[HN Gopher] Pinball is booming in America ___________________________________________________________________ Pinball is booming in America Author : pseudolus Score : 213 points Date : 2023-05-15 10:59 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.economist.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com) | elijaht wrote: | Recently went to a pinball museum. Was awesome. $20 got you play | for the whole day, and they had a variety of machines from the | early days of pinball to the present. Really helped you see the | evolution of pinball from then to now, and because it was a flat | payment, I could experiment and play around without feeling like | I was burning money. | pacoWebConsult wrote: | The one in Asheville, NC? I'm glad it was a flat fee because | some of those oldest pinball machines they have are just plain | terrible game design. Very unforgiving if you make the | slightest error, the ball is out of play. | | Really cool place and I'm glad they are keeping those artifacts | running. | AtNightWeCode wrote: | My tip is to find an arcade hall that is specialized in pinball | and that have both new and old games. | | I have been to some of the museums that people talked about in | this thread and I would avoid that. Better to ask around which | games you may like and then find a place where you can play a set | of them. Pay to play also assures you that the games are ok. | user3939382 wrote: | One of my long term dreams is a Star Wars pinball machine. Some | day... | LeifCarrotson wrote: | When you do find one to restore, look up these resources to | swap the old processor for an Arduino, download the framework | with all the rules for missions and points and so on, and still | emulate the old hardware interface: | | https://missionpinball.org/ | | https://github.com/AmokSolderer/APC | | There are a number of machines up for sale, priced at around | $4,000: | | https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/star-wars | | https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/star-wars-trilogy | | Might want to start with a cheap, older Bally or Williams | machine instead of the late-model licensed Star Wars machines, | but they can be found for a lot less if not (yet) in working | order! | user3939382 wrote: | Wow awesome, thanks man. I'll keep this as a reference. | vikingerik wrote: | If you want a Star Wars machine that is reliable and | cheaper, the best bet is the Home Pin edition from Stern | Pinball. You can get these brand new, and they use modern | technology that is much more reliable than older machines. | MSRP is $4,999 and you may be able to find one for slightly | less. | | https://shop.sternpinball.com/collections/home-edition- | colle... | beznet wrote: | Joined a pinball league last year after moving cities. Not only | did I fall in love with pinball(didn't grow up with any machines | in my hometown) its just a phenomenal community of people who get | together each week. I highly recommend anyone reading this to | look for any pinball leagues in your area. Its a mixture of all | sorts of people from my experience and just a wonderful | social/gaming environment. | meesles wrote: | My dad was gifted an old, defunct Globetrotters pinball machine | in the 90s by a neighbor, and spent most of my childhood | refurbishing it and fixing it up when it would break down. Lots | of fond memories showing it off to my friends, and later pulling | off the glass to get a perfect 99999 score! | NickC25 wrote: | That's neat! Wish there was more gaming themed bars around where | I live (South Florida) but for wider amounts of games, not just | pinball (which is awesome). | | I remember going to arcades growing up in the 90s and early 2000s | and would jump at the chance to be able to relive that nostalgia. | | Themed bars are making a strong run here (there's a local mini- | golf focused bar which is really fun, albeit expensive). Would | love a bar with pinball machines, maybe some fighting games or | 4-player co-op games, sports games and maybe even some | rhythm/music games. Nothing too hardcore, but something easy | enough for your average non-gamer to understand and still have | fun participating. | psychomugs wrote: | John Wilson, the mastermind behind HBO's Nathan Fielder-produced | "How To With John Wilson," shot some beautiful scenes of Vegas' | Pinball Hall of Fame. | | https://vimeo.com/180067392 (~13:00) | JKCalhoun wrote: | Highly recommend the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda if | you're in the Bay Area. | | https://www.pacificpinball.org | pipnonsense wrote: | I went to Vegas' Pinball Hall of Fame a few weeks ago and it's | a great place to go. I had one free day in Vegas before a work- | related conference, so I took the morning and spent around 4 | hours there. | | A lot of good, working machines, nice staff, no tricks to keep | making you consuming unnecessary stuff or stay there more than | you would want to. Just a fun place to be -- if you enjoy | playing pinball of course. Cheap too. | alcover wrote: | Thank you, this video is a unique unassuming and hyptnotic | jewel. | psychomugs wrote: | The HBO show is great, but his Vimeo is better IMO. I | particularly like 'The Road To Magnasanti' and 'How To Remain | Single.' | oldandboring wrote: | I went casually looking around a couple weeks ago to see what a | used pinball machine might cost. Down the rabbit hole I went | until I landed on a subreddit where I learned that pinball | absolutely exploded during the pandemic and the prices for both | used and new machines nearly doubled. I also learned that there's | a nontrivial cost-of-ownership at play, since (especially for | older machines) it can be difficult to find replacement parts, | and you need to be handy enough to diagnose and fix problems. | johnvanommen wrote: | I worked in a video arcade in college, and pinball machines | were the bane of my existence. They broke down easily 1000% | more often than anything else. Data East pinballs were | particularly shoddy. | skeaker wrote: | It's definitely never been a cheap hobby. A common folly that I | heard from multiple people involved in the scene was that they | would buy an old and broken game with the idea that they would | repair it themselves, only to find that the cost for parts | would greatly outweigh any resale value the machine would have. | Fortunately some push through regardless simply because they | enjoy the game itself. | pizzaknife wrote: | StreetFighter was meant to be played standing up | hijinks wrote: | as someone that has an arcade the prices for pinball games has | skyrocketed since covid. | | It was probably a better bet to put your savings into pinball | games in 2019 and selling them now then the market. | asdff wrote: | It's interesting how all it takes for something sometimes to boom | is to just make it available at a venue with food and alcohol. | People mentioned barcades. This also goes for things like | throwing axes at a plywood board. Swinging a golf club for people | who have good odds of sendign the club farther than the ball. | Throwing a duckpin bowling ball like its 1905 again. Shuffleboard | is a thing among millenials now, sleepy old person shuffleboard! | All because you can get a nice IPA with friends over it or some | food. It's too bad a lot of cities are so hard up with liquor | licensing or even make a racket out of granting the licenses. | Stuff like this should be easy. | pseudolus wrote: | On a bit of a tangent, pinball was banned in NYC until 1976 - | ostensibly because it was viewed more as a form of gambling then | skill. A movie - "Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game" was | released last year and is based on the efforts of Roger Sharpe, a | GQ editor, to overturn that ban. [0][1][2] | | [0] https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/did-you-know- | pinbal... | | [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13365876/ | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Sharpe_(pinball) | vikingerik wrote: | And to mythbust here: The common legend and shallow wikipedia | blurb goes that Sharpe called out one shot in the courtroom and | made it ("the shot that saved pinball"), which astonished the | jury into ruling that pinballs are games of skill. | | The reality was that he did make the one shot (and later | confessed that that one shot was half luck), but besides that | also played for tens of minutes (and some accounts say on two | different games), demonstrating all the things a skilled player | can do, to such an extent that the outcome was beyond doubt. | mortenjorck wrote: | The article is pretty brief, and doesn't get into what has been | (to me, at least) the biggest surprise in recent years: the | proliferation of new pinball manufacturers. | | After a wave of consolidation in the 90s and and eventual pivot | in the 2000s to the more profitable slots market, Stern was for | years the only company still making new pinball machines. That | started to change in the 2010s, however, and there are now half a | dozen names you'll see at a contemporary barcade. | | More here: https://www.kineticist.co/post/who-makes-pinball- | machines | calsheimer wrote: | wrote linked article, and it's truly been incredible to watch | over the last few years. most times if a manufacturer can get a | product to market (harder than you'd think), it sells pretty | well. | monkeydust wrote: | Wonder if there is some lowres analogue revolution going on. I | just brought a manual coffee grinder and a vinyl record | player...loving them both for now. | torunar wrote: | https://archive.is/res43 | hahamrfunnyguy wrote: | A few years ago, I found an old electromechanical pinball machine | out for the trash. At some point, the back box connector (the | part that connects the square top part with the scoreboard to the | table) was severed. | | I spent a couple of days tracing out the schematic and wiring | everything up again, cleaning contacts and doing some basic | repairs like changing lightbulbs and rubbers. By the end of the | process, I had a playable pinball machine. | | What was really an eye-opener for me was how the game was | "programmed". Timing was handled by flashing lightbulbs and game | state was maintained by relays and wheels that triggered stacks | of switches. Really a different way of thinking about how to | build up a game. | | I didn't play game enough and want to spend the time to keep it | running, so I donated it. It was really enjoyable to fix it up | (once) and figure out how everything worked. I might do it again | some time! | icoder wrote: | Slightly related but I once got a 'behind the scenes' of a | bowling alley, I was amazed to see (not sure if still the case, | could very well be) how 'analog' the whole machinery was, with | a big wheel and lots of mechanical entrapments to | pick/collect/replace pins. I think the technical constraints | demanded a lot of ingenuity back then. | | If I remember correctly they added digital score keeping as an | afterthought using camera's (+ software + screens). | bombcar wrote: | I was watching a hacking video on elevators, and some of them | are still run entirely analog with no real computers, it's | all relays and miles and miles of wire. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | It was like this, right? https://youtu.be/-DKCFjm0DvE | mustacheemperor wrote: | If you're in the Bay Area, you take part in the boom for a flat | admission fee (all machines are free) at the Pacific Pinball | Museum in Alameda. It started as a one-room collection and has | since grown to have a big collection of really well maintained | machines. They're also affiliated with Free Gold Watch near | Haight in SF, which has a good rotating collection of machines, | both brand new movie tie-ins etc and a room of vintage | electromechanical machines. It never gets old hearing the buzzing | and bells from an old school machine...or putting a quarter into | the Big Lebowski table and hearing "where's the money, Lebowski!" | | And, coming up in august, California Extreme will take over the | Santa Clara convention center with a truly mind-bogglingly | massive collection of hobbyist owned pinball machines, arcade | machines, and vintage gaming electronics. It's a blast and always | one of my favorite days of the whole year. | nthitz wrote: | Also this weekend there's a festival in Lodi not too far away! | https://www.goldenstatepinball.org/ | mustacheemperor wrote: | Oh wow, thank you! I just might be there on Saturday. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | There are similar pinball museums in Seattle, Las Vegas, and | probably many other cities. | mustacheemperor wrote: | Yes, I always love checking out a new one! I'll also | recommend pinballmap.com as a good resource for finding | pinball machine collections both large and small. I've used | it traveling to find little arcades in old malls and great | machines in laundromats. | hackernoteng wrote: | Neighbor down the street has 2 nice ones, in addition a basically | full-on full size video arcade. During a block party, none of the | kids cared about the video games. They were lined up to play the | pinball. | BashiBazouk wrote: | Growing up in Santa Cruz during peak arcade, the casino at the | boardwalk was one of the best. Not only did they have just about | all the arcade video games but also an incredibly deep pinball | collection for when you needed something else. My favorite was a | pinball machine with a baseball theme that was from the 30's. | Most the antique pinball are no longer on the floor but they used | to have such a cool collection that you could play. | danielodievich wrote: | My family goes to Seattle Pinball Museum | https://www.seattlepinballmuseum.com/ in International District. | Play pinball for a while, then go out for Chinese or Sushi. All | machines are marked with Fun/Grin factor on the scale from 1-10. | First time I went there, they had this really unusual machine | that emulated aircraft machine gun. It shot a neverending stream | of pinballs at about 2-3 bps (balls per second) with hundreds of | them flowing through the system at once and feeding back into the | gun. You controlled it with two handles on left and right of the | machine, like a gunner in the WW2 aircraft. You had to shoot out | the target lights at the board to get the score. It was | incredibly noisy, tactile and FUN. The label on it correctly | stated that it was "14 out of 10" on the grin factor scale. The | lady running that place told me they hardly ever turned it on | because it was so incredibly loud, and it was gone next times I | went there. | alexb_ wrote: | Who wrote this article? There isn't any mention of the marketing | here past new IPs being licensed for machines. The headline | doesn't mention the most surprising part of the article (that | machines are now connected to the internet for global high | scores). They call Rick and Morty a "bizarre cult cartoon". All | this article does is talk about how pinball machine sales are up, | concludes it's nostalgia, and then lets a guy who's interested in | pinball serve as their anecdotal evidence for it being nostalgia. | Then mentions some pinball history. | | I think there's a lot more that could have been said here, and a | lot better people that could have answered a lot better | questions. I doubt the average Economist reader even knows that | pinball machines actually have objectives and games inside. | te_234305 wrote: | It's a little more than just pure nostalgia considering that | new games are being made, notably by Stern | (https://sternpinball.com/) and several other smaller | companies. | | The history they highlight is a bit oddly framed. Based on some | manufacturing numbers (https://pinballmag.fr/en/the-best- | selling-pinball-machines-o...) it is true that the 1970s were | probably pinball's peak decade, but there was also a smaller | "bump" in pinball in the early-mid 1990s when the dot matrix | display and increasing computer power transformed the | complexity of the game (the best selling pinball of all time, | Addams Family, was made in this period). My guess is if there | is a nostalgia factor, it is probably driven more by those that | discovered pinball then, instead of the 1970s. | | My understanding is that the current resurgence in pinball is | due to a combination of the "arcade bar" phenomenon and | especially the home collector's market. Apparently there was a | huge surge of growth in the pinball market during the pandemic | (https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/coronavirus-leads- | to-s...), this of course due to everyone being cooped up at | home. | cocacola1 wrote: | I think Economist articles are anonymous. | glonq wrote: | Compared to arcade games, pinballs require quite a bit of | maintenance. Plenty of mechanical things to break or wear down, | and tons of wiring. | | I had a 1976 Williams EM that was fun to play, but definitely | kept me busy working on it. | efields wrote: | I'm 38 and I just learned that pinball machines have a script | you're supposed to follow. Like it plainly tells you do this then | this then this to "beat" the game. Of course it just loops back | to the beginning when you do. A lot of these machines tell you | this on a little white card sometimes in the lower left of the | glass top. | | Also a lot of machines have midnight madness mode. If you're at | an all night arcade and it hits midnight, multiball! | epiccoleman wrote: | At our local barcade, after years of visiting, I got really | into Medieval Madness, and I got a good laugh at myself after | reading that little card and thinking "oh, imagine that, | there's actually useful information in the instructions." | | Who'd have guessed?! | yamtaddle wrote: | Love Medieval Madness. Great, great machine. | | One of my favorites as far as merging of the form and the | story is Black Knight (and Black Knight 2000). The _machine | itself_ is framed as your knightly opponent in this apparent | duel (it even taunts you, LOL), and the table layout is such | that you can be on offense--ball in the physically-elevated | high part of the field, with scoring and mode-progress | opportunities and basically no risk of losing the ball as | long as you keep it up there--or defense, in the lower part | of the field, where it 's _quite_ easy to lose a ball, and | play 's alarmingly fast & reactive, but there are also some | good bonus chances or ways to set up your next play in the | top field. | | And that theme song on Black Knight 2000. Oh man. So good. | | [EDIT] Oh and I forgot that the "knight" taunts you _during | that awesome song_ with "give me your money!" (among other | taunts), which is another machine -> character connection. | You are _dueling_ the machine. It 's basically a perfect | fusion of story/motif and the form of the game. | epiccoleman wrote: | I haven't gotten into Black Knight so much, I need to give | it a few more plays! All my quarters usually get pumped | into Medieval Madness and (when it's _rarely_ working) | Banzai Run. I 'm decent at MM, and just awful at Banzai Run | - but the temptation of that upper (vertical!) playfield is | too much to resist. | | Medieval Madness though just stands head and shoulders | above every other table I've played. One of my favorite | things about it is that in my opinion it's a really fair | table - in that "Dark Souls" style, if I lose a ball, I | almost never say "ah, bullshit" - it's almost always | because I took a bad shot or whiffed on an easy save. I | know these machines are designed to eat your quarters, but | some of the Stern tables I've played seem to have a really | high "that was bullshit" factor. (Although, of course, my | own mediocre skill is more to blame than anything else). | yamtaddle wrote: | You've probably got similar taste to me--I like a table | that's a bit _relaxing_ to play, at least once you 've | got a feel for it. Black Knight (and 2000) are a lot more | challenging than my usual sweet-spot, but do at least | feel fair, which is why I still like them. Lots of | alarmingly-fast losses when you're starting out or if you | aren't really feeling it that day, but fun if I feel like | being _very_ engaged (and after a couple dozen games to | learn how to not lose within seconds, LOL) | | You might like Attack from Mars, which shares the "knock | down the barrier on a high-central target, hit it, move | on to the next" thing from Medieval Madness. It has less | fun with its theme and of the two I'd say MM is | unequivocally better, but if you're out and about and run | into one, might give it a try. I'd especially look for | Theater of Magic, if you haven't played that one. It's | not quite as clean as Medieval Madness, but in roughly | the same difficulty zone and has a lot of fun shots and | gimmicks, and really runs with the theme. Might enjoy | Whitewater, too--it's in the same ballpark, difficulty- | wise, but with a more complex playfield than MM despite | _looking_ fairly simple at a glance, but is still quite | legible once you 've given it a look over and a couple | plays. Theme's less obviously-fun but I find it really | nails a kind of kitsch appeal that works for me, at | least. Both the Elvira games I've played have been in | that zone, too--one's better than the other, IMO, but I | forget which. | | Oh, and find Monster Bash. Learn it. Get good at it. | There are few things better in mid-difficulty pinball | than finally getting the whole monster band together so | they can _rock_ :-) Fun, goofy theme like Medieval | Madness. | | A step up the difficulty level, I like Addams Family | (doesn't everyone?) and Junkyard a lot. Everyone seems to | love Twilight Zone but I can't get into the damn thing. | It's got the same thing Addams Family does where if you | don't have precise and well-planned shot control (looking | a move ahead, if possible) you'll end up with lots of | drains down the sides, but is _just_ enough harder to | learn that I 've not managed to enjoy it yet. | | There's another level that's _easier_ than the ones I | like, that I really despise. Like Mary Shelley 's | Frankenstein. I practically have to _try_ to lose that | one, to get the game to end. It 's just boring and feels | like it's patronizing me. | aidenn0 wrote: | One of the blogs that gets posted here a lot (I don't recall | which) is someone who teaches some sort of history of video | games. One of the things he has to convince his students of | is just how impossible it is to figure out certain old PC | games without reading the instructions (IIRC Ultima IV is one | where students would just be 100% confused). | epiccoleman wrote: | Even now, a little reading goes a long way. I have to | constantly heckle my son while playing the new Zelda game - | "hey, maybe that person is telling you something you want | to know!" | | I used to drive my own father crazy when doing computer | stuff back in the day, though - clicking through menus at | lightspeed and such. Guess it's karma. ;) | taylodl wrote: | That card is relatively new. Back in the old days, I wrote in | another comment here I started playing pinball before The Who | penned the song Pinball Wizard, there was no card. You had to | figure out the rules of the game by playing the game. Pay | attention to the lights, they direct you to what you need to | do. They don't always make it clear, but they give you an idea. | Generally speaking, a solid light means you've already achieved | that goal, and a flashing can mean many things but most often | it indicates a goal that's available for you to achieve in a | set timeframe, usually until you've lost the ball. | yamtaddle wrote: | One of the biggest steps on my pinball journey was an older | player explaining to me that most machines (the ones that | weren't super-ancient, anyway) had one or more "stories" or | progressions of play, and that playing well required | understanding those. From there, you kinda learn to "read" a | table before you try it, between LED screen directions and | printed directions under the glass and looking over the table | layout & elements. Gives you a big advantage. I'd poked at | pinball machines every chance I got (which wasn't _that_ many) | as a kid, but that part had somehow never clicked. | | Another surprise was that about 50% of playing well is in the | hips, not the fingers. | RandallBrown wrote: | I learned about that from the game Pokemon Pinball! | | I never usually last long enough in real games to learn what | I'm supposed to do to make progress. | doctorpangloss wrote: | Pinball on computers is thriving too. | | Visual Pinball X ("VPX", see | https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=downloads&showcat=51) runs | community authored recreated tables with ROMs dumped from the | hardware. The physics engine has good performance and | authenticity. | | Another project, Visual Pinball Engine, ported the C++-based | physics engine to Unity | (https://github.com/freezy/VisualPinball.Engine) through its DOTS | & "HPC#" (C# with manual memory management extensions) approach. | Unity adoption means you can play high fidelity tables right in | your browser (https://appmana.com/watch/pinball). | | Then there's commercial platforms like Pinball FX and people | building VPX rendering in VR. | | It's maybe the biggest simulation scene I know of. The community | fills many niches. Rigs of Rods & Beam.ng for the idea, | "Microsoft Flight Simulator, but for cars." XMage & Spellsource | for "Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone but you write your own | cards." Unreal Engine for Fortnite is a big entry for the open | world community authored content dominated by Minecraft, with | submarine stuff like Facepunch's S&box (think Garry's Mod 2.0) | coming up. | candiddevmike wrote: | Any decent virtual pinball machines out there? I was looking at | a Legend one once but it seemed really shoddy. | wincy wrote: | Not exactly what your asking for, but VR pinball games are | excellent. They also sell pinball controllers so you can | simulate the same hand positions as a real pinball machine, | so while you're wearing a headset you're looking down at the | right angle and get the feel of real pinball. | splonk wrote: | I just saw this video of Ronnie O'Sullivan falling over due | to trying to lean on a virtual snooker table, and I'm | almost certain exactly the same thing would happen to me | the first time I tried to nudge a VR pinball machine. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMceVbo3Tm4 | doctorpangloss wrote: | The Legend is well supported by the community. There are | 3/4th replicas mass produced that I believe can be modded to | run anything. Also produced with official licenses (Arcade | 1UP). | rideontime wrote: | The neat thing IMO about virtual pinball and real pinball is | how they complement each other. I've yet to find a virtual | pinball with really satisfying physics simulation, but that's | ok, because for me the real benefit is being able to learn the | rules without the pressure of dropping quarters. Thanks to the | tutorials in Pinball Arcade (RIP), I was able to reach Final | Frontier on TNG the first time I played a real one. | JKCalhoun wrote: | Been meaning to try to build one of these. | | Example: https://www.instructables.com/Virtual-Pinball- | Machine-1/ | chippytea wrote: | There is an excellet pinball museum in Budapest where you can | play original restored machines all night for an entry fee. | _fat_santa wrote: | I think more broadly, arcades have been coming back in US. Part | of it is the nostalgia aspect but I think more so, they have | finally figured out a sustainable business model: become a bar. | | For example I live in Denver and here we have a chain of popular | Arcade bars called '1up'. I always find it a great place to go | with friends or on a date because there's always something for | everyone, machines of all types, photo booths, and if you just | don't like arcade games they have a full bar as well. And as a | result they attract a varied crowd and always seem to be making | money one way or the other. | | I wish game bars all the best, as a 90's kid I never really got | to experience arcades like they had them back in the 80's, so | it's awesome to see arcade bars make a comeback now. | | Also it is just me or do pinball games just never seem to get the | physics of the ball right? Every pinball game I've ever played | always seemed way easier than playing "real" pinball. | hahamrfunnyguy wrote: | I am on the East Coast and there are probably at least a half | dozen places places to play in my area that have ten or more | machines. Many bars now have at least a few machines. I'd say | there is a large technical community here and pinball does | really feel at home in nerd/tech culture. | jhbadger wrote: | Yes, it's an idea, but in the 1980s when arcade games were | common, many "normal" bars had video games and pinball machines | in them. These days they seem absent except in those dedicated | barcades. | vikingerik wrote: | Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. Most | often the machines are owned and operated by an outside | contractor or dedicated hobbyist (who knows how to fix them.) | The games make it a destination for families with kids, and the | adults play some but really spend on food and drink. Same as | how a tabletop game store is really making money on the food | items, not the trading cards. | | And as for your last, yes, virtual pinball games don't come | close on ball physics. Real ball motion is so much more than a | pair of X-Y coordinates and velocities. A real ball slides and | spins and scrapes across the playfield and the objects in all | sorts of ways. A ball's motion is very 3d even on a 2d | playfield - it can have a spin axis aligned anywhere on its | sphere. | | Flippers too. It's much more than one object moving at one | velocity. There are really subtle details in the interactions | with the rubber on the flippers - a real ball will sink into | the rubber by a fraction of a millimeter and rebound in ways | that depend on that. Flippers accelerate and decelerate on a | time scale of single-digit milliseconds, with all sorts of | subtleties that an experienced player can feel. Response time | matters too - a computer platform is usually limited to 1/60 | second input resolution by the host hardware and OS, while a | real machine responds hard real time instantly. | | And of course nudging - no virtual controller comes anywhere | close to all the things you can do to a real machine, shoves | and pushes and slaps. No game physics engine comes anywhere | close to all that detail in all these areas. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | > the machines are owned and operated by an outside | contractor | | The OP mentioned 1-Up chain in metro Denver. Their games are | owned and serviced personally by the owner. He had the | experience operating arcades and partnered with someone who | had the restaurant/bar experience to make a very successful, | multi-location business. | sdfghswe wrote: | If we're able to simulate airplanes before they fly, I'm | pretty sure we can simulate a sphere. | idiotsecant wrote: | Sure, for enough money and with enough horsepower we could | simulate just about anything you want. | | For a freeware pinball game? Maybe not. | | It's always a question of money and time. | zamnos wrote: | On the other hand, Dwarf Fortress was free for how long? | musictubes wrote: | DF is still free directly from Bay12. | vikingerik wrote: | It's way more than just the sphere, it's simulating all the | surfaces and materials that the sphere interacts with. | Particularly the mechanical pieces with their own movement | as well. | | The comparable level of detail to get pinball right would | be something like simulating all the rubber gaskets and | surfaces in the ailerons and elevators, all the fluid | dynamics in the hydraulics, and so on. | | If you invested something like the $100 million that Boeing | or Lockheed must have done in their simulators, you | probably could. Video pinball isn't exactly that big | economically, though. | mywittyname wrote: | It is absolutely possible to model a pinball machine very | accurately with existing CAD software, and for much less | money than that. | | With GPU-powered physics, it might be possible to model | this in real time. But if not, one could definitely run | the simulations in CAD and export the results to a table | (or fit to an equation) and use those in the game. | | The limitation isn't technology. | vikingerik wrote: | Is your CAD software simulating the increase in | temperature as the coil fires frequently throughout a | game, with the ensuing changes in coil strength and | rubber resilience? | | Is your GPU accounting for millisecond-level fluctuations | in power as more lights and flashers are on at any given | instant so any coil receives a tiny bit less power? | | Are you accounting for a tiny bit of residual magnetism | left in the balls after they departed from recent contact | with a magnet? | | You are correct that the limitation isn't technology. All | this is doable with enough specialized computation - but | the reality is that it's vast avenues of effort that | nobody has done or likely will. | jwagenet wrote: | I don't doubt that these interactions have some minuscule | effect on pinball performance, but I'm skeptical that you | couldn't get close enough with some relatively simple | models. Eg count the lights on and model a draw in | remaining power available to solenoids. | mywittyname wrote: | > Is your CAD software simulating the increase in | temperature as the coil fires frequently throughout a | game, with the ensuing changes in coil strength and | rubber resilience? | | Yes. That's a basic feature a professional CAE package. | And the materials library includes a few hundred | different rubber compounds and metals to model with as | well. | | Modern CAD is amazing. Back when I worked in the | industry, we'd have customers whose simulations for jet | turbine engines match the the sensor readings on the | prototype almost exactly. | badpun wrote: | Are plane simulators really simulating fluid dynamics in | hydraulics, during real-time simulation? Is that even | doable (assuming the simulation wants to be realistic). | bluGill wrote: | Boeing is likely doing that in their CAD - but these are | tests they they can throw at a super computer of some | sort and let run for a week. | | Flight simulators that are used to train pilots are | unlikely to have this level of detail. There is enough | variation in things like wind turbulence that they can | ignore a lot of the other effects as if you can handle | turbulence you can handle smaller errors as well. | 40four wrote: | Of course we can simulate a sphere, but to the point of the | well written comment you a responding to, the simulation | models in pinball video games don't even come close the the | complexity of the physics of a real world pinball. I played | a lot of pinball as a kid, and I've played many pinball | video games since. I was recently at one of these 'barcade' | venues and tried my hand at pinball thinking I would be | good at it. I couldn't have been more wrong. I lost all 3 | balls immediately just about every game. It's incredibly | difficult and unpredictable. Go to your local barcade and | try for yourself :) | birdyrooster wrote: | I am pretty sure local game stores make money when they sell | booster packs to a kid at full price, kid sells them the best | cards at a 30% discount and then the store resells it for | market value. Sure there is risk here but they make it very | hard to lose. Running the store lets them have options to | purchase cards at a discount every time the sell a booster | pack. | cdchn wrote: | >Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside | contractor | | This has been the model for bars for a long time I think | everything from those bartop entertainment systems, | jukeboxes, electronic dart boards, etc. | echelon wrote: | Massive opportunity in Atlanta for any barentrepreneur. | | The main arcade on Edgewood ("Joystick") is super popular, | but only has 8 or so machines. They're not in good shape | either. People want to play, but it's too crowded. | | The similar "adult dog park / bar" concept has been | absolutely exploding. "Fetch" bar started just across the | street from me a few years ago and they've since expanded to | over ten locations in three different states. It's huge. And | it's always packed to the brim with over a hundred people. | | Plus you get to charge membership fees per dog in a | subscription model. | | People want to drink and bring their dogs. | | If the west coast doesn't already have this, get on it. I | can't imagine there's much moat apart from branding, but it's | got huge growth opportunity. | no_wizard wrote: | Like all things I worry about it being a fad. It's big | _now_ but what's to say these trends last? It can hard to | maximize the investment it takes to make a great repeat | experience. | | I know that's always the risk for sure, but I'd bet in a | longer run of the barcade market than dog bars, but I've | been wrong before | bluGill wrote: | The good part is if the fad dies - you still have a bar. | one of those businesses proven to make money for hundreds | of years (thousands? - I'm not up on my ancient history, | but I suspect it was a good way to make money even in BC | days). If the dog part fails, just remodel to whatever | bar type will make money next. If you are running a | business you should have a budget to do a significant | remodel every 10 years anyway, 10 years from now you will | know if the fad is still going strong to dieing. | tomtheelder wrote: | The dog bar thing is absolutely here to stay, and it's | actually sort of crazy that it took this long. The one | near us is more like a dog park that also happens to have | a bar and a food truck and good wifi, but it's just such | a big win as a dog owner. You get to hang out somewhere | actually pleasant while your dog plays in a controlled | space with folks watching and breaking up any major | scuffles. For a reasonably well off- especially younger- | dog owner it's kind of a no brainer. | | I guess if dog ownership crashes that would be a problem, | but I really don't see that happening any time soon. | samsolomon wrote: | Fetch is fantastic! For a long time my partner would | bring our dog there on weekday mornings--when it is less | crowded--and grab a coffee and work. They have bark | rangers or whatever they're called to make sure nobody | gets in a fight so owners can actually get work done. | | I hadn't ever considered whether the place was a fad or | not, but they are definitely benefiting from the trend | towards WFH. | debatem1 wrote: | Super popular here in Seattle. I was talking with a friend | the other day about how to start a small metal venue in the | area and their advice was to teach dogs to like metal | because there's no way you compete with a dog lounge on | revenue. | zamnos wrote: | If the dog lounge makes more money than you, do you lose | some sort of competition? | adfm wrote: | When real money is in the line, physics and real touch | matter. They had to change roulette because certain players | learned minor flaws delivered an advantage. | | https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-how-to-beat- | roulette... | JohnFen wrote: | > Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. | | In my city, there is one that is not only popular but has | been in operation for 20 years or so. It has a couple hundred | arcade machines, mostly pinball, and looks like that's their | main business. | | But the reality of the economics is proven by one aspect of | how they operate: if you buy a drink at the bar, you get to | play all the games for free. If not, they're 25 cents per | play. | m463 wrote: | alcohol might help balance out the "pinball wizard hogging | the machine all night" issue. :) | sitzkrieg wrote: | i like that bar freeplay approach, havent seen that around | here and that's probably a good thing | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Another good model is pay-by-the-hour using a reloadable | card. This allows kids to get good at a game without | having to invest hundreds of dollars. | jonny_eh wrote: | Please name the city and bar so I can visit it. | MegaDeKay wrote: | > And of course nudging - no virtual controller comes | anywhere close to all the things you can do to a real | machine, shoves and pushes and slaps. No game physics engine | comes anywhere close to all that detail in all these areas. | | "Anywhere close" might actually be a little closer than you | think. Ever take a peak down the virtual pinball rabbit hole? | The KL25Z microcontroller board at the heart of many visual | pinball builds has an accelerometer to measure nudges etc. | Most builds also have a real tilt bob if you get a little | over exuberant. Then there are real shaker motors, surround | sound feedback, multiple displays for the backglass and DMD | etc. | | Way of the Wrench on YouTube has the best set of videos I | know of on the topic of building your own cab. It would | really be a blast to build something like this. | | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrqlHbqP7FIO5P8e8HtrB. | .. | Tao3300 wrote: | @ 1:15 | | > There's nothing better than real pinball and I would have | to agree. | wahern wrote: | > Yes, the barcade business model works. | | Does Dave & Busters fit into this category, or would you say | they have the wrong focus? I've never been to a Dave & | Busters, but they're a fairly large chain that long-preceded | the current wave. Is Dave & Busters too much like an adult | Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese, rather than a more casual bar you | can pop into? | wizardofthetoa wrote: | Dave & Busters' arcade games are not real arcade games; | they are more like casino games. There's no Galaga, no | anything that has levels or characters, it's all giant | wheels that you spin or darts that you throw or bags that | you punch. It lacks all intellectual appeal, and honestly | seems more like a gym than an arcade. | weaksauce wrote: | it does too much. it's like 3 bars in one/a restaurant/over | the top huge style arcade games/meeting room venue/pool | hall/darts/shuffleboard | | probably missing something but yeah it's everything and | nothing at the same time. | splonk wrote: | > Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. | Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside | contractor or dedicated hobbyist (who knows how to fix them.) | | To expand on this a bit, the actual maintainer of the machine | is probably the most important factor of the quality of the | barcade, at least if you're the type of person who cares | about rulesets for games and will be irritated if something | doesn't work because of a broken sensor. I like enthusiast | owned/operated places because the owner who's actually | playing the games will notice problems and fix them, as | opposed to bars where any problems with the machine will | either be broken until the maintainer gets around to it on | their scheduled route, or possibly the problems never get | reported at all. One possibly useful proxy for this is seeing | where your local leagues play - in general they're more | likely to be in places with well-maintained machines. | | For San Francisco: | | - Outer Orbit is my favorite place, even though they've | recently removed a couple machines for more seating (more | evidence that the bar/restaurant is the money maker). The | owners met playing pinball, are heavily involved in the local | scene, and do the maintenance themselves, so the machines | tend to be in great shape. Decent Hawaiian food and a quite | good beer list. | | - Free Gold Watch is the place everyone always recommends | because it has the most machines. My feeling is that they | don't keep up on maintenance well enough because I always | have trouble with tables always having enough small things | broken about it that it's impossible to advance some modes. | (On pretty much any modern machine every lane/ramp/hole is | probably going to be required for some mode or another, so a | single broken sensor breaks the entire game if you're trying | for wizard mode.) It's definitely the place to go for the | arcade experience with a lot of machines to choose from. | | - the Alamo theater actually has a reasonably decent room | upstairs from the bar, across the hall from the theaters. | Doesn't seem to get rotated much and I'm not convinced it's | maintained regularly, but it doesn't get much traffic so it | doesn't seem like stuff breaks quickly there. A lot of people | seem surprised when I mention it's there. | | - Gestalt always has machines in decent shape, but the bar | itself might close any month now. | | - Emporium/Musee Mecanique - I don't go to them often, but | they're both more generalist arcades, so they'll have a few | machines at varying maintenance levels. | | I'm not sure how often https://pinballmap.com/ gets updated | or how its coverage is outside the SF Bay Area, but it looks | pretty accurate for me. | MegaDeKay wrote: | Which ones have you tried? My understanding is that the VPX | physics engine is the closest to the real thing at this point | in time. | | I'm really tempted to build a virtual pinball machine. It would | be awfully nice if the display of choice (42" LG C2 OLED) would | come down in price a bit more first. | coldtea wrote: | > _I think more broadly, arcades have been coming back in US. | Part of it is the nostalgia aspect_ | | For it to be nostalgia, 30+ year olds must be going there. | Anybody below that would have been like 10 when arcades were on | their last legs, and wouldn't have been allowed to go there as | a kid, right? | pupppet wrote: | Does anyone actually make new arcade machines/games anymore? | Like real 80's/90's style arcade games, not the ticket | dispensers. | throwaway_75369 wrote: | Some indies still make arcade games - Killer Queens comes to | mind, and I'm pretty sure Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | Shredder's Revenge got a full on coinop release. Of course, | Japan still puts out all manner of new machines with all | kinds of creative gimmicks (especially music-based, or arena | fighters), but they're rarely available stateside and they | might not always be the vibe you're looking for, if you're | trying to scratch a 90's nostalgia itch. | | https://sternpinball.com/ continues to make modern (awesome) | pinball machines - I'm fortunate enough to work for a company | that stocks a couple in breakrooms. They also usually have a | big presence in the floor of California Extreme | (https://caextreme.org/) which is totally worth checking out | if you're in the Bay Area in August. | | Edit: For a little bit more to search on in terms of Japanese | stuff - https://arcadeheroes.com/2023/02/10/new-arcade-games- | for-jap... | toast0 wrote: | Yes, but there's not nearly the variety. Mostly new arcade | machines are either retro stuff, or real pinball, driving | games or other large cabinet experiences, or fighting games. | Not a lot of new standard sized standup arcades that aren't | fighting games (or at least, I'm not aware of them). The | reality is all these machines are basically PCs now, and | where's the excitement from playing a PC based arcade game on | a ~25" screen for 50 cents to a dollar when you could play it | at home on your PC or your PC based console. | pupppet wrote: | See this is what confuses me, are Arcades not still fairly | big in Japan? What do they play there? Old machines? | ranger_danger wrote: | Arcades are unfortunately slowly dying in Japan, but it's | still a much bigger business there than in the states. | Most new arcade machines since the late 2000s are off- | the-shelf PCs with (already for its time) outdated | graphics cards. | throwaway_75369 wrote: | Depends on the location, many of the best arcades in | Japan are multiple floors, and each floor usually has a | theme, so like the ground floor is crane games, and then | a floor for shooters/shmups, then a floor or two for | fighting games, and then a floor or two for music games. | Maybe a floor with card games or those giant horse racing | games... | | I was fortunate enough to go like 5 years ago, but I | really fondly remember Taito Hey had a whole row of like | 8 Super Sweet Fighter 2 Turbo machines which were | basically continuously occupied, and then a floor down I | watched somebody basically one credit perfect one of | those Capcom Dungeons and Dragons side scrolling | brawlers, and then on another floor was a widescreen | Darius machine (which I'd never seen in the US). | | In other locations there were floors of like card-based | army formation strategy games, music games with circular | screens, etc. | | Pachinko is like its own thing, almost always in | different buildings, usually like 3 times as loud as the | arcades, and full of smoking. Strangely I don't recall | seeing any western style pinball machines anywhere, | though. | | Basically, it was arcade nirvana for someone like me | (born in the early 80's) I heard things got pretty bad | during Covid, though, so I don't know how much it's | regressed. I do have a friend who just got back from | visiting the first time though, and he mentioned he could | still find tons of competition in old fighting games and | stuff. (Man I wanna go back, especially since the | exchange rate is so good now) | | Edit: typos | johnvanommen wrote: | > The reality is all these machines are basically PCs now, | and where's the excitement from playing a PC based arcade | game on a ~25" screen for 50 cents to a dollar when you | could play it at home on your PC or your PC based console. | | This is something that Michael Abrash hasn't really | received proper credit for: he basically invented the model | of using off-the-shelf PC components for videogames, which | then spread to consoles and arcade games. | | If it wasn't for Abrash's "mode x" we wouldn't have | DirectX, then Direct3D, then XBox, then arcade games that | are nothing more than personal computers. | | At the time that Abrash came up with "mode x", there were | basically two ways to play games on a PC. The first method | was to use a PC that included a great graphics chip (like | the Amiga), the second method was to add aftermarket cards. | Neither method was ideal, because there weren't many Amigas | in existence, and software developers couldn't maximize | sales while selling software that required aftermarket | hardware. | batty_alex wrote: | > The reality is all these machines are basically PCs now | | You could make the opposite argument back in the day. | Arcade hardware was what home PCs, and consoles, tried to | emulate. The truth is, these still use specialized hardware | even if they end up targeting embedded Linux or embedded | Windows (or a combination of the two). They are also | incredibly efficient with their use of hardware | ohhnoodont wrote: | Killer Queen definitely managed to capture something | unique. | batty_alex wrote: | Yes. Raw Thrills, Sega, and Taito are still in the business | of arcade machines. Pinball similarly has quite a few | developers | nkozyra wrote: | The thing that baffles me is we're still stuck in these form | factors that are mostly made for | | a) standing b) in a group of 1 or 2 | | The cabinets don't have to look like this anymore. We don't | need a CRT, we don't need the full size cabinets. | | Seems like a real opportunity to design a more bar-friendly | option, tables with multiple monitors that operate like the | old desktop/seated machines or similarly. | | Standing is fine but after awhile people don't want to smoosh | next to each other and stand in front of a crappy screen. But | most of these places are too attached to the retro aspect, | imo. | JohnFen wrote: | Video games have had a format like that, intended | specifically for bars and restaurants, since pretty close | to the beginning. They're called "cocktail cabinets". | [deleted] | nkozyra wrote: | > Video games have had a format like that, intended | specifically for bars and restaurants, since pretty close | to the beginning. They're called "cocktail cabinets". | | I referenced them above (but gave them a different name, | "old desktop/seated machines"). They're still archaic and | don't fit well with modern bar seating nor gaming. | | Playing on one screen split in half was sort of a | necessity at the time but it never really worked that | well. | batty_alex wrote: | > a) standing b) in a group of 1 or 2 | | You just need to find an arcade with some candy cabinets, | those are seated. Also, most of them