Gizmodo
Did you know that there's only one manufacturer of pinball machines left in the world? That sole survivor of the pinball age is Stern Pinball, based outside of Chicago, and it's the last purveyor of this relatively low-tech entertainment left.
And things aren't entirely rosy for Stern Pinball. While they used to pump out 27,000 pinball machines a year, they're down to a mere 10,000 now, most of which end up going to homes rather than to arcades. It's a sad state of affairs.
But the owner, Gary Stern, can't really imagine that pinball is on the way out. He thinks that it's like a sport; while it may wane in popularity, it'll never go away. What do you guys think? Have video games made pinball machines antiquated and obscolete, or do they still hold a place in your heart?
In any case, check out the profile of the factory. It's a fascinating peek into the world of gaming development that doesn't involve 3D rendering and cubicle farms. [NY Times]
Comments
what the hell is "pinball"?
Once the boomers die off, I think it will become an entirely niche market. Most of us were raised on video games and our kitch products will be 2600's, NES, PS1, etc.
@nystreetfilms: Pinheads younger fatter brother.
Even though you rarely find them outside of arcades, I never really thought of Pinball as being a video game and I still love to play whenever I find a machine. It's too bad they don't have them at movie theaters and restaurants anymore.
I love pinball, but I don't go to arcades, so, yeah, the problem isn't that pinball is a bad game, but that I have 20 brazillion entertainment options at home. I'm going to go to the mall? Nope.
I really want one for my basement bar. Someday...
Definitely has a place in my heart. Sadly it's the "nostalgia place," right along side a number of other things that haven't been an actual part of my day to day life for years.
Pinball really is fun, except when the ball goes right in the middle of the flappers right when you start. I hope they don't stop making them, they really are alot of fun.
Yea, but there are like 5million machines somewhere rotting. It seems any niche market for them would be more interested in restoring a "Classic" than having one built.
@Kanyamagufa: don't forget bars...
I love pinball myself and I'm always down to putting a few quarters in a game when I see one, but thats a rare event now a days. I mean shit, you rarely ever see real video games in retaruants and bars now, all you see is lame crap like open tee and deer hunter. Video games for cromags.
Most bars still have a pinball game or two along side Golden Tee and their fleet of pool tables and shuffleboard.
Oh, and there's a pinball manufacturer in the south jersey/philly area that is still alive as well.
@iameleveneight: Golden Tee is the shit.
I truly miss Medieval Madness by Williams.
I still think a good pinball machine is one of the most fun electronic games you can play.
The first pinball machine I ever played was Dolly Parton pinball. Beautiful artwork.
Once I can afford my own house, and not rent, I will buy a pinball machine.
How much to pinball machines normally go for? I'd love to have one in my basement.
I currently have this guy sitting in a storage unit because I don't have room in my current apartment. I can't wait until I get my own place and am once again able to play this game. It's easily the best pinball machine I've ever played.
Haunted House Pinball Machine
So they've got a monopoly?
Gizmodo is just s shill for big pinball.
HE'S A PINBALL WIZARDDDDD!!!!
I put my four bits into almost any pinball machine I find. My college dorm had the Star Trek Borg pinball game, and I can pinpoint that as my reason for never making it to biology class.
I think it's cultural. The first thing that struck me coming to the US from Canada was the lack of arcades all-together. Even most movie theaters lack arcades. I still can't find an arcade here in Chicago. Montreal, Toronto, and most big Canadian cities you find them - sounds blaring from the street. I still don't get it. It's like American entrepreneurs aren't interested in investing in a arcade storefront, instead they buy a Dave and Buster's franchise...sad...sad.
Oh and best pinball ever? I gotta say it's split between "Simpson's" and "Ripley's Believe it or Not."
As a business, I think it will die. As a hobby, it will live on because you know there are people out there that love pinball enough to keep it going. Jay Leno still drives a steam powered car on occasion.
Somewhat related...anyone else love bubble hockey?
@GOKOR: Do you mean TNT Amusements, with their ridiculous hour long commercial? They're a restoration & sales place, not a manufacturer.
There are so many examples of one tech obsolescing when another comes along.
I would like to feel sorry for the nostalgia but the owner's lack of foresight in keeping up with the evolution of entertainment annoys me somewhat.
To bad he considered himself in the "pinball machine business" instead of branching out his expertise and using his business contracts to create a broader, healthier business model.
I love pinball. Thats really sad that there is only one left. My they never shut down.
@P3nnst8r: You raise a good point. I think pinball's real problem was the way the targeted the "deaf dumb and blind kid that sure plays a mean pinball" demographic.
Is it a loyal base? To be sure.
But it's hard to truly grow your product long-term with such a narrow demo-market.
@crap-action-jackson: Just woke up and that is the post of the day. HAHAHA
I hadn't realized that pinball manufacturing legends such as Bally and Williams had shut down. Yes, I am very old school, raised on pinball and can remember when this new thing called Space Invaders replaced my beloved Eight Ball pinball machine (later reborn as the even better Eight Ball Deluxe). After Space Invaders came Asteroids. And then the floodgates had officially opened.
I never really did get into arcade video games. My biggest claim to fame was that I played Centipede cross-handed and was pretty good at it. (Well, I don't know if I really was that good at it as much as my left-over-right hand playing simply unnerved my opponents into losing.)
I know it sounds like one of those "back in my day" stories, but I have to say there is something very tactile, very analog, very you-are-connected-with-the-machine about pinball--especially the classic machines (1960s through mid-1980s), before electronics turned them into clamorous pinball/video hybrids--that you just don't get in any other form of arcade or home video game.
Hang in there, Stern.
* sigh *
* dusts off "SJSU Pinball Champ 1978" trophy *
* returns to abacus under his kerosene lamp *
oh...and can I just add that the free game "POP!" is probably the most gratifying sound ever created? That and multiball. Gotta love the multi ball!
