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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am the tech editor here at how stuff work
Speaker 1: dot com. And as usual, I have managed to get
Speaker 1: our senior writer Jonathan Strickland to nearly laugh, but not quite. Ever,
Speaker 1: since I was a young boy, I played the silver ball. Yes,
Speaker 1: but it's harder to do that these days. It's a
Speaker 1: lot harder to find them. It's a whole lot harder.
Speaker 1: So those of you guys and gals who are around
Speaker 1: the age of your beloved hosts may already have picked
Speaker 1: up on what we're about to talk about. You youngsters
Speaker 1: out there may or may not know. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about pinball machines. Yes, something that I am actually
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic about. I love pinball, Yes, I agree. We
Speaker 1: grew upaya. It's a great game. Um, and it was
Speaker 1: uh sort of the precursor to the arcade machine, the
Speaker 1: video game. Um, you know, pinball were pinball was what
Speaker 1: video games were before they were video games, and then
Speaker 1: they were uh, you know, they kind of existed side
Speaker 1: by side video games for a while, but as arcades
Speaker 1: died out, so did pinball machines. Partly because, in fact,
Speaker 1: I would say in large part, because they have lots
Speaker 1: and lots of parts and uh and you gotta do
Speaker 1: a lot of maintenance to keep them running in good condition.
Speaker 1: Plus I I have, I have the real reason why
Speaker 1: pinball machines are so hard to find now. But hardly
Speaker 1: anyone's making them. Well, yeah there is, but there well
Speaker 1: there's no one making them side stern. Yeah, at least
Speaker 1: not in the United States. But um, but no, they're
Speaker 1: I was going to get into that we after we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about you know, so you normally
Speaker 1: do the history of sure the pinball machine. I was
Speaker 1: going to do that, Okay. Um, Actually, you could argue
Speaker 1: that pinball machines in their earliest form weren't really techy
Speaker 1: at all because they were mechanics, simply mechanical, right And
Speaker 1: and in fact, if you want to go before pinball
Speaker 1: machines proper and all, first of all, it all depends
Speaker 1: on how you define a pinball machine, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: the earliest pinball machines were basically a piece of wood
Speaker 1: with some pins. Uh. They were a lot more vertical
Speaker 1: than they are now. Yeah, and then you would drop
Speaker 1: a ball down from the top and they would plunk
Speaker 1: down along the pins and then eventually land somewhere at
Speaker 1: the bottom. Yes. Actually, if you've if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: the the Japanese phenomenon pachinko, pachinko is very similar to
Speaker 1: what the earlier pinball machines were here in the United States,
Speaker 1: because they were serious. They're seriously gravity driven. There're a
Speaker 1: lot more upright, you hang them on the wall basically. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, um, a precursor to the pinball machine was
Speaker 1: the Bagatel. Yes, the Bagatel was a uh device where
Speaker 1: it looked a lot like a pinball machine. Usually it
Speaker 1: was a cabinet that was higher on one end than
Speaker 1: the other. So you have introduced the element of gravity
Speaker 1: into the game. And you would use probably a plunger
Speaker 1: or perhaps a a lever of some sort to maneuver
Speaker 1: a ball so that it rolls from the top to
Speaker 1: the bottom and it goes down a series of various
Speaker 1: pegs like we had mentioned before, until it lands in
Speaker 1: a slotted spot at the bottom, which would have a
Speaker 1: score associated with it, and that's how how you would
Speaker 1: accumulate points. There's not really any skill involved, is all
Speaker 1: luck pretty much. So this device gave way to other,
Speaker 1: uh similar devices. Uh. Now, we have an article on
Speaker 1: our site about how pinball machines worked in which we
Speaker 1: state that the first pinball game was Humpty Dumpty by
Speaker 1: Gottlieb in ninety. Now that's something that some people would
Speaker 1: argue is not entirely true. I would argue that that's
Speaker 1: not entirely true. Now I think I know the reason
Speaker 1: why we stated so in our article. It's because Humpty
Speaker 1: Dumpty was the first machine that introduced flippers. So you
Speaker 1: have they call them flippers. Flippers, yes, yes, lightning. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: now now we've lost even some of the people our age. Um,
Speaker 1: exactly is this pinball machine dolphins safe? So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the first. The Humpty Dumpty was the first game
Speaker 1: to introduce flippers, which allowed the player a chance to
Speaker 1: alter the course of the game. Actually, really, well, that
Speaker 1: gives you an opportunity to interact with the game right then,
Speaker 1: just watching the ball moved from the top of the
Speaker 1: playing surface to the bottom. Right before that, people usually
Speaker 1: played would try and manipulate the game by nudging the
Speaker 1: machine and trying to get the ball to go one
Speaker 1: way other rather than another, which still, of course happens
Speaker 1: with pinball machines, but we'll get into that. So that
Speaker 1: is probably why they call Humpty Dumpty the first pinball
Speaker 1: machine in the article, because again, flippers, first time you
Speaker 1: got those. But you do have machines before that that
Speaker 1: had pins that the ball would bounce off of, and uh,
Speaker 1: those technically could also be called pinball machines. Um. I
Speaker 1: think of Humpty Dumpty as the first one because I
Speaker 1: think of when I think pinball machine, the flippers are
Speaker 1: definitely a part of that. I think of the others
Speaker 1: as variations either, um, whether the variations of Bagatel or
Speaker 1: variations of the pinball machine, but not actually a pinball machine.
Speaker 1: So um. But yeah, so so I go with hump
Speaker 1: Dumpty Humpty Dumpty as the first one, even though I
Speaker 1: know there are some pinball fanatics out there who would
Speaker 1: argue that that's not entirely accurate. I'm glad that there
Speaker 1: are still pinball fanatics out there. Otherwise the game would
Speaker 1: have died out already, and it's it's still coughing and wheezing.
Speaker 1: It's not doing great. Um, So let's uh describe the
Speaker 1: anatomy of a pinball machine just in general terms. You've
Speaker 1: got the head or the back glass backball box section. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the section that's vertical that you you look at
Speaker 1: and usually has some pretty amazing art on it to
Speaker 1: attract the eye so that you go to that machine
Speaker 1: versus any other. Then you have the body or cabinet
Speaker 1: section of the machine. This is where the playing field is,
Speaker 1: where the ball comes out at the top and gravity
Speaker 1: pulls it towards the bottom. And then you use your
Speaker 1: various flippers and elements in the playing field to keep
Speaker 1: the ball going as much as possible and to rack
Speaker 1: up points. Yes, now, um, this is the reason you
Speaker 1: would want flippers anyway. And the reason that pinball machine
Speaker 1: is different from a baggytell is that at least in
Speaker 1: in the age of electricity, um, you know, the mid
Speaker 1: early earlier, I guess mid twentieth century, um, electro mechanical
Speaker 1: pinball machines came into being. And this is why, because
Speaker 1: otherwise there's no point in and trying to get the
Speaker 1: ball except you know, well, this is headed for the
Speaker 1: forty point slot. I'd rather it ended up in the
Speaker 1: seventy point slot. So you want to keep the ball
Speaker 1: in play because the electro mechanical games have a number
Speaker 1: of switches and buttons and bumpers and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other dude ads that help you continue to accumulate more
Speaker 1: and more points since the game goes on um and
Speaker 1: they do this. These games were primarily before or so
Speaker 1: based on what I was able to find out in
Speaker 1: the Internet Pinball Database. I didn't know there was an
Speaker 1: Internet Pinball database you. I used to use that all
Speaker 1: the time. It is a great resource and I got
Speaker 1: a lot of valuable information about it. I p dB
Speaker 1: dot com um. But uh, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of descriptions for things I didn't
Speaker 1: know what they were. But on the playing field, I
Speaker 1: would say the probably the biggest thing in all these
Speaker 1: games dating back quite some time now, would be the bumpers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got the bumpers, and you've got a couple of
Speaker 1: Sometimes you would have some some holes that the ball
Speaker 1: could fall into that would accumulate some points as well,
Speaker 1: but the bumpers, and then towards the base of it,
Speaker 1: you would have the drain that's where the ball. When
Speaker 1: the ball goes through the drain, that means that that
Speaker 1: play is usually over at that point. So so your
Speaker 1: goal is to try and keep the ball out of
Speaker 1: the drain and in the playing field. UM. So you've
Speaker 1: got the bumpers usually towards the top, You've got the
Speaker 1: flippers at the bottom. You might have some sling shots
Speaker 1: on either side. Those are the kind of triangular uh
Speaker 1: elements that you see towards the near where the flippers
Speaker 1: are that have the the the really powerful bumper that
Speaker 1: will knock the ball right back towards the top. So
Speaker 1: those are usually called sling shots, even though they're not
Speaker 1: really slinging. They're they're punching the ball as hard as
Speaker 1: they can. Um. These elements all have something in common.
Speaker 1: They are controlled by or they're powered by, something called
Speaker 1: a solenoid, which is not a decepticon. I'm so disappointed.
Speaker 1: I see these things that I'm like, wow, there's a
Speaker 1: transformer in there, And sometimes there is, but it's not
Speaker 1: the kind of trans former I'm thinking of. It's not
Speaker 1: even a gobot. So solenoid is a coil um It's
Speaker 1: used in all kinds of things, but Basically, what happens
Speaker 1: is when there's electricity running through the solenoid um it
Speaker 1: causes UH, a magnetic field, generates a magnetic field which
Speaker 1: moves a piece of something, a piece of equipment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Often there are two coils. There might be one in
Speaker 1: the center and one on the outside and right, and
Speaker 1: what happens is you've got two magnetic fields that are um.
