In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever.  Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players.

Although I don’t think the Manufacturers “exploited” the players any more than change eating levels in video arcades do now, the post has some interesting points about how the manufacturers had to juggle difficulty and accessibility.

To anyone who started playing in the early 90’s, the ever increasing replay score was the norm and actually made sense. After you get used to a pin you are bound to score higher on average and the operator still has to make a profit.

Anyway, go and check out the article, it has some interesting info.

I caught the pinball bug in 1992 after seeing one of the Adams Family machines delivered to the hotel arcade, whilst on holiday in Greece. I chose to play it after thinking that arcade games now seemed expensive, due to the home consoles spoiling us at the time. I figured I would try it, then go back to the trusty arcade machines… I didn’t spend a spare drachma on anything else for the whole 2 weeks I stayed.

There was just something special about the physical and mechanical side of Pinball that got me hooked. Once I got home, I found out where I could play new machines near me and tried to visit as often as I could. The list of games that I had access to was probably quite typical: Terminator 2 became a favourite and Star Trek: The Next Generation ate alot of my change. Unfortunately this was also when the arcades decided that they weren’t worth having and it became difficult to find new machines/machines in playable condition.

It has certainly turned into a niche subject now. With only one manufacturer left since Williams left the market in 1999 (apart from a short production run of Big Bang Bar by Illinois Pinball inc). Most arcades are now full of nothing but poor arcade racers and DDR machines.

Fortunately, aside from the happy few who can get their hands on the Stern machines as and when they are released or have a collection of classics, there is a community dedicated to recreating old tables using development software such as Visual Pinball/PinMame and Future Pinball.

The plan for this blog is to cover Pinball in both the real and digital world, featuring general news and reviews, Video Table guides, machine location notification,  2nd hand market info, coverage of pinball events etc. .

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