Alkmaar
It started in 1999...
When Pinsider Robin got his first job as a designer/programmer for a company making accounting software, his boss at the time (a guy called Stephan) donated him some webspace for educational purposes. Robin had just started collecting pins and scoured the web for information on the subject. Any detail he would find about any solid state machine was jammed into an Access database and hours were spent seeking detail images (mostly from Ebay) of the tables. The first version of the "Solid State Pinball Database" (or SSPD as it was called then), was born.
Back to that donated webspace. After quickly learning the basics of the programming language 'ASP' the aforementioned database was connected to the web through a very, very detailed search form. Now machines could be found that, for instance, have more than 4 flippers, 3 pop bumpers, two ramps and 5 drop targets. No one needed this kind of search power (heck, there were only about 900 machines in the database anyway) but nevertheless, the SSPD made it possible!
The next steps
The next step was to join the found data with the thousands of images that Robin has then accumulated through auction sites and from scanned flyers and such and those images were also presented in the web interface of the SSPD. A website was taking shape now and we were starting to attract visitors. Then came the ability to write articles. We got our own gameroom section with an agenda (for our visitors to know when we would be open). Robin's brother Martijn, also fond of the hobby, joined the crew and coded some cool functionality into the site. A nice design was made and the site held up for a couple of years, being further extended by Robin and Martijn. The last big operation was the constuction of the Pinside Top 100. We spent a lot of time building a ratings engine (further detailed here) and now even more visitors found their way to the site. In early 2006 new plans were drafted to make a completely new version of the Pinside. But due to other duties, work on this new version did not start before the end of 2007. The result...? Well you're looking at it. But there's way, way more to come (we're bursting with ideas).
