#1: Let's get this ball rolling
Welcome, pin people, silverball stars, paddle passionates and ball bouncers!
Don’t worry, there is no actual need to excel in playing pinball, flipper videogames or anything similar. This newsletter is a celebration of game culture. Specifically, it’s an enthusiast’s look at all things pinball and silverball-adjacent, physical and digital alike. It’s meant for everyone, so fan lingo, technical knowledge or business expertise aren’t required here. It’s enough to enjoy those ball rolling games and be interested in all the different things connected to them.
IN THIS FIRST EDITION:
Introduction about the newsletter and its author.
(You can skip this if you just want to read the content :)News from the physical pinball world: Stern factory tour
Video pinball (new): From Eva with Green
Video pinball (classic): INKS
Pinball simulation: New tables from Zen Pinball
Pinball, elsewhere: Playstation’s promotional pinball
From the archives: A visit to pinball exhibition Ausgeflippt (Wolfsburg, Germany, 2015)
What is this newsletter about?
The Ball is Wild sees pinball games as cultural artefacts and looks at how they are integrated into society, how they bring different types of players together, and how specific themes, game elements and design decisions make for exciting experiences. We like physical machines and are into videopin games, old and new alike. We are intrigued by stellar simulations as well as inspiring fantasy pinball adventures. We love museums, art, education, academia, experiments and of course great creators and curators with unique ideas.
There are also no fixed boundaries here on the question what makes for a pinball or pinball-adjacent game. It can mean different things, and there are many contemporary and classic examples out there who show that the basic principle of pinball can be the foundation for highly imaginative game concepts.
Throughout different categories, The Ball is Wild offers recommendations, discoveries and hidden treasures out of the multifaceted world of pinball culture. New editions will be published every few weeks, completely free of charge. We will commit doing this at least until the end of 2024, which means about 12-15 issues of The Ball is Wild newsletter in your inbox. Possibly more!
Who writes this?
Robert Glashüttner here from Austria, game culture journalist and radio editor by trade, pinhead by passion. I started The Ball is Wild originally as a little blog in 2014 and now added this newsletter because I want to share my love for pinball, videopins, and silverball projects through good stories, recommendations and interviews from an approachable perspective. There are so many things to talk and think about in the silverball universe 🪩 Let’s get started!
HEAVY MACHINES:
News from the physical pinball world
Stern factory tour
The dedicated pinball world is currently analyzing and playing John Wick, the newest release from Stern Pinball, still the world’s biggest silverball machine manufacturer. Recently, both general games media as well as pinball content creators were approached by Stern and been given launch information about the title.
A lucky group was also invited into Stern’s new factory where they could watch how pinball machines get assembled. Retro Ralph on Youtube, for instance, has put together an approachable video of the tour. I especially like the Hannifin hydraulic press which is punching out the specific holes on a playfield. It has been inherited by pinball manufacturers throughout the decades!
Best pinballer
Also, since June 9th, the competitive pinball world has its 2024 world champion: 19-year old Jason Zahler, who was already #1 in the world rankings. Congratulations! You can re-watch the four tournament days here on Twitch.
VIDEOBALLS:
Pinball and pinball-like computergames
Afterlife blossoming and canvas coloring
From Eva with Green (Windows, Mac, iOS)
One of the most enchanting, beautiful and melancholic little pinball videogames I played in years is From Eva with Green, a poignant story about a recently deceased teacher named Eva Blossom who reflects on her life and loved ones before she moves on to whatever comes next. We hit a chime that dangles somewhere in each level. It spits out seeds onto the playfield with which we can make every surface blossom. As our blossoming quota is fulfilled, we move on to the next scene.
In between the levels, we learn about Eva, her interests and thoughts. Within the scenes, we meet places and people that were most important to her like a garden or a balcony where someone waters the flowers. Sometimes our ball can interact with those unique elements, too. As From Eva with Green is meant as an atmospheric zen-like experience, there is no fail state: If the ball goes in between the flippers it doesn’t drain but calmly bumps off of some kind of protective shield. Lovely!
INKS (iOS, Android)
It could very well be that INKS (2016) by Swedish studio State of Play was an inspiration for From Eva with Green as it is not only also visually impressive (as well as bold and colorful and fantastic) but also follows a similar gameplay logic: You have to transform the pinball playfield by, well, blossoming it up. With INKS though you don’t grow plants and flowers but instead spray heavy colors all around. Over a hundred of those little pinball levels are your canvases where you should not, or rather: must not hold back. Let’s color up the world!
SIMULATION STATION:
Authentic digital pinball (re)creations
Football, KITT and chainsaws
Zen Studios, the renouned developer of pinball simulations for over 15 years (hailing from Hungary) has been releasing six new tables within the last few weeks. The first five have been published under the Pinball FX framework (available for many different systems), the sixth came out for Pinball M, another framework for mature content that was released in late 2023 including IPs like The Thing or Dead by Daylight.
First off, there is Super League Football which is best suited to people who love pinball as well as they are fans of football (soccer). The occasion for this design is, of course, the UEFA Euro 2024 championship. If you are playing on Steam and/or Epic Game Store, you can get the table for free until June 15.
Then we have Universal Pinball: TV Classics, which includes Knight Rider, Xena: Warrior Princess and Battlestar Galactica. So we have a talking car from the 80ies, a female medieval knight from the 90ies and a science fiction drama from the 00s. I briefly played all tables and liked Battlestar Galactica the most, maybe also because this is the series I am most familiar with. Visuals and sound effects are solid, and the game feel translates well to the perceived toughness of the Galactica. Knight Rider and Xena didn’t blew me away though. KITT even crashed (the game) on my Steam Deck several times 💥
The fifth new table for Pinball FX is Pacific Rim which also didn’t impress me too much when I played a few games on it. The design seems a little cramped and it’s as like you can’t do a lot of stuff here although I am sure that the game opens up once you had a few more runs with it.
Finally, there is Texas Chainsaw Massacre for Pinball M. I’m not a slasher and horror film fan at all but until now I enjoyed the Pinball M tables a lot, no matter the theme. The games are a bit harder to control compared to Pinball FX but it also feels more like physical pinball. This new table isn’t the best of the bunch but still a good experience if you can cope with the somewhat grueling setting 👺
PINBALL, ELSEWHERE:
Flipping in unexpected places
Playstation’s promotional pinball
Sometimes, bigger is better. That was at least what promoters at Playstation UK had to have in mind when they conceived of this giant promotional pinball machine which they set up at Trafalgar Square in London (via This Week in Pinball). This colossal thing was built as a collaboration with UEFA Champions Festival but it’s clearly also an attractive Playstation marketing object of its own, with the blue-and-white color scheme as well as well known brands and IPs from the company (I’m Team Astrobot, if anyone asks 🤖).
The size of this huge pinball reminds me of an actual commercial product from 1979, Atari’s Hercules, the only model two to three times the size of a regular machine. As with the Playstation pinball it was and is mostly regarded as a PR gag although everyone admits that the sheer size of the thing makes it fascinating.
FROM THE ARCHIVES:
The Ball is Wild previously said ...
Galactic Dimension
But that’s not all for big machines! About nine years ago, I visited the pinball art and science exhibition Ausgeflippt at Phæno museum in Wolfsburg, Germany. One major attraction there was the showcasing of the art project Galactic Dimension by Berlin-based artist, inventor and educator Niklas Roy. It’s a giant pinball machine made out of common household objects. After watching the linked video below, also consider reading the making-of. Because Niklas’ write-up on how he created his amazing contraption is great!
You can find a review of Ausgeflippt and more pictures of the exhibition in this The Ball is Wild archive blogpost from 2015.
Getting in contact and coming up
Like what you see?
I’m curious about what you think about this first The Ball is Wild 🪩 newsletter! Let me know by sending an email (just hit reply) or reach out on Bluesky, Mastodon, X or Instagram.
Issue #2 will be out soon. See you then 👋