I’m reading Haruki Murakami’s Pinball 1973 and now I’m wondering about when pinball was actually popular. My “back of my mind” assumption before starting the book was that pinball was mostly a 1970s thing. Looking this up on google, however, leads to dates as early as the 1930s, with the Google AI claiming the 1930s through 1950s, and many other sites claiming the 1950s through early 1980s. As a Gen Xer (born in 1977), I don’t have first hand experience of those earlier dates, but they seem off to me. I can maybe see the 1960s, but I certainly don’t associate the 1950s with pinball, much less the Great Depression or WWII. So what’s the straight dope? When was pinball popular?
1970 kid here.
Definitely into the 80s, although video games pushed them out starting in the early 80s.
Yeah. I remember the decline. In my hometown it was the debut of Super Mario Brothers that led to the decline of pinball in the mid ‘80s. I witnessed that first hand. But the early dates seem way off. Were teenagers back in the Great Depression, WWII, or even during the Eisenhower years hanging out playing pinball?
New pinball machines were still being designed and sold in the mid to late 1980s - I saw this one in college (note that it featured Gorbachev - topical!)
I recall playing them in the bar in the 60’s when I was 8 or 9 while my dad had a few drinks and played cards with his buddies. I wasn’t quite tall enough for the pool table yet, that happened when I was 11 or 12. But I recall from popular culture that they were a standard fixture back in the 50’s when they wanted to show juvenile delinquents in leather jackets smoking cigarettes and being a menace.
But the 70’s took the game to another level with the Who’s album Tommy and the games got much more complicated and flashier. The first arcades I went to in 79 had them side by side and people played both, by 83 the video games all but took over and the pinball games were more of an afterthought.
Article offers a decent history of pinball’s popularity, among other things:
The types of pinball machines popular in the '30s and '40s were quite a bit different than modern models; the flipper was only introduced in 1947. Before that, they were more like pachinko/bagatelle machines.
I was born in 1965, and this generally tracks with my memories. Pinball machines were really common (and popular) through the 1970s, in bars and restaurants, as well as gaming arcades. Video games largely supplanted them by the early '80s, but there were still always a few pinball machines around; the pinball companies responded by making their games more electronic and flashier, and there’s still a niche for them.
The Slow Mo Guys and a pinball machine.
New pinball machines are still being designed and sold today.
I’d date the beginning of pinball’s decline to the appearance of Space Invaders in early 1978. Even though the local mall had ~5 machines, people were lined up to play it. I can’t remember anything like that ever happening with a pinball game. After that, at least IME, arcades had more and more video games, and fewer and fewer pinball machines.
But during the 1960s and most of the 1970s, pinball was popular. Video games like Pong and Breakout were different, but really didn’t supplant pinball.
Pinball heyday was prolly the 70’s. Tommy the movie was ~1976. The 80’s saw a transition to space invaders, mario and the ilk. Pinball arcades started to fade out. Used to be a lot of bars had 2-3 machines.
Now it’s retro, but nothing like it was in the 70’s.
Thanks
I grew up with video games (was born at the tail end of the 70s) yet I have always loved and still love pinball. There’s an appeal to seeing actual physical things happening over a flat 2D representation. I think they will always have a niche.
But video arcade machines definitely were the death knell for them as a common pastime and major draw for people.
These days people basically carry an entertainment device in their pocket everywhere. I miss the days when the arcade was an exciting place to hang out and have fun.
[/old man grumbles]
Pinball games took up a lot of floor space and repairs compared to a video game. That and games like Ms PacMan and others appealed to girls more than pinball ever did. I don’t recall seeing pinball games in most bars after 85, and then people mostly used them to sit there beer on while playing pinball.
Yep. We used to go to the local bowling alley after D&D to play pinball, then video games, and so forth.
Yep, but you were allowed to use your body to work the balls, or so i heard, buy tilting the machine- which later would cancel that ball or entire game.
I play pinball on my phone several times a week, does that count?
I played one on my Nintendo for a couple of months in the 90s. It was fun, but no it don’t count.
Anyone interested in pinball and is in Las Vegas, they should visit the Pinball Hall of Fame. They have hundreds of machines from different eras, plus some other coin op machines.
Cecil discusses the history of pinball and alludes to its post war popularity following the invention of the flipper in 1947.