Speaker 1: The are the same, so they repel one another and
Speaker 1: that pushes something out of the solenoid. And in this case,
Speaker 1: like with the flipper, when you press the buttons on
Speaker 1: the side of the pinball machine, it's since the electrical
Speaker 1: circuit or it completes electrical circuit, which then causes the
Speaker 1: solenoid to activate, which makes the the flipper go up.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that there are a couple of different
Speaker 1: styles of flippers. There's somewhere if you hold the button down,
Speaker 1: the flipper will remain engaged and it'll it'll because it'll
Speaker 1: the solenoidal they'll be poking out essentially when you release
Speaker 1: the button. I like that type, those favorite flippers. And
Speaker 1: then there's the other kind where it has a timer
Speaker 1: on how long the button can be pressed down. It'll
Speaker 1: it's usually pretty much an instantaneous thing, like if you
Speaker 1: were to hold the button down, it wouldn't matter. The
Speaker 1: flipper would activate, but then immediately stop because it would
Speaker 1: just be like a quick on switch. And then until
Speaker 1: you release the button and press it again, the flipper
Speaker 1: would remain in the down position. And uh, those are
Speaker 1: a lot harder to use for those of us who
Speaker 1: like to finesse the ball and juggle it in various ways. Yes,
Speaker 1: those were invented by someone evil. Yes, yes, someone evil
Speaker 1: who wanted to make sure that we spent more and
Speaker 1: more nickels, dimes, quarters, whatever. Yes. Um. Now active bumpers
Speaker 1: there are two different kinds of bumpers. They're active and passive.
Speaker 1: Passive ones were used in the earlier machines were basically
Speaker 1: when the ball would strike the bumper, it would register
Speaker 1: that it had hit and would give you the according
Speaker 1: number of points. Now, active bumpers use the solenois to
Speaker 1: bump back, bump back the ball across the playing field. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a plunger inside the bumper that that activates, and
Speaker 1: there's a little metal ring, which you know, that's when
Speaker 1: when the metal ball comes in contact with the metal ring,
Speaker 1: then that that's what activates it to um too activate
Speaker 1: the solenoid, and the plunger moves the bumper and it
Speaker 1: it propels the ball somewhere else on the playing field,
Speaker 1: which is you know, that's when you can get like
Speaker 1: maybe that there's often you'll see a configuration of three bumpers.
Speaker 1: Three is three is pretty common. I mean you'll see
Speaker 1: others like maybe two or maybe as many as five
Speaker 1: or six. But if you luck out, you can get
Speaker 1: the ball to bounce back and forth between the three
Speaker 1: or more bumpers and rack up points really quickly that way, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Or you know, the ball could go careening into a
Speaker 1: drop target, which is a little object I guess made
Speaker 1: of probably plastic or would um that when the ball
Speaker 1: hits it, it drops into the table um and gives
Speaker 1: you the according number points. You can't hit it again
Speaker 1: because it's gone. But yeah, if you usually if you
Speaker 1: hit all of the drop targets along a certain section,
Speaker 1: it'll reactivate and uh give you a bonus of some sort,
Speaker 1: and then all the targets will will spring back up
Speaker 1: and then you'll have them to hit again, but you
Speaker 1: you have to knock them all down or sometimes after
Speaker 1: a ball drains. It will reset the board um versus
Speaker 1: a standard target or stand up target I'm sorry, which
Speaker 1: is you know, usually a lot of times they're they're round,
Speaker 1: be like a lollipop there, you know, on some kind
Speaker 1: of um something mounted to the table itself, but they
Speaker 1: don't go anywhere the and it does it's usually through uh,
Speaker 1: depending on how old the machine is. If it's an
Speaker 1: older machine, it's usually a leaf switch. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: leaf switch is uh. Well, here's an easy example. Think
Speaker 1: of two strips of copper, all right, that are close
Speaker 1: to one another. Their their parallel and on one end
Speaker 1: you have the two strips embedded in an insulating material. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, so it's sort of like a v yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then on the other end you've got the the
Speaker 1: two free standing strips of copper. When they come into
Speaker 1: contact with one another, uh, it creates a circuit and
Speaker 1: that's it activates like a switch. That's the the whole
Speaker 1: uh concept of the leaf switches. Whenever the two pieces
Speaker 1: of copper come into contact, that means that it has
Speaker 1: registered something registered the contact. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: old electro mechanical pinball machines use leaf switches to register
Speaker 1: contact along various parts of the board, and it maybe
Speaker 1: everything from a stand up target like you were mentioning,
Speaker 1: or it could be a switch that's on the actual
Speaker 1: playing field so that when the ball rolls over a
Speaker 1: certain point, it uh it makes a contact and creates
Speaker 1: some sort of reaction, whether that's more points or changing
Speaker 1: the mode of play or whatever. And uh, that's really
Speaker 1: what the older machines rely on. Newer ones have things
Speaker 1: called micro switches, which are similar to the leaf switches,
Speaker 1: but they are self contained. They have they're usually protected
Speaker 1: in a little case. Um, and they're they're smaller and
Speaker 1: they're more sensitive. So uh so don't upset them or
Speaker 1: they'll cry. That's not what I meant. But sure, um,
Speaker 1: they're they're less likely to uh malfunction to break down. Um.
