I like pinball because...

[Free Bally!]

I like pinball because once in a while, on some machines, you can get a ball to bounce into the bat just right and crack the glass. I like alot of games (you should see my closet), because mostly i like to break games. Make a game do something the designer never intended it to be capable of. In high school, worked at an arcade. You know what that means: swimming in a sea of tokens. That place was about 70/30 video/pinball, my time was about 60/40. You get a feel for them, which machines you have to finesse with timing and which ones you can shove around like a drunk junkie to rollover that fourth target.

My Grandad had pinball in his diner, but at that age the Reeses inside the glass counter by the door were a much more immediate concern. After i left the arcade, found a new giant arcade near college, which contributed a whole lot of relaxation to counter the bustle, and maybe a missed quiz or two. Or three, hey don't judge! I am a firm believer that the opening pull determines your whole game, some machines let you hit the hardest target right away if you toss the opener up just right.

In general, like multiball but hate gerbil-race ramps. Don't like holes which swallow a ball until you unlock it, no board should thieve, but love vast banks of dropdown targets on the top-right. I don't like anything on the backboard other than my score, who needs the distraction? I do like more bouncey mushrooms as long as one of them doesn't send the ball straight down the gullet, but really don't like a game which doesn't give you a shot at the hardest target until you drop some pillar.

 

[JonPurpleHaze]

Pinball is still my favorite type of game to play but unfortunately real ones are getting harder to find. I've always loved drop targets, the more the merrier, hitting a difficult one feels so good!


I agree with you about the ball launch, it can make a lot of games much easier like the ones that give you score multipliers (2x, 3x, etc.) by launching into specified rollover lanes. A friend of mine used to get so impatient with me because I have to read the rules before attempting a new machine and the newer games seem so complex but become clearer if you know what the hell to prioritize.

That said, I find my reaction times are diminishing and still prefer EM's due to their simplicity of rules. I don't like to break games and don't think I've ever cracked a playfield glass with a ball but have broken other parts on a machine.

Tried to find a video of a pinball breaking the playfield and this is close, watch the left hand bottom corner:

Aftermath of a different break:

We used to go to a Pinball Arcade in the 70's and rack up credits on some machines to 10, 15, 25 etc. and then sell them to others for money, we knew all of the machines behaviors by heart, like how much nudge a machine could take. Looking back, wish I would have treated some of them like the pieces of art that they were, like not placing beverages or smokes on the machines.

I remember knowing which machines tilt mechanisms were broken or very forgivable and on harder machines we used to place ashtrays under the front legs to reduce the ball roll or drain.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Haha, ashtrays or improvised wedges were a must when a machine had been ridiculously levered up by the operator.

I'm still pretty amazed that relatively innocuous changes to a table's level can make the difference between a ball-breaking table and a relatively easy one to turn over. That might be more characteristic of modern games, I suppose, in which there's plenty of shots and situations where balls get fed back to the flippers are designed to be near-perilous, yet manageable by a skilled player. But sometimes you change that slope just enough, and lots of situations which were perilous are now downright deadly.

So, considering tables are typically designed in the above way, you'd think the manual or quick setup notes would mention the high-importance of setting the adjustable leg-risers just right. Maybe they do, actually?

I could even see an AI routine sampling the outcomes of typical shot-making scenarios and making some kind of adjustment to make them harder or easier, closer to what the table designers had in mind. You can see something similar in Addams Family, for example, when the machine has to learn what the right timing should be for the auto-shot from the small upper left flipper in to the swamp. It usually misses the first few times as it tries out different values, then after that, makes the shot maybe 95% of the time.

A similar example was Williams machines' ability to adjust some of the table characteristics when something on the table was broken. I thought that was really cool, except apparently they managed to patent it, and didn't allow Stern and others use similar AI.

 

[Free Bally!]

A pinball with AI? Gadzooks i hope not! Some things must remain sacred in this world. Snakes are not allowed to fly, people without umbrellas should not be able to hail a cab in the rain, and pinball machines must never be smarter than us, lest they come back from the future to ensure our servitude.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Speaking of flying snakes, I do notice some interesting pinball AI projects out there.

One uses AI within the format of VP to challenge a player to a game of Firepower (Williams, 1980). The author "3rdaxis" came up with that one, it seems.

Another takes a different approach, and uses a real-world AI setup to play a physical machine hundreds of times until it gets better and better at playing:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1184280497607700482

I've seen that kind of thing used in video games before, and it looks silly at first, but eventually it can get really skillful. Then if you add a way for the AI to nudge a pinball, I suspect that could impart an enormous advantage once the AI gets really good at it. Because there's no doubt all kinds of very subtle nudge opportunities that present themselves every few milliseconds that could make a significant difference in how the ball moves. Such nudges would be too subtle and too fleeting for most humans to equal. I'd definitely call kind of thing an unfair advantage, yeah.

Anyway, I'm still not sure if Addams Family (1992) was the earliest use of AI in real-world machines. Knowing the state of the art of Williams, I wouldn't be surprised if it was first used before that.