The general thought was at the time that they where taking there ball and going home. They didnt want anyone else to make a success of there failure.

Honestly i had forgotten about pinball in my mid twenties till p2k came out. It bridged the gap for the video era for me back to pinball. RFM EP1 is what got me back into playing pinball.

Plus i always love techie stuff.

I feel that SWE1, in particular, will start to become more of a collector's item as time goes on. I've always been amazed that the diehard Star Wars collectors haven't snatched them all up. There are certainly way more people that collect Star Wars/sci-fi memorabilia than pinball collectors. You would think a mint SWE1 would be a pretty impressive thing to add to your collection. Perhaps I'm just not in touch with the average Star Wars collector's mindset. Is "The Phantom Menace" really loathed so much by the Star Wars community that the pin would actually be considered the blight of someone's collection?

As far as "Tilt" goes, it's a great film! It's easily the best of the pinball documentaries I've seen thus far.

where can i get a copy of tilt?

I doubt it. The game is one of the worst I've ever played. I've never played RFM, but SWE1 was just plain bad. It has one (very easy) shot right in the middle. The entire time I was playing I wondered how much longer before I could get a ball to drain..

I love Star Wars, I used to play SWCCG when I was younger - and actually still have them. I sort through them from time to time building decks.. I'm a huge nerd. Maybe there is some collector interest for something like this, but not for me. The movie wasn't all that good, and some people hated it. For the price that these are going for - I'd rather have almost any other machine..

But yes, the Doc was good (sorry I got a bit OT). I personally liked Special When Lit, it featured more gameplay than Tilt. Tilt was definitely made better, I recommend both. I think any online pinball supplier should have either.

That documentary is very very well made. Preperation, script, interviews, presentation and technical. Awesome. When the topic is of interst, it doesn't get much better.

I think you missed my point. I'm not delusional enough to think that pinheads are going to suddenly start clamoring for the pin. It's the Star Wars collectors that will drive the market. They could care less if the game sucks. To them, it's would simply be another super unique, cool item to add to their collection. Of course, I could be way off the mark.

Awesome movie and a great propaganda piece for RFM, as I HAD to seek one out to play one and before you know it, I bought one. The extras disc is just as awesome as the movie, as you get George Gomez' famous Expo speech(pretty heart-wrenching at times), cool interviews with Larry Demar and Steve Kordek, along with a round table discussion with Roger Sharpe, Duncan Brown, Cameron Silver and Tom Uban. If you are a pinball fan whether you like Pin2k or not, you must watch it!!

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! Glad you enjoyed TILT. It was incredibly fun to make.

@tpn2011: you can purchase TILT at http://tilt-movie.com/buy.php.

Thanks again!

Greg Maletic
Director, TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball.

I thought it was very professionally made for a documentary. They didn't resort to weird art student concepts to get the points across. The graphics to show various parts(playfield redesign) were nice. People were interviewed in a positive light. Statements weren't taken out of context like King of Kong. There's suspense & disappointment(at the players, not this doc) when we see results of their competition.

At my workplace we have films play on silent to test hardware, and Tilt was one of them. Koi become a household word.

It's the best documentary so far about pinball. It tells a story and is professionally laid out. I didn't like the pin2k games, but the doc is very well executed. I also like Special When Lit a lot. As a documentary it is sloppy and unfocused, but it covers so my ground that my geek side is satisfied. Pinball Passion is also fun, but just as unfocused, and relatively short.

SWE1 will definitely be a hot item for SW fans in the future.

I don't think so. I think it's too big. If you are purely SW collector, with little interest in pinball, aren't there enough small figurines etc. to collect? Why fill up a good chunk of your room on this?

I really doubt it.. Again, not only is the game bad, but true SW fans aren't big on anything E1. Pins may be on the radar for some, but I think most would opt for a life sized stormtrooper.

I believe one of the biggest SW collectors in the world, has a massive warehouse with all the SW pins and arcade games including SWE1. It may interest the hardcore SW fans if they have the money.

One of the largest SW collectors in the world probably has everything you could imagine.. not an example that these will be highly sought after.. have you seen E1?!

What I'm trying to say is it may appeal to the hardcore SW collectors.

I played a SWE1 recently that was in very good shape and really liked so much that I put it on my wishlist and I am a PINHEAD!

And I'm saying I doubt it.

Anyone interested in Tilt can rent or buy it from Itunes, download it right to the Iphone and
watch it.

Is "The Phantom Menace" really loathed so much by the Star Wars community that the pin would actually be considered the blight of someone's collection?

hell_yes.jpg

I think you have 2 different camps in the SW's fan community, those who like ALL the SW's movies, and those that HATE episode's 1,2,3 and LOVE ep's 4,5,6 - the original trilogy.