Speaker 1: Here's an example I used to play. There was a
Speaker 1: game that I played while I was in college. It
Speaker 1: was an older pinball machine. Don't don't assume when I
Speaker 1: start talking about this pinball machine that it was new
Speaker 1: when I was playing it in college. It was a
Speaker 1: Star Trek pinball machine from the seventies, and it was
Speaker 1: an electro mechanical pinball machine, and it had a sensor
Speaker 1: in the upper left corner of the playing field that
Speaker 1: would register when you would roll the ball over it.
Speaker 1: It would uh start accumulating points towards an extra ball. Well,
Speaker 1: the one that we had in our student center, which
Speaker 1: I guess was donated by either a student or a
Speaker 1: former student. Um the the sensor would stick, so if
Speaker 1: you could get the ball to roll over it once
Speaker 1: or twice, it would stick long enough for it to
Speaker 1: register as an extra ball. So anyone who knew how
Speaker 1: that machine would work would the very first thing they
Speaker 1: would do is aim to get the ball up in
Speaker 1: that upper left hand part of the playing field, because
Speaker 1: as soon as you registered an extra ball, you could
Speaker 1: play the ball as recklessly as you like, because once
Speaker 1: it drained, you got another ball to to play. And
Speaker 1: then again as soon as you got the extra ball,
Speaker 1: aim for the upper left After a couple of hits,
Speaker 1: you would get another extra ball. And this these games
Speaker 1: could last forever. I actually managed to turn that game
Speaker 1: I got. I went over the top, as they say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went over the top and reset the score back
Speaker 1: to zero. By the way, once I did that, it
Speaker 1: did not register it as a high score anymore. That
Speaker 1: kind of was kind of a bummer. It took me
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half I think total, and
Speaker 1: I had more than sixteen free games racked up after
Speaker 1: it was done. Good times. Um, so yeah, there are
Speaker 1: there are other new technologies now, I'm just it's good.
Speaker 1: There are other new technologies too that h have been
Speaker 1: made possible with advanced electronics, such as the opto or
Speaker 1: opto electronic sensor um, which basically records what the ball
Speaker 1: is doing with light. Yeah, there's also proximity sensors that
Speaker 1: use magnets. Yes, basically basically the same kind of do
Speaker 1: hikey that registers whether or not your car is sitting
Speaker 1: there at the light. Because it uh, it basically identifies
Speaker 1: when a ball has passed over it without their needing
Speaker 1: to be a physical switch. Right, it changes the the
Speaker 1: the electron flow through the circuit um. We should say, however,
Speaker 1: that when I said it uses magnets, I really should
Speaker 1: have said it uses magnetic fields. Doesn't really use a
Speaker 1: magnet because a lot of a lot of a common
Speaker 1: complaint among pinball users is, oh, this thing must have
Speaker 1: magnets to make it drained so quickly. Um, all of
Speaker 1: all the research I've done, all the magnets that are
Speaker 1: used in these these pinball machines are used in such
Speaker 1: a way that either the player has control of it
Speaker 1: or it is a specific mode that gets activated within
Speaker 1: a pinball game, and are all electro magnets and otherwise
Speaker 1: there are no magnets in penell There aren't any magnets
Speaker 1: and pen ball machines specifically designed to make the ball
Speaker 1: drain faster. No, no, um, despite what you might think
Speaker 1: as you're playing and cursing. Well, these these devices that
Speaker 1: we're talking about are used more commonly in in what's
Speaker 1: known as solid state games, which are the heavily uh
Speaker 1: electronic type machines that you see, you know, you saw
Speaker 1: started seeing and then the late seventies, early eighties and
Speaker 1: into the es where it would usually be more than
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't have the numbers, the mechanical numbers.
Speaker 1: It would flip over anymore. Um more. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not even an led. They're actually using plasma displays, um,
Speaker 1: some of which had electronic games baked into them. Yeah. Actually, um, well,
Speaker 1: look just to to differentiate a little more, the electro
Speaker 1: mechanical pinball machines, they used a lot of switches, they
Speaker 1: used motors, scoring wheels, which would be like the digit
Speaker 1: counters um where each each number, each digit was on
Speaker 1: its own wheel that would turn as you accumulated points,
Speaker 1: and the number of wheels it had would essentially tell
Speaker 1: you how high your score could go before turning back
Speaker 1: over to zero. UM and stepping units relays that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So lots of electric electronic um, electromagnetic stuff,
Speaker 1: not electromagnetic stuff, but stuff you would find in basic electronics.
