckle under and buy a damn machine. Surely I can pay somebody in Atlanta to service it. I need my son to grow up playing pinball.
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Don't let it go the way of a ping-pong table. The flat playing surface lends itself all too nicely to a surface for folding clothes, etc.
 
#35
#35
wounded mullet said:
Freak must have been up the past two nights playing with his new toy.
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If you mean the iPad, I've actually had it for a while. The late night post rampages just happen from time to time. :)
 
#38
#38
crusse10 said:
Had you not said this, I'd have never known that. That's pretty cool. Too bad. But cool nonetheless.
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Maintenance is the key. If you're serious about pinball these days, which I am not, then the way you play is by buying a machine or two yourself and getting involved in your local pinball enthusiasts' group, all of which seem to be comprised exclusively of older, paunchy versions of the older kids who would never let you get near the Wizard of Wor machine back in the old days. They've all got five or six machines in their basements, and they trade them out with each other as they get bored, and since they are all amateur electrical engineers all of their machines are maintained perfectly. Or so you would believe if you believed everything online.

I love pinball so much that I have contemplated getting involved with these nimrods just to play their machines. Damn you, Golden Tee.
 
#39
#39
JTrainDavis said:
You'd think that with technological advances that a pinball machine could be made on a much simpler platform without losing too much of the traditional feel.
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I don't know how you get past the basic physicality of a ball being smashed around, with lights to light up and switches to operate and things that have to throw the ball around. Otherwise it's not pinball.

Which is not to say that you can't have fun simulating basically any classic pinball table you want on your PC using the Visual Pinball system. Here's a YouTube video of the classic Tales of the Arabian Nights table: YouTube - Visual Pinball: Tales of the Arabian Nights

(Enthusiasts who are willing to put way too much effort into it only, but then I assume that anybody reading a pinball thread has more than a little Dragon Con type in them.)
 
#40
#40
and Vercy wept....


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#41
#41
I don't know what that is and I don't want to know. I assume it's about as much fun as a thumb in the rectum. If it's being called "pinball," then the only ball in question is your prostate.
 
#44
#44
Vercingetorix said:
Electric Wizar[/B]d on the Strip back in the day. The tilt was basically turned off on Earthshaker; you could throw that whole freaking machine eight inches one way to save a ball and it would let you play on. Beautiful.
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ah, Electric Wizard. Good times, good times. First place I ever saw a video black jack machine that paid off.
 
#46
#46
back in my unemployment days, I had the high score on both of these machines at the local diner

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#47
#47
Pinball all the way. The difference is that you can have some input on a pinball game. The ability to push, shove, pull, kick, and other subtle nuances are an art form that can have a major influence on your game. On the other hand, you can do all these things and more to a video game and it's still the same, a pattern to learn and memorize.

Back in the day, mid 60's, I would go visit my Aunt and her family in Severville. She had a pretty good sized store out in the country and she had a pinball machine. She didn't really care a lot about the machine - or what I did with it.

So I would go to the shelf in the store where the little cat food cans were stocked and get me a can of cat food and sit it in the floor next to the leg of the pinball machine. Then I would insert a quarter, punch up a game, fire the ball and lift up the machine until it tilted. The ball was still on playing field, and I would lift and pull until the ball hung up on one of those rollover things. Then I would use my foot to push a can of cat food under the leg of the machine and slowly ease it down on the can. Sometimes it took several tries, but when I got it right, things started happening. I would punch off a new game and the score would start rolling up. BAM! 15 games. If a customer happened to enter the store, I would take hold of the flipper buttons and commence to flip them work around like I was really playing. Some of them were impressed by the numbers I was putting up.

Played the whole week I was there for less than a dollar. Can you do that with a video game?
 
#48
#48
Unfortunately, MWR's parents were banned from the bowling alley.

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#49
#49
It was before my time, but I'd love to have a pinball machine for the garage bar. I'm currently looking for a slot machine too.

They can be costly it seems.
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#50
#50
my fav pinball machine was The Black Hole. it had a sublevel special stage that could bit lit up and played on. have been playing Dream Pinball 3d on Wii. great game. graphics and sounds crisp, but the scrolling sometimes awkward.
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