Sorry, but 92-93 was the peak, not the beginning of the revival.
And as for T2, well, High Speed sold more than T2, so that argument doesn't hold water either.

Pinball started coming back after the Arcade crash of '83. 1986's High Speed was the highest seller since Firepower in 1980. This began an upward trend for pinball, with big sellers like Funhouse, F-14 Tomcat, PinBot and Cyclone. This upward trend continued and peaked in the early 90's with games like T2, Addams Family, High Speed 2, Star Trek, etc...

The arcades ran in trouble again, because their bread and butter was video games, and after the 16-bit consoles came out, video games in arcades became more passe.

Face it, pinball requires skill and patience to learn that skill. That patience is mostly missing from today's kids. Even when I was much younger, pinball seemed like a game in which you randomly hit the ball around. It was frustrating to see it drain so quickly. I wasn't much interested in spending money on that option compared to Asteroids, Galaga, or other video games in which I could see how my skill and scores increased quickly. The same is true today. Pinball takes too much time to gain the necessary skills, so it will be ignored for the game that a player can see more immediate benefits. JMHO.

It took many games on my uncle's pinball machine in his basement before I realized that I could get better, but those games were free.

What are the Great pins of 89 90 and 91??? There was low period just like 83 84. That's all I am saying you cant sit there and tell nothing but steady rise from High Speed to AF. Anyways enough with that. Not that this is new need but as a refresher read JJP patent. http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20130509ptan20130113161.php This new game will be different and meant for major multi media activity. Whether you can play while not on the machine or use a device to interact while you or friend plays. Who knows. My whole point is that this game wont be your grandfathers pinball experience as we know it up through GOT even.

So were talking safecracker 2.0 here.....so maybe you can collect cards out of the machine and reinsert them for special games or rewards? HMMMMMMM........

1989-1991?

Capture.jpg

huh?

But anyways, I just think this talk about dominating D&B with some new design is complete pie-in-the-sky right now...

I would be shocked if D&B would be super interested in a 300, 400, 500 pound machine with 20,000 moving parts.... One look under the PF of TH gets pinheads jazzed up- but probable has the exact OPPOSITE effect on some joint like D&B!

Also, consider JJP will have to seriously up their game on QC if they want to play in that space.

Massive dicking around with LED boards, inductors melting, PFs prematurely wearing, etc, etc would not "cut it." First time that happened, they'd likely say "come pick this crap up- we're not dealing with this headache."

And lastly, JJP would need to completely revamp their production planning/manufacturing to play in the big leagues.... that part of their business right now is a joke.

Cater to a fanatical hobby clientele that will look past 3 year deliver dates and QC problem? sure.
Try to market to buyers who don't give a shit if its pinball or Bar-Ber-Cut - whichever drives revenue? no way... not yet.

I disagree it evolved! Play some system 11's they are some of the best pins ever made. Also you have Double Dragon and Contra which were game changers back in 87.

Dave and Buster's stock has DOUBLED in last 12 months. You guys keep saying nobody gives a shit about Dave and Busters, and that may be true in your own bubble, but the investors/money is showing that you are wrong.

I don't care and this is off topic. I don't want to talk about the 80's and 90's. Just because those are seen as good games now doesn't mean they were block busters at the time. BOP sold no where close to PB for example. Lets stay on the topic of the new game. The only reason your are even babbling about this is because I said Lawyer is a game changer. Do you disagree with that statement? You provided Whirlwind as an example of a good game so I don't understand where you are going with this? If you have an opinion on what you believe is happening with JJP #3 then let us know. If your just here to argue about the 80's and 90's I don't care.

I don't mind posting it in a public forum: It is the DaveH machine. Pat finally figured out how a pinball machine could dispense a hot slice of pizza and a cold beer when you win a free game. As soon as he gets the pizza dispenser patent it will go into production.

Maybe JJP #3 is a slot machine and they're moving to where the real money is.

This. Pinball also costs more so it added to the frustration. Today, the old arcade games are dated and I rather play modern games. Pinball is still pinball. Old games are just as fun as new games in a lot of ways. Changing pinball to something else to attract new fans doesn't make sense. Like others said, there are other gaming equipment that can easily out earn pinball and need less maintenance. If JJP wants to get into that fine but that's not pinball.

You're the one who said Lawlor revitalized the pinball industry in 1992. I corrected you on it with facts. I'm done if you are.

I guess some kids thought differently, because I did the opposite. I grew up every summer in York Beach, Maine which had a huge beach side arcade, loaded with arcade games and two rows of pinball machines. I would play the arcade games on occasion, but I was frustrated and put off, that my money would last for about 30 seconds and that was it. It wanted more for the same pattern.

Pinball on the other hand, well. The first games I remember playing were lawlor pins, Whirlwind, Funhouse, Earthshaker, and you could prolong your play- extra balls, specials/free games/match. Extra chances was where it was at for a kid, plus the games had so much to discover. I guess I was patient.

