

The Ultimate Guide to Pinball - Mclhuman
http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/pop-stuff/213447-the-ultimate-guide-to-pinball

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mmetzger
The article isn't really covering the modern pinball scene. While Stern is
definitely the major manufacturer in play, Jersey Jack is growing and there
are several more boutique manufacturers including:

Multimorphic - Offers the P3 pinball system integrating a full LCD panel with
motion tracking into the playfield (as opposed to the backbox like JJ.) They
also offer the P-ROC which allows replacing the CPU (a 6809/ASIC combo!) with
a Spartan3 system allowing you to reprogram the rules on most 90's+ games.

Spooky Pinball - Ben Heck designed the America's Most Haunted machine, an
"unlicensed" theme that is quite fun to play. I believe the first run was for
150 machines, with the next title to be announced in the near future.

Heighway Pinball - Manufacturer out of England with one title in production
(Full Throttle, a motorbike theme) and are working on a licensed Alien themed
pin.

There are a couple others including current and former game designers working
on their own or with one of the manufacturers. This also says nothing of the
pinball modding community, custom one-off games, etc.

EDIT: Completely forgot Planetary Pinball who is remaking late 90's pinball
machines with modern electronics. First machine is Medieval Madness and is
shipping now.

~~~
joezydeco
I'm curious if Planetary ever resolved their licensing issues and how they did
it.

The prototypes they once showed were using MAME running on a Beaglebone Black
to emulate the old Williams hardware.

~~~
jgeorge
Planetary's Medieval Madness remake does indeed use a BBB as a core CPU,
connected to a driver board. I don't know exactly what it emulates, if it's
emulating the original CPU or it's new code (I presume some emulation layer).

~~~
joezydeco
It's definitely an emulation layer. The original game was written in 6809
assembly language along with talking to custom hardware, some of it in an ASIC
as well as an Analog Devices DSP for sound playback.

There's a branch of MAME called PinMAME that emulates this hardware, and
that's what Planetary showed in their demonstrations.

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jaredhansen
Slightly offtopic since not really about the article, but if you're even a
_little_ bit into pinball and you live anywhere near the Bay Area, you owe it
to yourself to check out the Pacific Pinball Museum[1] in Alameda.

$15 for an all-access pass to over 100 machines, all on free play -- you can
get lost in there (and I have). It's awesome.

[1] [http://pacificpinball.org/visit](http://pacificpinball.org/visit)

~~~
pkteison
Also if you like Pinball and are near the bay area, come to California Extreme
July 18-19th. It's fantastic, hundreds of pinball games and classic arcade
games for one glorious weekend each year in Santa Clara.
[http://www.caextreme.org](http://www.caextreme.org)

~~~
CocaKoala
California Extreme is awesome; my wife and I went last year, and were
heartbroken when we realized we wouldn't be able to attend this year. We're
going to mark it in our calendars to make sure we don't book a trip for that
weekend in the future because it's a really great experience.

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joshschreuder
It's mentioned in the article, but if you're in NYC, take a trip down to
Modern Pinball
([http://www.modernpinballnyc.com/](http://www.modernpinballnyc.com/)).

I'm no aficionado, but paying $12 for unlimited play on around 20-30 machines
for an hour was a no brainer, even just to see the difference in mechanics and
design between modern day and old machines.

~~~
pstuart
And if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, check out the Pacific Pinball
Museum in Alameda ([http://pacificpinball.org/](http://pacificpinball.org/)).
Even more machines for a couple bucks more, and as a museum it has machines
that go all the way back to the beginning of the game.

~~~
mmetzger
If in Austin, check out Pinballz Arcade - easily more high end pinball
machines than you'll find most anywhere.

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rajatrocks
There's a great documentary by Greg Maletic called "Tilt: The Battle to Save
Pinball" \- [http://www.tilt-movie.com/](http://www.tilt-movie.com/) \- highly
recommended, and it blows my mind that he made the whole thing himself.

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majke
If you want to see a fun game:
[https://youtu.be/9GGbCLWZIfk?t=21735](https://youtu.be/9GGbCLWZIfk?t=21735)

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sparkzilla
I highly recommend buying an old pinball machine and refurbishing it yourself.
You'll learn a ton about how these great machines work. I got an old Creature
From the Black Lagoon (1993) [1] and stripped down and rebuilt all of the
playfield and the cabinet. There's lots of info on the web about how to fix
them, and many companies sell spare parts.

[1][http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=588](http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=588)

