But there are some real-world constraints that virtual pinball could easily ignore.
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Windows’ classic 3D Space Cadet pinball is getting a physical re-creation
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I, for one, will await Aurich's discerning review of this machine, should it arrive!
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Haha, to be honest I've never played the original since I've never been much of a Windows users, so it holds no nostalgia for me.
It's an ambitious project. Pinball is hard enough without being able to use common off the shelf components. I wish them luck!
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Have you never felt nostalgia or loved something so much you wanted to start a project around it? You could just as easily ask this question about modders who make such sweeping changes to games that they may as well have wrote their own, the IP in question is the reason for doing the thing.
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If one doesn't know much about making a pinball machine, wouldn't it be easier to try to make something with which one is already familiar? Once one understands the basics, one can then iterate and innovate.
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NetOperator Wibby
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Hell yeah, I loved this game as a kid! Along with Secret Agent, Commander Keen, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Jazz Jackrabbit, Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem, Jetpack...ah, the good ol' days.
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I spent many hours of my childhood playing the original. And then I cheated/trolled my sister by editing the board to close off the two side channels (the 'walls' were all stored in an editable bitmap)
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Because they aren't pinball enthusiasts. They're Space Cadet pinball enthusiasts.
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Holy bumper-thumpin's Batman! Core memory accessed.....
Had totally forgotten about this gem, but as soon as I saw the image, that "revving up sound" intro played in my head. Then I saw the video, clicked play, and sure enough.
Thanks for improving my Tuesday, Ars!
Had totally forgotten about this gem, but as soon as I saw the image, that "revving up sound" intro played in my head. Then I saw the video, clicked play, and sure enough.
Thanks for improving my Tuesday, Ars!
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And, let's be honest: most people really aren't that creative, though we all want to think we are. It was humbling to me to realize my daughter, then in high school, was a much better creative writer than I was. I'm a much better editor than I am a creator. That has its place in the creative process, too, of course--or so I console myself. I
f a gifted craftsman who loves a work wants to use his or her unique skills to pay homage by helping it take shape in a new fashion, why not?
Well, for personal non-commercial use, mind you
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Nostalgia? Name recognition? Instant customer base? Far, far better chances for some kind of financial success?
You know, all those dirty things that make money and generate buzzz.
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It doesn't even have to be a money thing, and given the state of pinball it isn't likely to be. I have fond memories of Space Cadet and would be delighted to see a table in real life, but I don't think my dollar of quarters is gonna be a great ROI for the people working on it.
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I've been involved in a handful of commercial pinball projects now in various capacities. Building a game, any game, is really a big undertaking. But making something original, while clearly an awesome idea, is even more so.
If you're solo, or don't have a team and a lot of resources, it's definitely less effort to take on something that already exists in some form.
Any one part of making something from scratch is a whole job in and of itself. Sound, music, layout, mechanical engineering, software, lightshows, the theme, art, so many parts that are really fertile ground for creativity but also pretty daunting if you're not skilled in those fields.
And that's just the conceptual level, and leaving out all the actual physical work to make it come together.
I love seeing original ideas, but there's a reason why even the most ambitious homebrew pinball projects usually take an existing theme as a starting point.
If you're solo, or don't have a team and a lot of resources, it's definitely less effort to take on something that already exists in some form.
Any one part of making something from scratch is a whole job in and of itself. Sound, music, layout, mechanical engineering, software, lightshows, the theme, art, so many parts that are really fertile ground for creativity but also pretty daunting if you're not skilled in those fields.
And that's just the conceptual level, and leaving out all the actual physical work to make it come together.
I love seeing original ideas, but there's a reason why even the most ambitious homebrew pinball projects usually take an existing theme as a starting point.
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I LOVED that game. I would play it into the wee hours of the night. I can still hear it's catchy tune in my head.
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Mr.Mumbles
Ars Centurion
For those who have a hankering to play the original virtual version, a decompilation port of this exists for Win/Mac/Linux. Runs smooth as butter. All you need is the original game data files, which can be easily found if you know where to look.
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I played that game a lot. For whatever reason, I could never get past lieutenant rank (rank 3), but have gotten some silly high scores.
Some of the design elements were really questionable, and something about the physics seemed rather inconsistent. The 'Black hole' that sunk your ball if certain flags were/were not hit, the bumpers that sometimes stayed blank, the red wormhole that could continuously loop over and over... And the way it decided making the shaking of the machine a risky resource was a bit annoying, too. Warts and all, though, I still enjoyed it back in the day.
Now I wonder how the physical version would handle these little quirks. Because I bet some players would look at them as part of the nostalgia of the game itself. Of course, making such a elaborate machine seems like a great investment, and a desire to fix the quirks for the best experience could be in order, too.
Some of the design elements were really questionable, and something about the physics seemed rather inconsistent. The 'Black hole' that sunk your ball if certain flags were/were not hit, the bumpers that sometimes stayed blank, the red wormhole that could continuously loop over and over... And the way it decided making the shaking of the machine a risky resource was a bit annoying, too. Warts and all, though, I still enjoyed it back in the day.
Now I wonder how the physical version would handle these little quirks. Because I bet some players would look at them as part of the nostalgia of the game itself. Of course, making such a elaborate machine seems like a great investment, and a desire to fix the quirks for the best experience could be in order, too.
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I've got a mini virtual pinball cabinet set up in my home office, nothing too fancy, just a 24" screen in a half-assed wooden enclosure with the appropriate buttons and accelerometer. (Obviously not the same as a real game but it'll do.)
Anyway, I bring it up only to say that it amuses me how a recreation of Space Cadet is probably the top game that anyone who isn't familiar with pinball gravitates towards. It's just absolutely ubiquitous, I don't know anyone who doesn't immediately recognize it. Addams Family is the only other one that comes close.
Anyway, I bring it up only to say that it amuses me how a recreation of Space Cadet is probably the top game that anyone who isn't familiar with pinball gravitates towards. It's just absolutely ubiquitous, I don't know anyone who doesn't immediately recognize it. Addams Family is the only other one that comes close.
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I have never been involved with pinball hardware, but tried to make a table with Visual Pinball about 20 years ago. I wanted to make a table based on the platform game "Tamale Loco" which my kids loved. I played it too, it was lots of fun. Anyway, for developing a table, this was about as easy as it could get. Visual Pinball provided a slick GUI for table layout, and the game itself provided all of the artwork and sounds I needed.
Still, it was extremely challenging. Harder than the Q*Bert clone I wrote in 6502 assembler on the C64 in the 80s. Or the custom arcade/MAME cabinet I built about 20 years ago. Making pinball tables is hard.
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Bit of a non-sequiotor but this immediately brought c64 pinball construction set to the front of my mind
M
M
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It's amazing the things people get up to! First, real life tetris using a sliding ramp, and now this!
Now personally, my virtual pinball nostalgia goes back a bit earlier to Epic Pinball. The amount of time I spent on Android alone...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEg-CiHH1PA
Now personally, my virtual pinball nostalgia goes back a bit earlier to Epic Pinball. The amount of time I spent on Android alone...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEg-CiHH1PA
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Now we need someone to release playing cards featuring the same art as the original Solitaire.
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This, and Pinball Dreams were pretty awesome. Some great music in the latter (Amiga MODs never got the recognition they deserved)
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I was aware of Pinball Fantasies, but you had me look down a small rabbit hole and find out there was a whole trilogy going on over on Amiga, with Dreams, Fantasies, and Illusions. I didn't have an Amiga, so I didn't get to experience any of them, but I appreciated those games that managed to get ported, even if they had to make do with the sound options available on PC. Still, I do love how Epic Pinball made the Gravis Ultrasound sing. Oh, and I adored Boppin'. It got a Windows port with Amiga accurate sound several years back, but it doesn't work on modern machines mainly due to it wanting to play full screen in 320x200 resolution, which modern Windows doesn't know what to do with. Ah, oh well. It'd be nice if that ever got an update.
...It got an update?! THIS year?!
https://jenniverse.com/boppin main.html
Well I'll be dipped! This'll go well with that modern port/remake of Alley Cat!
https://gamejolt.com/games/alleycatremeow/327439
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HuntingManatees
Ars Centurion
I'm trying to recall the free games that came with our family's Macs over the years, and if any of them would work in-person.
There was "Bugdom," where you played as a pill bug who went around kicking ants and grasshoppers, which doesn't sound all that fun in real life. And "Nanosaur," featuring a velociraptor with a jetpack and rocket launcher, which is awesome but maybe a little complicated for modern science.
But either the Performa or the generic PowerPC came bundled with "Descent." A theme park where you fly around in space shooting robots sounds extremely expensive but ultimately doable.
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Space cadet pinbll can run on every single version of windows since windows 3.1 (with win32 installed). Its' also had multiple cpu ports including x86, x64, Alpha, MIPS, Itanium, and PowerPC.
With the modern port, it pretty much run on anything.
With the modern port, it pretty much run on anything.
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You have not really gamed unless you played Jill of the Jungle on an IBM PC/XT with CGA graphics. All the glorious bright pink and cyan, the sluggish movement, and the fact you could very easily input more command than the computer could handle and make everything freeze until it caught up.
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In the UK and Australia, where Amstrad dominated, many of us didn't even get to see those glorious colours, due to Amstrad's strange obsession with penny-pinching on display technology.
A colour CGA monitor was premium upgrade, so many of us got by with the oxymoron that was a "mono CGA monitor". This was a trend that carried on right through to the EGA and VGA era. Our Amstrad 286 had a 12" mono VGA monitor because the 14" colour display was a relatively expensive upgrade.
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