Posted on 05 September 2010. Tags: Pinball, R.I.P.
On this very day, exactly 10 years ago, Williams abruptly terminated it’s pinball division. As it was the only remaining mayor player in the pinball business at the time, this move actually meant that over 90 percent of pinball market suddenly ceased to exist.
Many people declared this day as “The day that pinball died?”
Do I agree with them?
Unfortunately I must say that I do.
Although that new machines still get made by STERN, with every new pinball announced I keep asking myself: “Where’s the progress?”. Every new machine could as well be built in 1995 and no one could tell a difference. We all know what happened with the technology in the last 10 years an nothing of that reflects in any of the new pinball machines. Here’s some stuff that could be well used in new pinball machines, but it’s not:
- LCD displays; the only step forward here in the last 20 years was pinball 2000 platform. Instead of hi res graphics that could work as both, backglass and display , there is a 128×32 4 color dmd.
Tiny, gsm like displays could even be integrated into playfield itself, instead of archaic lamps.
- Connectivity; new machines could easily be connected to the internet where global scoreboards could be published.
Machines could notify operators about earnings or problems with machine via gsm or email.
Operators could mark machines with location data, that would be published online, so the players could easily found the desired machines.
Entire online community could be built around machines, where players could communicate with operators or each others.
- Lasers; just remember with happened to the pc mice in a last couple of years. I’m sure laser motion sensors would be quite useful in pinballs
- Moore’s law; Imagine the cpu/memory capacity could be put in machines these days. What sort of games or self diagnostic tools could be built with that.
- New materials; I’m not sure about this one, but i bet, that there’s tons of new stuff that could be used
So. I guess Now I just have to wait until some STERN guy stumbles upon this blog and convince his boss to invest into Pinball 3000.
Until then I’ll just play with with we got, although it’s build on 15 years old technology.
View full post on JJ’s Pinball Blog
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Posted on 04 September 2010. Tags: 2009, Pinball, Report, Show
Martin Ayub has been busying away at Pinball News HQ getting the 2009 UK Pinball Show & European Pinball Championship report written up. Sadly Martin wasn’t able to compete in the EPC during the show as he had to organise it! Quite how he finds the time to remember half of what goes on I never know!
Click the pic for the 2009 report, great stuff Martin
Cheers
Nick
The Pinball Blog
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Posted on 04 September 2010. Tags: 2009, Pinball, Report, Show
Martin Ayub has been busying away at Pinball News HQ getting the 2009 UK Pinball Show & European Pinball Championship report written up. Sadly Martin wasn’t able to compete in the EPC during the show as he had to organise it! Quite how he finds the time to remember half of what goes on I never know!
Click the pic for the 2009 report, great stuff Martin
Cheers
Nick
The Pinball Blog
View full post on The Pinball Blog
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Posted on 03 September 2010. Tags: 2009, Pinball, Report, Show
Martin Ayub has been busying away at Pinball News HQ getting the 2009 UK Pinball Show & European Pinball Championship report written up. Sadly Martin wasn’t able to compete in the EPC during the show as he had to organise it! Quite how he finds the time to remember half of what goes on I never know!
Click the pic for the 2009 report, great stuff Martin
Cheers
Nick
The Pinball Blog
View full post on The Pinball Blog
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Posted on 02 September 2010. Tags: 2009, Pinball, Report, Show
Martin Ayub has been busying away at Pinball News HQ getting the 2009 UK Pinball Show & European Pinball Championship report written up. Sadly Martin wasn’t able to compete in the EPC during the show as he had to organise it! Quite how he finds the time to remember half of what goes on I never know!
Click the pic for the 2009 report, great stuff Martin
Cheers
Nick
The Pinball Blog
View full post on The Pinball Blog
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Posted on 02 September 2010. Tags: Pinball, Problems, Work
Dr Who, In my opinion is a great under rated game. I originally played it at Mark’s house and especially loved the multiball and the combo’s. I cant remember playing it in the 90’s at all.
