Travel Destinations

Though there’s been a lot of consolidation in the pinball industry in recent years, the quality of modern games keeps improving. This is due, in part, to improvements in technology–though not at the expense of first rate playfield design. Pinball went through a few lean years during the early years of the video boom, when designers tried to cram as much stuff onto the playfield as possible, perhaps feeling the clutter was needed to replicate the video game experience. In recent years, however, designers appear to have concluded–and rightly so–that pinball cannot be a video game, nor should it want to be.

A great game of recent vintage is the 1997 Bally release “Cirqus Voltaire”. The theme is sort of a ‘Cirque du Soleil” on acid, and the iconography of the circus that they cram into the design and play of the game is amazing. The ultimate object of the game is to “join the cirqus”, which, of course, is a classical American archetype of freedom and escape. Yet this “Cirqus” is not a Norman Rockwell vision of juvenile fun–there are a lot of sinister undertones as well, including evil ringmasters and an almost palpable feeling of sleaze. The clowns here have more in common with the Simpsons’ ‘Krusty the Clown’ than with Emmett Kelly.

The game play offers a lot of what we’ve come to expect from Williams/Bally, with sweeping ramp shots, clever uses of time-worn features (like the disappearing pop bumper, reincarnated here as a balloon. This feature dates back to the 1950′s and appeared on Williams “Gusher” among others), and multi-ball a-plenty. As is very common with pinball games today, the game’s ultimate object is to work your way through a variety of ‘modes’. Sometimes this is a confusing endeavor, but here is very easy to understand–yet still very challenging to the player.

At its nadir, pinball companies were cranking out games featuring themes and subjects that offered little, if any, synergy with game play. The low point might have been some of the celebrity tie-in games of the early eighties (which gave the world debacles like a Dolly Parton and Roy Clark tie-in). “Cirqus Voltaire” on the other hand is an almost perfect synergy of subject and gameplay experience.

The really great thing about the game is the multiple levels of contextual awareness it offers. It alternately provides a celebration and condemnation of the circus and, deeper still, of the popular culture that spawns embraces them. This is not a new notion for a pinball machine to offer different levels of interpretation of seemingly innocuous events (it dates back to the pioneering artist Roy Parker, if not before) but in recent years it may not have been done more deftly than in Cirqus Voltaire.

Ross Everett is a experienced freelance writer experienced in travel, casino gambling and sports handicapping. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for providing daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, falconry and deep sea diving. He lives in Las Vegas with four dogs and a pet coyote.

For most of the 20th century it seemed that pinball was sort of the ‘cockroach’ of the amusement industry–just too tough and/or too adaptable to kill. It survived wars, economic downturn, moral outrage and most recently video games. Despite the changing cultural climate, it was still a shock when WMS Industries, the dominant player in the industry for the past decade and the maker of Williams and Bally machines, announced that it was getting out of the business several years ago. WMS wasn’t in any sort of financial peril, but rather they wanted to focus on their more lucrative slot machine and video poker business.

Until the 1980′s, pinball dominated the arcade. In the late 1970′s and on the heels of the film adaptation of The Who’s pinball themed rock opera ‘Tommy’ arcades featured row after row of new machines from over a half dozen US based manufacturers. Countless other machines were made worldwide. The first shot of the video game industry didn’t make much of a dent–’Pong’ was revolutionary, but its gameplay was downright dull compared to pinball. It also required two players, another downside in the often solitary isolation of the arcade. The first real challenge to pinball was the second generation of video games, including ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’.

Pinball put up a good fight, and popular games continued to appear through the mid 1980′s. Several pinball games were actually spinoffs of popular video games–”Spy Hunter and Space Invaders and a number of not so good ones based on the Pac Man video games. For awhile, pinball and video games enjoyed an uneasy co-existence, much like Mac and Windows in the computer world.

It was the late 1980s”when video games became more technologically advanced and began to offer superior play experiences”that pinball lost its way. Depending on the manufacturer, they did it in different ways. Gottlieb and others made simple, traditional games that just couldnt compete with their video counterparts. Bally and other manufacturers went the opposite route”by cramming so much onto a playfield that the game hardly resembled traditional pinball. Some of Ballys late 1980s games”with so much playfield gimmickry going on”were nearly unplayable. By this point the video game had taken over the arcade. Some larger arcades continued to offer a few pinball machines to placate hardcores, while some eliminated pinball altogether. In the 1970′s most decent arcades would feature over a dozen machines, with large facilities having several dozen. By the mid 1980′s, it was rare to see more than three or four pinball machines in one location.

As the eighties gave way to the 1990s, however, a funny thing happened. Pinball began to experience a bit of a comeback driven by well designed, enjoyable games that finally got the balance between traditional gameplay and modern technology right. Williams and Bally (whom WMS later acquired), along with Data East, were making the majority of new games and some would become classics. Pin-Bot, Earthshaker The Adams Family and Diner are among my favorites of this era. Williams was at the forefront of the return to excellent design and gameplay, and its hard to think of a Williams game from this period that wasnt a fun game to play, if not a borderline classic. Articles started to appear in the traditional media about the durability and timelessness of pinball, about how the average pinball machine received much more repeat business than the average video game and about the devotion of the pinball player.

With the century drawing to a close, it seemed that the Williams/Bally outfit had found a niche and would be able to grind out pinball machines for the aficionados forever. The final nail in the coffin, however, was a lot of societal changes beyond their control. For one, video games and video arcades became less profitable as companies like Sony and Nintendo were able to transform a lot of the high end gameplay to the home platform. Meanwhile, trends like new urbanism,which saw a return to downtown storefronts and the growth of online shopping combined to hurt traditional shopping malls. Eventually the WMS corporate braintrust decided to pull the plug on pinball and concentrate on their highly profitable gambling machine business. From a business standpoint, it probably made sense but that didnt make it any easier for lifelong pinball enthusiasts to reconcile with.

So what now? Stern Pinball is still committed to building new games, and is starting to get some traction both among retail owners and home collectors. Still, it appears that the only hope for pinball players is that some effort will be made to preserve the machines that already exist. With the capital investment required for a new company to get into the business, its hard to envision any new manufacturers popping up.

Ross Everett is a well known freelance writer experienced in travel, poker and sports handicapping. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for providing daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, fencing and scuba diving. He lives in Las Vegas with four dogs and a pet coyote.

This time we wont rank the bad celebrity pinball machines, well look at several different genres of bad celebrity tie ins:

THE BOX OFFICE BOMB THEMED MACHINE:

In 1991 Williams Pinball released a machine based on Terminator 2. It had a gun trigger to launch the ball and a ton of Arnolds catch phrases like Ill be back keyed to various game objectives. The film was a huge hit, and everything worked well together. Now the bad news: because of the success of this machine the production companies thought Hmm. What well do is release the pinball machine simultaneously with the film.

Unfortunately, this thinking led to a number of pinball machines based on films that were absolute bombs. Some examples of this genre are machines based on The Last Action Hero and Hook. There wasnt a cooler cartoon than The Flintstones. So how do you screw up a Flintstones pinball machine? Just base the theme not on the classic Hanna Barbara cartoon, but on the horrible film starring John Goodman and Rosie ODonnell.

My two favorites are The Shadow which is hilarious because Alec Baldwin is on the backglass and Waterworld. Waterworld was released in 1995 starring Kevin Costner and quickly became the definitive big budget, no box office film replacing Michael Ciminos Heavens Gate and the Dustin Hoffman/Warren Beatty comedy Ishtar.

Playing a bomb themed pinball machine is downright surreal. The most pitiful thing is when the machine booms out a catch phrase from the film that no one is familiar with.

THE DUBIOUSLY TIMED THEME:

In this genre I include themes that would have been pretty cool, except for the fact they were released well after the subjects popularity had begun to ebb. Gilligans Island would have been great back in the mid-1960s or even in the late 70s when a new generation discovered the show in syndication. In 1991 it was just creepy since nearly half of the cast members depicted on the backglass were dead. The Six Million Dollar Man was released in the fall of 1978, just in time for the shows cancellation. Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry would have been a perfect fit for a pinball theme, except that its 1995 release came 8 years after the debut of the last film in the series (The Dead Pool). Popeye Saves the Earth was released 15 years after the release of the Robert Altman film.

Undoubtedly the strangest machine of this genre is 1994s Mario Andretti. The backglass didn’t display a picture of a young Andretti at the height of his racing career, but rather an image of grizzled old Mario Andretti. The smart move would have been to use his name, throw a bunch of race cars on the backglass and playfield and call it a day. Instead having the sixty-something race car driver on the backglass is vaguely akin to having your grandfather looking over your shoulder while you play.

ROOT,ROOT, ROOT FOR THE HOME TEAM:

A comment on the original celebrity theme article mentioned this genre and it is a good one. Its important to understand that the pinball industry has been based in Chicago for most of its history. Presumably for that reason there have been some machines featuring the local sports teams and stars. The Big Hurt Frank Thomas was a solid major league ballplayer, but not really worthy of a pinball machine themed around him. The most egregious example of this was 1978s Bobby Orrs Power Play, released not long after the trade that sent Orr from Boston to Chicago. Nationally, no one outside of Boston and Chicago cared.

THE BAD CONVERSION FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MARKET:

This requires a little bit of an explanation: for reasons that Ive never been quite clear on it was common practice to rebrand a perfectly good game for the International market. Sometimes it was released by the US company, other times it was licensed to a foreign operation. Youd think that there would be some creative control over the rebranded themes. Youd be wrong.

While I have a good grasp on the US pinball demographic I have no idea who plays pinball internationally. Based on some of the re-themed machines its probably better I dont know. Mata Hari was a classic machine of the early 1980s. The German release was rethemed as the more foreboding Lady Death. This one at least makes sense as they had some Nazi imagery that Germans are understandably sensitive about (despite being historically inaccurate, since the real Mata Hari was executed during WW I). Less understandable is the retheming of a military themed game called Special Force in the US to the downright bizarre Special Forces Girls, featuring comely women in low cut, cleavage baring fatigues.

Ross Everett is a experienced freelance writer specializing in travel, poker and sports handicapping. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for providing daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, falconry and scuba diving. He lives in Las Vegas with four dogs and a pet coyote.