Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh. And for this
Speaker 1: week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Pinball
Speaker 1: Works one of my all time favorite episodes and it
Speaker 1: was recorded in September of two thousand fourteen, which seems
Speaker 1: like just yesterday, doesn't it well at any rate? This
Speaker 1: episode has it all weird history, electro dynamics, the tilt sign, everything,
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy it in good health. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Do Do Do, and there's Jerry T Do
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know the podcast. What
Speaker 1: is that the news? Oh? Yeah, I thought you're making
Speaker 1: pinball pings and no bells and whistles. No, it sounds
Speaker 1: like Vegas, Vegas like one big pinball machine. It is
Speaker 1: that you've been to walk through those casinos? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: just made my neck muscles tight. Man. I hate Vegas.
Speaker 1: I like Vegas. Yeah I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I don't
Speaker 1: want to live in Vegas or like go to Vegas
Speaker 1: every weekend or anything like that. Going to Vegas once
Speaker 1: a year once every couple of years. That's fine with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not for me. I mean I've been a bunch and
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm done. Oh you're done with Vegas. That's
Speaker 1: what you're saying that I don't see any reason to
Speaker 1: go back. I guarantee somebody you want to see, we'll
Speaker 1: have some sort of residency out there, and you will
Speaker 1: be back in Vegas when I'm like sixty. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: pavement will have a residence valleys. That's exactly I think.
Speaker 1: What's going to happen. Well, then you'll find me in
Speaker 1: living in Vegas, my friend. There you go. Yeah, see,
Speaker 1: I got your back on the Vegas train. But that
Speaker 1: sound yeah, it's like a million pinball machines that take
Speaker 1: your money. Yeah, faster than pinball machines. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: was an early worry about pinball. Actually, as we will
Speaker 1: soon see, because I say chuckle, let's dive right into
Speaker 1: the history of pinballs. So pinball machines actually find their
Speaker 1: lineage back in the nineteenth century. There were um things
Speaker 1: called or what were they. I want to say bagat machines,
Speaker 1: but that's not correct. The bagate table, yes, the bagatel table,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um they were basically a cross between pool
Speaker 1: and pinball, use a pool queue and everything, and they
Speaker 1: sucked and nobody liked them. I think it looks pretty cool,
Speaker 1: does it. It looks and boring to me. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's if you're used to modern gaming, is not
Speaker 1: gonna thrill you. But I thought the look kind of neat.
Speaker 1: So the Bagatel table was there. It was in place,
Speaker 1: and in the eighteen thirties a guy named monte Redgrave
Speaker 1: came along, like, you can't not say that guy's name
Speaker 1: like that. Um. He came along and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: people just invented a spring. How did you say his name? Again,
Speaker 1: Montague Red like he's on lad on um um and uh.
Speaker 1: He came along and said, somebody invented a spring recently.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna add it to this Bagatel table. Yeah, make
Speaker 1: it less sucky. And then all of a sudden we
Speaker 1: have the the what did he call it, the ball shooter,
Speaker 1: which makes sense, that's what you'd call it. And now
Speaker 1: we had the first introduced mechanism of pinballs. Things are
Speaker 1: starting to take shape a little bit here. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you didn't stick a coin in the game. What you
Speaker 1: would do is kind of like pool tables these days
Speaker 1: at a bar, you would go up to the keeper
Speaker 1: of the balls and say, here's some money, give me
Speaker 1: my balls, and let me go play the game on
Speaker 1: the bag of tell table. Yeah, And he would go,
Speaker 1: you know it sucks, don't you And you would say, yes,
Speaker 1: but it's the eighteen thirties. Yeah, And if I play
Speaker 1: really well, then I can win free drinks and cigarettes.
Speaker 1: And they said, exactly, can you see a little twelve
Speaker 1: year old winning cigarettes and then going back to play
Speaker 1: more bagatel? Sure, So this is the way it went
Speaker 1: for many decades. People were miserable until the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and there was this enormous explosion of innovation in pool
Speaker 1: table re um in the thirties, Like just almost everything
Speaker 1: that you think of when you think of a pool
Speaker 1: to a pool um. We've been saying, we've been saying
Speaker 1: pool table just for the last like minute. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you correct me? I thought you were talking about bull tave,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about pinball anyway. In the thirties, there was
Speaker 1: a huge explosion in pinball. Pinball, yeah, and um, everything
Speaker 1: that you think of when when you think of a
Speaker 1: pinball machine, almost all of it came about in the thirties,
Speaker 1: coin operation, the back glass, the thing that has like
Speaker 1: kiss or q hef neuron it or something like that
Speaker 1: stands up off of the playing field, the table um
Speaker 1: electric well, I guess an electric current running through it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: legs um, the tilt mechanism. Bumpers yeah, uh sounds yeah,
Speaker 1: score keeping, and then bumpers. Of course I think I
Speaker 1: said bumpers, did I not? I don't know, maybe, but bumpers.
Speaker 1: And then most of all, most importantly, chuck was the
Speaker 1: thirties led to a huge surge in popularity because you
Speaker 1: had the Great Depression and pinballs were cheap entertainment that
Speaker 1: were wide, widely available. You notice the one thing we
Speaker 1: didn't say though and all that innovation flippers, because still
Speaker 1: up until nineteen seven, you just bumped the thing to
Speaker 1: make the ball move. Yeah, there were no flippers, which
Speaker 1: seems very counterintuitive to pinball. And the flippers really changed.
Speaker 1: They fundamentally changed pinball, not just in the way you play,
Speaker 1: but in pinball is a game, because before flippers, it
Speaker 1: was a game of chance. It was the same thing
Speaker 1: as playing like um high low, basically like you had
Speaker 1: no way really of manipulating the movement of the ball.
Speaker 1: Well you shake them, sheen, you could without tilting. I
Speaker 1: mean that's what you did. Yeah, that was how you
Speaker 1: did it. Even still it the amount of skill it
Speaker 1: took was minute compared to the skill that could be used.
