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 On 02/26/2018 at 03:42 PM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
Williams would soon put out a classic video game, but their main interest was pinball. Firepower was a great table out in 1980.
I ignored pinball in my arcade gaming years, probably because I came of age exactly as video games took over the arcade. I was too busy with the likes of Missile Command, Tempest, Asteroids and Berzerk to even look at a pinball table.
Today, though, I've found the fun in pinball starting with the Pinball Hall of Fame collections put out by FarSIght Studios in '09. I played Firepower on their Pinball Arcade app on Xbox One and boy do they look and sound great. Here's a video of the real table.
What I was trying to do, not knowing the rule set, or, too lazy to read it within the game, was to hit the targets in the center of the field and light up the letters that spell "fire". What that did, I wasn't sure, but sometimes I would get a multiball situation. I wish the rule set described and shown within the game was simplified to a list of basic objectives like I just read online at pinball.org.
1. Score center targets to light eject holes to lock balls. Lock 3 balls to start Muti-Ball play.
2. Complete F-I-R-E rollover lanes to advance bonus multiplier and light Extra Ball.
3. Collect Firepower Bonus to light outlanes for Special.
This is a much more concise list instead of the way they do it in Pinball Arcade where they show you what each part of the table does. It is a long list of things that is neat to watch, but could be much more direct and quickly understandable. This three step description above summarizes it perfectly. I think I'll get that list for all the tables I play from now on. Thanks pinball.org!
I think the reason I never really played pinball was the lack of a sense of progression: I've really never been satisfied with just getting a high score for doing the same thing; I need to at least enter a different area or something in a video game to care about it.
Well, that and they were always a bit more expensive than most of the video arcade machines. There were plenty of arcade games you could start with a quarter, but the pinball machines would be closer to about $1.
I've been getting some sense of progression once I learned the rule sets for the games, but yea, it's mainly about getting a high score, like old arcade video games.
Huh. I didn't know they were more. I keep saying that I would never play a real pinball machine with money because I know how short the play time is and how long it takes to get good. Also the luck factor that can sink your ship at any time.
I didn't ignore pinball games as a kid. But I mostly just watched others play them. I wanted my hard earned quarters to go to games like Pac-Man and such.
But there were times when pinball games would catch my eye. I remember one Tilt arcade in a mall nearby had a pinball game called Hercules, which was supposedly the largest pinball machine ever according to the Guiness Book of World Records. Later on when pinball games and hybrids like Mr. and Ms. Pac-Man Pinball and Baby Pac-Man came out, you know they got my attention. And sometimes video based pinball games would get me to look at actual pinball machines more. Case in point: at one point there was a video pinball version of Pin-Bot on the NES. That caused me to seek it out in arcades as well. I think I was most interested in pinball games in my college years, both real and video versions.
I got interested in that rpg/pinball mashup Pinball Quest on NES. I couldn't make any progress in the game, but it was a cool idea.
wow, look at that art!
This isn't an example of it, but Bob Mackey on Retronauts the other week mentioned that pinball is pretty horny. And thinking about that, he's right. A lot of the tables have bikini babes and shirtless conans in their art.
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