are set up for one | player per cab with your opponent sitting on the other side | of you | [deleted] | throwaway675309 wrote: | Well one of the reasons that a pinball video game is always | going to be easier is that by their digital nature they're | significantly more deterministic from a Newtonian physics | perspective. | | The "virtual solenoids" that control the paddles in a computer | game are always going to exert the exact same amount of impulse | on the ball each and every time they're activated. Contrast | that with your average Addams family pinball machine that has | been bruised and beaten have to death, and the flippers are | practically flaccid. | | The analog nature makes the game less predictable and therefore | more difficult for players. | laputan_machine wrote: | I think you're spot on. Where I live there is a _huge_ arcade | in what 's effectively an old millhouse in a suburb, over 3 | floors, and has been selling beer for a while. It's so popular | it's spawned a bunch of smaller arcade bars in the city centre. | | I think another part of it is that as the highstreet moves away | from appliance shops there'll have to be things to fill these | places instead, such as these kind of entertainment venues. | | I love arcades, so I'm hoping that they're here to stay :D | [deleted] | dylan604 wrote: | >they have finally figured out a sustainable business model: | become a bar. | | There used to be a bar in my town that I always thought was a | great idea, but this particular bar was not in the greatest of | locations. It was called Bar of Soap, and it was a bar in the | front, but a laundromat in the back. I think this would be much | better located in a college town, but this one was no where | near a college, and not really near any kind of residential to | speak of. | m463 wrote: | > Also it is just me or do pinball games just never seem to get | the physics of the ball right? | | There are plenty of "real" pinball machines out there, seems | that they keep making them. | gausswho wrote: | The most realistic game of pinball physics-wise for me is | Zaccaria. Its selection is of uneven quality. I recommend | sticking to the historical solid state and electro mechanical | tables, over the deluxe or remakes. My favorite table is | probably Farfalla. VR mode is quite immersive. It has a free | time limited mode for any table, and tables are quite cheap on | sale. | ravenstine wrote: | I think it's also a subtle reaction to the false promise that | we can wear an Oculus, live in a pod, and be happy. Turns out | that just going out and doing things IRL is more consistently | interesting and has fewer bugs than your typical AAA video game | in 2023. Better yet if you can drink while you're at it. | JohnFen wrote: | > Also it is just me or do pinball games just never seem to get | the physics of the ball right? | | It sure seems that way, but I think it's more nuanced. With a | top-notch video version of pinball, I don't they get the | physics wrong enough to notice. But what they are is | _incomplete_. | | The physicality of playing a pinball game is an integral part | of the experience. Standing at the machine, pressing the | flipper buttons, feeling the vibrations of the ball and | mechanisms, etc. If you don't have that stuff, then the game is | going to feel wrong even if the physics of the playfield are | 100% accurate. | mikepurvis wrote: | There's also just the fundamental difference in motives-- PC | pinball is designed to be fun, while arcade pinball, at least | historically, was designed to eat your money. | the_af wrote: | Agreed. | | But let me add the caveat that a lot of arcade videogames | were designed to eat your money as well, something I always | found infuriating as a teenager. Some were fair -- things | like Golden Axe, TMNT or Sunset Riders can be won with a | single coin if you know what you're doing. But plenty of | arcades are unwinnable (or require unreasonable expertise) | for you to have a good time without spending lots of coins. | | Which is why I always ended up playing Double Dragon, TMNT | or Sunset Riders ;) | mywittyname wrote: | Mortal Kombat was designed to be Pay to Win. Someone | reverse engineered the arcade version and later-stage | opponents were programmed to strike you like 2 frames | before you would have hit them, and there was a decay | each time you put a quarter into the machine. | ryandrake wrote: | I liked the Fighting Game PvP model, where if you won, | you play your next game for free. You could go to the | machine with one quarter and play all night if you were | skilled. | autoexec wrote: | supposedly gauntlet was too. | https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/back-in-the-days- | we-h... | | The games where your HP constantly dropped over time and | was replenished by inserting more coins were the worst! | yamtaddle wrote: | Pinball's great at eating the money of casuals, while | letting even moderately-experience players have a pretty | good time for very little money :-) | | Machines I was good at, I used to not-infrequently leave | with a credit on them, after paying for one game and | playing two. And I _am not_ a very good pinball player. | jacobr1 wrote: | > while arcade pinball, at least historically, was designed | to eat your money. | | It is a nuanced tradeoff. You need to make it entertaining | enough so that players will continue to play, but also | difficult enough that they regularly lose and put in more | quarters. Getting that balance right is hard. | zamnos wrote: | Instead of getting the balance right, the obvious answer | is this is a business proposition, so cheat. Instead of | having a fixed difficulty, you decide on a minimum coins- | per-hour revenue, and tilt the table ever so subtley | against the player if it looks like that revenue target | isn't going to be hit. | dasil003 wrote: | I've played pinball for most of my life, and definitely agree | with this. At a certain point the physicality is not | reproducible--there are too many layers to it. No two | machines are identical, and they change over time. The state | of the playfield, including when it was cleaned/waxed, the | strength of the flippers, and everything else about the | machine impact play in ways which good players can and do | account for. For instance, it's possible to anticipate how | much english is on the ball when it comes off a rubber at an | angle and how it will react when it hits the next surface, | but it won't be consistent between machines, so you need to | play enough to get a read on it. Great players can do this | quickly, and then adjust their play accordingly. It's bit | like rebounding in basketball in that you have to anticipate | where the ball is going to bounce based on very small | trajectory deltas, but the advantage is you can move the | machine. | dr_orpheus wrote: | There is also a barcade near me that has a model I like (and is | probably advantageous to them for staffing). It is a pour-your- | own beer/wine/cider bar, so it isn't a full bar. But the RFID | wristbands they give you for the pour-your-own also work on the | arcade machines which is pretty slick. | JeremyHerrman wrote: | I've been building my own pinball machine from scratch on and off | for the last several years. What I love about pinball design is | that it combines so many disciplines: woodworking, metalworking, | CAD, electronics, low level & high level software, game design, | storytelling, blinking lights, and competitive fast action play. | | I've got some old photos of my build progress here: | https://jherrman.com/gravity-pinball-public-build-log | whitej125 wrote: | I grew up on pinball. My dad would buy/fix/sell pinball machines | and jukeboxes as a side hobby - and of course we'd keep some for | ourselves. I absolutely LOVED learning how these machines worked. | Being able to go from a beautifully designed playing field to | then flipping that up and seeing how it all worked on the | underbelly. That trait of learning how things worked under hood | has carried with me ever since (and as a SWE - I use it | everyday!). | | To this day - myself and my sibs each have one of our childhood | pinballs at our homes. For me its 1980 Black Knight by Williams | (one of the early pinballs to have "voice" sounds). It's in our | garage now. It's pretty cool to watch my kids and their friends | play it. A refreshing alternative to screens IMO. | SeanLuke wrote: | Back around 2004 when we built the FlockBots, a small army of | differential-drive robots, we needed a microswitch with an extra- | long, 4-5", actuator arm that we could bend to form a bump | sensor. There's exactly one place to get such a thing: the | pinball machine repair industry. Pinball machines have | microswitches with long actuators bent into all sorts of odd | shapes to stick up out of the little divots in which balls fall | and be triggered when they do so. There are so many obscure | shapes that the industry just supplies long straight arms | designed to be bent as needed into whatever shape you need for | your unit. It's essentially a microswitch with a straightened-out | paper clip welded onto the switch actuator. | | https://www.pinballlife.com/sub-microswitch-with-4-straight-... | chefandy wrote: | My gut says we're going to see a bit of a meat space backlash to | the world of automation, remoteness, anonymity, and modern | conveniences. The hipsters of the mid-aughts already did to some | extent, but I think this will be far more mainstream than even | the re-emergence of vinyl records. | | There's no doubt that AI and such will bring great benefit to our | society in many ways, but I think people are already becoming a | bit anxious about the cost, especially culturally. It's not _new_ | -- it's one step in a long trend of many things becoming more | impersonal by design: Buying things from anonymous companies made | in anonymous overseas factories delivered by a huge anonymous | workforce. "Art" that was "made" by computers. Automated customer | "service." Automated "therapy." Transportation hailed by, paid | for with, and in many instances used for the entirety of | communication with an anonymous contractor. Groceries, delivery | food, and anonymously assembled meal kits dropped on your | doorstep without the inefficiencies and possible tension of | human-to-human interaction. | | I don't think many people will forget the benefits we reap from | modern technology or reject it outright, but I do think many of | us will be less enthused to be a cog in our increasingly | automated, anonymous, and