Speaker 1: That's what we're in the old pinball machines. Electromechanical stuff
Speaker 1: is solid state. Would be more things like circuit boards
Speaker 1: and UH and micro switches, things that are that don't
Speaker 1: rely on so many moving parts necessarily. And as for displays,
Speaker 1: instead of the score wheels, you might have the most
Speaker 1: common word dot matrix. Displays choose dots to indicate what
Speaker 1: the what was going on, you know, your score. You
Speaker 1: might have a special video mode, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: a little mini game pop up. Some had LED displays.
Speaker 1: The segmented plasma displays were a little different. They weren't
Speaker 1: like a plasma display like an HDTV. It was it
Speaker 1: would plasma would illuminate a small segment of the scoreboard
Speaker 1: and that could form either letters or numbers, so it's
Speaker 1: almost like a neon sign, is kind of what they
Speaker 1: look like. It wasn't that you would necessarily get a
Speaker 1: very high deaf um uh experience from it. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: people associate plasma these days with high definition. No, not
Speaker 1: so much. Pinball had kind of a rocky road to
Speaker 1: go through. Do you you know that some places uh
Speaker 1: outlawed pinball machines? Yes, because they by giving away free games,
Speaker 1: they were gambling. Yeah. The idea here is that you
Speaker 1: would have to pay to play a pinball machine. Therefore,
Speaker 1: playing pinball has a value. Right. Let's say it's a quarter,
Speaker 1: so it's a quarter of play. That means that you
Speaker 1: have assigned the value of the experience of playing the
Speaker 1: pinball machine to cents. If you were to win a
Speaker 1: replay that is a free game, that means that they've
Speaker 1: just given away a twenty five cent experience. Therefore you
Speaker 1: have uh gambled. You gambled to win another game. Uh.
Speaker 1: Most of us would consider this crazy, And eventually almost
Speaker 1: everyone did consider this crazy, and they decided that it
Speaker 1: wasn't really that big a deal. But for a while
Speaker 1: it was a big deal when when gambling was it
Speaker 1: was being what. There were crackdowns on gambling across the
Speaker 1: United States and in other parts of the world too,
Speaker 1: although in Japan UH pachinko is such a big deal
Speaker 1: and you can actually win prizes and in some cases
Speaker 1: people are who are professional pachinko players can actually make
Speaker 1: UH money playing pachinko. So and not everybody is well
Speaker 1: and some and some pinball machines actually did reward people
Speaker 1: with coins or or credits or things like that, something
Speaker 1: beyond just the free games. So there were games that
Speaker 1: did UH have more of a gambling element to them
Speaker 1: than just the free play. Let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the other things that you might find in pinball machines.
Speaker 1: Depending on what you're playing there, there are lots of
Speaker 1: different variations because I mean, of course, you've got your
Speaker 1: basic board, which is your your elevator. You know, you're
Speaker 1: tilted playing field so that gravity pulls the ball downward.
Speaker 1: You've usually got some bumpers. You might have the slingshots
Speaker 1: at the bottom and the flippers. You've got a plunger
Speaker 1: that allows you to propel the ball up to the
Speaker 1: top of the playing field so that you can start play.
Speaker 1: And then you got the drain at the bottom. Uh.
Speaker 1: But on top of this, there have been lots and
Speaker 1: lots of innovations for pinball machines to kind of differentiate
Speaker 1: them from everything else. So you've got things like spinners,
Speaker 1: sections of the playing field that spin around and around,
Speaker 1: depending on you know, some some might spend the entire game,
Speaker 1: some might spend if you activate a certain switch, and
Speaker 1: that can alter the course of a pinball as it
Speaker 1: rolls across. You've got ramps are very basically got the
Speaker 1: ramps that will lead to possibly another section of the
Speaker 1: um the playing field, or even another separate playing field
Speaker 1: that is otherwise inaccessible from the the the regular playing field.
Speaker 1: You've got different lanes that the ball can go down.
Speaker 1: Often these lanes will have lights above them that are activated,
Speaker 1: and in some games you can manipulate where the lights
Speaker 1: are using the flippers, and if you light all the lanes,
Speaker 1: then you get some sort of bonus. You've got various kickers,
Speaker 1: which are holes that the ball can go down and
Speaker 1: then it'll kick it back out. Yeah, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot that where you might knock a ball in
Speaker 1: a hole on one part of the playing field and
Speaker 1: the ball will come out in a totally different part
Speaker 1: of the playing field that reminds me of one of
Speaker 1: my favorite devices in a pinball game, which is really
Speaker 1: very little too with the experience, but it's just weird.
