/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7478587
because it's niche and not really worth innovating I guess

>>7478587
Is this what you want?

>>7478597
>Chess 2?

Chess960?

Above all, there's no money in it. Pinball machines also require frequent maintenance -- they can't get too complex or they'll be a nightmare to own and operate. It'd need a lot of iteration to get right (would a game like The Pinball Circus have ball times that are too long? Do the gimmicks get old and make you want to play a more fine-tuned machine or no machine at all?) and Stern's not going to pump any money into that when they can barely pay their art and sound teams in the first place. If you're insufferable you could instead just say that pinball is perfect and doesn't need to be innovated which is probably still half correct

Has there been any work to decrypt the pinball arcade pinball tables? Hate for all of that work to be lost to time.

>>7478679
Sorry for the stupid question, but 'decrypt' what exactly?

>>7478679
Pinball in the 80s and older is very straight forward electromechical components and simple logic. The only thing to preserve is the table art and the marquee. Everything else is fairly easy to replace. Experienced service techs are a dying breed but that is true for everything.

For modern tables you have your LCD visuals and whatnot but again nothing complicated that will ever be lost. Certainly no "preservation project" is needed, just a good network of enthusiasts with basic skills.

It generally works

>>7478587
How would you innovate pinball OP? I think those depths are plumbed. As mentioned above, there's little return in investing in a machine meant for arcades which are basically dead.
Even pinball videogames are pretty lame unfortunately, despite having no physical limitations. Pic only semi-related.

>>7478587
Terminator machine is brutal, ate my tokens like crazy.

>>7479064
Not OP, but as a kid I played Joust pinball in the wild. This was really something. Head to head battles for 2 players, egg round, about 10 balls on the playfield. It was a cocktail machine, look it up if you're unfamiliar. It had a ton of innovation but still couldn't compete with video games.

>>7478756
>>7478852
The Pinball Arcade by Farsight is a video game with a metric shitload of tables based around real pinball tables.

>>7479064
Zen Pinball team have no idea what makes pinball GOOD. They're tales are aimless as fuck, with even the simple things missing like sound effects and actually holding your ball so you can read the fucking text on the display because you couldn't be bother to record lines from your shitty knock off voice actors that give you any indication of what your prime objective is in the mode you've somehow stumbled into.

they should do versus pinball

>>7478587
Most people who are really into pinball would say there's been massive innovation. In a sense, every new toy that has never been done before is innovation. But even if you don't count that...
Anyway, here are the innovations of modern pinball since Pinball 2000, something you're probably never heard of.
RGB lighting (inserts can turn any color)
Lightshows (compare Lord of the Ring's lightshow with Deadpool's)
Character selection (Game of Thrones, TMNT, Pirates of the Caribbean 2018)
Mini-wizard modes that are playable from the start menu, meaning that the developers can justify spending more work hours on making them since more people will see them.
Pop bumper mystery awards (GoT, TMNT, Ghostbusters, etcetera)
Clever non-Pinball 2K usage of holograms (Dialed In, Ghostbusters Premium)
"Spatial" rulesets (Stern Jurassic Park)

Individual toys that deserve mention:
The Pirate Ship on PotC2018
The Danesi Lock and the reactor on TNA.
The projector on Stranger Things premium.
The Toybox on Aerosmith
The ring on Lord of the Rings
The upper playfields on Wizard of Oz
The truck on Stern Jurassic Park
The T-Rex on Stern Jurassic Park premium
many others

sonic spinball was peak pinball innovation

>>7478587
Evolved to what?

It's funny because almost every single table has at least one unique "innovative" gimmick.

I know what you mean OP but what exactly can you innovate? It'll mostly be small changes. Pinballs pretty perfect. Also there's only one big company now with 3 or 4 tiny companies so because it's niche there's no point in radically changing what works.

>>7479971
These are fairly modern innovations, you could list so many more if you included some of the shit they came up with in the late 80s and 90s.
OP is a jackass who knows fuck all about pinball. I bet he never played a 1970s pin table.
Compare Gorgar from 1979 to anything released in the last few years and Gorgar just seems completely barren (still a great pin though).

>>7478587
>>>/tg/

>>7480903

>>7479064
Multiplatforms

>>7480903
The stickied thread literally says Pinball is allowed to be discussed on /vr/.

>>7478587
It reached peak evolution. Aside from putting tits on it what else is left?

