Olds go nostalgic for the good old days of pinball

[Lucy_Gothro1]

I had two favorite pinball machines at the bar my 1st-ex-hubby and I used to frequent in the early 1980s, but I can only remember the name of one - Blades of Steel. The other one was themed around an amusement park like Coney Island.

I remember (amazing, considering how long ago it was and how much I used to drink!) that the unknown game had a voice that said “A million!” with some reverence when that number of points was achieved via certain maneuver, but I can’t remember what it was! I know that rollercoasters figured prominently in the theme, though; and that there was a wire tunnel that was important (maybe in getting the 1M points?).

[LockeCJ]

I was able to find a Kings of Steel, but not a Blades of Steel. I’ve never played that one.

The other one is probably Comet. It forms a sort of trilogy with Cyclone and Hurricane.

[Lucy_Gothro1]

Thanks for the correction on that.

Comet looks as though it was the one.

[noahdjango]

@LockeCJ

m not sure quite how to respond to that.

I’m jealous of anyone who owns a pinball machine, let alone multiple tables. I don’t know the first two but they sound cool, but I love Black Knight. I only played it once as a kid and I still remember that it was really fun and was the first machine I ever got multi ball on.

[ChickieD]

Chattanooga Classic Arcade Pinball Museum.

My daughter works there so I’m there all the time.

I heard the Texas event is really good. We went to Atlanta for the Southern Fried Gaming Expo and that was so much fun.

We’re visiting Game Galaxy in Smyrna, TN next week.

[DaakSyde]

I mostly missed the pinball and arcade era. I remember as a kid seeing big ‘VIDEO’ signs and asking my parents to stop thinking it would be one of those video game arcades I’d heard about, but instead they were always just VCR movie rental places.

One year recently on vacation we went to the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot. It was a lot of fun. My wife got high score on one of the machines and was ecstatic. They have a couple of walls of pinball machines, and I ended up spending more quarters/tokens on them than the video games.

(site doesn’t onebox for some reason)
https://www.classicarcademuseum.org/games

These 4 Living History Museums in New Hampshire Will Take You Back in Time

[RAvery]

Not exactly pinball, but he does reference it.

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Pac-Man (Parody of "Taxman" by The Beatles) [Lyric Video]

Apparently recorded in 1982, but not released until now.

[noahdjango]

oh man, I’m crying

[ChickieD]

Reporting back from Smyrna, TN’s Game Galaxy:

This place is a pinball fan’s dream palace. It’s stuffed to the gills with games, games, games. In the 2 main rooms there’s a mix of arcade games, console games, band and dance games, and the more modern and popular pin tables: the modern Sterns, Toy Story 4, Jurassic Park, etc., and things like Cirque Voltaire and Theater of Magic. Plus the Spooky machines, Jersey Jacks, and Pinball Bros.

Here I found a new obsession, Spooky Pinball’s Total Nuclear Annihilation. Holy Smokes is this a good game! The board looks like a really old game - no toys, just targets and bumpers - arranged in a classic pattern. Looking at the layout, it could be a game from the 1960s. But then the way the balls shoot, the sequence of shots, the shots themselves - and the turbo charged bumpers - it completely upends the normal pinball game play. Obsessed.

Total Nuclear Annihilation Pinball! - YouTube

I also enjoyed Alien from Pinball Bros. Toy Story 4 was fun but I was just too tired to figure it all out. Jersey Jack games are a lot of bells and whistles and I just couldn’t deal with that much complexity.

Then there is the 3rd room. It is rows and rows and rows of pinballs all crammed as close together as you can get them. They have so many classic Williams games. It was heaven.

They didn’t keep all the games turned on, which was great! We could turn off machines as we went along and only hear the tables we were playing. There were very few other people in this room - maybe 2 other people beside my daughter and me.

We started with Banzai Run - the only pinball table with a fully functioning pinball game in the back glass as well as the main table. It was pretty cool except the sound design was not as good as I would wish. I got into the upper glass game. It was fun. I’d love to play it more.

I finally played Bad Cats. Talk about amazing sound. What a great table.

My daughter fell in love with the rainbow themed Spectrum.

I really liked the F-14 Tomcat game though I can see why people playing with quarters would hate the fast game play. I like machines that use the playfield design to evoke the theme. I got how it was like handing a fast plane.

I spent a lot of time on Pinbot. I love that game so hard. I’ve played it before and it’s addictive. I was quite tired so the more simple game play appealed to me.

Medusa was a huge surprise to us - an old game with flippers in the upper part of the table that would sometimes move and knit together to stop the ball from dropping to the lower part of the table. I’d never heard of it or seen any other machine with flippers that moved. (Flipper zippers)

No one has ever beat Williams games. They are so goofy and fun. They have such heart. I enjoyed playing so many of them.

We also played many, many variations of Black Knight and the many pretenders. The Pharaoh was a good one I hadn’t heard of. Black Knight 2000 is so good.

So that’s my report.

[LockeCJ]

@ChickieD

Spooky Pinball’s Total Nuclear Annihilation.

I was lucky enough to get to play this as a homebrew/prototype at TPF. The gameplay was essentially the same, but with an essentially empty backglass and hand-drawn sharpie art on the playfield. It was still a blast to play and a testament that a good design and fun gameplay are far more important than gimmicks or theme. The ball lock on this game is legitimately cool. The music, which was composed by the game’s creator, is fantastic. One small point of clarification: The retail game is produced and distributed by Spooky Pinball, but was designed almost entirely by one person, Scott Danesi. He went on to design the Rick and Morty game for Spooky, which I haven’t had a chance to play yet.