Speaker 1: Once flippers were introduced, pinball wizardry and it became a
Speaker 1: game of skill um. And then but before that, the
Speaker 1: like I said, things were popular. Get this um. In
Speaker 1: the early thirties, there were a hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: companies making pinball machines, and the field became so competitive
Speaker 1: and ruthless that by the mid thirties, like five years later,
Speaker 1: there were fourteen. Yeah, and most of those were based
Speaker 1: in Chicago, which became sort of the pinball capital of
Speaker 1: the world. And I've never been there, but I bet
Speaker 1: you anything, Chicago still has a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: more pinball machines than elsewhere, you know. I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of like this, researching this made me want
Speaker 1: to go play pinball, like researching sushi. Maybe we want
Speaker 1: to go eat sushi. And I was thinking, like, I
Speaker 1: have no idea where to go to play pinball, you know,
Speaker 1: And we'll go to my brother's house. Does he have one?
Speaker 1: He's got three oh, I love your brother even more now, dude.
Speaker 1: He built a whole game room, of course, because that's
Speaker 1: what my brother does. What does he have he has?
Speaker 1: Uh F he has a Tomcat F fourteen, which is
Speaker 1: the rip off of Top Gun. I've seen that one.
Speaker 1: He said. There's a lot. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: rip off games for a while, of movies and actual
Speaker 1: movie time games. Uh. He has black Hole, but not
Speaker 1: the movie, just another rip off game. I would love that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And those are both kind of old school. And then
Speaker 1: he has a Jurassic Park, which is uh. I think
Speaker 1: didn't they have like a t Rex that comes down
Speaker 1: and like eat your ball? I can't remember, I feel
Speaker 1: like all three of them. But yeah, and he also
Speaker 1: kicked this. He took an old um video game like
Speaker 1: stand up video game console and removed all the guts,
Speaker 1: got a computer screen and um computer and hooked it
Speaker 1: up in there too, where you can play all the
Speaker 1: old school games, you know those programs they have now,
Speaker 1: and change the screen vertically so it just looks like
Speaker 1: a regular arcade game. And you can go up and
Speaker 1: play Frogger and Space Invaders and Scott Bite Me Over
Speaker 1: and it's all free. That's so awesome. Man, he's like, um,
Speaker 1: Ricky Schroeder and silver spoons or something. But growing up
Speaker 1: yeah pretty much. Um. And I think the reason why
Speaker 1: I don't play more pinball over there is because, um,
Speaker 1: we're always playing ping pong. Yeah that's a game of skill,
Speaker 1: and I love ping pong. But I'll try and get
Speaker 1: in a pinball game. Man. I want to play some
Speaker 1: pinball so bad. Let's just go out to Roswell dude, Okay,
Speaker 1: do it right now. Uh. And I if I if
Speaker 1: I collected post, it would definitely be mid mid seventies
Speaker 1: and mid eighties from me. I would think, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: all the bells and whistles and all that, the new
Speaker 1: fangled bells and whistles. They're fine, that's cool, but I like, uh,
Speaker 1: not so old that it's like electro mechanical, but not
Speaker 1: so new that it's like nothing, but like, um, plasma
Speaker 1: screens and stuff like that. Well we're in the middle. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm the same way. My favorite game of all time
Speaker 1: pinball wise, Um, favorite game ever, gallagha. But a favorite
Speaker 1: game pinball wise was Adams Family Pinball. And then I
Speaker 1: learned in this article that is the top selling game
Speaker 1: of all time from Yeah, I think it was either
Speaker 1: Bally or Williams put that one out and they sold
Speaker 1: more than twenty thousand units of it. Dude, it's awesome
Speaker 1: and it didn't surprise me, and like, I have no
Speaker 1: affinity for the Adams Family, but it's the best pinball
Speaker 1: game I've ever played. And when I saw it was
Speaker 1: number one, I was like, well, of course it is,
Speaker 1: because it's the best one. You don't like the Adams Family, No,
Speaker 1: I mean I like it fine, but I don't. I
Speaker 1: didn't play it because of the movie. I played it
Speaker 1: because it was an awesome pinball game. And they had
Speaker 1: one at them all, not them all the bowling alley
Speaker 1: near me and Athens Bowling Alley. That's where I could
Speaker 1: probably go find a pinball machine. Huh yeah, maybe or
Speaker 1: maybe not. Sadly, I'm starting a quest, all right, um
Speaker 1: so telling you let's go to my brother's house because
Speaker 1: we can have a scotch okay. Uh So. Anyway, is
Speaker 1: when they finally invented the flipper. D Gottlieb Company introduced
Speaker 1: a game called Humpty Dumpty, and that was where what
Speaker 1: most people say the first modern game came about. It
Speaker 1: took at the lower flippers, all the innovations of the
Speaker 1: thirties and out of flippers and boom you got pinball,
Speaker 1: not pool table pinball pretty much, although the flippers weren't
Speaker 1: the same. It was the nineteen fifties the same person
Speaker 1: and came up with spot bowler and that was the
Speaker 1: first modern arrangement of flippers, right, and they were longer
Speaker 1: with that introduction or else a little later on. The
Speaker 1: first flippers they introduced were um, they were shorter, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they didn't face this They faced in reverse of
Speaker 1: the way they face now, which is weird. It was
Speaker 1: like they were working it out, yeah, beta pretty much.
Speaker 1: So it's funny that they introduced flippers in seven because seven.
Speaker 1: By the time flippers came around, pinball was illegal and
Speaker 1: most of the major cities in the United States, um,
Speaker 1: and had been for several years. I never I think
Speaker 1: I had heard this once and forgotten it, but pinball
Speaker 1: was totally outlawed because they equated it to gambling because
Speaker 1: it was not a game of skill, which and I
Speaker 1: guess because you've got prizes. Yeah. Um. Mayor Lea guardia Um,
Speaker 1: who you will remember from the Burlesque podcast, was a
Speaker 1: bit of a moralist. Although he was a wet politician,
Speaker 1: he was in favor of repealing prohibition. He hated pinball,
Speaker 1: hated it. He he thought it was a mafia racket.
Speaker 1: He thought that it robbed the quote pockets of school children.
Speaker 1: The forms of nickels and dimes came to them as
Speaker 1: lunch money. And he got an outlawed in New York.
Speaker 1: And once it was outlawed, he ordered like really dramatic raids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right after Pearl Harbor, he said, you know what we
Speaker 1: need to do. The Japanese have just bombed us. We
Speaker 1: need to get rid of these pinball machines. And so
Speaker 1: let's go round them up, uh, like in a raid style.
Speaker 1: Let's smash him with sledgehammers. Let's dump them in the river.
Speaker 1: What they did, they dumped them in the river after
Speaker 1: they smashed. That's a very New York nineteen forties thing
Speaker 1: to do, exactly. I bet you they're still pinball machines
Speaker 1: down there, if anyone's brave enough to get into the
Speaker 1: East River. I don't think they are. Now we should
Speaker 1: say also give a shout out to popular mechanics who, um,
Speaker 1: we're working off in part really awesome article. They came
Speaker 1: up with eleven things you didn't know about pinball history. Um. So,
Speaker 1: from the forties until the mid nineteen seventies, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to play pinball in New York City and Chicago
Speaker 1: and l A most cities in the US, it was illegal. Um.
Speaker 1: You had to go to a pornography shop basically and
Speaker 1: go behind the curtain and play pinball. Is that weird?
Speaker 1: It's the weirdest thing we've ever said on this show.
Speaker 1: Until the mid seventies, and like there were still raids
Speaker 1: and pinball operators. A little five year old chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have been dropped off at a porn shop
Speaker 1: to play pinball, which I'm sure your parents would have
Speaker 1: been happy to do. Well they did, and I played pinball.
Speaker 1: I didn't look at nudy people. Did you really know?
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Man, you just blew my mind. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: And get this, The city of Oakland, Oakland, CALIFORNIAWN, just
Speaker 1: this past July overturned an eighty year ban on pinball.
Speaker 1: Free the pinballers. Yeah, good for them. Yeah, so pinball's
Speaker 1: band people are still playing it like crazy. Um. And
Speaker 1: apparently the manufacturers realized this as well, because they're still
Speaker 1: innovating and adding and making new games and machines and
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Well this is after World
Speaker 1: War Two, that where things really slowed down, obviously because
Speaker 1: of the war effort. Pinball was big. Dent was put
Speaker 1: in pinball manufacturing too, Yeah, like everything else. And then
Speaker 1: after the Fishies it took off again, and it also
Speaker 1: became um kind of a symbol of rebellious youth. And
Speaker 1: this popular Mechanics article points out, like the Fonds played
Speaker 1: a lot of pinball. I never considered that from Tommy
Speaker 1: Um from the Who's Tommy the Pinball Wizard? And Tommy
Speaker 1: both kind of rebellious like stick it in your ear LaGuardia. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it seems silly now to think about that,
Speaker 1: But when Tommy came out, it was illegal, so pinball
Speaker 1: was sort of uh yeah, I guess it was just
Speaker 1: the rebels. Yeah, you're anti authoritarian if you played pinball,
Speaker 1: it was just an image of it. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: the great Simpsons quote Sideshow Bob said television is ruined
Speaker 1: more young minds than pinball and syphilis combined. That one
Speaker 1: flew right over my head when I heard it the
Speaker 1: first time. I just thought, oh, that's silly pinball, but
Speaker 1: I didn't think about like moral turpitude. Yeah. I didn't
Speaker 1: get that one either, but I do now. So luckily,
Speaker 1: pinball was still widely available, albeit in the backs of
Speaker 1: pornography shops. UM. And the reason we say luckily is
Speaker 1: because somewhere along the way, a young man I think
Speaker 1: in his early twenties named Roger Sharpe, who is a
Speaker 1: magazine editor, UM, was called upon to save the pinball world.
Speaker 1: At a New York City council meeting. Yeah, they finally said, hey,
Speaker 1: city council, can we get a hearing on pinball machines?
Speaker 1: You guys are being ridict because it's a bicentennial of
Speaker 1: this country and we need pinball. It's as American as
Speaker 1: America gets as pornography. So they said, sure, we'll have
Speaker 1: a hearing. Because their intent was to prove that it
Speaker 1: was a game of skill and not chance, which was
Speaker 1: the whole rub in the first place. He brought in
Speaker 1: there a pinball wizard, game of chance is gambling. Sure,
Speaker 1: LaGuardia had a point, well sort of. I still don't
Speaker 1: get it, but this law was obsolete because they added flippers,
Speaker 1: and now it was a game of skill, but the
Speaker 1: law was still around basically, so they brought in their
Speaker 1: pinball wizard Sharp and Um. They brought two machines because
Speaker 1: if one broke down, they wanted to have a backup,
Speaker 1: and some jerk councilman, when he went to play the game,
Speaker 1: said no, no, no, no no, why don't you play
Speaker 1: the other game, the backup one? Yeah, the backup game.
Speaker 1: And Sharp started sweating because he was like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: not very good at that game. Yeah, he never played
Speaker 1: it before. I'm a master at this one. But he
Speaker 1: was a pinball wizard, so I believed in him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what happened. Did you? Did you see
Speaker 1: the the documentary special Winlet No, Oh my god, it
Speaker 1: has footage of this. It's amazing and amazing documentary. All
Speaker 1: about pinball. I mean all about pinball is not so
Speaker 1: awesome documentary. I think it's one called Tilt as well.