>>7480213
For me, it's Akira Psychoball. A surprisingly unique pinball spinoff

>>7479971
We're also now seeing games with four ramps, like Stern Jurassic Park and Led Zeppelin Premium. That's new. And of course, there's Lexy Lightspeed and Cosmic Cart Racing. The list goes on.

I predict that in the future we'll see more pinball machines where you navigate through the modes spatially like in Stern Jurassic Park.

>>7481450
Here are a few pinball machines with breasts integrated into the gameplay:

>>7481636

>>7481638
The targets on the left (I think they light ball lock) are Elvira's measurements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAfVUHro3sQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNj9IjjfA2g

>>7478587
Perfection needn't be innovated upon. Pinball is about as core as retro gaming gets right next to Atari.

>>7481681
This. Hell I think modern pinball detracts from the formula by adding too much screen flair and being too reliant on modes versus actual good playfield design. 80s-90s was the sweet spot.

>>7481487
Solid game considering it was just a promotional game for the 20th anniversary re-release of Akira

Pinball is a fundamentally flawed genre because it rewards boring play and punishes risk-taking. The key to high scoring is keeping ball movement as slow and controlled as possible. Pinball is fun when you're a noob, but only extreme autists enjoy it at a high level.

>>7482538
So no middle ground for enjoyment?

>>7482671
Challenge plays are only fun when the challenge can be clearly defined. "Don't play too boring" is not such a challenge. I've played probably over 1000 games of pinball on many different tables (most on free play) and I quit because I finally understood what I'd have to do to git gud.

>>7482671
Don't play competitively and just try to beat (ot at least get to) the wizard modes.

>>7478679
>>7479841
It still fucking pisses me off that Williams decided to screw over Farsight like that and just take away their tables from the game, sure I have most of the good ones already, but it just sucks that I can no longer recommend the game again. It's not like Williams is doing anything but slot machine shit now anyways.

>>7482919
The pinball fx people got the rights, but their tables are censored and their physics model is shit. I actually bought a vertical grip for the switch port and the tables were removed almost immediately. Bullshit.

>>7482931
>Their tables are censored
That just angers me that they do that, especially since the people who would argue for table censorship don't even care about pinball in the slightest anyways.

>>7481641
Don't forget The Machine's light-up robo-nipples.

>>7478587
>basically the same shit as a 70's machine

pinball machines are a very old-school form of amusement, they're pure presentation, and that evolved a lot. things like the soundboards and LCD screens with animation and stuff are not minor changes, they were game-changers.

>>7478587
If mag lev tech ever makes its way to pinball that could turn some heads. It likely will run into the cost to build and operate vs who will pay to play it, issue.

>>7482931
The physics on fx are way better than pinball arcade, and most people agree with me on this.

>>7482538
A lot of machines incentivize you to shoot combos. And if you play slowly during a multiball ball saver then it's a waste of your ball save. Also there's timed modes. And with upper flipper shots, you can't go slow because you can't trap up.

>>7483558
>if you play slowly during a multiball ball saver then it's a waste of your ball save
Best way to play multiballs is trapping all but one and playing the remaining ball alone. The ball saver time is boring play setup time.

>>7483540
Hoverball

>>7478638
What an unholy abomination is that?

>>7481332
Well, fuck, so it does.

>>7483542
Maybe if you only play Williams tables on Classic and not the ones created for FX.

>>7483948
Bobby Fischer style chess

>>7478587
arcades are dead, so these machines will never recoup their losses. the only manufacturers left sell direct to boomer collectors
but before the market dried up, every time they tried to innovate it failed
this killed williams' pinball division

>>7484427
And eventually shit just gets too complex. An electronic arcade video game is just a monitor, some controls, and a pcb. You can churn it out in mass cheap
you cant do that with pins, theyre hand-made. and the more labor that goes into it, the more expensive it will get

>>7484371
Speaking of Fischer, did you know he liked pinball?

>>7483293
Groovy

>>7484427
My barcade has a whole bunch of pinball machines. New ones like Rick n Morty and old stuff like Iron Maiden
>>7484845
That's a fuckin cool photo

i would love to own a pinball machine, but im afraid with my lack of maintenance/repair knowledge id end up destroying a treasure

>>7485184
Just get a common one then

>>7479858
There's a virtual table that does that and it sucks

>>7483542
They're all shit compared to VPX.

