A reunification of pinball and videogames

It’s been over 15 years after the pinball renaissance started around 2010, and a lot has happened since then: First Jersey Jack and Spooky arrived as the first two new pinball company hotshots, slowly but steadily picking up the pace after Stern as the sole manufacturing company pushed the game through the silverball slump of the 2000s. Leagues and tournaments followed suit in the early and mid 2010s, as well as audiovisual media which provided tutorials and livestreams. Modern electronics, software and tools like 3D printers made it easier to not only incorporate new and neat mechanics in the games, but they also gave rise to the homebrew scene. Finally, pinball machines were put online and got connected to leaderboards, achievements, code updates and also things like special events, locally and internationally.

Abandoned rivalry

Pinball now comes full circle with its former rival, the videogame. This development wasn’t easy, as step by step, year by year, videogames used to bully the silverball machines out of the arcades in the 80s and 90s. This made many pinheads resentful for a long time. The younger players on the other hand who already grew up with videogames didn’t care much about pinball in these days, except maybe dabbling around with Space Cadet on their Windows 95 PC.

Fortunately, today’s players are neither interested in old rivalries, nor are they burdened with a narrow view on what (skill) game culture can encompass. Younger Millennials and Gen Z embrace pinball and its identity with curiosity. They recognize their uniqueness while acknowledging the fact that the pinball of today is more videogame-like than it ever was before — technically, visually, and in terms of themes and game-design.

Celebrations!

The last two weeks brought together two birthday celebrations that connect old and new pinball, reunify videogames and pinball, and show the diversity throughout all the different pinball players and scenes we have these days. First off, Stern pinball is happy about 40 years in business. The company goes back ever longer, but after his father Sam died in the mid 80s, Gary Stern founded his own pinball company, first as a subdivision of Japanese gaming firm Data East. Before coming back to the Stern name again in 1999, Gary’s company was acquired by Sega in the second half of the 90s.

After the recent release of Stern’s Pokémon where many fans of the franchise flocked towards pinball machines because of it, Stern’s main competitor Jersey Jack Pinball now comes with another videogame classic: Sonic the Hedgehog, a character who, by the way, is celebrating its 35th birthday this year. This brings up an interesting question: Might Gary Stern have had his own shot at that brand about three decades ago when he was CEO of Sega Pinball? Perhaps.

In any case, and although Sonic as a character is not quite the high flyer it used to be 30 years ago, the machine looks fresh and more importantly: fast. Designed and supervised by Steve Ritchie, the King of Flow himself, this table is based not on the recent Sonic movies but the videogames and how their gameplay is shaped around speed and kinetics. The only thing now left that we’d need is a Sonic pinball companion videogame app. That’s right, I really want a remaster or even remake of Sonic Spinball rather sooner than later.

Cool pinbally things:

• Lego Pinball: While we can brick-build toy versions of old videogame consoles and arcade cabinets for a while now, the newest edition to this type of nostalgia is this tabletop pinball machine that you can build and then even play. Hopefully this early July release will then also be available in Europe and other territories outside the US.

• Pinball Frenzine: Bruce Sheldon, a young pinball player from Portland, Oregon, has started his own zine which focuses on specific tutorials (Godzilla, Pulp Fiction, etc.). It has the ageless punk vibe of DIY publishing that never gets out of style. You can also print Pinball Frenzine for your own area. Want to know more? Kineticist has interviewed Bruce.

• How many flippers do we need? - In a particularly fun write-up at the more established punk pinball publishing endeavour over at Nudge, Ian Jacoby is delving into the struggling question of how many flippers one pinball machine should or shouldn’t have. If you make it to the end of the article and then have a proper WTF moment due to the video posted there, I’d like to invite you to a The Ball is Wild 🪩 classic article (2015!), a report on an exhibition in Germany which showcased even more wonderfully strange pinball art projects.