Respect for the Old School
Last night I gained new respect for a prior generation of pinball machines. We took part in John Schlarb’s Old School Pinball Tournament, which was played on four of his 1980-1981 era pins: Blackout, Black Knight, Black Hole, and Embryon. I certainly didn’t expect to win (and I didn’t), but Jessica whooped ass on Blackout, and actually beat me in total points (though it was close). Our friend Ray swept the rest of the pins.
I’ve seen a few pins of this era, and have even owned (and sold) a few too. I’ve thought they were kindof cool but they never really did much for me. This past week I’ve been playing a good bit of Gorgar and enjoying it, but seeing what John has done with his collection was really an eye-opener.
This is a photograph of John’s Embryon, taken by him (original here). Not only does it look amazing (note the mirror-like reflection of the targets), it plays amazing too. On our Gorgar the ball rolls across the paint and wood. On John’s pins, the ball glides. Embryon in particular was a lot of fun. There are three captive balls in the center (photo). Striking the exposed one just right will send the other two up around their curved paths and into the target, which results in a nice light show of flashes from the pop bumpers around it.
These games don’t have funny sound quotes or animations on a dot matrix display (DMD), nor do most of them have ramps, but they’ve got some great drop targets and pop bumpers, as well as a fairly transparent bonus mechanism (lights on the playfield indicate how many bonus points you’re building up, to be awarded at the end of the ball) that’s a lot more compelling than the mysterious bonus points of a DMD. Seeing a correlation between an action and a bonus point makes that element of the game much more exciting. They’re not as flashy or deep, nor as rabidly popular as some titles, but a lot of them are just good games, and they can sure kick ass when it comes to showing off a glossy playfield.
And now I need to see about waxing our Gorgar to a mirror shine.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I hope that your blog is the first and last place that I see the phrase “waxing our Gorgar”.