And dynamically activated force fields instead of Cliffy's.

Nice dream and actually when you think about it all possible with today's tech.

10k by............nevermind.......

None of what you described has much of anything to do with pinball. Pinball happens, you know, with the ball- not the backglass.

well the GAME has evolved even LESS than the tech has in the intervening 20 years. if you want to talk about gameplay feature advances from '73 to '93, that list is a mile long! what gameplay features does STLE have that wasn't already implemented by '93? i really can't think of anything.

I was going to ask you Adam what you were smoking but then I thought that everything you mentioned is actually possible!!! To think that the latest innovations in pinball is the monitor Jack has in WoZ and soon to be TH, LEDs and color DMD. All of which is technology that we available 5+ years ago!

What I'm hearing is pinball is much like Rock 'n Roll = obtained its perfection in 1993.

Man, STLE doesn't even have a color DMD. (STTNG does though...)

On what planet did Rock peak in 1993? It sure wasn't Earth. Here's the top ten singles for 1993:

1 "I Will Always Love You" Whitney Houston
2 "Whoomp! (There It Is)" Tag Team
3 "Can't Help Falling in Love" UB40
4 "That's the Way Love Goes" Janet Jackson
5 "Freak Me" Silk
6 "Weak" SWV
7 "If I Ever Fall in Love" Shai
8 "Dreamlover" Mariah Carey
9 "Rump Shaker" Wreckx-n-Effect
10 "Informer" Snow

I'm all for keeping pinball somewhat pure and free of too many technical inclusions, but I would love to see them come with WiFi support for uploading scores to the Internet or organizing online leagues with score tracking.

And you think nib pins are expensive now?

camera and mic are trivial expenses. the software development would be tougher but there are free facial and voice recognition libraries any developer can implement pretty easily. you'd need something reasonably strong like a raspberry pi or beaglebone or whatever under the hood, but i bet the coding for the machine itself is more complicated than that stuff would be.

i absolutely love the idea of snapping a photo of the player in victory and presumably storing it for the grand champion screen. seems like an obvious and pretty easy-to-implement upgrade for the next "LE".

I understand what your saying....

But just because something CAN be done, doesn't mean that it should be done.

Guess it's just personal preferences, but I really don't need a pinball machine taking pictures of me and taking to me over the music.....

Also, all those things will undoubtably add to our COST.... And IMO- NIB pinball is getting expensive enough!

New stuff I like/would like:
WOZ-style LCD....
RGB lighting
Stereo sound

But I know some don't even like the LCD- so- lol- guess it's all personal taste....

I'm in if the game serves me nachos, a coke in a glass bottle and gives me a happy ending.

Sometimes technological advances don't improve anything, in fact sometimes they make things worse buy removing the human and mechanical elements. Get yourself one of those virtual pins and you will see the future.

Thats what she said

some attempts at innovation succeed. most fail. the failures get left behind and the successes become part of the fabric of all future games. up until the mid 90s or so, pinball gameplay was a constantly evolving thing. it's not like it was ever some sacred thing that went unchanged for decades ... until the last 15 years or so, anyway. there are decent reasons for that: the collapse of the industry, only one major manufacturer, etc, but "because the game is as good as it can possibly be" is not one of those reasons.

Does Pin2000 mean anything to you?

as i said, most attempts at innovation fail. that doesn't mean innovation is bad.

(also i think RFM is pretty fun, but that's neither here nor there ... just my opinion of course)

most of that WOW factor, was basically the invention of Solid state. Not so much pinball itself, but technology as a whole. Since the Solid state revolution, technology hasn't really gotten that much better. Just smaller components and brighter LED's.

Yeah, Pin2K was some serious innovation. Wish it had a chance to grow. Think there's just so much that could have been done with it.

At the time RFM came out I thought it was fun too, but I was also looking for the new standard machine that never showed up. I stopped dropping quarters in pinball machines at that time because they went that way. I'm sure a lot of others did too. Innovation is good, but there are standard items that must remain. Plus the new machines now have lights running up the sides of the cabinet above the playfield. Now THAT'S inovation!

Two things:
1. Pinball was bigger...much bigger from the 70's thru the 90's, so company's had the money to invest in research and development. It wasn't til recently. (Last 2 years?) that we're starting to see a rise in pinball and money going back in the hobby to have company's and investors spend the time and money in advancements.