Speaker 1: The knocker. Yes, when you hit a replay, it's a
Speaker 1: solenoid that's inside the uh, the the actual pinball machine,
Speaker 1: and the only thing it's supposed to do is hit
Speaker 1: against the side of the pinball machine to make a
Speaker 1: really loud knocking noise and it indicates that you have
Speaker 1: won a replay. It's way louder than that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the same, and they had one in UH. I
Speaker 1: think in the Cubert video game too, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: when he'd fall off suddenly. But you you'd hear this,
Speaker 1: you know, you feel and then the joystick that you
Speaker 1: used to manipulate the game, you would feel this, you know, whack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's often. It can be very loud and very
Speaker 1: um very disconcerting, disconcerting. Yeah, you'd be in the middle
Speaker 1: of a and you'll hear it. Usually either if you've
Speaker 1: earned a replay by hitting a certain score, or if
Speaker 1: you hit a match at the end and matches where
Speaker 1: they you see a random set of numbers. It's usually uh. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know one through zero followed by a zero, and
Speaker 1: if they matched the last two digits on your score,
Speaker 1: you get a replay. Uh. You may suspect that people
Speaker 1: fiddle with the odds because usually would think one inten chance. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of machines that can allow you
Speaker 1: to fiddle with the odds and lower it to as
Speaker 1: low as one percent chance of it landing on what
Speaker 1: you actually scored. Well, I'll get back into that in
Speaker 1: a minute, but I also wanted to mention another feature
Speaker 1: that you can't see in games. Are you gonna talk
Speaker 1: about tilting? Yes, you're not ready for tilting. Now let's
Speaker 1: talk about tilting. Well. Uh, in the early games like
Speaker 1: bagatell you you needed to tilt the game table to
Speaker 1: actually get the ball to move where that was you
Speaker 1: know in some of those games. But um, in pinball machines,
Speaker 1: they didn't want you to do that because, you know,
Speaker 1: for one thing, they didn't want you to get more
Speaker 1: play than you should be getting for your quarter. But
Speaker 1: for another, there are a lot of different parts in
Speaker 1: these pinball machines, and some of them are kind of delicate,
Speaker 1: and there's a very good reason that you really don't
Speaker 1: want to tilt it too much, so, uh, they added
Speaker 1: what what's called a tilt bob, which is essentially a
Speaker 1: pendulum inside a metal ring. So as soon as you
Speaker 1: tilt the game more than just a little bit, um,
Speaker 1: the pendulum is going to strike the ring, which is
Speaker 1: going to cause the machine to tilt. Yeah. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like the game operation. If the tweezers in the
Speaker 1: game operation touches the side, then the guy's nose lights up,
Speaker 1: and then you've killed a patient. So every time you
Speaker 1: tilt a pinball machine, some patient dies. I might have
Speaker 1: mixed that up a little okay, um, but well, that's
Speaker 1: one kind of mechanism. There's also a ball roll tilt. Yes.
Speaker 1: This is a ball that's in a little channel underneath
Speaker 1: the playing field and at the top of the channel
Speaker 1: it's it's aligned in the same way as the playing field,
Speaker 1: so it's it's on an incline and at the upper
Speaker 1: end is a sensor. And if the ball should come
Speaker 1: in contact with a sensor, that triggers a tilt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's uh moving that is generally going to cause
Speaker 1: what's uh, what's known as a slam tilt. These are
Speaker 1: very bad, Yeah, For one thing, they can be they
Speaker 1: can damage a machine, and for another, it's just considered
Speaker 1: bad form. Yeah, a slam tilt is basically they're they're
Speaker 1: telling you that, um, you really messed up, because not
Speaker 1: only I mean in a regular tilt, you would lose
Speaker 1: your points and the flippers don't move, so it's like, dude, no,
Speaker 1: you lost it. Yeah, yeah, it'll it'll it'll kill everything
Speaker 1: on the playing field. The ball will drain, you won't
Speaker 1: get any bonus, and you won't continue to score for
Speaker 1: that round. Yeah, But in a slam tilt, it actually
Speaker 1: resets the machine. This is you know, generally a solid
Speaker 1: state era yeah device. And there are other sensors that
Speaker 1: can also trigger a slam tilt. Usually they are located
Speaker 1: mostly in the coin slot area, like anywhere where the
Speaker 1: coins are collected. That's usually where you're gonna find a
Speaker 1: sensor for a slam tilt. Yeah. I don't want to
Speaker 1: mess with the but I mean, if you really enjoy pinball,
Speaker 1: you don't want to You don't want to break the machine.
Speaker 1: So there's there's that too. You don't you really don't
Speaker 1: want to tilt it for that reason. Um, so should
Speaker 1: I get into the demise of pinball real quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about Yeah, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the way pinball's kind of kind of fallen apart recently,
Speaker 1: and then let's do a little bit talk about some
Speaker 1: of our favorite pinball machines before. Um. Okay, Well, a
Speaker 1: few months ago I did a blog post because I
Speaker 1: happened to hear um Jeff Eli Uh, an economics professor
Speaker 1: in Northwestern University on the radio, and he had written
Speaker 1: He's he's an economist, but he wrote a post on
Speaker 1: pinball because he has also a pinball aficionado. UM. And
Speaker 1: he met somebody who had designed two of his favorite games,
Speaker 1: Black Night and High Speed UM and those were some
Speaker 1: of the earliest, uh, serious digital high end pinball machines.
Speaker 1: Some of that that that really got going UM and
Speaker 1: it was it goes back to what you were talking about, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: because over the course of pinball history, I mean, you
Speaker 1: think about it, we were going from a gravity only
Speaker 1: game to something that has flippers that you can put
Speaker 1: back and put the ball back into play. It's got
Speaker 1: electronic switches that enable you to rack up lots and
Speaker 1: lots of points. They're trying to add new gimmicks to
Speaker 1: keep you playing, keep you spending money on pinball. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: so they start adding these ramps and you know, the
Speaker 1: habit trails the ball goes through and the little uh
Speaker 1: you know, get it in the monster's mouth and he'll
Speaker 1: spit the ball back out kind of stuff. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. Um, all kinds of stuff like that to
Speaker 1: get you to keep playing and enhance the experience. Well,
Speaker 1: some people got so good at the game that they
Speaker 1: could win free replays often, so the pinball manufacturers started
Speaker 1: enabling the amusement facilities owners to adjust the odds of
Speaker 1: getting a replay by doing the number match there and
Speaker 1: the more people I mean, it stopped people from uh
Speaker 1: exploiting the game by being really really good at it,
Speaker 1: but it also kept new people from entering. And because
Speaker 1: it was so difficult for them to score replay that
Speaker 1: they couldn't, they weren't interested in playing. I mean you
Speaker 1: also started seeing circuit boards eventually that could adjust the
Speaker 1: score that was needed to get a replay. It would
Speaker 1: just increminally increase, so if people were getting lots of replays,
Speaker 1: it would keep upping that score to make it more
Speaker 1: and more challenging to get a replay because they figured
Speaker 1: you were going to keep pumping coins into it anyway,
Speaker 1: and of course they were going to keep playing, so
Speaker 1: why should we give it you a free game. There's
Speaker 1: also the whole three ball versus five ball thing, where
Speaker 1: you could set it to either be a three ball
Speaker 1: game or a five ball game, and of course if
Speaker 1: you found a five ball game, you said, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be here, this is what I'm gonna play.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I did set the bar pretty high.
Speaker 1: And it didn't help that there were other pinball machines
Speaker 1: that started coming out that really catered to the hardcore
Speaker 1: pinball enthusiast. I mean, it meant that the pinball enthusiasts
Speaker 1: were they loved it, but it acted as a barrier
Speaker 1: for anyone who enjoy wanted to wanted to play pinball,
Speaker 1: but didn't understand all the different modes and all the
Speaker 1: different tricks you needed to do in order to score well.
Speaker 1: So it just became a confusing experience for anyone who
Speaker 1: wanted to get into pinball. So that also really hurt
Speaker 1: the game overall. And to that, the rise of video games,
Speaker 1: especially really good video games, and uh um, the the
Speaker 1: temporary demise of the video game market. A lot of
Speaker 1: the people that were making video games were also making
Speaker 1: pinball machines. So when the coin operated arcade sort of
Speaker 1: went out of style there for a while, some of
Speaker 1: the people who were making pinball machines failed, some of
Speaker 1: emmerged and then failed, And now a few years ago
Speaker 1: there were only two companies. Now Stern Pinball is the
Speaker 1: only company ball machines here, and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know of any I don't know of anybody else worldwide.
Speaker 1: Those old Bally and Williams games, they were fantastic, they
Speaker 1: were so much fun. Let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of our favorites. Um uh. One of my favorites
Speaker 1: is also one of the games that actually, I think
Speaker 1: uh contributed to the downfall of pinball, and in fact,
Speaker 1: even the creator of the game would tell you that,
Speaker 1: and it's twilight Zone. Twilight Zone was an amazing pinball machine,
Speaker 1: but it also was one of those that was really
Speaker 1: geared for the hardcore pinball enthusiasts. So people like me,
Speaker 1: we loved twilight Zone, but anyone who just stood came
Speaker 1: up to play it would get really frustrated pretty quickly
Speaker 1: and then never play pinball again and the designer for
Speaker 1: twilight Zone was Pat Lawler. Pat Lawler is kind of
Speaker 1: a legend in the pinball field, even though really he
Speaker 1: came in on the scene pretty late. He wasn't like
Speaker 1: one of the people who shaped what pinball is. But
Speaker 1: he designed some of the greatest pinball machines from the
Speaker 1: you know, late eighties and uh into the nineties and
Speaker 1: up to today. Um and twilight Zone was one of them.
