History

Note: This page is a work in progress. Please help get it to a completed state by adding any useful information to it.

I am very, very slowly working on adding info here, but anyone who wants to add more info, feel free.

5 Cheating and Pinball

As long as pinball has been around and accepting coins people have been trying to figure out how to cheat the machine out of free games. In some of the podcast interviews with designers there is mention of some way in which they used to get free games. Looking through many pinball machines and pinball schematics through the years, I have seen many devices and circuits intended to prevent cheating and abuse. Sometimes the purpose of these isn’t obvious until you consider ways people might try to cheat.

The obvious device is the pendulum TILT mechanism that evolved from the non-resettable stool pigeon. Since then there has been a long evolution of new mechanisms as people found new ways to cheat. The following is a list of other anti-cheat devices:

1. Ball roll tilt mechanism to prevent player from changing the playfield angle by lifting the cabinet
2. Anti-slam switch in coin door to prevent people kicking coin door to trip leaf switches and add credits
3. Anti-slam switch in back box to prevent people from adding points by banging on back box
4. Guards on inside of leg bolts to prevent people from removing a leg bolt and using a wire to reach in and trip coin mechanism
5. Metal shielding under bottom of cabinet in front to prevent access to coin box and coin door switches
6. Metal guard around credit stepper to prevent people from using a wire to reach in and add credits
7. Careful selection of switches and operating position. For example, on credit stepper the switches are normally forced OPEN at the limit to prevent a back box slam from adding a credit.
8. Lock-out switch on SS games that blocks switch operation when the coin door is closed.
9. A delay relay in Bally games that used a #455 flasher as a timer to make the machine appear dead for many seconds after a slam event. This may have been more focused on avoiding abuse.
10. Coin drop circuitry in Bally Bingo pinballs that require the coin drop switch to actuate for no longer than a fixed time length to defeat coins dangled on strings, etc.
11. Coin mechs with magnets used to grab ferrous based slugs
12. "Cutter" coin mechs used to cut coins on strings
13. "Biff bars" under the flippers used to keep from easily putting a drained ball back in play
14. Kick off switch on EM motor board. Originally used to shut game off, but existed after power switches were added.
15. Spring type coil with a bent nail in center used as tilt mechanism in the 40's
16. Metal rails installed inside some woodrails just above playfield.
17. Metal rails installed on outside of game.
18. Glass back glass. Plexiglass was tried, but people found they could drill a hole in the credit window to reach in with a wire and add credits. A drilled credit window is shown in this IPDB picture: Gottlieb Sunset backglass, drilled hole

www.flippers.be has an article on How to cheat playing pinball machines that is mostly focused on game play vs. game design.

6 The Transition from Electromechanical To Solid State

The transition from electromechanical to solid state pinball machines created some problems in the industry. Players were used to hearing all of the mechanical relays and solenoids clanking around for the game logic and some operators thought that players wouldn't play the games if they didn't make the noises. To compensate for this Williams was known to put fake mechanisms in the bottom of the first few of their solid state games to generate the noises. Bally ran both electromechanical and solid state models of games for the first several titles to please both types of operators. Gottlieb® Pinball stuck to their guns of electromechanical machines for quite some time, only to later make the switch over to solid state late in the game and never recovered from it.

The appeal of solid state was seen from both the operator as well as the manufacturer's perspective.

8 Pinball 2000

In 1998, Williams Electronic Games was dealing with a pinball division that hadn't offered a profit for several years. To try and turn this around CEO Neil Nicastro, of Williams Electronic Games gathered the seven design teams together and gave them the Pinball 2000 initiative. This was a project to come up with a new style machine that people would buy and play, otherwise Williams Electronic Games would be shutting down its pinball division down. The initial project that the teams came up with was a machine with a full sized playfield but a 27" monitor where the backbox would normally reside. Similar to Baby Pac Man and Granny and The Gators, this hybrid pinball machine and video game was supposed to offer another dimension of game play. George Gomez and Pat Lawlor were not happy with the direction of Pinball 2000, complaining of too much disconnection between the play field and the video screen. George Gomez and Pat Lawlor were given 3 options: 1) Come up with a better idea and present it, 2) Get on the band-wagon and be happy with the current design, or 3) quit their jobs at Williams. This design got about 6 months in before George Gomez and Pat Lawlor had developed their own idea enough to present, the "HoloPin". The HoloPin was the proof of concept for the actual Pinball 2000 machines that were actually released. Imposing a video monitor and an old trick taken from video arcade games in the late 70's, they used a mirror to "project" onto the playfield various video images. The defining aspect of the setup was that the game still got the video aspect to it, but it was properly integrated with gameplay, not requiring the player to look away from the playfield to interact with the video screen.

9 The Last Manufacturer

Stern Pinball was formed in 1999 when Gary Stern bought Sega Pinball. This was not the first time that someone from the Stern family owned a pinball company, as Sam Stern owned Stern Electronics as well as being a part of Williams. Stern Pinball became the only company manufacturing pinball machines, holding that title from 1999-2013, when Jersey Jack Pinball finally began production on their first game, Wizard Of Oz. They have managed to survive on a low-production business model, focusing mostly on temporary labor and re-runs of older games. Stern Pinball struggled in 2008 and almost closed their doors, until an outside investor helped the company to recover, and now Stern Pinball is doing much better.

10 2011: The Renaissance Of Pinball

This Section is not considered completely accurate yet, and needs to be updated to properly reflect 2011

2011 has been dubbed "The Renaissance Of Pinball" for many reasons, including the formation of new pinball manufacturers along with several groundbreaking projects.

Stern Pinball has announced a 50% increase in profits, while also hiring several highly famed people in the industry including George Gomez, Steve Ritchie, and Lyman Sheats.

Jack Guarnieri of Pinball Sales Inc. announced in 2011, that he will begin manufacturing pinball machines under the name Jersey Jack Pinball, with his first title being Wizard Of Oz, with a promise that his second game will be an unlicensed title, a highly demanded concept from collectors. Jersey Jack Pinball has also hired on famed people from the pinball industry, including Joe Balcer, Jerry VanderStelt, Dennis Nordman, Greg Freres, Jim Thornton, Keith Johnson, Chris Granner, and Matt Riesterer to form his first design team.

Retro Pinball, a company aimed at remaking classic EM pinball machines with SS innards, a project started in March 2007, has finally begun shipping its first remade game, King Of Diamonds. They promise that once their first game is completely out of the door that they will move on to continue reproducing other classic games in a similar fashion.

John Popadiuk recently updated his website to announce a new pinball machine he is going to build and sell called Magic Girl. It will be a 13 game run, with the price starting at $15,995 for pre-order before October 31, 2011, with the final cost going to be $17,995.

11 Today

When looking back at 2011, some may question the validity of the statement " Renaissance Of Pinball", but 2011 was considered the laying of the groundwork to a recovering industry. Currently, beyond statistics coming from Stern Pinball that sales keep increasing and seeing the announcement of new hires, the various other manufacturers haven't commented on how business is going.

In 2012, another manufacturer announced its plans to enter the pinball market, Heighway Pinball with machines aimed at operators. Their first game, Full Throttle, is supposed to be released in 2013.

On April 19, 2013, Jersey Jack Pinball announced that their first game, Wizard Of Oz, after many delays, had finally moved into production. This broke a 14 year period in the pinball industry where only 1 American manufacturer was actively producing games.

12 Custom / Converted Pinball Machines

In addition to manufacturers creating pinball machines, several pinball enthusiasts or hobbyists have converted existing pinball machines to something completely different, or built games from scratch. A Wiki page dedicated to these pinball machines can be viewed here