Was Cecil right? How are pinball machines doing nowadays, anyway? I presume that with videogames, Wii, iPhone games, etc., they’re hurting, but I don’t know.
Pinball machines are not doing well as even the arcades are disappearing.
I can tell you the left-over machines generally sell well and thousands of people maintain them and many part supply stores still exist available with ease over the Internet. I have an old Bally’s Machine myself. My FIL got it at some point and I partially reconditioned it. It works well and is fairly easy to maintain. I was just playing it this weekend past.
BTW: It appears that Sales directly to consumers is taking over the market for new pinball machines: Pinball Machines - By The Numbers | From From BMIGaming.com
One more addition: Here is a recent model you’ll like: http://www.sternpinball.com/Lord-of-the-Rings2.shtml
Thanks. If those figures in the first link are accurate, it looks like pinball is at least hanging on, although in dollar terms, making probably only a tiny fraction of what’s spent on various videogames today.
As to the LOTR machine, I’ve never been much of a pinball fan, but that’s a beaut!
From what I read, it is unlikely that you can find any concrete sales figures showing what the industry was like in the 50s-70s versus 80s (the big decade of the arcades) and then today.
I love pinball and even played the old Bingo games Cecil mentions in his column and yes, it was for cash under the table.
I’d love to purchase a flipper machine, but always worried about how to maintain one…there are plenty of moving parts, after all. Are you particularly mechanically inclined or can the common man keep one of these things operating with a little help from the internet?
In my case I am somewhat mechanically inclined but not great. Mostly what I did was order and change the rubber parts, clean contacts and oil the solenoids and wax the playing surface. I did a little bit of jury-rigging and made two plastic lenses from some clear plastic that was toy packaging. The only electrical thing I had to do was replace one solenoid. It was fairly simple.
I saw something neat the other day: a gumball machine that was a miniature pinball game using the gum as the ball. You’d play to see if you could win a second gumball free.
I remember my father occasionally spotting me the dime to play one of the polyflipper games ca. 1953-5 at the general store in Vassalboro, ME. I had almost come to the conclusion that I must have hallucinated those extra flippers.
I’d say that you need not be Mr. Fixit to maintain a pinball game, but you do have to be familiar with basic electronic principles and circuitry, and with using small hand tools. In my experience, if you can track down what’s giving you trouble, you should be able to do something to remedy the problem; or at least, identify what replacement part is needed. There are many resources (manuals, schematics, etc.) available on the Internet for the average person.
And if you play the more advanced computer simulated pinball games, the physics are getting better and better all the time.
Completely a thing of the past where I live; I haven’t seen one anywhere for years now. Perhaps ironically, the big thing now is gambling (I’m convinced this is the only thing keeping Tilt in business).
They were truly something to behold, a spectacular fusion of analog and video technology, and the best ones were incredibly inventive. (Star Wars Episode 1 and Revenge From Mars, sadly the only ones of their kind, were especially awesome.) Unfortunately, it took practice and steel nerves to get any good at, and a lot of player simply didn’t have the patience. And don’t kid yourselves, there was a LOT of luck involved, and fluke drains (and there were a lot of stupid chancy fluke drains) were a constant aggravation.
There’s so much history and nostalgia involved that I don’t see them dying completely for a long time.
in Japan.
Frankly, that’s what I thought of first when I read the article’s initial question. Pinball machines without flippers? PACHINKO!
But the subject never came up, either in the article (i.e., Cecil’s response) or in SDMB comments thus far.
I have fond childhood memories of a pachinko parlor going full blast on a warm August evening in Fukuoka. The continuous clatter of hundreds of pachinko balls cycling through dozens of machines, the occasional loud RING RING RING of someone scoring a payout, the blue haze of cigarette smoke just above adult eye level… I thought it was crazy cool.
IMO
It’s video game machines that will die out. Pinball (and air hockey, foosball, and that domed game with hockey players on sticks) will thrive. Originally, a game machine had technology generations above any home console or computer. But home machines eventually caught up to arcade machines. Why plunk down quarters on Mortal Kombat 3 when the home version is just as good?
But pinball (and the above mentioned games) have a physicality that’s impossible to duplicate on a computer or console. The last arcade I was at was connected to a movie theater. They had one shooter game, a ten-year old Simpsons machine, pinball, an airhockey table.