Speaker 1: And he actually said that, yeah, they thought they didn't
Speaker 1: have any real limits on what they could do because
Speaker 1: before he built twilight Zone, he built the Adams Family,
Speaker 1: which is my all time favorite machine ever, one of
Speaker 1: the best pinball machines ever in my opinion, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was so successful that they essentially had uh a
Speaker 1: you know, an open sky to design twilight Zone. And
Speaker 1: he said that was the problem was because they were
Speaker 1: allowed to do anything. They put everything in it and
Speaker 1: then made it so complicated that only the hardcore enthusiast
Speaker 1: wanted to play it. But um also he designed Funhouse,
Speaker 1: which had Rudy the talking ventriloqu with dummy head that
Speaker 1: would insult you as he played the game, and you
Speaker 1: could knock the ball into his mouth and activate multi
Speaker 1: ball that way, and it was pretty cool. My other
Speaker 1: favorites were Theater of Magic, Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, Junkyard.
Speaker 1: I loved Tommy Who's Tommy That had a mode where
Speaker 1: as you're playing, a shield would come up and block
Speaker 1: your view of the flippers, so you had to play blind. Um.
Speaker 1: I actually would use the There was a way you
Speaker 1: could start off that way and just play the whole
Speaker 1: game blind, and that's how I would play because I'm hardcore.
Speaker 1: And there's one other game I want to mention, Mary
Speaker 1: Shelley's Frankenstein, not because it was awesome, but because it
Speaker 1: gave you the chance to choose which music you want
Speaker 1: to play. You could either play the the soundtrack from
Speaker 1: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or you could play Edgar Winter's Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, I think you know which one I chose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Don't don't done, don't done. That's all I
Speaker 1: can home about that before we have to pay your turn.
Speaker 1: It's funny because Internet Pinball database actually lists most of
Speaker 1: your favorites in the top ten of all player rated games,
Speaker 1: and they are awesome games of Twilight zon Zone being
Speaker 1: number one and those would be the solid state games.
Speaker 1: I would guess, yes, mechanical ones. You know they have
Speaker 1: a separate list for electro mechanical um mine. Actually high
Speaker 1: Speed I really loved High Speed UM which kind of
Speaker 1: makes me sad now because that was one of the
Speaker 1: ones that I really really enjoyed playing, and then now
Speaker 1: I know it was sort of the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end UM. But I also loved Space Shuttle. That was
Speaker 1: one of the games that I played all the time
Speaker 1: when I was growing up. Just just happened to be
Speaker 1: a lot of those machines floating around out there. Um
Speaker 1: almost as if in zero G. But now I feel
Speaker 1: like going roller skating and Jerry knee high simply because
Speaker 1: you know, this whole pinball thing is bringing that up.
Speaker 1: So and you know, there are a lot of places
Speaker 1: on the web where you can read about the care
Speaker 1: and maintenance of pinball machines, and there are auctions out
Speaker 1: there where you can purchase pinball machines. Yeah you can.
Speaker 1: You can still buy them, Yeah you can. You can
Speaker 1: find them on sale. I would be very careful about
Speaker 1: buying them, just to make sure you know you've got
Speaker 1: a reputable seller before you you engage in something like that,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, definitely look into the whole uh um
Speaker 1: maintenance issue too, because these machines do require a lot
Speaker 1: of upkeep to keep them running smoothly. There's just a
Speaker 1: lot of moving parts there and uh and things do
Speaker 1: need to be replaced and h and repaired over time.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a really cool thing if you want
Speaker 1: to pick up a hobby, especially if you're interested in electronics.
Speaker 1: But they're expensive and they you require a lot of work,
Speaker 1: so keep that in mind. Yeah, um, just we need
Speaker 1: to close up here, but I wanted to uh tell
Speaker 1: you that if you haven't seen the episode of How
Speaker 1: It's Made on Science Channel that tells you how pinball
Speaker 1: machines are made, there is a clip from that on
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com and I totally recommend that
Speaker 1: you see it because it's it's really interesting. You you uh,
Speaker 1: you'll see when they pull the you know, when they're
Speaker 1: putting the playing surface together that uh, I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole underneath of it is just like spaghetti with all
Speaker 1: the wires and gadgets and stuff that it takes to
Speaker 1: do it. Um, but it's fascinating stuff to see how
Speaker 1: they actually have to wire everything together. And also if
Speaker 1: you are interested in buying a machine and really thinking
Speaker 1: about the maintenance involved, scare the crud out of you, right,
Speaker 1: I have to deal with that. It's it's a lot,
Speaker 1: So check out our article. You can find that at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Check out our blogs. You
Speaker 1: can find a link to that on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Remember that Chris and I do a live
Speaker 1: show every two day at one pm Eastern, so that's
Speaker 1: also you can find us to that on Hey what's
Speaker 1: that website? Post up work struck. Thank you Chris, And
Speaker 1: if you want to ask us any questions or send
Speaker 1: us suggestions anything like that, write us at tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
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