I though I had posted about it before. It took a little digging, but here’s what I said back then:

@LockeCJ

There is a game being produced by Spooky Pinball called Total Nuclear Annihilation. It has no ramps or extra playfields, very much in line with the street-level concept. I played a prototype of it earlier this year(before Spooky got involved), and it was some of the most fun I had among 400+ machines available at the show.

I found the pictures of the whitewood too:

@ChickieD

Jersey Jack games are a lot of bells and whistles

I haven’t played Toy Story 4, Guns 'n Roses, or Wonka yet, but I highly recommend Dialed In! which was designed by Pat Lawlor (The Addams Family, Funhouse, Banzai Run). It’s not licensed, and one of their lower sellers as a result (probably), but I think it’s one of their best playing games.

@ChickieD

Banzai Run - the only pinball table with a fully functioning pinball game in the back glass as well as the main table.

It’s a pretty memorable gimmick, but I could never get much ball time in the backbox, what with gravity and all.

@ChickieD

I spent a lot of time on Pinbot. I love that game so hard.

Same. Pinbot and Safe Cracker are the two machines I would probably most want to own. Neither are difficult to find, but they are also not cheap. I’ll probably never get a Pinbot via windfall, since my Brother-in-law also wants one, and the chances of finding two are low.

I like Bride of Pinbot, but not as much. Jackbot is also good and more technically advanced, but I think that the original is the best of the three. Also worth mentioning is the Doctor Who table, which has a similar upper playfield toy.

@ChickieD

flippers in the upper part of the table that would sometimes move and knit together to stop the ball

According to IPDB, there were 31 games that used Zipper Flippers, most produced between 1966 and 1970. Medusa, in 1981, is one of the latest games with that feature, although I don’t think I’ve seen it in the upper playfield on others. I was going to say that I haven’t played Medusa, but after looking at it, I’m not sure any more. I can’t find any photos to back up my fuzzy memory. Notable tables with that feature that I’ve definitely played are Fireball, Four Million B.C., and The Wiggler.

@ChickieD

variations of Black Knight

I still haven’t played the most recent one. It’s a rare unlicensed game from the modern-day Stern. I have a soft spot for games that don’t lean on known quantities, you might have noticed.

[ChickieD]

We had 140 games to go through in 10 hours. I made a decision to bypass some of the more recent and popular games even if I hadn’t played them because they had so many classics that are hard to find. That’s part of the reason I didn’t play Toy Story more. I know I’ll see those games in other places, but Bad Cats and Banzai Run? Those are so much rarer.

Both my daughter and I are huge Lawlor fans. He is the best designer hands down. My daughter was saying that there’s 2 kinds of play - a stop and shoot style and more of a flow play. Lawlor is a stop and shoot designer. We were excited to play a bunch of his older games.

I’d heard of the flipper zipper but never seen it. It was a good innovation. I wish they’d bring it back on a new game. It’s unclear if some of this old IP is available now or still locked up.

I played Jackbot at No Quarter and I liked that one a lot. They had Bride of pinbot there and at Game Galaxy. I played it for a while. I can’t get into it the way I do Pinbot, but I think it’s a more complex game and if I were to have time with it I’d get into it. That’s the problem with these trips where we play so many all at once is we just have time to sample the games at a surface level and not give them much attention.

[LockeCJ]

I finally got around to replacing the ion cannon in my Laser War.

Here’s the old cannon:

If you look closely, you can see that there are lights lit up inside.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the old vs. new:

You should be able to see a number of cracks in the old one, as well as some pretty obvious signs that it’s almost entirely held together with glue. You can also see how yellowed it has gotten over the years.

Here’s the new cannon in place:

Here’s a couple of videos of it in action. I’m not sure I had realized that all three colors (Red, Blue, and Yellow) were represented until this replacement, since the yellowed plastic (and glue) were blocking so much light.

Laser War with replacement Ion Cannon

Laser War with replacement Ion Cannon - Game Over

Oh, I forgot to add that I played for a bit after installing it, and managed to eventually get withing 100K of my best score ever, so that’s nice. Unfortunately, when my daughter went to play it a few days later, the mechanism to kick out a ball into the shooter lane failed, so now I have to figure out what’s going on with that…

[noahdjango]

super sweet, dude.
since the replacement is not yellowed, that means it’s not salvaged? did you 3d print it or something?

[LockeCJ]

Sorry, I neglected that part. My father-in-law found a new old stock part. Then, after giving up on 3D modeling it from scratch, used a 3D scanner to produce a model, tweaked it a bit, and then sent it off to a service to 3D print it in resin.

If you’re curious why he went through the trouble of 3D printing one when he had the actual part:

• He was waiting on me to loan him the original, and a part became available, so he didn’t intend to buy a part in the first place.
• His other intention was to be able to produce multiples so that a local parts supplier could potentially sell them.
• He’s a retired engineer, and working on pinball machines is one of his hobbies.

[Nonentity]

Just based on the surface features, I’d be tempted to try building a cheap vacuum molding setup to reproduce it rather than 3D printing. Though there could be something hidden underneath that would make that more difficult.

Nice job on reproduction!

[LockeCJ]

I’m pretty sure the original was vacuum molded, or some similar process, so that would likely work well. He had already used that service for PCB manufacturing and other 3D printing, so it made the most sense to him from that perspective.

[RAvery]

AtGames Pinball Micro : Small table - Big fun

[RAvery]

LGR Oddware: The $400 CrossPad Tablet from 1998

[Nonentity]

The Algorithm dropped this in my feed today, and it reminded me of the thread…

Old pinball machines are amazingly complex

[LockeCJ]

Ninja’d. I was going to post this. That channel is worthwhile. He has a knack for explaining complicated things in an engaging and accessible way.