Dan has left his Dr Who at my house and it has the common problem of the mini playfield not rising properly which in my opinion kills the game play so i decided to try to fix it. I basically made one good gear box from two bad ones and it still doesn’t work properly, there were broken gears and gears missing teeth in both gearboxes. I then tested it and it gets to about half way up on the second level and stops. The motor still sounds like its turning but there is no movement on the gearbox side of the assembly. Originally the playfield did not move at all but sounded like it wanted to. In total i tore the gearbox down and took the mini playfield out of the game about 4 times and Brendan came and looked over it all too and we cleaned / re-lubed all the gears. We concluded that the main gear was spinning on the shaft. Hopefully a new gearbox/motor will fix the problem.
The game also had reset issues and did not display anything when powered on so i replaced the power driver and dmd controller board with the known working ones from my WH20 project which eliminated both these issues. The opto boards which control the optos on the second stage of the mini playfield [the grey round targets] are also hacked to bits from previous work done to them and will need replacing. Brendan is now servicing the original power driver board… bloody BR’s!!! lol
I have rebuilt the lower flippers, the EOS switches were pretty bad so i replaced them, the return springs and the coil sleeves. The left flipper also got a new crank/plunger just because i had a few spares lying around. The coil stops were not replaced but probably should be. Standard sized flipper bats were also installed.
One further thing to note, lots of mouse shit was found inside the cab!
I also made a small video of the error;
View full post on NMD’s Pinball Blog
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Posted on 31 August 2010. Tags: design, Machine, Part, Pinball, Silhouette
Who plays our games? What I mean is what range of skill sets do the people that play our games have? Are they mostly novices or do they have some amount of skill? We have no means to do real research. So we mostly just guess.
Knowing who our players are is one of the first steps in knowing what game to design. How much of the game should be engineered for the novice, beginner, intermediate, expert, or Lyman?
My guess is people play our games first and foremost because they have the shape of a pinball machine. From a distance they have the silhouette of the game they know how to play on some level. I believe Pinball is like billiards, or darts, or bowling you have some idea what it’s about and you want to play it or you don’t. They are a form of entertainment but we are not a movie or bar band that people can passively participate in.
When I design a game I try and place emphasis on the beginning to intermediate player. I think it’s really important for the novice as well as the expert to have fun playing the game too. But I believe we should not bow down to the novice. We should instead make a game that intrigues the novice and pulls him in. Then after a few games the novice is no longer. In his place is a player on his way to being average. Yay!
The fear is that since a novice’s skill is so low they will play once not achieve anything, decide that their original assessment was correct, pinball was not their “thing”, and not play anymore. So it is often argued that we should design to allow the novice to accomplish something every game.
I argue that an initial experience of a particular game is not one 2 minute game but a series of games. The goal then is after that series of games the player has learned enough about the game to want to play it again someday. I think it’s a mistake to design a game so that everyone every game sees every major feature.
There is one wrinkle in this line of thought. More and more games are being sold to be in basements. Most of which are people putting a Pin-table next to their bar and 60” flat screen for when they entertain guests. Guests will play pinball because it’s there even if they normally would not. They are novices that for the most part will not become a player but still need to be entertained.
View full post on My Pinball Blog
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Posted on 31 August 2010. Tags: 2009, Pinball, Report, Show
Martin Ayub has been busying away at Pinball News HQ getting the 2009 UK Pinball Show & European Pinball Championship report written up. Sadly Martin wasn’t able to compete in the EPC during the show as he had to organise it! Quite how he finds the time to remember half of what goes on I never know!
Click the pic for the 2009 report, great stuff Martin
Cheers
Nick
The Pinball Blog
View full post on The Pinball Blog
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Posted on 31 August 2010. Tags: 2009, Pinball, Report, Show
Martin Ayub has been busying away at Pinball News HQ getting the 2009 UK Pinball Show & European Pinball Championship report written up. Sadly Martin wasn’t able to compete in the EPC during the show as he had to organise it! Quite how he finds the time to remember half of what goes on I never know!
Click the pic for the 2009 report, great stuff Martin
Cheers
Nick
The Pinball Blog
View full post on The Pinball Blog
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Posted on 29 August 2010. Tags: 2009, Pinball, Report, Show
Martin Ayub has been busying away at Pinball News HQ getting the 2009 UK Pinball Show & European Pinball Championship report written up. Sadly Martin wasn’t able to compete in the EPC during the show as he had to organise it! Quite how he finds the time to remember half of what goes on I never know!
Click the pic for the 2009 report, great stuff Martin
Cheers
Nick
The Pinball Blog
View full post on The Pinball Blog
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