What are your favorite pinball tables? What do you think makes a good pinball table?
Do you think a table being too simple or having very clear optimal shots ruins it? Example: Theatre of Magic, it's an incredibly fun game but it's very easy to gain a huge score by just building your bonus multiplier with the left ramp and shooting the crate, you rarely even want to play the modes.
My favorite tables are from the 90s, so somewhat simpler rules than modern tables (and usually better theming,) but I like the ones that while easy to understand also have some depth to them and don't boil down to just one thing.>The Addams Family>Medieval Madness>The Getaway>Twilight Zone>World Cup Soccer>Scared StiffAlso >>12763653 Theatre of Magic despite it having some design flawsI also have a soft spot for these Mark Ritchie machines, despite them being on the simpler side:>Taxi>Diner
>>12763653>Do you think a table being too simple or having very clear optimal shots ruins it?No. Kinetic tables are generally not as complex. Monster Bash is my all-time favourite. The shots are mostly easy, stacking modes pretty straightforward. But it is so well made and the theme is pure kino, so who cares?
Black Knight > Black Knight 2000
>shoe danglebut it's totally a new phenomena
medieval madness was my personal favorite and the only machine that was so fun i would go to the arcade specifically to play it. just the perfect combination of humor and entertaining challenges. i loved the trolls and opening the drawbridge.
>>12764390Based
*nudge*
>>12763648Im a pinball-let that only has access to FXIve yet to actually learn every table to know whats really going on but one of my favorite tables is dr dudeIts simple, it has no modes but the progression is really clear and the shots are fun, drains are brutal though, never maxed out the dude meter yetSo far I think I prefer the harder machines than the easier ones where you feel there is no risk, those machines that you can just play for an hour and never drain are fucking boring to me so I think Ill always prefer the older stuff
>>12766695Yeah but tables I find easy in FX can be a lot harder irlLike Addams Family, on FX I can consistently hit the electric chair and bear kick ramp from either flipper and tour the mansion really easily. But in real life, both shots are much less consistent and may be easier on one flipper than the other. Real life is less predictable.
>>12766702There is always pro mode in FX which makes it harder, but yeah I bet irl is way harder, I only played a real pinball once many years ago, Im not in america so pinball machines are really rare
>>12765905I just recently realized Im supposed to nudge in the same direction the ball is falling if I want to save it as Im moving the playfield and not the ball itself, I was doing it wrong for months (FX player) Im not very smart
Also I miss when Pinball had their own themes characters and universes they would sometimes cameo or reuse from table to tableNow its all IP1 sonic, IP2 pokemon, IP3 harry potter, IP4 transformers, IP5 some movie from the 90sI know it sells much better that way but I still think its a big shame we lost original themes
>>12766740Back then even the licensed tables had crossovers with each other, the Twilight Zone table has a ton of references to the Addams Family table
>getting into pinball with VPX>pinball threads start appearingStop spying on me
>>12768138>randomly thought of something extremely obscure when I was in the bathroom a month ago>thought about it for a few minutes>didn't look it up>didn't mention it out loud>someone mentions it here in passing the next dayI'm not schizo enough to do anything about it but it does worry me a bit.
>>12766740You could make your own pinball machine for the p3 platform. About Iceland. Geothermal plants, hydropower, fishing, etcetera. Or whatever.
Turning this shit off on any table that has it
>>12768138pinball threads are not that rare
>>12766740Some of the licenses are complete junk, I don’t get how they sell better than original themes.Does anybody care about Jaws or The Munsters in 2026?
>>12769682Jaws is famous boomer schlock, who are still the primary audience for pinball sadly.The Munsters is a neat idea because The Addams Family is a famous machine and The Munsters is like the counterpart to The Addams Family.
>>12769682I actually laughed when fucking Bon Jovi was announcedI dont think there could be less overlap between BJ fans and pinball fans
>>12769765>Bon Jovidoes The Who have their own pinball machine?https://youtu.be/3xZzGtDW2p4
>>12769794https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/tommy-pinball-wizard
>>12769682Jaws is a classic, everyone loves Jaws.