Im not saying "NO ONE cares about D&B", I'm saying THEY don't give a shit about pinball, and I as a pinhead, don't see D&B as being much of a player in pinball....

If D&B started having pinball machines I WOULD care - and that's the point. In fact, if my local D&B had a good pinball selection I would go this weekend.

Pinball may be dying...but it ain't dead yet (from a player perspective - but it is hard to be profitable from an operator perspective - and that is also the point).

At least pinball is thriving now while we all can enjoy it. I got 3 kids, 2 boys and a girl all in thier twenties. They love pinball. When they have disposable income, they all plan to be buying their own machines. Pinball may fade away someday, but not on my watch.

If all of us pass it on to our kids, pinball will survive.

I'd love to see pinball become more widely available on location, but I'm just not a fan of D&B, or turning it into a redemption machine.

Pinball should be played for what it is, not with some Frankenstein attachment so kids can get 1,000 tickets to get a toy worth 50 cents.

I'd go eat there. So if my coming in to buy a burger and a beer was worth it to them, they would buy pinball machines. However some actuary that works there runs his equation and decides that my coming in for a burger and beer every few weeks does not offset the cost of attempting to maintain a pinball machine. It is that simple.

So instead, every few weeks Bertuccis sells a spaghetti and meatball lunch with a Sam Adams because they happen to be local to both of my local pinball haunts. I'm sure my lunches are not a blip on their radar. However, I wonder how many people do the same thing. An afternoon of pinball costs me about 30 bucks between gas, food, and pinball. It is a bargain.

Lawlor's design philosophy is always to try something he's never done before - and creating a hook for the average joe who walks by with money in his pocket. Even though he always tries something different, pinball fans end up loving his games for the most part. So, if I had to guess - even if he's trying something a bit weird and different to appeal to location players, we're still going to think it's cool.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't go there to eat (been there, done that - the foods not that good).

a good selection would mean more than a couple games to me. I'm not sure how much real estate they will give up for pins, if any. I'd love to see 5 or more pins - that might get me to stop by to play a few games.

Yeah where do these guys come up with this stuff. It is entertaining though.

I have to agree. Lack of information makes the imagination go wild

And adding to the problem is the extremely poor explanation of rules on modern games. Playfields rarely have instructions written on them any more, instruction cards give vague advice, DMDs often play an animation while the game holds the ball and then tell you what to do only as the ball is released and you aren't looking. To top it off, many features aren't even coded when the game is released, making the instructions useless anyway.

Hopefully this is something that Pat will address with his new game. Also, have an optional setting that adjusts the game difficulty if you're playing badly: narrower outlanes (have the machine move the posts automatically), longer ball save time, extra magna saves etc.

Remember, pinball isn't an investment. If you want to make money, try investing your organs on the black market instead.

Whatever the #3 game is I will not buy it if it has all white LED lighting. Jack knocked it out of the park with his GI lighting on WOZ. Stern even had some color mixing GI when they had the 3 color bulbs in games like AC/DC and Xmen. But now the manufacturers have cheaped out and gone to all bright white GI LED lighting boards and it sucks IMHO.

There's an Arcade place by me that for $15 on weekends you get free play all day on pinball games and arcade games. A great day with carpal tunnel by the end of the day. Occasionally there is Groupon for half price. The sad thing is that they sold about half of their pinballs and just sold a really nice black Spiderman. I'm slowly loosing my best place to play.

He knocked it out of the park with a foul ball. The GI lighting on WOZ sucks. I've been playing my WOZ for 2 years and it has to be located near a light.

Alien will have full RGB LEDs, and so does Full Throttle. I kinda doubt Heighway is planning on dropping that any time soon. So there's that.

Back vaguely on topic, if I was walking past a Dave and Busters and they had pinball I'd go in and play. But I'd never drive out of my way for it.

Huh? Full Throttle is being down graded across the board, even from the owners for its poor lighting.

You spend your time in this thread with snide remarks about JJP and now this? Very unprofessional from a Heighway employee.

A Snide remark from Aurich??? Say it isn't so! That Shadow Backglass was pretty cool, I think he can be Snide if he wants to! With that one item he will have done 100x more than I'll have ever contributed!

Mr 68, Aurich is a stand up dude who at times wears his emotions on his sleeves just like any one who is passionate about something he loves. Get it straight he is not an employee of heighway but a contractor. Do you own a full throttle? I dont think so, you are going on hearsay of others you havent even played the pin but your talking shit not only about one of the good guys in our community but also against a pin you havent even played. Real classy bro.

I don't own it but played it at Expo quite a bit two years in a row as I was interested in buying it. But don't take my word about the poor lighting, read the review by one of the Pinside owners: Not hearsay at all and its been spoken about openly on Pinside.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/full-throttle-1-month-later

So your hero Aurich can have a public opinion about his employers competing companies but I'm not allowed to have an opinion about his acting unprofessionally?

LOL. Real classy bro.

Guys, I can't ignore him if you're going to name him in your posts, so thanks for defending me, but just let it go. I have no idea what he said, and I don't care. Thanks for the kinds remarks anyways.