Speaker 1: There is that's about a specific in history and pinball.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that one, but it sounds pretty good too.
Speaker 1: But see Special when Let amazing, um n C Tilt two.
Speaker 1: It's what's the deal? So, um, Roger Sharp's playing, he's
Speaker 1: not really impressing anybody, and things are kind of going bad,
Speaker 1: and he decides to do a Babe Ruth call. He
Speaker 1: pulls back the plunger and before he releases it, he goes,
Speaker 1: I'm going up the middle aisle here. Yeah, And just
Speaker 1: so you know, if you've never seen a pinball game,
Speaker 1: you you pull the plunger, it shoots the ball up
Speaker 1: the right hand side through a trough and then it
Speaker 1: spits it out at the top. And what he was
Speaker 1: trying to prove is where I'm going to spit it
Speaker 1: out and where it's going to start its descent back
Speaker 1: to me. It's going to be in a very specific
Speaker 1: place in the center of the board, not on the left,
Speaker 1: not on the right, right up the middle. And um,
Speaker 1: he did it. And apparently right afterwards the city council
Speaker 1: was like, okay, we'll repeal it, like it's obviously a
Speaker 1: game of skill, like Roger Sharp single handedly, well double
Speaker 1: handedly because he was using the flippers, um, save pinball
Speaker 1: from illegality. I wonder if they said, yeah, fine, good lord,
Speaker 1: just it's legal. Get the machines out of here, get
Speaker 1: this loser out of here. But he is not a
Speaker 1: loser because he is currently still the number five hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty six ranked player in the world. I'm surprised.
Speaker 1: I thought he went on to be I think at
Speaker 1: the time he was number one, which is why they
Speaker 1: chose him. He probably was, but he's been falling ever since. Man,
Speaker 1: that's another thing in special win let Man. There are
Speaker 1: some like really good pinball players. Well, I've got the list.
Speaker 1: I'll quickly go with the top five. Number one in
Speaker 1: the world as of today, two thousand, fourteen August whatever
Speaker 1: it is. Keith Lwyn of the USA is number one.
Speaker 1: U s a Urian Ingle Brixton of Sweden's number two.
Speaker 1: Swede dimn Zack Sharp recognize that name that sounds vaguely
Speaker 1: familiar Roger's son. Yeah, he's the number three player in
Speaker 1: the world. That's awesome. Number four Danielle Celestino AXIARTI what
Speaker 1: was that? He's Italian, he's before. Jorgan Home is also Swedish.
Speaker 1: He's number five. There's a Canadian at six, a Sweet
Speaker 1: at seven. Than eight through twenty save one are all
Speaker 1: Americans and number twenties Josh Sharp. So his sons followed
Speaker 1: in his footsteps. That's great and are both top twenty
Speaker 1: ranks players. And I bet Josh is soups jealous Zack.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe Josh is also He's like, I want to
Speaker 1: be a veterinarian, so I'm paying more attention to that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Maybe so. Um So pinball was saved
Speaker 1: by Roger Sharp and um pinballs just kept going on
Speaker 1: and on. Apparently it had its golden day age. Um.
Speaker 1: It's widely believed between nineteen fifty eight, but it was
Speaker 1: also huge in the seventies, huge in the eighties, and
Speaker 1: then video games came along and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: pinball was like uh, and it started to decline and
Speaker 1: decline and decline and decline and all I think we
Speaker 1: were down to maybe five major pinball machine producers, and
Speaker 1: by major, I mean the only ones um by Minora,
Speaker 1: because I mean, it's all it takes a lot of
Speaker 1: time and effort to manufacture a functioning pinball game. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: um by the nineties there were just a couple left.
Speaker 1: Everybody was selling off their pinball divisions, and there was
Speaker 1: a company called Bally Williams, which were former competitors that
Speaker 1: emerged and this is what the documentary Tilt is about.
Speaker 1: They went to their pinball division and said, hey, you guys,
Speaker 1: are great in the pinball world, but the pinball world sucks.
Speaker 1: We want more money out of you guys. What are
Speaker 1: you gonna do that pinball? Yes, they came up with
Speaker 1: Pinball two thousand. They said, we will give you a
Speaker 1: chance to save yourselves. Figure out what will revive pinball
Speaker 1: for tree, and they came up with Pinball two thousand. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's basically a hybrid of video gaming and pinball, where
Speaker 1: you have a kind of a standard pinball set up,
Speaker 1: but a video screen that's interactive. Yeah, as the back
Speaker 1: um backdrop no on the playing field too, so like
Speaker 1: holograms pop up on the on the playing board and
Speaker 1: like run away from the ball and interact with the ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it stinks though, and no one liked it. Have you
Speaker 1: played it? I haven't played it, but I saw videos
Speaker 1: of it and it didn't look like fun, and no
Speaker 1: one liked it. So the thing is is, like this
Speaker 1: one article I read pointed out like it wasn't given
Speaker 1: a chance to flourish, Like the idea was great, and
Speaker 1: the fact that they pulled it off successfully it was
Speaker 1: really something. Well, they built only two games, right, and
Speaker 1: I think each one had a few thousand production run.
Speaker 1: Um but there was Star Wars episode one, which here's
Speaker 1: my theory the reason Pinball two thousand went nowhere charge
Speaker 1: our biggs. Yeah, that the other one was revenge from
Speaker 1: Mars and um you can still find those you was today. Um.
Speaker 1: But despite the fact that Pinball two thousand was created,
Speaker 1: it was it was okay as far as successes go. Um.
Speaker 1: Bally Williams pulled the plug, which left one company Stern. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Michael Stern, I believe, who inherited
Speaker 1: his father's business and um became the only people making
Speaker 1: pinball machines in the world. No. Yeah, man, had we
Speaker 1: been have we been recording this two years ago, we
Speaker 1: would have basically been saying, like, pinball's dead, it's on
Speaker 1: its last leg. There's one company making it. They've started
Speaker 1: to lay off their designers because of the economic crisis.
Speaker 1: Some of those designers went on, some of the Stern
Speaker 1: vets went on and founded a company called Jersey Jack,
Speaker 1: and for the first time in many many years, there
Speaker 1: are more than one pinball manufacture. There's two, right, But
Speaker 1: the competition has caused Stern to go back and rehire
Speaker 1: some of the people they laid off come up with
Speaker 1: new designs, and um they are. There's a pinball renaissance
Speaker 1: and nascent pinball renaissance just beginning to bud that could happen. Well,
Speaker 1: pinball is definitely a sort of an end thing now. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're super cool and you have some money, then
Speaker 1: you might have a pinball machine in your house like
Speaker 1: my brother. Um it is Apparently Stern's ratio of home
Speaker 1: sales to commercial sales has risen from thirty five percent
Speaker 1: to sixty of their total sales. So the market now
Speaker 1: isn't for arcades, because what are those. The market is
Speaker 1: for the person who has enough money to buy a
Speaker 1: pinball machine. Yeah, you don't have to. Well, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you want a new one, it's gonna cost you. But
Speaker 1: if you want like a vintage one, it's I mean
Speaker 1: it's hundred still. I mean that's a decent out of money.
Speaker 1: But the high like the Adams family one's less than
Speaker 1: five thousand. Man, that's the one that you need in
Speaker 1: the house. Yeah. So, um, I think my brother actually
Speaker 1: refurbished his. I think I think I'm right. I think
Speaker 1: they weren't even working and he was able to fix
Speaker 1: them very neat. Yeah. Um, yeah, I imagine you can
Speaker 1: get them for way less because these are like fully refurbished,
Speaker 1: like polished, ready to go one um, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are starting to come from overseas because the
Speaker 1: demand in vintage collectors um items are like is rising
Speaker 1: so much that like seventy of them come from overseas.
Speaker 1: They're re importing them back to America. Well, and it's
Speaker 1: big in Europe because I mean, as evidence from that
Speaker 1: top ten, uh two or three of them are European Swedes. Swedes,
Speaker 1: look at them. So we'll get into how pinball actually
Speaker 1: works right after this. All right, so we've talked a
Speaker 1: lot about the history of pinball, which is way more
Speaker 1: interesting than I thought it would be. But um, we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about the game because I assume everybody has
Speaker 1: played pinball, But if you haven't, we're gonna break it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's actually it's pretty simple if you really think
Speaker 1: about it. There's two real components to the game. Now.
Speaker 1: Ever since time before, you seven flippers in the ball.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, everything else is just kind of ornamentation or whatever.
Speaker 1: But to play pinball, you need flippers and a ball
Speaker 1: because the point of pinball is to score points using
Speaker 1: the ball bouncing off of obstacles and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and then to prevent the ball from going down the
Speaker 1: drain using the flippers. That's right there, you got flippers
Speaker 1: in the ball. That's right. You've got your flippers. UM,
Speaker 1: typically at the bottom of the playfield, which is what
Speaker 1: it's called, directly above the drain on both sides. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of games you'll see now have other flippers
Speaker 1: on the upper right and upper left that also do
Speaker 1: fun things, um, like flip the ball. But you know
Speaker 1: a lot of times the ones at the top will
Speaker 1: flip it into the very special chamber where you can
Speaker 1: score tons of points. We'll get to the scoring here
Speaker 1: in a minute. UM. And you basically want to propel
Speaker 1: the ball up with your little plunger and then all
Speaker 1: the bumpers and ramps are there to score your points.
Speaker 1: And um, it makes a lot of noise, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, and that's pin ball. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it for me. This article on how stuff works
Speaker 1: pointed out like you know, when you're talking about scoring,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about later, that's like doesn't mean anything
Speaker 1: to people who are playing pinball, most of us, because
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to keep the ball from going down
Speaker 1: the train. Sure, um, but the way that pinball's arranged,
Speaker 1: as you get better and better at it, you'll learn that, Um,
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of combinations and tricks and stuff
Speaker 1: that you can do to really score some points. We'll
Speaker 1: get to that later on, I get ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: That's right. The ball itself, if you want to just
Speaker 1: talk hardware, it's one and one sixteen inches in diameter.
Speaker 1: It's steel in a ways, about two point eight ounces,
Speaker 1: and and can reach speeds up the ninety miles an hour.
Speaker 1: When you see that thing shoot out of a one
Speaker 1: of the little chambers that will come back at you,
Speaker 1: it's going really fast, and that is um. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: will use magnets underneath the table too, because since it's
Speaker 1: a steel ball, you'll sometimes see a game that has
Speaker 1: like a like a spinning disk, like a vortex in
Speaker 1: the center of the table that will start at any
Speaker 1: given moment and it can catch your ball and keep
Speaker 1: your ball there with its magnet just sort of spinning
Speaker 1: in place, which is no good or it could be
Speaker 1: super good, depending on what you're after. Uh. Sometimes though,
Speaker 1: they do use a ceramic pin ball called a power ball,
Speaker 1: and it is lighter and faster and immune to magnets.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times when you'll have multi ball
Speaker 1: going on, some of those other balls are ceramic, and
Speaker 1: that's when things get crazy. So as the ball is
Speaker 1: going around the table, um, it's hitting the bumper, as
Speaker 1: it's hitting the targets, and they're sending messages to the um. Well,
Speaker 1: if it's post seventy six game, to the motherboard that's
Speaker 1: keeping track of your score and all that jazz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've only got the three balls. That's that's a game, yes,
Speaker 1: but there are circumstances where you can get more, which
Speaker 1: will tell later. So, Chuck, there's also another component you
Speaker 1: don't have to have to play pinball, but all pinball
Speaker 1: games have it now. It's called the black box. And
Speaker 1: if you look at a pinball table, you've got the
Speaker 1: field right, yeah, the playfield, which is the board that
Speaker 1: has all of the bumpers and the stuff and the
Speaker 1: flippers and everything on it, and then at a right
Speaker 1: angle to that, coming off of it, you've got what's
Speaker 1: called the back glass. And connecting the two is called
Speaker 1: the black box. And this is where all of your
Speaker 1: electronics and your solid state stuff goes. Yeah, your back
Speaker 1: glass is not only going to have your scoreboard and
Speaker 1: your information. Like they'll say things like aim for the
Speaker 1: aim for the canyon. You know, they'll give you hints
Speaker 1: and little tricks along the way. Look Out for the
Speaker 1: t rex look out for the t rex um. But
Speaker 1: it's also to the bad classes where like, if you're
Speaker 1: walking through your arcade, that's where you're gonna see. That's
Speaker 1: where your attention is going to go. So that's where
Speaker 1: you see the Playboy models on both sides of you,
Speaker 1: Hefner or kiss looking cool. So it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: an advertisement. Hey, come put your quarters into me. It's shiny,
Speaker 1: it's colorful. They's been money designing those things, and uh
Speaker 1: a lot of those have become art. Now they'll remove
Speaker 1: them and frame them and hang up on the wall,
Speaker 1: which would be wicked cool, I think it would be.
Speaker 1: But I'd rather have the actual pinball game. Yeah sure. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, back in the seventies, they they introduced
Speaker 1: solid state electronics. Prior to that, all pinball machines were
Speaker 1: electro mechanical, And at first, when I was researching this,
Speaker 1: I thought like, well, okay, so solid state took over
Speaker 1: everything that's not the case solid state took over. Basically,
Speaker 1: the back class everything else is still electro mechanical, or
Speaker 1: it was up until the very very very recent times,
Speaker 1: although they still might be electro mechanical. So, um, when
Speaker 1: you hit a bumper with your ball and it makes
Speaker 1: it like bounce and vibrate and you get some points,
Speaker 1: that's because you set an electrical impulse using an electro
Speaker 1: mechanical assembly to the motherboard, the solid state motherboard that's
Speaker 1: keeping score. So the motherboard is now keeping score. It's um.
Speaker 1: Now they can use digital sounds, so they could add
Speaker 1: speakers to the back glass and all the stuff, but
Speaker 1: the actual function of the the pinball machine while you're
Speaker 1: playing is still electro mechanical. Yeah, it's old school. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's about a half a mile of wiring in
Speaker 1: each one. And um, if you come over to my brothers,
Speaker 1: he will show you the guts. That's he has his
Speaker 1: rigged where you can pull down the back backglass look
Speaker 1: under the hood. Yeah, basically, and you know it just
Speaker 1: looks like a huge mess of wires and half a
Speaker 1: mile's a lot. It's pretty crazy. Um does he wear
Speaker 1: like a chain wallet when he works on his pinball machine?
Speaker 1: Don't know. Maybe. Uh So the playfield itself, which is
Speaker 1: what everything is on, is tilted at about six to
Speaker 1: seven degrees towards you, and it is made of wood.
Speaker 1: And it's also very old school. You know, so at
Speaker 1: some point someone makes this like a wood base like cornhole,
Speaker 1: and it's got holes drilled in it, and it's got
Speaker 1: stuff painted on it and a bunch of layers of
Speaker 1: finish to keep it, you know, to protect it and
Speaker 1: to make that ball go. Yeah, but I mean that's
Speaker 1: basically it. It's pretty simple. Yes, some of the very
Speaker 1: newer ones, um, I guess from the twenty one century
Speaker 1: replaced the wood playing field with um uh, plasma screens
Speaker 1: or LCD screens. Yeah, but you know, kids today no thanks, um.
Speaker 1: But other than that, it's like screws and glue and wood.
Speaker 1: It's just it's fairly old school and and still like entertaining.
Speaker 1: Pinball's challenging. That's why you hate pinball two thousand. Huh
Speaker 1: it was newfangled, Yeah totally. Hey, let's take something awesome
Speaker 1: and make it new for everybody. Like I hate that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like taking some classic drink, Like you're
Speaker 1: a cocktail guy saying let's add you know, let's add
Speaker 1: some some new oxygen eated something to the Manhattan. You're like, no,
Speaker 1: Manhattan's perfect. I don't know oxygen neated something that is. Hey,
Speaker 1: every like some things are perfect the way they are,
Speaker 1: and I think pinball is one of them. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you approached the pinball machine, you put your quarters in
Speaker 1: and everything um and you either so you press the
Speaker 1: start button or well, once you press the start button,
Speaker 1: a ball should fall into the launch lane, which is
Speaker 1: the at the back of the launch lane is the plunger.
Speaker 1: In some of the newer games, there's a solenoid which
Speaker 1: shoots it for you. Yeah, I see other things like
Speaker 1: a like a gun handle, trigger and stuff instead of
Speaker 1: the plunger. Very clever, but again I'm into the like
Speaker 1: the um One way or another, you're going to launch
Speaker 1: the ball. The advantage of a solenoid that launches it
Speaker 1: for your with the press of a button is that
Speaker 1: if you are playing a game and you're pretty good
Speaker 1: and the pinball machine decides it wants to see what
Speaker 1: kind of a wizard you are, it will send more
Speaker 1: balls into action. The way it does that these days
Speaker 1: is by using a solenoid in olden days before the solenoid,
Speaker 1: say the eighties. Um, it's a little man inside. Well,
Speaker 1: you had to pull the plunger back yourself, and that
Speaker 1: meant you had to take your finger off of a
Speaker 1: flipper button. Man, hey man, you better be quick. I
Speaker 1: kind of forgot about that, or you're dead. That's why solenoids,
Speaker 1: that's the advantage they have. Yeah, I'll take that. Umu
Speaker 1: advancement that passes my bar. The solenoid is good. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about actual pinball play after this message, Chuck, Okay,
Speaker 1: scoring in pinball, like you said earlier, if you're a
Speaker 1: regular shmo like us, we're just trying to keep that
Speaker 1: ball on the table. But if you are a pinball wizard,
Speaker 1: then that means you know the game within the game
Speaker 1: and all the combination shots that you're specifically trying to
Speaker 1: hit in order to rack up the big, big big points.
