Metamorphic

I may have mentioned once or twice that I'm a little pinball-crazed. Crossing my newsfeed today is this item about a group working to recreate in the physical realm a popular pinball machine that formerly only existed in the digital. There are constraints to the project, not the least of which are budget and the laws of physics. The availability or practicality of parts, for example, are utterly unlimited in a digital realm, and I own some games that simply cannot exist in any physical form. And there are some that lie vaguely in-between the realms of "physically possible" and "batsh*t cukoo" (and get criticized for basically being tables that play themselves.)

The Timeshock! table, though -- and the other virtual tables produced by this studio -- all appear to have just enough grounding in reality to make them practical, and that, in my opinion, is a large part of their charm (I have two of the other titles they list in the article.) They're challenging and yet predictable: simulating reality in a convincing fashion is sufficiently difficult, and I'm sure that goes two ways. I like the idea, though, almost as if the idea of pinball retreated to a digital cocoon during the lean years of the 1990's, only to re-emerge reborn and metamorphosed.

Of course, I'm still rooting for the creation of digital simulations of some of my favorite tables, too. Farsight did a decent recreation of the classic Haunted House table for their Pinball Arcade app, and they're promising a Kickstarter campaign to bring over The Addams Family, the top-selling table of all time, and (not coincidentally) the one that appears to be requested the most. I'd love to have a playable version of this machine around, as it contributed in part to my delinquency in grad school and made me weigh the importance of truly having clean laundry vs. setting aside a few quarters for a game. (Hint: laundry did not win.) As I've pointed out before, pinball machines are in top form as they leave the factory, and then are devoted to a life of being bashed and battered around from the inside-out. Care and upkeep is much easier on a tablet than a table.

All the same, I'm pretty excited. I hope this digital-to-analog port happens, and I hope to give the game a try in person if it does. It's not too often something digital gets to insert itself into the analog realm, and I think it's noteworthy when it does.

Pinpigeon

Eugene the Typopigeon's visit is drawing to a close. To celebrate the nearly-simultaneous birthdays of my daughter and father, the family -- and Eugene -- made what's becoming an annual trek into Alameda to the Pacific Pinball Museum.

Eugene was entranced by the lights and activity, though we had to work on his etiquette a bit...


Kind of blocking the view there, buddy...



Barely better

Luckily, the PPM is very family- and flock-friendly, and offers numerous stools to boost up the vertically-challenged players. He was intrigued by the promise of "Slick Chicks", though I had to break the news that these chicks were of the non-Playboy-infringing sort, not the feathered type.


Resisting the urge to make a "stool pigeon" joke here.

You may notice Eugene is sporting a new fashion item: a red-and-black scarf patterned after a typewriter ribbon. My girls were concerned that the cooler Bayside temps might ruffle his feathers, and insisted he be dressed correctly. This seems about as reasonable a transition as I can muster for taking a picture of him atop the Dr. Who machine, his preferred perch location for maximum heckling.


Eugene having a Fourth-Doctor scarf moment

He enjoyed the day immensely (as did the human members of our party) and I'm sure Eugene will always be welcome in this palace of the silver ball.

Fugue (For Marilyn and Dolly)

This typecast is web-enhanced for your convenience: see the bottom of the page for end-notes and links.


















* "hopelessly blurry," not "hopefully blurry"

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End-Notes:

1. "Tommy" by The Who, in case you're not familiar. I mean, what else would you listen to for a trip to a pinball place? Proof that it was kismet: "Pinball Wizard" started up just as I got into a parking spot. Half the album for the drive in, half for the drive out. That's how you know when something is Meant To Be.
2. You can roughly lump machines around how they display scores. Some of the very early machines just used lamps behind painted numbers, making the score an integral part of the artwork. Later machines used reels with numbers on them, and then segment displays (like a digital watch) and then ultimately a grid of pixels, which I think are actually neon, not LED, though I would imagine the technology of LEDs has improved enough to make those viable, too. I'm not fully "up" on the latest play technology. I do know that one of the last acts of Williams Pinball (before folding) was the creation of a platform called "Pinball 2000" which uses a very old optical trick known as Pepper's Ghost to appear to project a computer display on or over the playfield. They have one of these at PPM, but I find the display distracting -- like trying to play golf and watch TV at the same time. Some things were not meant to be. I think modern makers are going back to having just light displays on the table, and saving the fancy tech for the backglass, which is where you want it -- to attract new players and their loose change.
3. Damn, that was a long end-note. Dolly Parton, via the Internet Pinball Database. (IPDB.org) The "backglass" picture gives you some idea of the taste level of this machine.
4. Marble Queen, and it's just as unbelievable in person.
5. Dragonette, showing that it's not just Chinese knockoffs that have cornered the market on sound-alike names. Our fair damsel is tied to a chair (of course!) and being given the third degree by a Sherlockian-type character. Also unbelievable.
6. Captain Fantastic and Wizard! Wait, didn''t Ann-Margret play his mother? Oedipus! may have been a horrible name for a pinball.
7. Slick Chick is irresistible to the ladies. Check out the almost-Bugs-Bunny on the lower playfield.
8. Real example: I have Funhouse in various electronic forms. It features a ventriloquist's dummy on the table. Well, just the head. (Those of you with clown/dummy aversions should skip the rest of this note.) It's called "Rudy," for what it's worth, and Rudy heckles you and factors in to some play modes. What you miss on a TV or tablet game, though, is that Rudy is big. Like, real-dummy's-head big. It's like a child's head is stuck in the machine... and the eyes move. You miss all of this nightmare-fuel on recreated versions. Also, PPM's Rudy has a broken eye, so he's slightly cross-eyed all the time. More funny than scary. Mostly.
9. Seawitch, a one-word name, not two as I have it. A fine example of how mixing up the playfield can make a novel game. Boy, is this one fun.
10. Laser Cue. Because ROBOTS AND LASERS THAT'S WHY.
11. Mystic. The eye and pyramid on the backglass are photo-realistic, which is even more unnerving given the normal cartoony illustrations of the table art.
Second footnote #11... The first real pinball experience I can recall is Haunted House which I blogged about indirectly in the very early days of Clickthing.  It may not have been my first ever machine, but it's the one that sticks with me in my memory as being Completely and Totally Awesome. Probably doesn't hurt that I was about 11 or 12 at the time I played it, maybe younger. That table is regularly asked for in app form by fans who had the same near-religious experience as I did: some even as adults, I gather. It is reportedly an utter nightmare to maintain, with a complex electrical system that required two sets of circuits (and hence flipper buttons) and has ton of features and parts that are hard to source, access, and repair. Supposedly, you can buy one of these, set it up, and just listen to it fall apart. I may be making that up. Maybe. During my formative teen years on summer vacations I played games like Cyclone and Pinbot and High Speed, all of which I played today for that nostalgia boost ("I can't believe it's been 25 years" etc.) but nothing can take the place of that first pin.
12. Time Machine. No mention of badgers on IPDB, though.
13. CSI, for what it's worth. Far better: playing Doctor Who multiple times, to retroactively make my nerdy Whovian teen self happy.

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Hey Teeritz! The machine you're thinking about is Hercules, which is a jumbo-sized machine that plays using a pool ball instead of a steel ball. If you like slow, prone-to-break machines, you'll love Hercules! Proof that novelty alone doesn't make a good table.

Black Knight is a classic table, and should never be uttered in the same sentence as Hercules. I have played the former in real life, and once was enough. The latter was out of commission at PPM, so I hope to get a shot at it next time.

Those of you with some sort of electronic computing technology and a yen for the silver ball should run-don't-walk to The Pinball Arcade. They're doing an excellent job of digitizing these machines, even if they don't manage the life-sized creepy talking doll heads. Can't have it all, I guess.

Prelude

I suppose there's the easy comparison with both machines containing bells, too, although most mechanical noisemakers except the extra-ball/replay knocker have been replaced by stereo sound. Nobody dares touch that knock, though. It's just an electromagnet that smacks a piece of wood in the cabinet, essentially, but it's one of those funny little holdovers form the past -- like QWERTY? -- that can't be changed, at least not easily. To get rid of that component is to lose some of the pinball-nature of the table.

PPM has a website with hours and photos, in case you ever find yourself in the Bay Area and need an afternoon of amusement. I bet they'd have no problem staging a type-in.

Typed on an Olympia SM3

*ding*

Another one of my technological loves is pinball machines. Can I blame this on educational television? These classic "Sesame Street" clips that are surely responsible for planting the seed. I can remember them vividly, and are my favorites: 1-2-3 and counting to twelve (sing along!) Years later, I remember ignoring my loved ones during a family vacation at Salt Fork so I could waste away time playing Haunted House down in the game room. I'd already played a lot of pinball, and would seek out those machines even during the heyday of arcade mania that was about to hit even our sleepy little town. The unpredictability and challenge of playing a game with an actual physical element to it was far more interesting than the purely twitch-based play of an arcade machine. Our childhood summers were spent at the local pool, which featured a 1960s-era table set up near the jukebox and sun-faded Space Invaders machine, off on the deck just under a shady roof. This was a Real Machine with score wheels, electro-mechanical parts that really buzzed and clunked and thunked, and that wonderful gut-loosening knock that you felt when you made a match or crossed 57,000 points and won a game. I can still smell the chlorine in the air when I see one of those old machines. One of these days I will have to make a pilgrimage down to Lucky Ju Ju and relive this thrill. Typewriters and cameras are functional remnants of a past time, but pinball machines are purely entertainment, and live to be played.

I'm in awe of those who have the technical and artistic knowhow to restore these beauties. Pinball machines are harder to come by these days, usually being a heavily-played model tucked back in the corner of a birthday venue. Sticky flippers, filthy gameboard, broken elements... it's sad to see. Like other mechanica obseleta, pinball machines are unwieldy, expensive to maintain, noisy, prone to misuse and abuse, and very complex... everything I love, in other words. Unlike all the other machines that I'm dragging home these days, I have no room in my home for pinball machines: actually, I have no room for the other stuff, either, but being a pinball collector requires a certain degree of insanity that even I have not yet attained. Emulated tables in software are good enough for me for now, though it's far from the feeling of the real thing. I keep the old rites alive on modern technology, and keep my eyes open in corners of cafes and coffee shops, looking for a chance to drop a quarter and reacquaint with an old friend.