FWIW I only brought up Heighway because the comment I was replying to mentioned another company (Stern) and said "the manufacturers" so I was simply pointing out that one of "the manufacturers" was still doing RGB LEDs in the GI. Not trying to troll up a JJP thread. Given how off topic it is and how there's no news to discuss it seemed reasonable.

And no, I'm not a Heighway employee, Alien is a contract gig. Maybe that doesn't really make a difference, I dunno. I get nothing for Full Throttle sales though.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, there's some truth to that. But then I see kids playing their first-person shooters all day or those sports games that you need to go to school to learn (I spent a summer trying to learn FIFA 08 and my brain almost melted). If they can handle that complexity, why not pinball?

The reward factor for starters. I go nuts losing a buck in under a minute sometimes...

Wow. If any of you guys believe that, shame on you.

????

Whiwlwind, Earthshaker, Funhouse, T2...these games were huge hits. Pinball was very healthy during this time. Comparing it to 83-84 is ridiculous and something someone with absolutely no understand of pinball's history would do.

I wish the GI lighting in WoZ, especially in the lower PF, was WAY better, and the INSERTS (especially yellow brick road) could be turned down another step. In a dim room, the inserts are WAY too bright (even on "low" in the setup) and the general playfield is so poorly lit that most of the bottom 2/3rds is way too dark.

I played it at the Dutch Pinball Open and lighting was perfect. And there wasn much light around, so itś not that it isn good in a dark environment. So if there was a problem with the lighting in Full Throttle, they sure fixed it.

Agreed the lower playfield is to dark (illuminated balloon helps a tiny bit) and the forrest is too dark too. JJP hit it out of the park with the playfield light show but GI lighting could be much better.

My 2 cents:

WOZ GI is horrible. With a pinballbulbs kit it's awesome.

Full Throttle never struck me as being too dark the few times I played it, and it was pretty dark in the room one or two of those times.

It doesn't matter if Aurich is an employee of any company. He's a pinball enthusiast first and foremost and is entitled to an opinion either way.

I don't always agree with some people either, but why get your panties in a bunch about it?

Oh...and Mr68 is a good dude, too. He's gotten my back numerous times!

Not an argument,just an observation.Theres no denying the data:sales numbers ,etc.

My point was I noticed T2 really turning heads and getting video gamers to part with some coins.

All great games that players loved and still do,but the video gamers didn't take as much notice till T2.At least at the places I frequented back in the day.

49 new posts since my last visit and nothing new on the 3rd pin but lots of good viewpoints on the future of pinball.

All I know is that unless we collectively introduce our youth to the joys of playing pinball, 30 years down the road it may already be dying. My kids love pinball but when they tell their friends they have pinball machines, their friends have no idea what they're talking about. I look at it like kids wearing sports jerseys. The kids only give a shit about a team because their parents have conditioned them to a point to like that team and are financing the fandom through clothing purchases, tv subscriptions, event tickets.

There aren't arcades all over like the 80s/90s to expose kids to pinball machines. That's why D&B is the best mainstream venue to make this happen. I think LCDs like WOZ and Hobbit are helpful to at least modernize the experience. That's the norm even in casinos near me, nowadays. I've never won anything substantial on these machines, however, the pretty pictures and Ghostbusters clips help me forget that I'm very quickly losing real money.

So, whatever this new pin entails, let's hope it furthers the lifespan of this hobby we all love and that everyone eventually gets their damn Hobbits!

Gee I thought your time would be more best spent answering these guys regarding fried boards!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/yikes-woz-fried-lots-of-smoke-where-do-i-start

Just a thought...

All good games and all Lawlor games which was part of what I was trying to convey. He was an innovator during a down turn. Arcades were going bust due to flood of Jamma games. Pinball has never carried the arcade. Untill Addams Family that game was a must have in every arcade and brought people in. My whole point is Lawlor I awesome and Innovative.

Its got 4 magnets

Ohh if that were actually true. I commented on Metallica which I actually bought day one of its release and the shit I took from being "biased".

I do believe that making an objective comment on a competitors machine isn't really easy but it should hold much more water if you actually OWN the machine.

...and you know I've always supported your right to an opinion as well. I know others here don't, but there are a lot of people here that think that you're entitled to their opinion. Otherwise, it's an instant thumbs-down and trashing retort.

When do you guys ever see Stern or JJP employees on Pinside criticizing or giving their opinion of the competition. All of those guys are pinball fans also. - Those company's have learned and know the lesson.

I will admit that Aurich is very clever with his subtle, disguised comments about Stern, JJP, et al but he doesn't fool everyone here.

You fanboys want to believe I'm out to get your hero, fine. Fact is he is doing harm to himself and a disservice to Heighway Pinball.

Agreed. I learned my lesson after Metallica. I purchased the machine and my comments were still seen as disingenuous. I warned Aurich that there is no way he can be seen as impartial any longer the second he signed on to help heighway and he just brushed it off. I do however note that he never states a negative opinion either constructive or not about FThr. So yeah...