Thank God for the drain feature...

*waits for pictures of people eating at their pinball machine in the dining room*

Hahaha - I agree - calling a pinball machine a table really pisses me off.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/table-or-pinball

I think the voting speaks for itself.

I call it a machine 95% of the time, sometimes I just call them games, but table definitely still gets some use from me.

The real question... who cares and why does it piss anyone off?

Pool Table, Foosball Table, Poker Table, Shuffleboard Table; folks get used to calling things like this in their game rooms tables out of habit. Relax, go play pinball.

Mine don't have any pins in them, so I guess it could be a tableball.

It doesn't bother me. I don't get why the term "table" is so upsetting to some people.

I think the better question is: why does calling a pinball machine a table really grind your gears?

pasted_image (resized).png

That would be a 'bathtub'.

Noob.

I thought I was the Bally TABLE King! Ever hear that song?The Who?? Hello??Anybody home??Guess not!!But the lights are on??

Even on my favorite table, he can beat my best.

"Table" doesn't bug me, but "deck" does.

I also understand that some other languages refer to them as "flippers"!

I noticed this when I dabbled in Visual Pinball, they tend to call them tables. I just thought it was odd

Bagatelle, the mother of pinball, was referred to as a table game related to billiards tables. Don't any of you pinheads know your pinball history?

pic_msm09 (resized).JPG

Bump wayout440,exactly! If you read my story,thats what got me hooked on pinball!

Do new games no longer have a finish nail or two hidden under the plastics somewhere? Are those nails there to legally call a game a "pin" ball in some jurisdictions? I read that once somewhere, maybe what I read was BS. Anyone know for sure?

In the Atari-era, some people were determined to call Atari cartridges "tapes" no matter how extra-nerdy it made them come across to everyone else.

Today, these people call pins/pinball machines "tables".

Everyone is special in their own way.

We get guests at work who rent DVDs from our lobby and call them "tapes", haha. As for pinball, it depends who I'm around. Most casual players call them "tables" or "machines", while "pin" is strictly a hobbyist term.

"Tables" had a resurgence thanks to Virtual Pinball. They needed a way to refer to the different machines without calling them machines.

I know people in the UK have used "tables" for a long time but it was never popular over here. I only started hearing it when I came back to the hobby two years ago.

Pinball machine or table sounds better than just calling them pins, a feature than no longer exists on modern tables.

I like decks, tables, pinballs, machines. It does not really matter. All the same thing and just preference or slang.

DanQ > LMK when you want to come play some decks at my place

It's funny, the arcade guys have the same goofy argument, they get all bent out of shape when people call arcade machines "arcades" and ask the newbies if they're talking about their businesses sarcastically. Thank god nobody cares about the word "pinballs". Maybe we should make sure they're talking about their machines instead of little silver balls!

Yeah, I don't really get "Table" either. It doesn't bother me, I just think it's kind of weird...

For a general term, I'll usually use "machine", as in "that's a fun machine!"

"That's a good table"
"I like that table"

Nah, kind of odd...

"Pins" is the geekiest insider term for collectors/hobbyists. Generally whenever someone asks me how many "pins" I have, it'll often turn out to be a fun discussion.

I can see pins since pin it's short for pinball.

I'm too old to be skateboarding!

chocolate_pinball_series_decks (resized).jpg

(Seriously, thanks for the invite, I shall take you up on it someday! You are welcome here too!)

Hmmm, my oldest "pin"ball indeed looks quite table-like!

oldest (resized).jpg

in the UK pins were traditionally called pin tables and in early gaming legislation were referred to as such. No-one under 40 would use the term anymore though. many old school engineers I know prefer deck to playfield and backflash to backglass. only last week I had a call offering a "Corvette table with a nice deck"

I believe pin tables games and "table" terminology has been around since about the 1750's, more so in Western Europe.
My guess is that the term Pinball Machines became more widely used in USA in the mid/late 1940's after WWII as the games took on more varied and complex parts and mechanisms, playfield components, flippers, etc.
Virtual pinball did give new life to the word tables.

Not sure why people would want to call them tables unless they want to feel special and stand out. I used to know a guy who would call cocktail video machines "cocktables". I have NO idea where he got that term from (it was probably his own creation) but when questioned about it he'd look at you as if you had 2 heads. Weird.....

Stern calls them tables in some of their recent game flyers.

I just hate it when people call them "flappers"!

I enjoy when people call them decks. It makes me laugh when people call console controllers paddles.

