Quick Look: The Pinball Arcade

@UltimAXE: I can see that but Jeff is exposed to pinball machines more than regular people who isn't on the industry or live in California for events like California Extreme and what not , but those must be very few and scarce then.

Looks fun.

@Romination said:

@Sarumarine said:

I find something relaxing about Jeff and Co. talking about pinball machines. I really, really hope he does this monthly with new DLC. That would be fantastic.

Game Room 2: The Pinball Arcade!

Yeah! Hopefully without the occasional depression and running tally of how much money Jeff has lost to old games of questionable quality. But I do hope that nothing, and I mean nothing, stops The Pinball Arcade Quick Looks.

Enjoying this free Vita game. I already get all the Zen DLC tables so this will probably be the same.

Pro Tip: Rotate the thing sidways to get vertical view before you start a table. I thought there was no vertical option because it won't switch after the pinball begins.

Also, anyone know if this uses the full resolution on the new iPad?

Great QL, and a fun game.  The only problem is the Arabian Nights table is still busted.  Trying getting the 4th (I think) standard goal of "Do HAREM Multiball".  Still fairly impossible to pull off, just like in the Williams Collection earlier.  I hope they patch it someday (but I doubt it).

Jeff, do not compliment Stern's Family Guy table. It was a bullshit reimagining of the Simpsons table they put out a couple years prior (which I guess says a lot about how Stern feels about Family Guy).

I love Zen pinball, but the Farsight stuff just feels like more like real pinball. I cannot wait to play Bride of Pinbot again after all these years!

Jeff goes straight for the gutter. Every time.

Jeff should check out the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Veags. That place has about 150 pinball machines.

Android users can get the updated version with Medieval Madness free to play for April.

This is actually a great set of tables, with at least one (Ripley's) that I've never even played before.

I'll be playing this until the flippers on Black Hole break.

It's awesome on the Vita! I'm having a blast playing it.

Ugh, can't believe they used Coolvetica for the menus. That font is atrocious and is just a terrible rip-off version of Helvetica. They should have just paid the money to license the actual Helvetica font. Using Coolvetica makes them look so cheap and amateurish.

When I heard about 13 ball multi-ball, first thing I did when this video ended was go to youtube and look up Apollo 13 multi-ball. HOLY CRAP! That is insane!

In addition to Shorty's, there's also a pinball museum in Seattle's International District that has a ton of almost unrecognizable-as-pinball tables from as far back as the 40s I think.

I wonder if the Creature from the Black Lagoon table from 1993 will be made available. I have no idea if it's a good table, I just used to see it a lot at the Faculty of Humanities house at the Stockholm University campus when I studied there, but it was always broken. Apparently it was fixed the year after I dropped out, but I'd probably pay to try it out.

Dear Giant Bomb Staff, 
 
If I could be so bold as to make a request, could you please re-record this Quick Look with Vinny on a mic. I hate to be such a stickler for quality but it's embarrassing how many times "waxing the playfield" was said without a hint of innuendo.

At Jilly's Arcade on the Ocean City, NJ boardwalk, there's a lot of pinball tables (including the Family Guy one and The Simpsons Pinball Party). In general, the NJ boardwalk is a great hotspot for pinball machines, but that's the best one I know of.

$10 for only four tables seems like a bit of a rip-off. I've never seen Black Hole or that Arabian Nights table.

I have this on the iPad 2 and it's fantastic. Theatre of Magic is my jam.

The optimism in this reminds me a bit too much of the first QL of Game Room... let's hope this doesn't go down that path (at least not until they get Twilight Zone table DLC... and they had better do just that)

The console versions definitely look better than the Vita version. While its fine the light and stuff is way better on PS3/360.

@5eNintendan: There are some rare tables that are quite expensive to get your hands on (upwards of $10,0000.) They're also, in some cases, a pain to maintain. They require a lot of maintenance to keep everything working optimally. They're kind of like cars, you can't just leave it in the garage and fire it up every six months and hope everything is going to work smoothly.

Im pretty sure that ten bucks on psn gets you both the vita version and the playstation version, not just the dlc

@WilliamHenry said:

Ugh, can't believe they used Coolvetica for the menus. That font is atrocious and is just a terrible rip-off version of Helvetica. They should have just paid the money to license the actual Helvetica font. Using Coolvetica makes them look so cheap and amateurish.

No one else is bothered by that.

13:30:

Yo dawg I herd you like pinball so I put a pinball in your pinball so you can pinball while you pinball

Will this be the new Game Room?

