#9: Press the button
A splendid Silverball Summer to you, dear readers!
Welcome to a new edition of The Ball is Wild 🪩 pinball culture newsletter. I had some busy and bustling last weeks, not only due to my dayjob work, but also because of some pretty serious pinball competitions. Early May saw another edition of the wonderful Slovenian Pinball Open, made possible by the powerful commitment of Zana, Vid, and their team.
Late May into June then made Austria the center of the international pinball world for several days when the EPC (European Pinball Championships) were held in Vöcklabruck, Upper Austria, made possible thanks to the great effort of Stefan Riedler (RS-Pinball) and a large team of helping hands. It was tremendous!
Some more bricks
Before I get started with this edition’s editorial, there is something more to say about the last issue of The Ball is Wild 🪩, where I dived into brick breaker videogames and their relationship to pinball. Some of you reached out on Bluesky and showed your appreciation for this article. Thanks! More interestingly, I received additional recommendations of more brick breaker games I didn’t mention in my article. Jake Birkett (of Grey Alien Games, check them out!) listed, amongst others, Crystal Hammer (1988) for the Amiga. He is also fond of early 2000s brick breakers for Windows, much like Shawn Clapper, who mentioned for instance Acky’s XP Breakout (2004).
I checked those games out, of course, if only via web and video searches. And look what I found eventually: an unbelievable treasure trove in form of a Youtube channel named Arkanoid Archive, “the ultimate hub for fans of Arkanoid and Breakout games”. Indeed, it very surely is. Whoever runs this, posts new videos every few days. There is also an over four hours long heavyweight clip which collects around 1.900 different brick breaker games. It’s brain melting!
One last brick
Afraid of getting completely lost in this ultimate brick breaker rabbit hole, I have one more recommendation of my own before I move on: Whackerball (2023). This one is a fusion of brick breaking and action roguelike. Think Vampire Survivors (2022) with a paddle. It’s a bit overwhelming at first and hard to get your head around moving the paddle, shooting with your ball in different directions, avoiding bullets, and collecting loot all at the same time. It’s intriguing though. Also, if you ever played Downwell (2015) before, you will quickly encounter some design similarities.
IN THIS NINTH EDITION:
Editorial: How to press the button
Heavy machines: Dune, King Kong, Harry Potter
Videoballs: Pinball Wicked (This Way Comes)
Videoballs: Pinball FX VR
Rare sight: Pinball-videogame hybrids
Look at the article: The Seattle Pinball Wars
Update! Pinball Spire
EDITORIAL:
How to press the button
Years ago, it took me some time to fully realize that the pinball buttons on the side of a machine, the most important input devices for playing pinball, don’t work like digital buttons at all. Of course, there are also many videogame controller buttons, old and new, who know more states than just on/off, yes/no, 1/0, but instead can be pressed lesser or harder, with, of course, different results.
With pinball though, it’s something even more nuanced. By pressing a flipper button, you magnetize/electrify the respective solenoid and thus activating the corresponding flipper. Depending on the strength and length of your press, the results vary wildly! It has almost some kind of magical vibe to it when you can pull off a micro flip so small that you can see the silverball moving, but not the flipper. How useful (and utterly important in high-level pinball play) those subtle flipper techniques are, can be seen in one of Abe Flip’s early tutorials.
Another important aspect of pressing a button in general is the range/travel between the two states of the button: being depressed and being pressed. The looser a button is set up and the longer its travel, the less precise it becomes. On the other hand, the range between pressing and depressing a button is always there in some way. Knowing about this and therefore pressing buttons more efficiently certainly gives you an edge in competition.
Stay on those buttons
I try to always keep my fingers on the buttons during play, although I know that there also will always be moments when my fingers get (much) farther away from the buttons from time to time. This happens due to multiple reasons, like being excited or scared of losing the ball. In these cases, for example, one does, say, a good safe, only for the hands to then quickly transition into a crazy state for a quick moment. That’s okay! Still, returning to close contact with the flipper buttons for a good reaction time is of paramount importance for those very quick balls and situations where twitch movements are necessary to get back into control.
Button travel can also be observed during videogames played on a pinball machine. Let’s take Junk Yard (1996) as an example, where in one video mode, you have to escape the angry dog. In doing so, you simply need to spam both flipper buttons in very quick succession to escape in the fastest way possible. The same rule from above applies: If your fingers always stay in direct contact with the buttons, they can be pressed more times (more efficiently) in a shorter amount of time — compared to when the range/travel is longer, which usually happens when the fingers always move a bit away from the buttons after each consecutive press.