efficiency-obsessed consumerist | machine. I foresee many of us being much more interested in | having in-person experiences and interacting with mechanical | objects in many parts of our lives. Don't have a crystal ball or | anything, but that's my prediction. | | *Edit: I don't mean to be too negative about the tech. Many | effects attributable to tech were because this tech made most of | our lives more livable during the pandemic. I just think a lot of | people are ready to shed a lot of that. Other random thought: | it's quite possible, if not likely, that engaging in this | lifestyle shift will be a luxury, at least initially, and involve | some significant class tension. | nemo44x wrote: | I think people want real, tangible things. They want to hold | them and feel them and interact with them. They want real | relationships in real places doing real things. The virtual | world dominates many of our lives from how we interact with | people, work with people, and socialize (like this forum). As | the virtual world has replaced more and more of our time it | makes sense that we crave a physical, tactile space. | chefandy wrote: | While I agree that people generally want these things, not | everybody values them equally, and aren't willing or able to | expend the same amount of resources and effort to get them. | Most people value local stores which sell damn near | everything they need and are staffed by their neighbors... | but for many, the resource and effort savings afforded by | Amazon are more valuable to some extent. I think that these | things, to some extent, have become a luxury. | martyvis wrote: | Roman Mars just released an excellent podcast looking at the | state of play with pinball champions and designers at | https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/for-amusement-only-fr... | nerpderp82 wrote: | https://pinside.com/pinball/map | | https://pinballmap.com/map | bena wrote: | Pinball always seems like something that is just below the | threshold of pop culture at any given moment. | | Every now and then it pops up over, but for the most part, it's | just under the radar. | RheingoldRiver wrote: | Pinball is the best game. I used to play the Lord of the Rings | machine when I was a kid. You had to collect the Fellowship to | get multiball, although there were also a couple other ways you | could trigger multiball (with a smaller number of balls though). | I always considered controlling multiball as long as possible to | be the "goal" of pinball, and of course getting as many free | games from two quarters as possible. | | Recently I learned (through hn I think) that there's an arcade in | Chicago that offers a relatively cheap play-all-day pinball | arcade room, I'm thinking of trying to go down there some day. | | Unfortunately I also remember that I got a lot of wrist pain from | playing, and I'm a bit concerned about re-triggering that; it | would be catastrophic if my typing were impacted, so unless I had | some prolonged time off work I don't think I'd ever play for more | than maybe an hour at a time, spread out over several months. | splonk wrote: | (I used to own a LotR) | | LotR has three different "main" multiball modes (one for each | movie), as well as the Gollum multiball (just 2 balls, | normally). The Fellowship multiball is the one that requires | hitting essentially every shot on the table. | | The particular thing about LotR is that the multiballs can be | stacked with the "story" modes (from shooting the center ring). | Depending on how flaily you are, this can make the story modes | easier or harder, but generally I find that it makes them safer | if you have enough ball control. When my overarching goal was | to reach Valinor (which requires beating a certain number of | story modes, as well as all the multiballs), the general | strategy was to spam Two Towers multiball as much as possible | on top of a story mode. | wintermutestwin wrote: | Yes, and when you complete all three movie multiballs, you | can then destroy the ring, which requires that you hit the | ring to start the mode, make four shots and then get a | perfect ring shot (which is way harder than just hitting the | ring) to destroy the ring. | | I've had my LotR pin for a year now and still haven't managed | to pull off destroy the ring, but perhaps tonight will be the | night! | RheingoldRiver wrote: | Oh the dialogue line for that is, "You must destroy the | Ring" spoken very urgently right? I think I remember | getting to that a few times although yeah I NEVER managed | to actually destroy it. | koz1000 wrote: | That's the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield. They now have | the largest collection of arcade videogames under one roof, and | they're growing their pinball collection. | | https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/ | taylodl wrote: | I've been playing pinball since before The Who penned the song | Pinball Wizard. A couple of things pop out. One, the game was | $0.25 back then. It's a bit surprising to hear it's still $0.25. | It should be roughly $1 per play to keep pace with inflation. | Related to that is they were expensive to operate. It got to the | point it was rare to find a machine that was 100% operating - and | that was in the 70's! Once of the reasons they quickly went away | in the 80's (to my dismay), was due to their expense in | comparison to the digital arcade games. The kids were pumping | quarters into both, but the digital arcade games required far | less maintenance. So they made more money. | | There are a few barcades in my city. Every single one is setup | where digital arcade games are free with the purchase of beer. | Pinball costs money. Many of them are $0.50 per game. A few are | $1 per game. They're _not_ free. Interesting to hear that 's not | the case elsewhere. Not sure how they're making the economics | work. | mhink wrote: | > It's a bit surprising to hear it's still $0.25. It should be | roughly $1 per play to keep pace with inflation. | | Where are you playing?! Most places I go to are $0.75, except | for one which is a bargain at $0.50. I probably wouldn't play a | $1 game unless it's a game I know well. | User23 wrote: | In an increasingly digital world it's just fun to play a physics | based electromechanical game for the change of pace. | jxramos wrote: | it's stimulating in a whole different dimension. Hearing that | steel ball smack the glass gives the thrill of being hit. | Feeling real vibrations in the hands, lights hitting you from | different angles, sound. Something akin to a hunters instinct | using neural circuitry chasing and hunting and shooting things | puts you in a deep in the zone mode at times. | slipperlobster wrote: | All of what you said is absolutely why ePinball won't ever | feel the same. It's a shame - with the price of a "real" | machine being 5 digits (USD), I can't ever see myself owning | one.. but damn, I want to. | LeifCarrotson wrote: | 5 digits? There are lots for 4 figures, going rate seems to | be around $5k. And if you're willing to fix one up, they | can be had for 3 figures instead of 5: | | https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds?s=1&keywords | =... | slipperlobster wrote: | Sure, but everything I've seen in the 4 figures range is | MUCH older than I'm looking for or needs MUCH more work | than I would like to put in for my first table. | | Every year, I go to an annual pinball convention in my | area. The tables that are 4 figures are the old 70s and | 80s tables. Hell, one I've had my eye on (Fish Tales [1] | from 1992) is averaging about $5,700USD on Pinside. | | [1] https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/fish-tales | jxramos wrote: | there's an interesting middle ground virtual pinball case | that's an approximation. This fella built his own case and | everything in between. It was a fascinating project to | watch | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxilHoceiNo&list=PLrqlHbqP7 | F... | fauxpause_ wrote: | Question, I played a pinball video game a while back (Demon | Tilt). It was largely just a pinball machine. But it also let you | nudge the ball and this was pretty critical to doing well. Are | physical machines supposed to have this tilting mechanic? Because | I'm vaguely aware that TILT is a thing you can be punished for. | And I'm wondering how it is possible to avoid unlucky deaths | otherwise. | tanseydavid wrote: | Nudging (without triggering a TILT) is generally considered a | legitimate part of the game play. | | https://digitalpinballfans.com/threads/was-nudging-always-co... | pessimizer wrote: | > Are physical machines supposed to have this tilting mechanic? | | Yes, and "tilt" sensitivity can be adjusted. When I was a kid | we called the machines that would tilt at the slightest | movement "tight" and the ones you couldn't tilt without pushing | them over "loose." The looser the machine, the fewer quarters | you have to feed it. | vikingerik wrote: | Real pinball absolutely allows nudging. There is a sensor in | the machine, a pendulum hanging within a ring so that it makes | contact if you move the machine too far. The game software will | assess you with a warning at first, and then if you go too far | the penalty is to shut down and lose the ball in play. | | Nudging just enough so you don't trip the sensor, or | deliberately going too far to incur the warning when you need | to save a ball, is absolutely a component of skilled play. | fauxpause_ wrote: | Dumb question but how do you do this? Are you gripping the | machine with your hands and literally lifting it from | different sides? | vikingerik wrote: | Not lifting, but you can push the machine horizontally from | your normal position with your hands on the buttons. With | your hands at the front corners, you can push north-south | or east-west or on any such axis. The machines are designed | to allow this; the legs and feet have some flex. | | What's different from people's experience of virtual | pinball is that you're moving the machine underneath the | ball, not the ball itself. The computer games like Space | Cadet let you deflect the ball in open space anywhere on | the playfield... that's not really how it works, Microsoft | got that wrong, what you're really doing is pushing objects | on the playfield either into or away from the ball. | mcnnowak wrote: | You can slap the buttons hard to get the table to wobble a | bit, you can tap the cabinet with your wrists, you can grab | the table tightly and move a leg or a hip in the opposite | direction while