The revival of the Pinball industry?

I am a huge pinball fanatic, and from reading these forums, I remember a couple of you are fans also, so these bits of news should make you happy.

1'st news is that Stern (the only pinball manufacturer remaining) has hired Steve Ritchie to design tables for them. For those who don't know, Steve was the 2'nd most popular pin designer, only behind Pat Lawlor, and designed such pins as Black Knight 2000, Terminator 2, Star Trek: TNG, Indiana Jones, and others. While he's still a bit skeptical about the industry, the fact that he's even making games should give it a boost.

Also, John Papadiuk is starting up his own pinball company called "Chicago Flipper". Papadiuk is a great designer, but wasn't as well known as Ritchie and Lawlor mainly due to that none of his tables except 1 used any licensing tie-ins. His tables includes World Cup Soccer '94, Theatre of Magic, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Cirqus Voltaire.

You can read more at http://www.pinballnews.co.uk/ , and http://www.pinball.com.au/

Pinball will never regain the status it had back in the 70's, and early 90's, but I hope this will increase pinball's presence back in the arcade, as pinball (and the hope of finally seeing a DDR machine) are the only reasons I occasionally stop by the arcade.

Talk about an uphill battle.

Good.

I was really upset when I heard that pinball wasn't gonna be manufactured anymore.

This is great news.

Go pinball!

Like shooters, pinball is nearly a religion unto itself in gaming. Those of you who don't play (and most likely blipped past this thread anyway) really need to go learn what you're missing.

James

I've had this idea in my head for awhile, concerning a new kind of pinball machine. What if you took one of those new widescreen plasma displays, and used it in place of an actual board? That way you could have multiple games in one unit, along with additional levels and all sorts of graphical tricks. I mean sure it'd be expensive, but so are other arcade machines.

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1'st news is that Stern (the only pinball manufacturer remaining) has hired Steve Ritchie to design tables for them.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow!

Maybe Stern will finally put out some decent machines!

<--- Grew up on Pinball.

Worships weekly at Funhouse.

Fantastic News!

i just wanna see more full-size machines...i don't jive with those tiny ones, like that newer star wars machine that came out not that long ago...

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Originally posted by Johnny
I've had this idea in my head for awhile, concerning a new kind of pinball machine. What if you took one of those new widescreen plasma displays, and used it in place of an actual board? That way you could have multiple games in one unit, along with additional levels and all sorts of graphical tricks. I mean sure it'd be expensive, but so are other arcade machines.

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Would that really be true pinball? The last great videogame pinball I've played, was Last Gladiators on the Sega Saturn. I feel that it, and it's sequel, were the only video game versions, to get pinball right.


I think Pinball's biggest hurdle over the last decade, has been the arcade operators. The tables were'nt balanced, or the angle too steep, to give the game it's proper playtime. If arcade operators would take the time to balance the machines, take the time to make sure the machines are operating right, and clean the glass, Pinball could stand a chance of succeeding. Pinball's last heyday was during Pin-Bots prime.

So what are some of you guys' favorite machines?