2. Put STLE next to your STTNG and you'll see a huge difference. Maybe not in the dmd, but trust me, it'll make STTNG look ancient in every other category.

that's a great insight, thanks. solid state suddenly allowed a big leap forward with what was possible. furthermore, i would say there are several areas of technological low-hanging fruit that has so far remained mostly un-plucked by pinball manufacturers, and i ain't talking about brighter lighting:
- the internet.
- super-cheap, super-tiny, modular desktop-level graphics and processing power that adds virtually nothing to the power consumption footprint of the game.
- large cheap high def flatscreens (granted this one IS in the process of being plucked)
- advances in the area of rapid prototyping / 3d printing should reduce initial R&D time and costs for more elaborate layouts / toys / ramps etc.

This was planned for the Journey arcade game from 1983. A camera in the cabinet would take your picture and your face would be digitized on the player's character. It was a great idea, until about the 4th kid to play the game decided to have the camera take a picture of his junk instead of his face. I like the idea, but it would be harder to implement for a public setting.

easily solved: equip the game with wifi, and have a guy on staff at Awesome New Pinball, Inc, whose job includes a 20 minute block each day scrolling through every new high score image and deleting the nasty ones. we're not talking about millions of photos here.

It would be a reality if there were a market. The reason there is not a market in part is because of the thing I'm typing on. People spend their money on other things. Its hard to get someone off the bar stool to play pinball once for a dollar when they can buy a new game on their phone for a dollar.

Well, we are about to enter a new era of Stern boards and displays my friend, so you'll get your wish to an extent and JJP is already leading the charge. Although if you want to talk to your pin, just spend a little more time with Siri and you'll realize the limitations.... and that's coming from a company with BILLIONS of dollars of revenue.

I can see the OP's point. Those are just some ideas he came up with while working out for a little while for shits sake. There is a ton of technology out there that could completely blow everyone's mind, especially with the software applications available these days. I understand that video game developers have a budget that's astronomical compared to any given pinball company that's still in operation but come on, Stern isn't even releasing games that cost an arm and a leg with complete code and thats pretty damn sad. If stern was some company from japan you would probably be able to pick between 5 different game themes for your new machine based on different code alone

Pretty much just lighting.

And the captain has more hair.

Better toys? You mean the space hogging 2 cannons on the horribly designed slingshots? What other "toys" does STTNG have? The borg ship really does nothing but shoot the ball back slower then the vengeance.

ST is faster & has much better flow then STTNG.

And how exactly do these things make the game more fun to play?

It's funny, the one thing that virtual pinball does right is exactly that- global leader boards, play against your friends lists, unlocking goals/achievements, and other software rich implements. I do enjoy the razzle dazzle of the LCD backglass, but honestly, I can take it or leave it. But if one of the pinball makers can find a way to up the connectivity between players globally, it would definitely make playing on location more rewarding.

I think it would be even more brilliant if it was all integrated to an app that you can download on your phone. Then you could connect to the machine stats via bluetooth, map & find other machines on location, and keep track of which locations you've already played to collect points or even earn free credits as a reward.

In my opinion (and as others have said before), just adding those simple features would easily make playing pinball feel more up to date, or even modern, but without shifting the focus away from the ball and flippers.

These items are still pretty cool, IMO. "Send to Starfleet, we have engaged the Borg!"

Damb straight.

Stern has been on a hell of a run lately. AC/DC is easily one of the best games built in the last 10 years. Maybe 20 years. MET and ST will only get better with updates. Don't focus on the technology. These are fun games overall. Enjoy them and don't sweat the details.

For the collectors and players, this is a very good time for pinball. So you really shouldn't be complaining (not that you were d.

I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave.

As we speak, I am in the process of bringing this unit back to it's former glory. And then some...
DSCN2202.JPG

My kids love their trampoline. And the swimming pool and the table tennis. And the pinball machines. All the same as they were when I was a kid.
Oh, the trampoline has a net around it. That's new.

I think we'll reach the pinnacle of pinball perfection, when we don't have to service the machines, they service us!
What's that hole near the coin slot for??? Oh, my oh, yes!

The DMD graphics on the new start trek look like they're from 1993. Does that help?

Maybe sit the next few plays out for awhile Homebrood.

I am sure guys have. I would love to see a thread of guys that have done just that.

They make a machine that does all of those things, and then people freak out with a 12k price tag.

I don't run an arcade, but i think the LAST thing I'd want is items that require MORE labor.

I mean we COULD have a pinball machine that also has an iPhone charger built in, and maybe even an espresso maker.... but why?

Everyone one of these bells&whistles will add to the cost (no matter how little you think that might be) AND the development AND the software, etc, etc. I think thats the wrong direction with NIB games peaking $8K in some cases...

Once Multimorphic has some more complete, playable games for people to check out - I think there will be a lot of people who finally click into 'getting it' -- but really, if you're whining about lack of innovation, look this way: