namelessWrench

The Only Rotten Dollhart Webring

A hideous fruit, disgracing itself.

Allo-Aro



arborelia
@arborelia

Pinball peaked as a game industry three times: in 1932, 1980, and 1992.

And hey, tonight's stream is the start of 1992! https://twitch.tv/arborelia


arborelia
@arborelia

Turns out these are tables you want to play for a while! Or are obligated to play for a while, in the case of Super Mario Bros. Mushroom World.

If I played all the planned tables it would have been a 6-hour stream. So I'm scheduling another stream, 8pm (@1042 beats) on Sunday, to play more 1992 pinball:

  • Metal Man
  • Lethal Weapon 3, and its clones Aaron Spelling and Michael Jordan
  • Black Rose (Pinball FX3 tournament)
  • Pinball Dreams, for the Amiga

arborelia
@arborelia

As mentioned before, there's too much pinball in 1992 to fit it into just two streams! Tonight's stream is the middle of 1992, including the same table three times, because it's fun that VPX lets us experience Data East's custom rethemes that you'd never get to see for real.

So what are the conditions that made pinball thrive? I wanted to say more about this last week but ran out of time to make the post.

  • 1932: Gottlieb started mass-producing pinball tables in 1931 to great success. Bally started up in 1932 to fill the rest of the demand. The world was looking for a relatively cheap diversion during Prohibition and the Depression, and pinball was suddenly there to provide it.

  • 1980: four years after 1976, when pinball was widely legalized, and solid state electronics made pinball more economical and maintainable. By 1980, four large pinball companies figured out how to use solid state to do truly new things. Arcades were booming and pinball was one of the big attractions.

  • 1992: pinball may not be the shiniest thing in the arcade anymore, but arcades are still big, pinball is grabbing attention again with fresh-looking DMD displays, and Bally/Williams and Data East have incredible teams designing incredible tables. Attention-getting licenses combine with increasingly deep gameplay to create an experience that you just can't get at home.

But speaking of pinball at home, 1992 is also when Pinball Dreams comes out for the Amiga. You can now have pinball that strives to be physically realistic on a home computer, and it's got amazing graphics and sound for the time. I'm going to be playing that too.

Silver Ball Century starts at 8pm Eastern. The stream might start early as I start @FlannelKat's async multiworld for the week.


You must log in to comment.