@tescovee said:

yeah

@Jeff just a heads up funspot is in NH not shitty ole Taxachusetts

He never said it was in civilized Massachusetts. No, you have to travel to the redneck sticks of Laconia, NH to get to Funspot.

@Tsuchikage: 800 is the same price for 4 tables on Pinball FX 2 and at least here you know what the tables are like and the ball physics feel right to me. Some of the tables in PBFX2 are just straight up garbage.

BALLS OF STEEL!

this game is great, you guys should buy it now.

Jeff mentioned a PC version, when is that coming out?

My only experience with Pinball has been the Windows 98 version.

We need a new Pinball Construction Kit. That's the next step.

I wholeheartedly support farsight's effort to digitally archive these pinball tables. I hope one day they can emulate the vertical Pinball Circus machine from Midway. I played it at the pinball hall of fame and it's awesome!

Oh, what I wouldn't give for a Theater of Magic table...

I envy Jeff's multiball skills. Pinball maintenance sounds like a bitch though, holy hell. I think I'm going to grab the Android version now, because playing in vertical orientation just makes sense.

I would love to play that Theatre Magic table somewhere.

It will be interesting to see how successful they are in licensing everything. Some of the best tables out there have been covered by FarSight now, but I'm curious to see if Star Trek and Star Wars properties are up for grabs. Spiderman and Batman are also great gadget-heavy tables, but might be too recent...?

@Jeff@Brad : AC/DC is Stern's first 2012 table, Transformers was the last of 2011. The new Premium AC/DC looks awesome with the inset playfield instead of the... well you should go look at the wiki pics. I don't normally pimp out Facebook pages, but Stern Pinball is always worth watching. People post their modded tables and classics "discovered" in the wild too.

@Smokey_Earhole: Pinball Machine (object). :)

@MattClassic: Five thousand dollars would be a good start! ;) There were about 6,600 produced, so it's not especially rare, just still popular.

@Stahlbrand said:

Wait, pinball tables are wood?! But the lights and stuff? I always figured they were acrylic or some other glass-like plastic.

I can't think of a place to play real pinball here in shitburg Ontario. I'll have to make it a point to find one next time I'm in a real city.

Do they still have the Playdium in Mississauga? Check out Stern's machine finderfor some tips. Never stays very current though.

Yep pretty well all mass produced arcade and pinball cabinets are plywood, particle board, or some processed variation. The reasons they aren't plastic are very simple, wood is an order of magnitude cheaper to manufacture and easier to repair, refinish, and less likely to crack during transport and other rough handling (i.e. tilts, ball impacts that can crack glass). That's aside from the fact that plastic tables wouldn't have been practical between 1935-1975, which is the main era of "electromechanical" tables, so it's a historical thing too. ;) (Just FYI, from 1975 on they quickly evolved to "solid-state" tables, meaning the first use of circuitry, digital scores, computerised sounds & speech, etc. The technology of the machinery evolved quickly, but the utility of wood cabinets didn't fade.)

@tescovee said:

yeah

@Jeff just a heads up funspot is in NH not shitty ole Taxachusetts

To people from California the whole east coast is just Boston, they cant fathom how many states we cram into an area that is just one state where they are from.

I like pinball, gotta admit that.

Terminator Table please!

Somewhere Brendan Sinclair is happy!

I want Startrek TNG and Demolition Man.. And.. Indiana Jones.. So many really good tables that you NEVER see in games. They're all out for vpinmame, but never seen them in any of these release titles.

@cassus: licensing them is probably almost impossible. :(

Balls! of Steel. Christopher Walken. Random associations. Brain overloads.
On a more serious note, there's a special kind of addiction with pinball
simulators. You can completely forget about it, but it never goes away.

I definitely have come to a point where I only care about tables I used to play. Unfortunately I never really played much of the tables in this collection. I've certainly tried them, but probably not more than once or twice.

DLC pins is actually something I can get behind with.

Sans Jack Palance, unfortunately.

I'm still picking it up.

@thebigJ_A said:

@tescovee said:

yeah

@Jeff just a heads up funspot is in NH not shitty ole Taxachusetts

He never said it was in civilized Massachusetts. No, you have to travel to the redneck sticks of Laconia, NH to get to Funspot.

Whoa there flatlander. You keep that kind of junk talk to your selves now. Just because we don't feel the need to tax everyone all the time, doesn't make us rednecks.

BTW: Pinball Wizard is also in NH and it is amazing. More people should go there they have some classic pinball action as well as some really killer arcade machines and there all usually in really good condition.