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 On 02/02/2017 at 03:25 PM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
About a week ago, I went to my local arcade, Pinball Gallery, to play a pinball machine that was released in 1967, the year I was studying for January, Derby Day by Williams. I took a picture shown below:
This is a really cool machine! You basically try and knock the pinball at one of those numbers at the top edge of the table to move a horse in the upper box. Whatever numbers are lit are your horses, so you try and get those to win the race. My only issue with the machine was the small flipper size. It was quite hard to keep the ball in play with such small flippers. Otherwise this was super fun and I tried hard to get my horse to win. It can also be a two player game. Not sure how that works since I was by myself, but I imagine you take turns trying to get your designated horses to win in the upper box.
There's something about mechanical games like this that are appealing. You can play digital versions of pinball, but there's nothing like the 3D object before you and seeing the physics at work in the real world. That being said, I found a digital pinball multi-table machine at Pinball Gallery that had some of the other tables I wanted to play that were released in 1967.
Playboy, by Rally, was one. This is a pretty simple and uninteresting pinball machine with the obligatory sexy female art and lounge lizard jazz music. I was a bit embarrassed playing this but I had to keep to the plan and play all the pinball machines from released in '67.
Then I played a bunch that had card playing themes: Solitaire, King of Diamonds, and Hit-A-Card all by Gottlieb. Seemed to be a popular thing these card playing themed pinball tables. They were fun on the virtual table, which was a little smaller than a real pinball table but with pretty loud sound.
Then I looked for The Adventures of Batman and Robin on SNES, but they didn't have it. Pinball Gallery has many multi-game video game machines and a few consoles too. This was to see about Batgirl in that game, a character created in 1967.
Finally, I left my '67 theme and played an old favorite real pinball, Sea Witch. Then I tried No Good Gofer!. This pinball machine does a good job, through voice work, to guide you in what targets to go after. Many pinball machines are like puzzles. You have to figure out just what the rules are and what gets you the mega points with very little information. This at least gives you a few hints.
And that's my trip.
I remember being a little kid and thinking some of the "sexy" games you'd find at bars were magical, even though you never saw much of anything and I never was able/allowed to play them. Just something naughty at the bar I wish I was old enough to enjoy without getting caught.
Now, as an adult, porn is everywhere, culture is exhaustingly sexualized, and while I haven't lost my libido, all of this is just trashy more than anything else.
Wonder if there was ever a Batgirl pinball machine.
This Playboy pinball machine was pretty tame. I immediately thought of a pinball table design a million times more lusty.
My favorite video pinball games are the ones in the Pro Pinball series. Especially Big Race USA.
My favorite modern real life table is Cirque Voltaire.
You gotta play Pocket Card Jockey on 3DS sometime!
I've played Cirque Voltaire.
I just rebooted up the demo for Pocket Card Jockey. I'll play that some more and maybe buy it. I liked it the first time.
The older pinball machines take a lot more skill than the newer ones. When I ws a kid, I'd get to go to Boston and stay with my uncle for long weekends. He knew where all the pinball machines were, so we'd go to a pizza parlor for pizza and pinball. More often than not, my uncle's initials would be on the machine.
Just figuring out the rules is difficult. I need to print out a rule sheet for the next one I play. I used to read those on the Pinball Arcade tables on Xbox and they helped me a lot.
That table looks simple but it most like is a ton of fun. I used to play that Playboy table all the time at the local mall arcade.
Derby Day is pretty simple. I just wish the flippers were bigger. I went to play a new table and it was so much easier with flippers almost twice the size. The Playboy table wasn't bad, it just wasn't terrible complex or interesting.
For younger Chris I think most of the appeal to the Playboy table was that it was part of Playboy.
Right. I guess Playboy was really big in 1967. They had a TV show as well.
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