>>7485184
If you live near a city you may be able to rent. Find your local pinball group and try to get a lease before bars start opening up.
Ask the operator about maintenance and such to feel it out.
And yeah, get something there's a lot of so it's easy to find parts and such.

>>7484438
Looks interesting

>>7484438
this is why pinball should be made in some china sweatshop for pennies.

>>7486602
>lead-based tables that are even less reliable
No thanks

>>7486602
Some company actually did try that and no one bought their tables.

>>7478587
you didnt hear about this new, wild thing called pachinko?

>>7486792
The Homepin guy said that they didn't save that much on labor, they saved through better access to supply networks.
Shame it didn't work out.

>>7479858
It's been done. Not just with Joust, there have been other versus pinball machines. Joust is the one people know about though.

>>7486816
>new

>>7478587
Because it's fun enough without it. there's already zoomer takes on Pinball like arcade1up cabinets that are just a box with a screen on it, but those aren't as popular as actual pinball tables becausr you aren't controlling an actual physical ball. Once you learn how intricate each table is, not only will you start to become much better at it, but you can also respect the engineering that went into it. (This isn't me hating on pinball sims in general, they have there place and I'm all for ways for pinball to be more accessible in this post-arcade era.)

Unlike fucking videogames, pinball knew that if it wasn't broke, don't try to "fix" it with style-over-substance bullshit. Even the nupinball glitzy machines of the 90s and later still were fucking goddamn amazing and still fun to play while videogames in the mid-90s went to absolute shit.

>>7482919
Gee that's sad it's a shame you can't just pirate it or anything.

>>7488709
Not the same brah

>>7478587
Pinball machines are the mechanical wristwatches of the video game world

>>7482919
slot machines actually make money though

>>7489484
:(

Op doesn’t even play pinball if your asking this question you don’t even play pinball.

Is it relevant if he does or does not?

>>7478587
Why fix what is not broken?

>>7478587
There's nothing to "innovate", dude.

>>7493247
This

it's all variations of the same mechanical, arguably perfect, game

(testing; I love pinball btw)

>>7478587
Pinball pretty much died after the '90s. So unless there's a pinball renaissance with a lot of new players there won't be any innovation. Except for the occasional pinball video game.

>>7494208
>So unless there's a pinball renaissance with a lot of new players
That's literally been happening for the last 10 years.

>>7494259
>googles it
interesting I honestly didn't know about it.

>>7478587
Unfortunately, the majority of people don't give a shit about them anymore. The only thing that matters to people seems to be a series tie-in.

>>7484427
>I have never been to a pinbarcade
That's too bad, there's some fun pins coming out
>>7485173
Spooky Pinball LLC is an amazing nupin manufacturer

I keep seeing modern pinball sims here and there, is there a general consensus on what the best one is?

>>7494569
For commercial sims Pinball Arcade was the best, but losing most of their good shit, Pinball FX 3 is now the king which is unfortunate because it's god awful.

Free shit, it's a mind field. Since it's all hobby shit it varies from table to table.

>>7494540
barcades are way too few and far between to support an industry anywhere near the size of the 80s-90s pinball industry

>>7494880
seems to be enough for a decent number of new pins to show up. it's never going to be like the 80s again but i thought new machines were going to stop coming out altogether

Where do you go when you reach the top? It's hard to improve something so simple. But to me, pinball was at its best from the start.

>>7495626
Technically pinball started with no flippers and was pretty much luck based like pachinko, until around the 40s when someone added flippers to it and made it a game of skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f4wPJP2VYw

>>7496586
I have this one and I always have a good time with it. The rank #1 shot is pretty intense.

>>7494880
>>7495330
>barcades

There's still drinking establishments like bars and pubs that have pool will sometimes have a smattering of arcade machines and maybe a pinball or two, and guess what, pool halls are still a thing, at least in my city anyway. The sad irony being that the largest pool hall here in Sydney used to stock around 10 brand new Stern pins and would update regularly with what ever was new, over the years they slowly dwindled down to just 2 pins, and now after corona they replaced the pins left with fucking dance machines or whatever you call those god-awful noisy things.
Also In Australia we have RSL clubs and they usually will have a pin table next to their pool tables.
Movie theatres as well can be a place for a pin table.

As a pin fan I've gotten used to sniffing these fuckers out in the wild. And there's https://pinside.com/pinball/map that has a world map of pins you can scan your area for tables.

The pin general on here used to be pretty good