How The Pinball Expo Started
How It All Started The Pinball Expo started way back in 1985 by Robert Berk in Chicago which is known to be the city with the most pinball manufacturers. Robert started playing pinball as a child and was immediately drawn to it. He knew his dream was to be able to...
Pinball Was Illegal
Pinball Was Illegal Pinball was illegal, it was banned from the 1940s to the mid-1970s in most of America's big cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, where the game was born and where virtually all of its manufacturers have historically been located....
Pinball Skill Shots
What Is A Pinball Skill Shot? In Pinball games, a skill shot is a bonus that the player could earn by performing some particular task when launching or plunging the ball. How To Be Better At Skill Shots First off, every pinball game is different. The speed, slope,...
How Do Pinball Machines Work?
So How Do Pinball Machines Really Work? To understand how pinball machines work we got to go back to the beginning, since the first true pinball game, Humpty Dumpty, was released by Gottlieb in 1947, people the world over have had an obsession with making a little...
Origin of Pinball
The Beginning Here is the origin of pinball, The "ancestor" of all pinball machines is known to be "Bagatelle-Table, This is a sort of hybrid between a "pin table" and pool table. To understand the history of pinball we need to go back to France, the 1700s. It is the...
When did multi-player games appear for pinball?
Originally, machines were all single-player games. It was one player at a time. But starting in 1954, Gottlieb came up with the idea to have two or even four people playing at a time. Player one would play ball one, then player two would play ball one. Then player one...
What were some of the other most popular pinball themes?
Gottlieb was really good at card themes. They were known for that. Card games like poker, you’re trying to get different hands, a royal flush, they used that name a bunch of times—Card Whiz, Royal Flush, Pop-a-Card. . In the 1950s, Gottlieb would run a machine for...
When did movie promotion begin for pinball?
Bally was the first company to do that. They were the first company to get an official licensed theme. During the 1950s, Gottlieb had done some unlicensed themes. They had a game called Guy’s Dolls, and it just happened to come out at the same time as the Broadway...
Did Williams and Gottlieb have their own artists?
Yes, they had preferred artists. During the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, artwork wasn’t always created in house. Williams or another company would design a game, and then they would hand the game over to another company that just did art. This second company had their own...
Who were the major manufacturers for pinball?
During the 1930s, there were literally hundreds of companies making pinball machines. After World War II, though, there was only a handful. The key players were Gottlieb—the biggest, and pretty much the Cadillac of pinball—and Williams, which was substantially smaller...
How did pinball evolve in the United States?
It was a game that morphed from the French game of bagatelle. In the 1930s, it really exploded as a gambling thing, and that’s where pinball got this gambling association. Coming out of World War II, the gambling laws were changing in the United States. In particular,...
Are there a lot of pinball machine collectors?
Are there a lot of pinball machine collectors? It is a fairly small hobby. I’m the co-editor of one of the pinball magazines, and the subscription number is 1,200 people worldwide. Now, I know not every collector subscribes, but that gives you an indication that the...
How long does it take to repair the average pinball machine?
The quickest someone can restore a machine is maybe a week, and that would be the best-case scenario. It takes time to tear them down. All the mechanical assemblies have to be taken apart, cleaned, and the parts must be replaced and put back together. A lot of times...
Why People Flip Pinball Machines
I didn’t really get into to pinball machine collecting until maybe 15 years ago, but when I was a freshman in college, video games were really big. I went to Purdue University. They had a huge arcade there. I always said that Space Invaders and Pac-Man took so much of...
The Glory of the Pinball Machine
What is it about the pinball machine that draws us in? Even today in our time of gorgeously illustrated video games, pinball machines continue to have an enchanting quality. In part this is the result ofthe game's visuals: the lights, colors, and artwork. But it's...
artist modifies a pinball machine to make art prints
Dutch graphic designer Sam van Doorn has modified a pinball machine so that it uses lithographic ink to make prints. Calling his machine STYN, the device makes messy modern art on poster board with six flippers and the ball. van Doorn doesn't call the resulting works...
Pinball Cafe closes doors for having more than two pinball machines
The Pinball Cafe opened its doors in February, on the strip of Queen West between Roncesvalles Ave. and Dufferin St. It was a family place where one could buy ice cream, eat a sandwich and play a few rounds of an old arcade favourite. When it closed on Monday, after...
National Pinball Museum to close
Just five months after opening its doors to delighted pinheads and wizards across the D.C. region, Georgetown’s National Pinball Museum is being forced to close. David Silverman, the Silver Spring man whose dream it was to share his pinball collection with the masses,...
This is serious business for 9-year-old Caine Monroy
Nine-year-old Caine Monroy is totally nonplussed by the attention his homemade cardboard arcade received this week after the short film “Caine’s Arcade” went viral on the Internet. The documentary was directed by Nirvan Mullick, an L.A. filmmaker who happened upon...
Simpsons Arcade Game Finally Released for Consoles After 21 Years
It’s been a long time since you could pump quarters into The Simpsons Arcade Game, gleefully mashing buttons with a can of Mountain Dew by your side. Well, prepare to seriously embiggen your gaming library because the Simpsons are coming to the Xbox 360 and...
Disney film explores secret world within arcade games
Any classic video gamers who still remember the good days of arcade tokens and joysticks may want to prepare themselves for a nostalgic moment or two. Disney’s newest animated film Wreck-It Ralph hit theaters on Nov. 2. Boasting an all-star cast of video game...
Simpsons Arcade Game rated
The Simpsons Arcade Game may finally be in line for its first console port. As reported by XBLA Fans, the Australian government's Classification Board has updated its database with a listing for The Simpsons Arcade Game on multiple platforms. The Simpsons Arcade Game...
EyeAsteroids arcade game has no joystick, uses eye control
If you were an old school gamer, I would wager that back in the day you spent many a quarter playing Asteroids at the arcade. A company we have talked about in the past called Tobii has a new game that reminds me of the classic Asteroids game that is called Tobii...
Where Ms. Pac-Man Still Has a Home
WALKING down the southern end of Mott Street a stretch lined with cheap-toy traps and Chinese restaurants of varying quality is a fairly unremarkable experience until the sidewalk is suddenly packed with grungy and very loud teenagers and young adults loitering in...