Also in this community you have those who LOVE ep;'s 4,5,6 in their original unedited, NON cgi-added form. For those that may not know Lucas went back and added elements to these movies when he had CGI technology available, which was blasphemy to alot of hardcore fans. Especially the "greedo shot first at Han" scene and most recently the Vader "Nooooooo" scream Lucas added into Ep. 6 for the SW blu-ray box set.

So to answer Gweempose's question - YES, Phantom Menace is really loathed so much by a segment of hardcore SW's fan's that they would not spend the cash on having it in their collection.

Now...a hard-hardcore SW's fan that has to have anything and everything SW's merchandise related, they'd have ALL the SW's pins in their collection.

Lucas does have a habit of f_cking with his films, and spoiling them for people who wanted to see what they grew up with.

The Vader 'NoooooooOOOOooo!' is almost like a Youtube comedy dubbing video, it's just so out of place and poorly integrated. I think the prequel series is OK, some of the casting could have been better and JJB was irritating.

I guess my problem with Tilt was that I think Williams gets sort of a bad rap for something that was way out of their control - the coin op market was deep in the doldrums by 2000. The Street Fighter 2 craze of the early and mid-90s was the last hurrah for the arcades. I was heavy in the scene. By 1996 it was pretty much dead and arcades were closing every where. The saddest part is several arcades that managed to survive the first crash in the early 80s also closed around that time.

Likewise, when people talk about the 90s pinball scene, while the games improved drastically, they owe a lot of their success to all the drawing power of games like Mortal Kombat. I never, ever saw 10 people crowded around a pinball game, but I saw that all the time around MK and SF.

Simultaneously in 2000, 3D graphics cards became standardized on the PC and we had great games like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament showcasing what was to come. That was just another nail in the arcade coffin that Sony built with the Playstation in 1995.

So, I guess I wish tilt examined a few of the overarching factors more in-depth.

You need to find another digital distribution method for those of us who can't/won't touch iTunes with a 70 foot pole.

Don't forget the kid.

If it turns out there's a secret mode where you can beat the crap out of the kid and Jar Jar, it will quickly become an A-list game.

And why is that?

Until Apple get's their database hacked and my CC # is compromised it works well for me.

Because I don't want Apple shovelling every piece of crap they can think of on my machine, like auto-updaters and Quicktime. I want a Paypal address and a download link. Not everyone uses Windows or Mac either...

I could go back to using IBM's OS/2, but just to prove a point...nah.

Linux is fine if that's what float's your boat. I'm just not one of those "I have to fight tha' man and not use windows" kinda people.

The fact that Itunes uses an autoupdater and quicktime, Jeez...if it's something that insignificant that chaps your ass I'd hate to know what REALLY pisses you off.

I thought JJB added a little humor to star wars movies

I haven't watched the movie yet. I've had it since it came out but just haven't gotten to it yet or something. But to your point, I was personally always irked that the only 2 people from Williams still working in the pinball industry at the time of filming (myself and Dwight Sullivan) weren't ever contacted for our perspective. Maybe we would've had something to add, maybe not. Maybe I should finally watch the movie and figure it out, huh?

With Jersey Jack pinball coming on the scene maybe someone will do a sequel to Tilt and do more extensive interviews with the JJP people, people going to the pinball shows,conventions, tournaments, and people like pinball keefer.

Pinball is no longer in need of saving, it's alive and well.

Nice job, Greg! Just watched it tonight.

Really liked it. Seems like Williams was going to go slots only no matter what those guys did. Too bad those 3rd and 4th Pin2K machines never came out.

It was cool to see Gomez getting emotional about the end of Williams pinball.

It was absolutely in williams control. PB2K wasn't a failure (they sold 3,200 units of star wars, revenge from mars sold 6,800). By today's standards that's a hell of a good turn out, but williams saw slot machines as more profitable (even though they could easily have continued to support the pinball business, with profit). They chose to close it down, which was actually pretty stupid. Had they hung on, they could have probably beat out Stern (and be the last pinball manufacturer), and we'd all be playing new williams games right now.

The sad sad part when you watch the documentary is all the overtime those guys put in, all the sweat they put into those machines, just to have management say "nice try, but not good enough, your all fired". People like gomez floated around (only knowing pinball) for what, 10 years until Stern finally hired him?

I own it and like it. It is one of the few docs I have watched more than once. Haven't seen Special yet.

i own tilt and enjoy it. on disk 2 there are some really cool bonus features. one of the best imo is an audio only round table discussion with roger sharpe and some of the design team.they reveal a lot of their personal opinions about pin2k,williams and other things in pinball. if you get the chance check it out. also check out pinball passion. its another documentary that is well done. its more like special when lit without the extreme personalities.i got both tilt and pinball passion on amazon fwiw.