Speaker 1: This is nuts to me. I have to tell you,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that this existed until Yeah, I knew.
Speaker 1: I just you know, like, that's how poor my pinball
Speaker 1: playing is. Now. I'm I'm not any good either, But
Speaker 1: you you is your brother good? So you've seen him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's better than me. So they used this um in
Speaker 1: this article to use the example of a game called
Speaker 1: high Roller Pinball. Yeah, and basically imagine this. While you're
Speaker 1: playing high Roller, Um, you basically want to knock out
Speaker 1: some icons that are associated with poker. Once you've hit
Speaker 1: all the icons with the ball or something like that,
Speaker 1: so there are tiles that you knock down or whatever.
Speaker 1: When you've hit them all, you've unlocked a game within
Speaker 1: a game. Yeah, and I think it starts with poker,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're playing pinball while you're
Speaker 1: also playing poker on the back class. Yeah, so like
Speaker 1: you're trying to hit a specific thing that will give
Speaker 1: you a specific card and a poker hand, let's say,
Speaker 1: and like you have to be you know, you have
Speaker 1: to You're trying to do this with your flipper. It's
Speaker 1: a game of skill, like we said, right, But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you're still playing your pinball game too, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's part of the game. So like you know,
Speaker 1: you'll know you've got the cards up on the back
Speaker 1: glass and we'll say, all right, I gotta hit that
Speaker 1: bumper to get a king. I'm aiming for that king
Speaker 1: the whole time, Okay, so if your brain hasn't melted yet,
Speaker 1: prepare for the finish. Once poker has done, there's like
Speaker 1: four or five other casino games that you play after that,
Speaker 1: and you play them in succession, and and as you
Speaker 1: win them, you get closer and closer to this um
Speaker 1: special play mode called Casino Friends at that's what it's
Speaker 1: called in the high Roller Machine. Yeah, that's after you've
Speaker 1: won all the game the poker games, right, yeah not
Speaker 1: but yeah, all the games, and so you're playing Casino Frenzy,
Speaker 1: and that's what's called a Wizard Award, where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this kid's good. Now we're gonna really let them or
Speaker 1: her up their points by playing a special round. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the field is like flooded with
Speaker 1: balls and every bumper you hit is worth like hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of points and it's just scary and terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: multi ball is stressful for a guy like me. Same here, man,
Speaker 1: I just try and keep you know what happens to
Speaker 1: me and multi ball is I'll usually lose them all
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Like I can't even hold onto the one
Speaker 1: because it just it stimulates me too much. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what what happened me too, and I'm like, as long
Speaker 1: as I've got one, I'm break even. But with um,
Speaker 1: with Wizard Award functions, um, that's when you start to
Speaker 1: earn even more points. But imagine having like three four
Speaker 1: or five balls on the field and the computer in
Speaker 1: the machine is telling you, like, hit this combination and
Speaker 1: we'll give you like twenty million points. And um, if
Speaker 1: you're even in Wizard Award ball, you're a pretty good
Speaker 1: pinball player, I would imagine for sure. And that's just
Speaker 1: the high roller game. But most games have a couple
Speaker 1: of games within the game that you should look out for,
Speaker 1: and um, that's how you get your free game. If
Speaker 1: you've ever uh locked up or been super good and
Speaker 1: gotten um, you know, they'll tell you on the backglass
Speaker 1: how much you have to have like replay value thirty million, um.
Speaker 1: And that's what you're shooting for because you want to
Speaker 1: get that free game, not just because it's a quarter
Speaker 1: or whatever, but because it's like a big award. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like entering your name on the in the top
Speaker 1: ten in Galica, right yeah, Um, so I didn't understand this.
Speaker 1: When you get a free game, is that like three
Speaker 1: free balls or one extra ball. I think it's three.
Speaker 1: I think it's a full free game. That would make sense.
Speaker 1: That's why they kin keeps taling. It doesn't like reset, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can also fall backwards into a free game with
Speaker 1: something called match where I had never heard of this.
Speaker 1: Every once a while, the computer will just flash like
Speaker 1: a random number between what zero, zero and ninety. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: multiple of ten and um, if the last two digits
Speaker 1: of your score at that moment happened to match that number,
Speaker 1: then you win a free game. It's like a little
Speaker 1: lotto game. And I think I've gotten a free game
Speaker 1: that way, because I remember getting free games before. But
Speaker 1: being like, how did I get a free game? I
Speaker 1: must I must have hit the match you like just
Speaker 1: turned into Christopher walking in the dead zone. I saw
Speaker 1: that not too long ago. That holds up, Yeah, it does. Um.
Speaker 1: But as far as replay goes, it says that most
Speaker 1: machines are set so you have to be in the
Speaker 1: top ten percent to get a replay, and you can
Speaker 1: get a second replay, but they have it max out
Speaker 1: at a hundred and fifty of the first, so a
Speaker 1: double replay is tough. Yeah, I mean you're Tommy at
Speaker 1: that point or your last name is sharp yeah, I um.
Speaker 1: And then tilt chuck, you know. Tilt it's synonymous with pinball.