keeping your body rigid, you can even slide | the whole table if you're feeling desperate and want to | burn a warning. | | It's a super physical game if you're taking risky shots and | having to recover from bad situations constantly, and the | pros make it look like they're barely nudging at all by | taking safe shots and making minor corrections with nudges. | syntheweave wrote: | Imagine you're gripping the handlebars of a bike - you can | push it a little bit laterally, but much more by leaning | into a turn. Gripping the side of the machine to nudge | works in the same way - you can slap it a little bit to get | the ball going off its designed trajectory, but you have to | use your legs and core to get it to move a lot, and if the | game is set tight that will usually set off the tilt | warnings. | [deleted] | larrik wrote: | About a year and a half ago I bought 3 pinball machines along | with a bunch of arcade boxes (and a shuffle bowler) as a lot. | Price-wise it was a pretty good deal on the pinballs with | everything else thrown in free. | | The pros: | | * Pinball is very good at keeping the baby awake until bedtime, | lol. I would sit him on the glass and he would be enamored by the | sights and sounds. Screens don't catch his eyes, so the | physicality was great. * Having pinball in the house is fun, and | it makes parties better. | | The cons: | | * Turns out I'm not good at pinball! * My machines are older (mid | 90's) and they are a TON of work. The arcades too. * One worked | the morning I bought it and never again. Still working on it here | and there. * The others have all sorts of gremlins big and small. | * I have yet to find someone local who can repair them. | | But, I've learned a ton about them and electronics in the | meanwhile, so I _no longer_ entirely regret jumping into this. | | BTW, they sell new-in-box pinballs for almost as much as I paid | for my whole 9 machine arcade, and you have to wait many months | sometimes to get them. There's limited editions that are 2x-3x | that, even. | xahrepap wrote: | Do you know a good place to shop for new-in-box pinball | machines? | | A few weeks ago I poked around on eBay and Google. And mostly | found cheap digital ones or other cabinets similar to the | arcades you can get at Walmart. | Symbiote wrote: | A local-ish distributor [1] of American pinball machines | lists these: American Pinball, Bitronic, Chicago Gaming, | Jersey Jack Pinball, Pinball Brothers, Stern Pinball. | | EUR5,000-EUR10,000 (plus taxes) seems the going rate, up to | EUR20,000 if you want some sort of "limited edition" (but | aren't they all limited now?). | | [1] https://www.shop.freddys-pinball- | paradise.de/index.php?n=99&... | lief79 wrote: | Posted above: | | https://pinballmap.com/ | | Has a dealer near me, no idea how good they are, but the 81 | machines caught my attention. | larrik wrote: | You would want a dealer, and there are only a handful of | machines in production at a time. | | Stern is the main one since Williams gave up. There are | others, but Stern is the one people consider the most lately. | chorsestudios wrote: | Stern Pinball still manufactures new pinball machines with | new table designs. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Everyone is mentioning Stern in the comments, but Jersey | Jack pinball is superior in many ways (and costs more). | Don't ignore them if you're looking to buy. | pfarrell wrote: | I considered buying a pinball machine in my 20's. An older, | wiser guy I knew told me, "Do you like working | on small gadgets and tinkering with lots of rubber bands and | motors and solenoids?" "Not really, but I love playing | pinball." "Don't buy a pinball machine." | | Now that I've got a basement and am reasonably stable, the itch | is coming back. | wintermutestwin wrote: | The trick is to find a local repair person and vet them. If | you buy a new modern pin by a company still around, you won't | have many issues with a home use only pin. | yamtaddle wrote: | I've had the itch for over two decades at this point, but the | prices of the machines I want keep inflating faster than my | stomach/budget for spending money on pinball machines :-( | | Guess I should have picked one up back in high school. Would | have been a lot of money for me at the time, but it'd be | worth like 4-5x that now if it I'd kept it in decent shape. | Moving it several times would have sucked, though. | mmetzger wrote: | Various manufacturers have been listed, but there are actually | several different companies building them currently: | | - Stern Pinball (sternpinball.com) - Great, modern themes, | biggest manufacturer. Recently released The Mandalorian, | Godzilla, Foo Fighters, etc. Easiest by far to find to play and / | or purchase via distributors. | | - Jersey Jack Pinball (jerseyjackpinball.com) - Tend to be more | collector quality machines. Recently released Guns n' Roses | (developed with Slash), Toy Story 4, and the Godfather. | | - Spooky Pinball (spookypinball.com) - Initially home brew | pinball, built into much larger company. Releases include things | like Rick & Morty, Halloween, Ultraman, and Scooby Doo. | | - Chicago Gaming Company (chicago-gaming.com) - Involved in many | things, but from a pinball standpoint, mostly have made remakes | of popular 90's games with more modern hardware (Medieval | Madness, Attack From Mars, Monster Bash, Cactus Canyon). | | - Multimorphic (multimorphic.com) - Advanced pinball system, | designed to allow changing of games in the cabinet (ie partial | playfield swaps). Large screen built into playfield, ball | tracking, etc. Games have been mostly original themes. | | There are other smaller manufacturers as well | (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pinball_manufacturer...) | that have made games of various types. | | Typically each manufacturer will release a given title, at | typically 2-3 "trim" levels (ie, Stern calls these Pro / Premium | / LE, Jersey Jack has called them Standard Edition, Limited | Edition, Collectors Edition). Price and features go up with the | trim level. | koz1000 wrote: | Chicago Gaming just announced a non-remake, Pulp Fiction. The | designer and programmer are veterans from the Williams days | (Mark Ritchie and George Petro) | | https://www.chicago-gaming.com/coinop/pulp-fiction | | The old System 11 look and feel...is kind of neat. | Tao3300 wrote: | Ah, I was recently shocked to see that a local arcade had a | Mandalorian pinball machine. I couldn't believe something that | new was being pinballified. It sits across from the old | Simpsons arcade brawler that kids can't get enough of. | skeaker wrote: | Pinball has had a pretty interesting hacker-y sort of space for | years, so I'm glad to hear this. | | I remember going to a few conventions pre-covid where enthusiasts | would bring out their machines, often so old that they had to be | completely restored under the hood, and there's a surprising | amount of complexity that goes into them. Even simple games need | each and every bumper to be wired up without obstructing the | other parts and maintained such that they work every time. A | player will notice when a bumper doesn't go off even once. More | complex games that do fancier things with the ball need all kinds | of interesting physical mechanisms to do so. Many games have | multiball mechanics and there are multiple novel ways to tuck | those balls into the board and route them back up after they fall | out of play. | | I suppose it's sort of a weird middle ground between watchmaking | and car repair. Would love to see more novel ideas enter this | space if it really is picking up again as the article says. | jamal-kumar wrote: | I remember dropping in on a place that specialized in restoring | old pinball machines oh say 10 years ago? They were just REALLY | starting to pick up back then and already were swamped with | work they were telling me. Some of their restorations were | going for like 10k+$... They were also restoring one of those | electromechanical dog racing games for a casino. Honestly if | anyone wanted a job in working with these things there's | probably really good demand for skills. | HeckFeck wrote: | Something had to fill the void after Microsoft deprecated 3D | Pinball for Windows. | swagtricker wrote: | Seattle area is blessed with a wealth of all ages and 21+ | barcades. There's a great one less than 5 miles from my house. | I've been a pinball fan for years and still play weekly, playing | in a local league pre-COVID. About 2 years ago, I saw a machine | with my childhood hero that I couldn't pass up buying. A year ago | it finally got delivered. I play at home a few times a week. No | big issues with the machine other than one dead "flashy" servo | that doesn't work and a stuck target that doesn't impact | gameplay. I'll get around to fixing them at some point. FWIW - | Here's some info on my big toy: | | https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/spooky-announces-ultraman-... | cpeterso wrote: | If you live in the Bay Area, check out the Pacific Pinball Museum | in Alameda. You pay an admission fee and then all the games are | free play. https://www.pacificpinball.org/ | | Discussed on HN two months ago: https://www.pacificpinball.org/ | axiomdata316 wrote: | Previous post. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35954776 | freedomben wrote: | > _Even now, in South Carolina, fans are still lobbying the state | to lift a decades-old ban on people under 18 playing._ | | Fascinating. I had no idea the history behind pinball and | gambling. Nevertheless that seems like the classic "ban the | legitimate thing to stop illegitimate use cases." | foobarian wrote: | My favorite pinball implementation was a PC game that was one of | the first to use hacked VGA modes to get a better resolution. I | don't know what I found more interesting, the game itself, or the | mode tweaks :-). I'll need to dig deeper to find the exact | name... | vikingerik wrote: | This would have been either Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, | or Epic Pinball. All of them used the 256kb of VGA video memory | to display a playfield several times taller than the screen (a | 64kb bitmap), and could scroll instantly just by setting the | start-position register each frame. | | What table themes do you remember? If it was Android, that's | Epic Pinball; if it was Party Land (an amusement park theme), | that's Pinball Fantasies. | 0x445442 wrote: | Pinbot Circuits Activated ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-16 23:00 UTC)