Computer Pinball: Visual Pinball Screen Shots: Classics 2, The Seventies

Friday, August 9, 2013

Visual Pinball Screen Shots: Classics 2, The Seventies

Here are some "late mechanical era" pinball tables from what was probably the best era for active balls, lots of power and elasticity from the table elements. You may lose the ball a lot quicker, but now that it's all free, a moot point. Remember to lower the tilt sensitivity in the Scripts section of each table you like, it's no longer about extracting quarters from kids to pay for the country club membership.

Strikes and Spares, Bally, 1978

[Shown in 'night mode' - beautiful lighting]

Designer: Gary Gayton

Ranked #112 all-time for mechanical tables

"The soft glow of electric sex" - A Christmas Story

If it was baseball, I could say "he's kissing her on the strikes,

she's kissing him on the balls" (that comment got Dizzy Dean

fired on NBC's Game of the Week when I was a kid - hilarious!)

Cosmic Princess, Stern, 1979

Designer: not listed at IPDB

Star Battle, Coffee-Mat, 1978

[note: Century Consolidated Ind. also marketed this table]

Designer: not listed

Sold inside a cocktail table unit

Graphics pop here, probably more than the game play. Don't like the yellow "apron" but a fun machine to play - the yellow breaks up the darknes and makes the reds dim out a little, eh? Wish I could repaint it..

L'Hexagone (France), Christian Automatic, 1986

Art: Agnès G. Dusaugey

Not one person in the world has rated this machine at IPDB.

The computer table is fun, nice sharp graphics.

But you have to drink cognac to play, and sing French songs

Genie, Gottlieb, 1979 [wide body]

Designer: Ed Krynski

I love the wide body machines, especially Paragon [next screen].

Paragon, Bally, 1977

Designer: Greg Kmiec

[yes, him again, he has many classics]

This is #89 all-time on the electronic tables top 300

This wide body table was one of the first ever, certainly Bally's first.

Beautiful artwork on this, though the image used for the table is a little fuzzy,

here is a photo of the more subtle and detailed real thing. Hey, that one's

not very clear either, maybe the table is protected by griffins!

I'm like mad at numbers, there's too many of them" - Beavis and Butthead

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Abbreviations Used

For table manufacturers, I'll use these abbrevs:

Gott = Gottlieb (US)

Bally = Bally (US)

Wms = Williams (US)

DataE = Data East (US)

Mid = Midway (US)

Cap = Capcom (US)

Stern = Stern (US)

Tai = Taito (Japan)
TaiBr = Taito Brasil

Zacc = Zaccaria (Italy)
Geig = Geiger (Germany)

CC = Chicago Coin (US, gone by '60)

Pre = Premier

SE = Sega (US)

AT = Atari (Japan)

If the table is original, I'll just use the designer's name, ie "Starman" (Nova), and "Tii" (Spectrum) are two builder's screen names I'm using.

If you see JP or Salas anywhere, it stands for consummate table designer J.P. Salas, a Spaniard working as a network admin in Norway, who just retired from Visual Pinball work after making about 40 awesome tables, including some of the top rated: Medieval Madness, Addams Family, Funhouse, Attack From Mars (his own favorite), Theater of Magic, Whitewater - all of which are in the top 25 of nearly every list of modern machines. I like his classic machine conversions, perhaps even more, he makes them works of art: Bow & Arrow, Big Brave, Eight Ball Deluxe, and Mata Hari stand out. He has become a master of Photoshop, which was his own reason for doing this initially, "to learn Photoshop better". Salas often includes JP in the table's title for his conversions in case other's have recreated the same tables.

Note: Gottlieb made the most classic machines at the top of the polls, 18 of the top 20 at IPDB, and all my favorites growing up (Buckaroo, 8 Ball. Their heyday had passed by 1980 when video games emerged. Newer multi-media tables are usually made by Stern, Williams, Bally, or Data East, and nearly all the top-rated by fans have movie tie-ins, so one wonders if they even like the pinball game or are just fans of the films, since the top names are titles like Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Haunted House, Jurassic Park, as the top 100 of modern tables is dominated by movies, mostly SF, fantasy, or horror.

ROMs

The read only memory of arcade games are all online now as small code files. Many tables for Visual Basic use these, primarily for unique machine sounds; Future Pinball does not use them. You have to download them into the ROMS folder in VpinMAME so the tables can find them at startup, and leave them zipped up. They are tiny but a hassle: no table tells you which one to use until you run it and the file is not found, ie "ww_l4" is one for Whirlwind; then you download that file and the program will run, often after initializing the ROM with the F3 key to start it for your use. Setting changed like DIP switches will be saved (by pressing F3), ie, for 3 or 5 ball, the game credit level, easy or difficult, etc.