> Even so, he intends to keep pressuring his rival: Jersey Jack’s next licensed game, The Hobbit, is scheduled for 2014, to coincide with the final movie in Peter Jackson’s trilogy.
This is quite interesting because Stern's Lord of the Rings is one of their best (and most complex) games and would create a natural comparison, but it will be quite hard to outdo compared to taking on more recent (read: cheaper) Sterns.
On that topic I wish I could find a fully functional LoTR as I came late to it and now everyone I find has critical flaws. There's one in the Minneapolis airport that is broken, and I've played one in London that mostly works except the ring sensor is broken so you can't destroy the ring, which you only discover after an epic game. Apparently there is a setting compensate for this, but the operator won't turn it on. Incidentally, I almost beat Martin Ayub's (he's mentioned in the article) high score of 350M on this machine, and were it not for this fault I certainly would have. And of course without that it is also impossible to reach what is reputed to be the most difficult-to-reach wizard mode in the history of pinball: Valinor.
One of the designers / developers for LoTR (and many many other games,) Keith Johnson, is now employed by JJP. Chances are he'll be involved with The Hobbit machine.
If you like pinball and live in the Bay Area, I highly recommend visiting Lucky Juju (aka the Pacific Pinball Museum) on Alameda. $15 admission for unlimited free play on dozens of pinball machines, including many vintage machines.
And if you're in Lyons, CO (not far outside of Boulder) you must check out Lyons Classic Pinball. There are a ton of machines, plus the proprietor is super knowledgable.
Does anyone know of anything like this around Tokyo? I'm visiting in a few weeks and would definitely like to see something like this, aside from regular arcades.
I saw One More Time [1] but that's about 4.5 hours out from Tokyo if my directions are correct.
I remember playing pinball when the state-of-the-art video games were such Atari 2600 titles as Adventure and Yars' Revenge. Pinball, even then, could not compete. They are as obsolete as 78 RPM gramophones.
Incorrect. The high water mark of pinball was 1993's Twilight Zone. Aside from the physicality of it which still hasn't been equaled by digital games, the ruleset complexity of late 80s and early 90s pins started to explode. An order of magnitude more complexity than any Atari 2600 game; several orders more than Yars' Revenge (ugh that game was boring).
Pinball may have been more popular pre- (and during) the transition to arcade games, but arguably the /best/ pinball came in the early 90s with the advent of better processing power and more complicated electronics allowing more complex gameplay. Twilight Zone is one of the most complex pinball rulesets I've ever seen, and The Addams Family (from 1993 also I think) was and still is the best-selling machine of all time.
I collect pinball machines; I have 11 of them crammed into a house not designed to hold that many large machines. It's an interesting amalgamation of physical and electronic skills to repair and restore them, it's possibly more fun to restore them than it is to actually play them.
Pinball rocks. I was an addict from an early age, around 7.
I always play a machine if I see one and have time on my hands. Although it is a little frustrating to find most machines I come across have some problems, or have been tampered with to make them more difficult.
I also love the Zen studios pinball game on xbox / windows 8. Ironically, I think it is one of the best real world activity sims I have encountered.
If you haven't tried it, I'd also checkout the rather creatively titled "Pinball Arcade" - ios, android, xbox, PS3, etc. They got the licenses for a bunch of old tables, and are adding one or two a month. Very good physics engine, and they're emulating the hardware so the gameplay is very accurate.
Medieval Madness is my favorite machine, and I've bought it through Pinball Arcade on iOS and Android. If they would get Greenlit on Steam, I'll buy it again on PC!
Zen studios pinball games are a nice blend of physical pinball emulation and video games. The tables have pretty good physical properties, but there are things in the games that are difficult, expensive, or downright impossible to do on a real machine and lend themselves nicely to an arcade equivalent.
On the flip side of the coin, Pinball Arcade strives to emulate classic games exactly as they were, so the games may be more "boring" to some, but appeal far more to the portion of the market that's played them before.
Pinball Arcade actually emulates 4 machines that I also physically own. Sometimes it's easier to fire up the video version of the game than play the real one. I know to some that's heresy (and to me it is as well) but the video versions are a LOT quieter, and are easier to walk away from if needed. I would be a rich man if I could design a "pause" button for a physical pin, I think.
No. Pinball machines are phenomenally expensive to maintain, and don't yield good revenues for operators. Most arcade operators have little interest in buying new video game cabinets, because the new generation of Amusement With Prizes/Skill With Prizes machines (Flamin' Finger, Barber Cut, Stacker etc) are an order of magnitude more profitable.
I don't care for the theme, but then I learn he's targeting women on location - I figured this was a home use only machine.
The big issue with pins on location is the maintenance - the number of people left who can genuinely maintain pinball machines is pretty tiny. I wonder if they've done anything to improve the maintainability, like reducing the amount of dirt buildup. The LED lighting will certainly help!
There's a lot to be done - granted the majority of pinball failures are mechanical, and they're hard to reduce simply by the fact that you're flinging a heavy metal ball at a decent momentum against mechanical components.
Some of the actual mechanical designs haven't changed in decades (the flipper mechanics are pretty simple and cheap and well-understood; the payoff in "redesigning" the mechanism has almost no chance to pay off in the long run) but there are improvements that can (and have) been made in overall servicability. Modern machines are easier to access (in general), components are easier to remove (in general) and the diagnostics built into the software are light-years ahead of what used to be typical. While there's still a fair amount of skill in being /good/ at repairing pins, modern pins seem to me to be much easier to maintain by an owner-operator than they've ever been.
It's always a pleasure to see a hard thing being done well by someone who really cares about the craft.
But at the same time pinball is... not very fun. And expensive. I fully expect it to go the way of the music hall, and on a larger scale I'm happy about that.
But I'm also sad to see a craft disappear. Not sure what to think.
We're very different people. I love Pinball. That said there are some really great pinball machines and some that are just super-boring. Maybe it's a function of my age as I still played pinball in arcades and whatnot (I'm in my early 30s). I'd really like to get a shot at this Wizard of Oz machine.
I also found the description oddly compelling. There was a Terminator pinball game in the break room at Sun that we used to play, I felt it provided a good social nexus. There were also machines at Google but strangely if you played them you could feel like you were touching the exhibits at a museum which I found disconcerting. Mostly this came from the looks people would give you as they walked by. Sad really.
Should you ever find yourself in Portland Oregon, please visit 'Ground Kontrol'. An entire floor of nothing but pinball games, quite frequently at capacity.
This is quite interesting because Stern's Lord of the Rings is one of their best (and most complex) games and would create a natural comparison, but it will be quite hard to outdo compared to taking on more recent (read: cheaper) Sterns.
On that topic I wish I could find a fully functional LoTR as I came late to it and now everyone I find has critical flaws. There's one in the Minneapolis airport that is broken, and I've played one in London that mostly works except the ring sensor is broken so you can't destroy the ring, which you only discover after an epic game. Apparently there is a setting compensate for this, but the operator won't turn it on. Incidentally, I almost beat Martin Ayub's (he's mentioned in the article) high score of 350M on this machine, and were it not for this fault I certainly would have. And of course without that it is also impossible to reach what is reputed to be the most difficult-to-reach wizard mode in the history of pinball: Valinor.