Tom's Hardware: Topic Did video modes, 'ball save', million point games, and tra..
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Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)
While pinball never enjoyed the fad that video games enjoyed. Because of the
video game fad and increase in places to play, during those years pinball
machines were made in record numbers.
While the player base was there, manufacturers failed to maintain it or keep
it when the player's tastes changed. The start of the 1990's was the zenith
of pinball and by the end of the 1990's it was gone. It took ten years to
run it into the ground, it will take a long time to rebuild it. LTG 
"ctsteps5" <ctsteps5@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1120156232.021477.219900@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> i agree 100% its the vidieo games that destroyed pinball, not the
> makers or the machines. I do perfer the older ones, but,,, I can
> always remember putting the first few vids on route with my brother,
> and people saying what the hell are you doing? we dont want these, they
> will die off fast. then go back a few weeks later, and they are
> playing them.. The writting was on the wall by 81 for pinball IMHO.
>
> Ctsteps5
>
> owner of
> 71 Bally Expressway, 72 Williams Superstar,
> 74 Williams Star Pool, 75 Gottlieb Fast Draw.
>
> Moderator of EM Pinball Group
> http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/empinbalmachines/
>
Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)
Well, I wouldn't say "ruin", but for
the most part, it adds little for me.
Numeric scores were just fine, but the
alphanumerics do make it nice for troubleshooting.
They could of stopped there and I would have
been just as happy.
Fred
TX
CARGPB#8
===========================
bayoubilly wrote:
> I say YES!
>
> Flame away... :-)
Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)
ball saves made it more fair. anyone can have a bad ball where you
plunge the ball and it hits a slinshot and throws the ball down the
side with no way of saving it. or a straight down the middle plunge (as
can be had with episode 1).
it happens to beginners and pros alike.
ball save was a great idea.
translites just made it more "non collectable" etc. of course cuz they
cant flake, peel, get ruined by time/heat/environment (or not as easy
anyhow).
video modes- its an added edge, may be boring, but its an added edge to
the evolution of pins
gotta keep moving forward like most things in life. things get old fast
to peoples entertaining tastes, esp with how fast electronics
technology is moving these days.
thats why they must evolve.
Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)
In article <1120156448.820863@sj-nntpcache-5>,
bayoubilly <bmichalo@cisco.com> wrote:
>I was waiting for this response.
>I didn't ask what killed pinball, or how did pinball machines need to be
>modified to compete with other gaming, I asked did things like "ball save"
>make a pinball machine into an almost unrecognizible beast that was less fun
I say no. I guess that's all you want, but I'll support my opinion that
other design factors and external factors were bigger, based on my time in
the industry helping make these sort of design decisions on a day-to-day
and game-to-game basis. What I say below isn't all original thought, but
rather my take on a number of factors that have been suggested here and
elsewhere (and that should do nothing to violate my continuing
non-disclosure agreement with DE/Sega/Stern)
Many people talk about the replacement cycle of games on location. Well,
there's also a replacement cycle with players. For the most part,
location players today are between 21 and 30. Most are casual players not
expert players. When they get too old they stop going to the typical
locations (bars) as often - family concerns, whatever. They are replaced
by younger people who become old enough to go to bars. It's been
happening for years.
However, in the past these new bar players had easy access to pinball when
they were younger, and already knew how to play. Today, they haven't, and
don't.
Why? Many locations for pinball once accessible to youngsters are gone.
Convenience stores like 7-11 have remodelled their stores to exclude game
nooks. Many arcades have died. Many bowling alleys don't have pinballs
anymore. Most parents don't play pinball with their kids, it's no longer
part of the culture. And parents today don't frequently let their kids go
to pinball locations by themselves - the world has changed.
Combine this with the fact that the pins of the late 90's were very
complex - multi-level, hard to understand, fast. Frequently the ball
disappeared into a hole to be fired back at a flipper from another
hole without much presentation, resulting in a quick drain. Very
demoralizing.
The players who started with games like Funhouse or even TAF could make
the leap to understand something more tricky, but new players were quite
lost. They got killed, despite the ball savers, "bozo" extra balls, etc.
which were there to specifically help them. In effect it was like the old
"5 ball" games for those players. Ball times were bi-modal - the good
players played absolutely huge games, the newbies still got slaughtered.
This hurt earnings in two ways, and pinball machines that don't earn just
don't exist on location, unless the operator has other reasons to
have them (loves pinball, location requires a pinball along with the
other stuff, etc.).
Getting back to your point, I believe the first game with a ball saver was
T2, which had an autoshooter not a plunger. Players had no control over
how firmly the ball was launched, and sometimes it went right to the
drain. So the game gave it back - that's only fair. Right? Then
once players came to expect it, it was added to plunger games.
Most new pinball players that I have seen (both at my home over the years,
and in the course of watching play of test games on location for DE/Sega)
quickly grasped the concept of a ball saver without explanation. (Also
note that 90% of location games are 1 player.) In my opinion, complex
rulesets and complex playfield layouts were a much more serious problem.
The game evolved to the point where the new player couldn't grasp it,
couldn't understand, and couldn't do well enough to want to play again.
It was too fast for them to grasp the basic mechanics of play. And, also
in becoming more complex, games didn't work as well.
I'll say video modes may have hurt, but were not nearly as big of a deal.
Excluding skill shots. most games were programmed to have only a small
portion of players get video modes, often with some effort to get there.
Video modes where the unresponsive player can't "die" before the end are
very expensive in terms of ball time, which we monitored carefully. It
was a side-effect of the dot matrix display, which truly spawned the
explosion of pinball production in the first few years of the 1990's.
At DE/Sega we tried hard to give the average player a chance. Often we
were chastized in this forum for making games too simple/easy for players
here. I will admit that in many games I worked on the whole "wizard mode"
went it last, and in some cases it was almost an afterthought. I'm sure
somebody can name a few. I tried to put the resources I had available
towards what most players would see, both in terms of writing rules,
programming display, and helping with playfield layout. We tried to make
simpler games where the ball was more often in sight, and using a real
plunger when possible and appropriate. (Note that the "combo plunger"
patent comes from DE, it was first used in Tommy, you'll see that patent
on a bunch of WMS games.)
Also, after Jurassic Park, the company as a whole tried to make less risky
design decisions for more reliable games. One motto was something like
"better to make a good game that works great than a great game that only
works good - or never." Yes, we had our problems in reliability (too),
but over time it got better, despite not having as regular a work force in
the factory as WMS did.
Probably more than you wanted, but that's what I think. Flame away if you
will, it feel can't be worse (at least in content) than the originals.
Orin
--
Orin Day | Women's Basketball Photos at http://www.dwhoops.com
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