There are a few people here at work that get confused and say "So, how many ping-pongs do you have again?"

Uuuummmmmm...none.

Dude,i live in western europe, we call everything a table over here..
Lol
But we call it "flipperkast" and translated from our Dutch language to english that means "closet with flippers"!!
Never thought about that,real stupid name in Dutch?
But nobody calls it table over here.

Ya I don't like table and add the word 'pin' to my shit list

I don't know why they call them tables either, 'tableheads' doesn't work.

pinball_table (resized).png

"I have a good condition folding pinball table on wheels for sale! It works good, just don't have the space for it!"

From an old, long gone CL ad.

Im partial to the name flipper, but it reminds me of an aquatic sea mammal.

A pinball machine by any other name is still a pinball machine.
It's got all three elements
" Pin " as in assorted connections through Molex connectors and such.
"Balls" need I say more
"Machine" that's what it is.
Lots of people call things by different names. Sometimes just to be different.

Nice deck Dan!

Never heard a pinball machine called a deck before. Looks like someone is trying to set a new trend.

I think caucasion2step might have coined the term.

When I read this, in my head I hear it in Jerry Seinfeld's voice.

Most people I've heard refer to them as "tables" are European. I've actually got used to the term "table" lately, and it makes just as much sense as "machine." We could call a "car" a "driving machine", but we don't (unless you work in BMW marketing).

These two statements seem to oppose each other.

From reading your reply post pinballrockstar, and re-reading my earlier post, I guess I could have added more detail to clarify better what I was trying to say, but I was trying not to type lengthy paragraphs.

The OP's title for this topic is “Why do some people call it a "Table"?” So I assume we are all in agreement that calling it a pinball machine is what most everyone calls them all over the world both today and for at least several decades, and that *some* people call them a table sometimes, but not as much as in years past. I was sort of commenting as to when the different terminology came to being used.

The word(s) "machine/machines" shows up in various industry documents in the 1950's, and sometimes even back in the 30's and 40's.
Some examples being: Amusement Pinball Machines, Amusement Machines, Coin Machines, Machine.

I did see a couple Gottlieb flyers calling their products a "Pin Game" (1947 Humpty Dumpty, & 1950 Bank-a-Ball).
Gottlieb started using the phrase "Flipper Skill Game" back in the 1960's.

Gottlieb was using "Table" and "Pin Table" at least occasionally in mid 30's from what I noticed.

Often times over the decades the manufacturers just called them "Games" or "Novelty Games".

Here in the South and Midwest (in USA), almost everyone I ever talk to calls them pinball machines, from mid-70's to present day.
I rarely hear someone calling them a table.
Exception is when you hear The Who's Pinball Wizard song being played on the radio.

my wife never calls it a table,
she loves tables! and any other furniture

she calls them :stand in the way's

weird thing is : thats how i call her mother!

In Australia
Old school days we like to refer to a Pinball Machine as

Pinny

Lets go play some Pinny/Pinnies mate !

I could never appreciate the term Table

Understand Europe, Flipper, for me this is not appealing as well

Each to their own hey

Down under for me at least............ its a
Pinny

Thanks USA so much for Pinball, the best fun ever
Well after a couple of other sweet things anyway

I got into a slightly heated discussion over this with another guy once, and in the end we kind of agreed to disagree.

For someone like me it derives from digital pinball where they always seemed to be referred to as 'tables' rather than 'machines' in games - I guess because you don't actually have the physical machine in front of you to play. You just have the playfield, or the table.

I posted a topic once on another site using 'table' and this guy just nitpicked at it 'Table, whats pinball table?' 'You know...a machine, table, whatever.' 'If you walked into a bar round these parts and asked them if they had a pinball table they'd have no idea what you were talking about, it's a machine.' At this point I just kind of went 'Okay guy.' and gave up. I couldn't fathom that someone would have no idea what the difference between referring to it as a 'pinball table' and 'pinball machine' would be and he maintained if I kept calling it a table I'd just get goofy looks because nobody would know what I was referring to. Hell I could probably ask 'Got a pinball?' and they'd know what I meant!

Once upon a time - way back when they actually LOOKED like tables. Around the early bagatelle days. Those certainly looked like tables.

Things evolved over time and now we have pinball machines NOT tables anymore. Modern pinball machines (last 30+ years) don't look anything like a table and so it is pretty silly to call them that when referring to a modern style machine.

Agreed.

Here's a link showing a pin table game dating back to 1750's to 1770's era. Have to scroll down a bit once at that website.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball