You’re gonna want to either get comfortable or move on, because I’m fixin’ to write about 700 words on video pinball. Seriously.
Dear officials from the City of Beacon, NY: You are stupid. (Update: OK, you are not that stupid).
Look, this DIY LCD pinball machine is definitely impressive. I’m just wondering what the point is.
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Can a digital pinball machine capture the charm of the classic game? Nike’s machine, which uses a giant LCD screen as the playfield, a soccer ball-style pinball and virtual Nike shoes as flippers, comes pretty darn close.
Continuing the trend of metal-masters launching dubiously-themed apps, metal band Slayer has painted a game of pinball with skulls, pentacles and other HARD MAN designs. You play along to songs from their latest album, with original voiceovers from the band.
There’s a great read over at Cheap Talk about how digital pinball machines changed the industry, back when there still was an industry. They were big tables where you flick a ball around, but they were smarter than you think.
Hammacher Schlemmer’s digital pinball machine crams a 720p, 32-inch display into a full-sized cabinet, and offers by way of emulation 17 classic boards. But I’m not sure pinball freaks are that interested in digitised flippers.
Urban Screen, the same group behind insane 555 Kubik illusion, built a humongous, functioning pinball machine through facade projection way back in 2007. Why more architecture isn’t decorated with multi-storey video games, we do not know.
After the first Pong cabinet was placed in Andy Capp’s Cavern in 1972, video games exploded, reaching their full stride by the late ’70s. Here are some of the notable games/systems you played (or would have played) back then: