
The Pinball Wizard (2013) - kryptiskt
http://www.filfre.net/2013/02/01/
======
kazinator
I played a lot of _Night Mission_ pinball on the Apple II: simply excellent.

Some of you kids might not recognize the reference in the article's title to
the "Pinball Wizard" song by _The Who_ , unless you're into classic rock.

There is a computer-science themed parody of this somewhere:

See "UNIX Wizard" right at the top here:
[http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/textos/unix-
songs.txt](http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/textos/unix-songs.txt)

If that URL doesn't work for you, Future Visitor, just google for "ever since
I was a young boy, I've hacked the arpa net" in quotes.

------
thevibesman
When I clicked the link, I was hoping this was going to be a story about a
pinball wizard in "The Who" sense of the word, but this was a great read!

I've always been into pinball since a young age (I imagine I was interested
because of noticing my parents preference at arcades in the 80s/90s---and the
shorter lines). Over the past 4 years, I've gotten into pinball in a bigger
way, taking a few blocks of serious study on machines in Local Boston and
Berlin bars.

I've always felt that digital pinball implementations were a kind of arcade
game that had little to do with traditional pinball. While they _may_ converge
with the advent of VR, I think pinball and digital pinball in the past are two
different games; this has been highlighted a couple times I would tell friends
about how I've been playing a lot of pinball recently and when they would join
me at a bar with a machine some would be surprised I was not talking about a
video game.

> Budge didn’t find pinball intrinsically all that much more interesting than
> he did purely electronic arcade games.

I guess my observations about pinball and digital pinball can be traced back
to Budge and Raster Pinball, as from this article, it seems like _pinball_ was
just another 'electronic arcade game' to Budge.

> “They were students of the game, talking about catches, and how to pass the
> ball from flipper to flipper, and they really got into it.”

Maybe someday I'll get to run a startup with a pinball culture ;)

[To date my pinball interest: Born 1985]

~~~
JamesGoblin
Indeed, I was, too, "tricked" into clicking but I don't regret it at all :)

------
panic
Here's the "software artists" photo shoot referenced in the article:
[http://www.filfre.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/Anzeige_Can...](http://www.filfre.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/Anzeige_Can_a_computer_make_you_cry.jpg)

I miss the days when people talked about the creative potential of computers
like that. It feels like modern computing has lost a lot of that optimism.

------
jccalhoun
This site is really great for people interesting in gaming history. Another of
my favorites is The Golden Age Arcade Historian
[http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/](http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/)
although he hasn't updated since November so I wonder if he's given up on it
or something happened to him.

~~~
joezydeco
I really enjoyed this blog too. Lots of detailed stuff on very obscure corners
of the coin-op industry that have (almost) been lost to the sands of time. The
series on Allied/Centuri was really awesome, especially when he uncovers how
Namco created Dig Dug by pretty much stealing Centauri's _The Pit_ (oh yeah,
and it was programmed by the Stamper brothers!)

I contributed some material about the 1982 Bally/Midway TRON tournament and he
did a really nice job with how he handled that stuff.

I hope he comes back soon.

------
Sniffnoy
This isn't quite the correct link -- this is a link to that _day_ of posts,
which happens to contain only one post. But the actual link to the post would
be [http://www.filfre.net/2013/02/the-pinball-
wizard/](http://www.filfre.net/2013/02/the-pinball-wizard/)

------
digi_owl
And i just discovered that all of the articles can be downloaded in epub form.
I guess i have some reading to do.

------
joezydeco
I loved _Raster Blaster_ as a kid, and for its time it was an amazing piece of
programming for the Apple ][. Budge is a personal inspiration of mine.

Although I kind of wish people would acknowledge that _Raster Blaster_ 's
playfield design was directly copied from _Firepower_ , a Williams Electronics
game from 1980 designed by Steve Ritchie and Eugene Jarvis.

[http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=856&picno=19164](http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=856&picno=19164)

~~~
sanj
Thanks for pointing this out -- I never realized it!

I have an original Firepower machine in my basement. This bit of trivia is
enough to get me to make it functional again.

------
bitmapbrother
Pinball Construction Set PC page from the Archive.org:

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Pinball_Construction_Set_1...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Pinball_Construction_Set_1985)

------
sparkzilla
Pinball on the PC is a fool's errand. The screen is too small to convey the
ball motion. However, companies that are adding computer displays to pinball
machines, are finding some success: [http://www.jerseyjackpinball.com/the-
hobbit/](http://www.jerseyjackpinball.com/the-hobbit/)

~~~
Allagash
Pinball in VR is surprisingly immersive. It's a much better simulation of
playing pinball in real life, plus you can press your face to the "glass" to
see the fine details of the playfield.

~~~
thevibesman
I imagine this is pretty cool, have you tried it?

Not being able to look at the ball/table is a key part of pinball I find
missing from the digital experience, and while VR takes care of this I think I
would still miss the physical experience of the controller.

I see someone made a pinball table controller to use with Oculus as soon as it
came out[1]; this controller doesn't look heavy enough to have fun tilting
properly, but it certainly got me excited to try some VR pinball.

[1]: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11345624/pinsim-pinball-
fx-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11345624/pinsim-pinball-fx-2-vr-
machine-replica)

~~~
Allagash
Yup, I've tried Pinball Fx2 on the Rift. It's certainly not the same as real-
life pinball, but I enjoy being able to look around the whole table rather
than the camera automatically panning where it thinks I want to look.

It's obviously not the same as a real pin; I've yet to find a PC game that
simulates nudging to my satisfaction.

One interesting data point is that my 10 year old son is more interested VR
pinball than either regular PC pinball or real life pinball. I think it's
because of: \- the novelty of VR \- the animations on and around the table
(these can be either fun or distracting) \- the tables are easy for a beginner
\- the fact he's taller in VR. At an arcade he's either not tall enough or has
to stand on a stool, but in VR he can look down on the table as if he's 6 feet
tall.

Pinball Arcade is working on VR version, so I'm interested to see their take
on it. They mentioned it in passing for their AC/DC table kickstarter (since
cancelled but still under development).