What does the Action Button do?
Related to these thoughts about button press efficiency is the big question about what to do with the flashing button in the middle of the lockbar that is featured in more or less every new pinball machine which gets released. This can get pretty confusing as the functions of the Action Button can vary wildly — sometimes even on the very same machine. Fear not though as Tilt Forums have you covered with the Action Button Master List! Pinball Jen also has something to say about the Action Button in Star Wars (2017).
HEAVY MACHINES:
News from the physical pinball world
The amount of new and upcoming physical pinball machines is at a high right now. Many projects get announced while others already have been or are being released these days. As The Ball is Wild 🪩 isn’t a dedicated pinball news publication, I will only mention the three most important releases which also carry attractive IPs that will almost certainly also bring people in from outside the pinball world.
Dune Pinball (Barrels of Fun)
The new pinball company Barrels of Fun from Houston, Texas, already surprised with its debut release Labyrinth (yes, a pinball machine about the 80s fantasy movie featuring David Bowie) in 2023. Now comes Dune, an IP which received a huge boost in interest mainly due to the two movies that came out within the last few years. I played the machine only once and it didn’t strike me as immensly impressive at first glance but that doesn’t mean anything. You grow fonder to some machines the more you play them. In any case, Dune is a brand that probably won’t create too much trouble finding interested buyers.
Harry Potter Pinball (Jersey Jack Pinball)
It was rumoured for a while now that a Harry Potter pinball machine will finally see the light of day. Many fans of both the Wizarding World and pinball had hoped for a combination of the two for years. It is safe to say that securing the rights for a brand like this is never easy. With pinball especially, manufacturing companies usually have to persuade IP holders to allow them to use their brands for reasonable licencing fees. Pinball is a niche, many big pop culture icons are the opposite of a niche.
But how complicated the negotiations may have been, Harry Potter Pinball now is a reality. Designed and created by Jersey Jack Pinball (JJP), the first new manufacturer that emerged out of the early years of the pinball renaissance in the early 2010s, this is a project where it seems important to get at least the return of investment for JJP to not get into financial trouble. JJP machines are not loved by everyone though they are premium-quality and often offer a high class play experience with (too?) many details and elements that invite players to dive deep into the game.
King Kong: Myth of Terror Island (Stern Pinball)
The newest release of the seemingly always reliable Stern Pinball, the only manufacturer having pushed all the way through the slump of the 2000s, is a machine that seems like a hybrid of the urban destruction mayhem of Godzilla and the dangerous wildlife adventure of Jurassic Park, both two former Stern releases. King Kong: Myth of Terror Island with its mysterious jungle setting is colorful and action-packed, featuring unusual shots and fun toys like the wobbling spider that sits right above the left flipper (just not in the cheapest Pro edition, mind you).
The rule for many players and buyers still apply: You can hardly go wrong with a Stern machine. This is in many cases true for the design, the ruleset, as well as the technical and physical reliability (important for tournaments!). The pricing is usually fair, both for private buyers and operators. I like King Kong more than the previous Stern machine Dungeons & Dragons. The latter came across as a little bit boring to me, also with a bland color palette. Although progression is interesting, as D&D tries to be a role-playing pinball machine with incremental stats and perks, King Kong is much more immediate and bustling.
VIDEOBALLS:
Pinball Wicked (This Way Comes)
In the works since 2017 already and seemingly abandoned in an unfinished state unril recently, Pinball Wicked (This Way Comes) defies the notion that pinball simulations have to be fed with more and more tables constantly. Instead, Formslingers, the small Berlin development team behind the game, chose to create only one game for their own simulation. It’s called Black Flaggers. In a surprising update in early May, the first since January 2020 (!), Formslingers announced that Pinball Wicked / Black Flaggers will finally transition into a 1.0 release at the end of the month.
I have yet to check out the finished game, but I’m looking forward to it, as I am once again intrigued by just watching the trailer. Formslingers apply the philosophy of Pro Pinball from the late 90s to Pinball Wicked, meaning that it’s better to create one game (or maybe, later on, a few) for your pinball simulation rather than a lot of them. With the latter approach you always take the risk that people eventually get bored of all that content. Also, it’s almost inevitable that some of those many table releases won’t be more than just mediocre if you don’t take your time.