Speaker 1: Tilt is where you are being well, basically where you've
Speaker 1: been punishing the machine and the machine says enough, hands off, man,
Speaker 1: And basically, like we were saying early pinball machines, um,
Speaker 1: the only way you can manipulate them before the flippers
Speaker 1: was to move the machine gonn bump it. So the
Speaker 1: tilt mechanism has been in place to prevent people from
Speaker 1: overly cheating by tilting the machine by It's really old
Speaker 1: timey contraption and I guess it's still in use. It's
Speaker 1: pretty funny how old school it is. Basically, they have
Speaker 1: like I guess, like a copper copper wire with a
Speaker 1: circle on the end, a ring on the end, and
Speaker 1: dangling in the ring but not touching. It is like
Speaker 1: a metal ballast, right, and it's connected to the machine.
Speaker 1: So as long as the ballast is just swinging around
Speaker 1: freely within the ring, you can tilt as much as
Speaker 1: you like. And a skilled player knows how to till
Speaker 1: without getting caught, right, it's part of the game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But once you tilt too far and the metal ballast
Speaker 1: touches the copper ring, a current is formed and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it sends that to the motherboard, and
Speaker 1: the motherboard says, tilt. This is your first warning, and
Speaker 1: apparently most modern games give you two warnings, and then
Speaker 1: the flippers stop working and you lose your ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's just losing one ball. If you really get upset,
Speaker 1: if your ball is stuck, or if you're just having
Speaker 1: a bad day at the office and you pick up
Speaker 1: the front of the machine and slam it down, that's
Speaker 1: called a slam tilt. And they have these little leaf
Speaker 1: switches inside the machine for that, and if they touch
Speaker 1: each other, that means you have really taken things too far,
Speaker 1: and that is shut it down. No game, not worth
Speaker 1: taking your ball. They're saying, leave the machine. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna win any cigarettes doing that exactly. And that's the Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the slam tilt. That's pinball. Maybe, Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: nothing else. I don't either. This is very exciting. I'm
Speaker 1: glad we finally did it. It's been on my list
Speaker 1: forever ever since I found out it was illegal. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta get into that. But that was like a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. I feel like, wow, yeah, when
Speaker 1: I saw a special winlet nice man, everybody go see that?
Speaker 1: Is that on the old Netflix? I believe it is tilt,
Speaker 1: definitely is. I think special Winlet might be to add
Speaker 1: that to the former queue, which they had to change
Speaker 1: because Americans are dumb what they call it now it's
Speaker 1: not called a list because people are like, what's a queue? Really?
Speaker 1: Was it spelled like that? I hadn't noticed that they
Speaker 1: did that. Oh my goodness, Yeah, I've heard. That's the reason.
Speaker 1: It makes sense to me. I can't verify that though.
Speaker 1: Uh well, if you want to learn more about pinball,
Speaker 1: go check out special win Let. Go check out Tilt.
Speaker 1: Check out the popular Mechanics article we mentioned eleven things
Speaker 1: you didn't know about pinball history. It's pretty awesome. And
Speaker 1: of course, check out the article on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Go to the search bar and type in
Speaker 1: pinball and it will bring up this article. Since I
Speaker 1: said search parts time for listener mail. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: via Facebook. Actually, um in regards to our more Gelon's podcast,
Speaker 1: because one of our is it funny? I think it's
Speaker 1: more gallons. But you are literally the only person on
Speaker 1: the planet that calls it that fine um Tyler Murphy
Speaker 1: are one of the generals and the stuff you should
Speaker 1: know army and Facebook and email friend uh pinged, I
Speaker 1: guess a doctor friend of his name Chris Wells, and
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, dude, check this out. Do you
Speaker 1: know anything about this? And so he commented on there
Speaker 1: and I was like, hey, this is a listener mail.
Speaker 1: Can I use it? And he said yes. So he
Speaker 1: says he's only come across it twice. In both cases
Speaker 1: they brought stuff in telling me it was eggs and
Speaker 1: bugs along with my med technologists reviewed under a microscope
Speaker 1: and it was mainly lent and hair follicles. One had
Speaker 1: some insight that it was not an actual infection and
Speaker 1: felt relieved. The other was very upset that I suggested otherwise,
Speaker 1: So he kind of got both ends of this spectrum.
Speaker 1: I would never treat um with an antiseptic I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: anti parasitic med if I didn't think it was a
Speaker 1: real infection. The risk of causing harm versus fixing anything
Speaker 1: is too high. Any PARASITGA meads can have all kinds
Speaker 1: of unwanted effects, from kidney and liver impairment to lowering
Speaker 1: the threshold for seizure to potentially being carcinogenic themselves. For
Speaker 1: every case of monsters inside me on TLC that goes
Speaker 1: undiscovered and later is found to truly have a parasitic infection,
Speaker 1: there are many more where there is no physical evidence
Speaker 1: of infection because they're simply not one. Uh. You feel
Speaker 1: really crappy as a physician though, when you have to
Speaker 1: tell someone that everything they brought into your office is
Speaker 1: all dust and lent, that there is no physical evidence
Speaker 1: for their ailments. The most important thing for a clinician
Speaker 1: to remember is that even if this is all in
Speaker 1: their head or imagine or however you want to word it,
Speaker 1: the patient is still experiencing it, which is what we
Speaker 1: pointed out. So you need to try and treat the
Speaker 1: root cause, whether it be with continued reassurance and second
Speaker 1: opinion within reason or cognitive behavioral therapy or other means.
Speaker 1: And that is Chris Wells via our buddy Tyler Murphy. Cool,
Speaker 1: thanks guys who Tyler is a teacher and in the
Speaker 1: summertime he works at the Big put put Chain Putt Putt. No,
Speaker 1: that's that's like the Big Adventure Land or what I
Speaker 1: can't remember what it's called. Hire pirates Cove? Is that
Speaker 1: a chain? I don't know. It sounds like a chain anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what he does. Since it sounds like fun, It's like, man,
Speaker 1: I could totally do that job. Summer would be fun. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much you guys in uh, anyone else
Speaker 1: out there who has any further clarification on any episode
Speaker 1: we've ever done. We want to hear from you. You
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and, as always good
Speaker 1: check us out at our home on the web, Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does It how Stuff Works dot
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