The Magnificent Marble Machine
Pinball was so popular in the 1970s they even made this ridiculous game show based on it.
More Chinese pinballs down south
About a month ago (here) I wrote about some interesting pinball games that are coming from China and heading to places like Mexico and other Latin American countries. Here’s a few more videos, including one that clearly shows flippers at the bottom of the game (Pinball con Flap!).
History Stuffs: David Silverman of the National Pinball Museum
You know they’re bad because
they’re playing one of those pinball games. Only the bad kids do that.
Not surprisingly, they jack a car.
DIY Pinball Kit
Aduis.com have a DIY pinball kit that looks like a lot of fun, along with this very cool how-to video.
Pinball Summer
Pinball Summer is not a good movie by most standards but of course that puts it on my A list of must-see trashy films.
It was originally titled Pick-up Summer but they changed the name to capitalize on the 70’s pinball craze. There’s quite a bit of actual pinball so that’s about the only thing that doesn’t feel like a cheap cash-in in this clearly “filmed while stoned” effort.
The movie makes practically zero sense. Something about a stolen pinball trophy followed by lots of crazy shenanigans and topless scenes to retrieve it. Biker gangs, hookers, car chases, bikini babes, amusement parks, burger joints, pool parties, dumb cops and of course, pinball. Jeez, all that for a $5 trophy. It was like the The Quest for Fire.
The good news is someone thought this film was worth a dvd transfer so you can rent it from netflix.
NOTE: The following clip contains brief nudity
NOTE: The above clip contains brief nudity.
BONUS: Here’s a song called “pinball summer” by a band called Sekiden, who describe themselves as “powerpunk, pop and new wave”.
400,000+ paying customers for Pinball FX series
This is why I have to laugh when people dismiss video pinball games as a passing fad or not worth anyone’s time.
All the original DLC tables were bought or imported as well in the new app — ranging from 13,000 to 20,000 users in each. Pinball FX currently has over 400,000 people on the Leaderboards, and you’d think many of them would at least try out this new application – but maybe they’ll migrate over time.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31658/InDepth_Xbox_Live_Arcade_Sales_Analysis_October_2010.php
Some guy pays $15000 to play video game on 250 meter screen
New gaming history exhibit opens
In this guest article, professor and exhibit advisor Stephen Jacobs was nice enough to fill us in on the opening of a dedicated video game exhibit at New York State’s Strong Museum Of Play, including a host of excellent resources and archives from the history of gaming, from arcade machines to historical artifacts and beyond.
Pinball Magic for iPhone and iPod touch
Pinball Nerd
Tommy isn’t about Pinball, but about impressing rock journalists and making money.
Pinball Wizard is a great song and probably did more for pinball than anything since the invention of the flipper. Still, if I have to hear it again I’ll probably punch a nun.
You see every casual player and I mean EVERY SINGLE CASUAL PLAYER who walks into the Pacific Pinball Museum just has to put this on the jukebox no less than forty three times. Finally PPM took it out for awhile. And then every casual player and I mean EVERY SINGLE CASUAL PLAYER now asks “how come a place like this doesn’t have Pinball Wizard on the jukebox? That’s so lame. How come? Huh?”
The only solution I think is for PPM to take a jukebox and fill it with nothing but versions of Pinball Wizard (including mixes, covers by crappy bar bands, foreign language versions, etc), but unlike all their other jukeboxes, which are set on free play, charge a buck a song. This is one of those “can’t miss” ideas.
But I digress. What I’m certain of is that not one of those folks knows that Tommy, the Who’s rock opera, wasn’t about pinball, at least not at first.
From Amazing Journey: The Life of Pete Townshend, by Mark Wilkerson
From The Who and the Making of Tommy, by Nigel Cawthorne:
A somewhat different version of how it went down, but most accounts agree that Nik Cohn’s influence was the primary driver of making Tommy about a “pinball wizard”.