I’m really into this development philosophy as I grew pretty fatigued by the dozens and dozens of Pinball FX tables that have been released in the last 18 (oh dear) years myself. So treat yourself with those mighty pirates! Black Flaggers is available for Windows on Steam, but also on iOS and Android.
Pinball FX VR
To not be unfair towards Zen Studios and their amazing commitment to (digital) pinball for such a long time now, it’s important to note their newest release Pinball FX VR. This is Zen’s freshest virtual pinball engine after the release of Pinball M in late 2023. Remember: Since 2007, Zen Pinball releases its own pinball designs (and recreations of old physical Williams machines) on different home-grown engines which change every few years. By now, it has become very complicated to be able to differentiate which table is available on which engine and for which system.
But I digress! So, Pinball FX VR is the successor of the old Pinball FX2 VR from the mid 2010s (you see the high probability to get confused here, don’t you). Back in the day, there weren’t many Zen tables available for the early VR systems, but I liked them anyway. You can look around! You can move about! You can get very close to the elements and intricacies of a table or you can choose to stand more far away.
This movement amazes me and is as close as it gets to playing physical pinball. The new FX VR for Meta Quest (2 and above) doesn’t feel like a huge technical improvement to me, but the important part is that you are now playing in a virtual arcade (and can also place “machines” via an augmented reality option in your own physical rooms) and have way more tables available. Sure, you have to pay for them (again), but that’s how this works.
Lara Croft coming up
If you like your Zen Pinball experience to be bound to a flat screen, you are catered to as well: June 19th sees the release of two brand new tables, covering Tomb Raider and Lara Croft.
RARE SIGHT:
Pinball-videogame hybrids
During the time when those hip new videogames entered the arcades to soon reign supreme and push away the good ol’ pinball machines, designers and manufacturers in the early 80s then tried to combine the two in an attempt to get the best of both worlds. But it soon turned out that this kind of amalgam wasn’t anything that both pinball and videogame players liked very much. Eventually, videogames established themselves within pinball machines with the well-known “video modes” where you play a certain mini-game (that you have to unlock first).
Looking back at the early pinball-videogame hybrid experiments is a cultural investigation into a strange arcade fad, a mostly overlooked curiosity. Kineticist has a great article about this with the most important examples pictured and explained: The Weird World of Pinball Arcade Hybrid Machines by Matt Owen.
LOOK AT THE ARTICLE:
Seattle Pinball Wars
Pinball’s history is pretty seedy. Especially in the early days, the 1930s and 40s, but sometimes also decades later, until the 70s and 80s, pinball was torn between gang crime, corruption, extortion, bribery, and also honest attempts from some companies and administration to keep pinball — considered a vice back in the day — in check without outright banning it (as it brought in a lot of taxes!). Remember that pinball used to be a different game back then, most importantly without flippers. People bet their money on the (arbitrary) results.
Earlier this year, the Pacific Pinball Museum, whose Michael Schiess is fond of investigating pinball’s shady past, put an interesting link to an article into one of their newsletters. It’s a well-researched text by Brad Holden, published last Fall, called The Seattle Pinball Wars. Chronologically, Holden works through all the pinball related events that took place in Seattle between the 1930s and 80s, thereby also shining a light on some of the protagonists of this war, which involved imprisonments, bombings, and more. After the read you won’t need your murder mystery fix for today!
UPDATE!
Pinball Spire
You may remember the video pinball game Pinball Spire and the interview I conducted with its developer Tom Voros last October when the game was just out. Since then, Tom made a lot of improvements and updates to his game, including a nudging feature (much appreciated!), a port for Switch (including, of course, the new Switch 2), and most recently also a New Game+ mode, which means you can play through the game a second time with additional and more challenging tasks. Check out the game, if you haven’t already, and take another look if you haven’t played it for a while. I will certainly try out New Game+ soon.
This was issue #9 of The Ball is Wild 🪩
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Back issues:
Issue #8: Pin and Pong (7 April 2025)
Issue #7: Marvellous Marble Machines (3 December 2024)
Issue #6: Spooky Silverballs (30 October 2024)
Issue #5: Balancing balls (30 September 2024)
Issue #4: Pinball in the public (31 August 2024)
Issue #3: Machine manipulation (29 July 2024)
Issue #2: Examining the pinball (1 July 2024)
Issue #1: Let’s get this ball rolling (10 June 2024)
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