~~~
circuitslave
I second this - and am happy to see an ipdb.org link - there is a ton of
information there. I picked up an old Xenon -
[http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=2821](http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=2821)
\- worked it over with guides online and it still runs great 10 years later.
If I had the room I'd have more!

~~~
jgeorge
Thirded. One of the most satisfying restorations we've ever done was a sand-
it-down-to-the-wood repaint/restore of a Space Shuttle. There's an extra level
of satisfaction to play a machine where every screw, bolt, wire, and switch is
something that you personally put in place.

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bane
Kind of surprised it didn't really talk about the modern pinball "emulation"
scene.

Here's an example of a custom build
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4hP9RipKg0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4hP9RipKg0)

And some software
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball)

~~~
CocaKoala
What are the physics like for that? Does it feel like the real thing? I've
tried some pinball games on steam and they always feel "floaty", for lack of a
better term. Building a pinball emulator sounds like a fun project, but only
if the experience is pretty faithful to the original.

------
raintrees
I feel fortunate, in that I traded 8 hours of software authoring for a 1971
Bally Sea Ray machine. The client was using it as a paper goods storage
surface.

I brought it home, repaired the power cord, and played. It was so-so. I then
started researching, found a trove of data on restoring/repairing, learned to
be careful of the back panel art as well as the right kind of wax for the
playing surface, and much more.

I also found companies offering replacement rubber kits, as well as spare
bulbs, springs, etc. Armed with that and a repair manual, I went through the
machine, taking all of the play field apart (after photos), waxed the play
field surface, carefully cleaned the parts, put them all back together,
replacing burnt bulbs, broken springs, and so on. There was also a lot of
cleaning of copper contact points, as well as removal of oxide from the
solenoid shafts and housings (some 20 or 30 of them).

New rubber _completely_ changed the dynamics - What a blast! The ball was
suddenly flying around, sometimes even hitting the glass top.

It is all solenoids and relays, with one main motor that controls timing. When
the ball contacts a target, it has a conducting back surface that comes into
contact with another vertical contact situated right behind each target - This
completed circuit energizes a specific relay, "saving" the state that the
target was hit for the next subsequent rotation of the controlling motor.
Without this "save" the target hitting occurs far too rapidly to be caught by
the electro-mechanical machine to be scored.

The motor steps/rotates one step with each registered score (or multiple
scores, again due to timing), with the appropriate "score" going to either a
10 point mechanical wheel or a 100 point wheel and each energized relay de-
energized (re-armed, as it were). The motor shaft also has several (6?) discs
with raised tabs at strategic places on the edge that are "read" by micro-
switch followers to control various parts of the scoring electronics. The
score wheel rims are labeled with the score digits, rotating like an older
odometer (or gasoline pump display) with the current status (points, games
remaining).

All the smaller targets hit also serve to rotate an axle that has some 20 or
so copper wipers that may or may not come into contact with a random
assortment of contacts laid out on a circuit board - This completes the
circuit and lights up the next "randomly" lit target(s) (imagine your hand
with fingers out-stretched rotating around the center of your palm with the
tips of the fingers touching on a surface that may have contact points and you
get the idea).

I also re-enabled the tilt-mechanism - A plumb-bob-type affair suspended
within a conducting frame - Move the machine too much and another circuit is
completed from the plumb-bob touching the frame, through to the tilt-circuit.

After all of that work, rather than fit an opaque back to the back box (the
original was missing), I used a sheet of Plexiglas - You can see electricity
arcing during operation with the room lights turned down.

Lots of fun, time to clean it again.

------
nasalgoat
I've been collecting pinball machines for nearly 20 years now and the recent
resurgence in popularity has really breathed new life into the industry.

It was a dark time for pinball after WMS closed their pinball division in
1999, leaving second place Stern alone in the market, at a time when their
quality was nowhere near what WMS was doing at the time.

Now there's a new breed of collectors who exclusively buy brand new Sterns and
add all kinds of modifications to "bling" them out, and the cost of the
nearly-20-year-old WMS games has skyrocketed.

Pinball has never been stronger.

~~~
dasil003
The only thing is that you have to seek out good machines these days, and
there are relatively few in public unless you know where to look. I got into
pinball in junior high right when TAF came out. At that time I could randomly
walk into any movie theater, bar, or video arcade and find new pinball
machines. These days when you find a random pinball machine, it's either a new
Stern (rare) or it's run down to the point that you can't even play it
seriously.

I wish I had space to start a collection, but even if I did I would the casual
competitiveness of the golden age. No one gives a shit about your high score
on your home machine, but the time I got Lost in the Zone twice and scored 6B
on the TZ in a bar in London (The Pipeline FWIW), that turned a few heads.