>>12763648>I cut you mang
>>12766717I get similarly confused about button nudges in video games because im not sure what the implementation is. does the button on the right mean 'nudge the ball to the right?' or 'hit the table from the right, which moves it left, which would move the ball right UNLESS theres a wall in which is would push the ball left'I play vpx with a homemade controller that simulates the 3 keyboard nudge buttons and its generally innefective unless I change the script for each table to increase the nudge power. One of these days I should just put an accelerometer in it and use the analog nudge as its probably much better than the legacy keyboard shit.
>>12763648I'm a pinball casual, I go to the arcade very 3 or 4 weeks. But I'm always so much more drawn to the natural feeling of older machines of the 70's and 80s. Later machines are so flashy and it's just so much bullshit at once I don't want to bother with. Feels smoothcohesivemellowjust love it
>>12770969Same here, I prefer the old stuffModern machines are designed to be owned not to be played at an arcade, they are way too complexAlso dotmatrix displays with sprite animations mogs the shit out of the modern screens with 4K footage from whatever movie the pinball is based on
>>12770969Also those bell sounds every time you hit everything, so good.
PSA get a saturn emulator and give Last Gladiators v9.7 and Necronomicon a go. Both under the 'digital pinball' label by Kaze. Kind of like pinball dreams/epic pinball videogamey pack of tables but its much better than stuff like that. I also like it doesnt rigidly stick to being a sim of a physical table like Pro Pinball but leans into the videogame side - the DMD display animations get integrated into the gameplay and used as callouts with arrows so you know what to do.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRpsn60sUfA
>>12771026>Also dotmatrix displays with sprite animations mogs the shit out of the modern screens with 4K footage from whatever movie the pinball is based onThat shit is so soulless and tacky I couldn't believe it when I saw it. As if all star wars pinball needed was the whole fucking movie playing on a shitty computer monitor. Manchildren will really pay for anything.
Anybody seen the guy trying to build a real Space Cadet pinball machine? youtube.com/embed/_wvKlX_NsGkNo idea why he's trying to build it from scratch. It'd probably be much easier to modify an existing machine by doing a teardown and swapping cosmetics, right? Even if not, being stuck with cheap plastic 3d printed material seems like an obvious issue. Not everyone has the money or space for a whole ass CNC shop in their garage, but 3d printer parts just feel like cheap chinese crap. I get the idea of using a 3d print for testing but personally I'd opt for machining of some kind from the start, cause the mechanisms won't even work the same in a different material.
>>12769765>I dont think there could be less overlap between BJ fans and pinball fansI could see it appealing to boomers and Xoomers who like nostalgic shit. Fuck, I'm a Millennial and I'd totally play a Bon Jovi table.
>>12773972the worst was when they tried to straight up digitize movie clips into the dot matrix (think Batman Dark Knight as the biggest example). original animations loosely based on the IP worked way better.a lot of this is licesnse holder based stuff. usually when you see a game come out with a really uninspired art package that's just photoshopped images from the movie (like 007) that's cause that's what the IP holder wanted, typically the game makers WANT to utilize their talented artists to their full potential.
this is the game I'm most likely to go for when I go to the arcade as long as it's working right
remember when $5k was considered expensive for a pin?
>>12773986I think he's mostly doing it for fun. He seems to like designing and creating things.
i kinda call bullshit on vpin having lottle translation to real tables. i hadn't played a machine in probably 15 years and played a bunch this weekend at funspot. scores on virtual and irl were pretty similar once you felt each machine out a bit.
>>12777182It depends on the software and table. Modern VPX tables from good devs like VPW have very accurate physics
>>12777278>VPWBloated garbage that looks bad.
Interesting how there are people here whose whole purpose in life is to post contrarian shit
>>12777378Your tables look like washed out garbage and are bloated as fuck. COPE.
>>12777418Looks fine to me
>>12777421Not to me.
>>12777428Why are you taking a screenshot from a completely different table? Sounds like you're a buttmad dev from another teamI've already posted a screenshot from the actual VPW table here: >>12777421
>>12777432>I've already posted a screenshot from the actual VPW table here:And it looks completely washed out. Do yourself a favor and download any other version of MM and if you can, go play the the real thing.
>>12777471Holy kek, didn't think I'd ever see another dev getting so butthurt by VPW tables
>>12774685The Rush closest to me has a pretty strong scoop kickout. When I see footage of other RUSHs on yt the kickout leads to an easy dead flip aka bounce pass. This one I can't even drop catch, but maybe I'm just bad at drop catching.What's your strategy for this game?