@ARP: pretty much sums it up.
Being a boomer I miss the Pinball and even the older slot machines that were totally mechanical. I'm very tempted to get a machine or two for this new house I'm building. My mail person (PC all the way) collects old slots he finds mostly on the dreaded ebay. Has about 11 so far and is one step from being whacked by his wife.
@Ollie: I suck at multiball. I always end up just picking one ball and sticking with it.
A friend of mine has a vintage pinball machine from the days before they had flippers! You had to have a meanly tuned bump to adjust the trajectory without causing tilt!
Sad to see something so classic not be around any more. I want one next to my rotary payphone, 8-track and record player, complete with that THING you used to convert the record player to play 45s. Kids today miss the thrill of playing records at 78 rpm which made even Barry White sounds like Alvin & the Chipmunks.
Where'd those two guys in the middle's heads go? No brain needed for assembly apparently.
Pinball rules.
You all need to go straight to Portland, OR and experience Ground Kontrol and get playing. Grab a beer and watch a band while you're at it.
I guess I would be preaching to the choir, because the young ones here who don't know what a pinball machine is, wouldn't be able to afford a whimsy flight and grab a drink at an obscure arcade.
Does anyone remember a short-lived pinball game called Caveman? At some point, the ball gets locked and you used a joystick to chase dinosaurs around on the video screen. When you went back to your cave, the ball popped out and regular play continued. I can still hear it say "Caveman, Wake up!"
There's this bar in Seattle that is filled with pinball machines. I'm not sure if it was intentional but a few of them were screwy enough to let you keep playing long after your two quarters ran out.
I miss arcades. T2 with the machine gun that started searing your hand was possibly one of the highest achievements of man.
I love pinball machines, but since most arcades have all but vanished I rarely get a chance to play them anymore. I didn't grow up in the golden age of pinball and have been playing video games for a good portion of my life but I'm sad to see so few of them around. Im still want to own the Twilight Pinball machine badly.
i love pinball, and now i am sad.
I'll give you my Twilight Zone pinball machine when you take it from my cold dead hands.
At 34, my entire life has been a veritable timeline of the video game industry. I remember pong, had all the flavors of Atari, C-64, C-128, Amiga, Intellivision, Coleco, etc.
Pinball remains dear to my heart.
I think it's the unquantifiable factor.
In today's video games, people can pretty much memorize the game and end up mastering it with little to no effort.
Case in point, DDR kids who play the game so much, they're not actually good dancers, they just have played the songs so much they could play it blindfolded.
Same with peopel completing various incarnations of Mario games in under 3 minutes. Same with Castlevania, etc.
There aren't many games that have actual replay factor. Enemies are in the same spawn area or it's immediate vicinity the second, third, and fourth time around.
Essentially, the more one plays a modern video game, the more he/she memorizes the game, the more likely that person is going to have repeat perfect games or very high scoring games with a very low point differential.
With pinball, the unquantifiable factor, ie. where is the ball going to go? ensures that the game is NEVER the same when replayed and ensures that high scores are truly a rare thing and not easily duplicated.
I hope somewhere down the road, someone reinvents Pinball and it sees new life breathed into the genre.
I wish I had more room next to my Tempest arcade machine for some hot pinball action. Either Dark Knight 2000 or the Futurama modded pinball would be perfect.
Man, I got a pocket full of quarters and I'm to the arcade...
@FSeven: ditto!
@Sportyboard:
As far as cost, you're looking at anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a not very popular table that could use some work to $5,000 for a well-shopped really popular table. Someone mentioned wanting a Williams Medieval Madness table... you're not alone, that's almost always one of the top priced tables ($3,000-$5,000).
I'm posting this from next to my 1987 Williams Big Guns table.
I love pinball, and for me there's a replay value inherent in pinball that I hardly ever find in video games. It's kind of gratifying to find that I've played almost every machine mentioned upthread... off the top of my head, I can add the Twilight Zone and Demolition Man machines as tables on which I whiled away many an hour.
But! Nothing tops walking into the local gigantimegaloplex as a teenager to find something I'd never expected to see without going to the UK - the Doctor Who pinball machine. I never managed to get a copy of "Dalek Attack" which I was trying very hard to do back in those days, so I think the universe offered this hiccup of probability by way of restitution.
@Killjoy: Whoops! Twilight Zone was indeed mentioned during the time I wrote my post, so never mind that.
This is one of the most depressing stories I've ever read on Gizmodo. I used to have an old pinball machine that my grand father gave me after he shut down the arcade in Peddler's Village (for those familiar with the Jersey Shore).. That and an elevator action cabinet. I miss them both. I think I will dedicate the next two - three years to making my own pinball machine and MAME cabinet. I don't want the pinball to die.
@GOKOR: If you remove the "the" from that sentence, you're absolutely right.
Wow! That many posts and no link to the coolest place in Vegas, the Pinball Hall of Fame:
[www.pinballmuseum.org]
There is a bar here in my town (named "The Replay" imagine that).
It is a really really grungy little "alternative" bar in a town full of frat bars (In this case alternative means: gutter punks, neo-greasers, hippies, etc. NOT scensters for the most part)
And they have at least a dozen pinball machines crammed into a relatively small bar, and they have some of the greats (and most of the specific machines mentioned in this thread previously). Simpsons, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Haunted House, Playboy Mansion, and several movie related ones that I would have thought came out too late for a pinball machine to be made for them...
The owner owns several bars in town and is a huge pinball fanatic, he opened a similar bar right across the street w/o the pinball machines because he didn't want to have to remove them from the existing bar for space.
Great stuff... Oh and I think the pinball is free Thurs/Friday Afternoon!