Have you ever looked at a Canadian goose on your way to class and told it “Fight me?” No one? Just me? Alright then moving swiftly on, my advanced Pinbox design is titled Goose 2: Canada and is just an expansion of the goose game head to head design I designed.
The main draw of this design is the extensive use of the soundboard I had purchased beforehand, but this time with speakers installed. I’ll be taking the goose honk samples I got off the internet and mixing them into a variety of sound effects for the soundboard to play.
As for the triggers for the sound I’ll be hiding momentary pressure switches under the playfield such that the switch is on the surface. The idea is that the marble will roll over the switch and trigger the sound, but if the marble is too light then I will have to get creative.
Functionally, the last feature will be making bumpers with cut cardboard holding a rubber band around them, to give a little extra kick to the bounces. There’ll need to be more testing, but I’m confident in the relative simplicity of the idea.
I also intend to add some color to the design, with printouts similar to how I made the bagatelle earlier in the semester.
Sometimes Columbus just comes back from the grave and ruins a perfectly good plan. Or in other words “the story of how Columbus made my speaker delivery come too late and sank the main gimmick of the project.” Ethan and I had a ‘fun’ time after that.
I’ll take a step back and talk about the good things with Named Goose Game, which boils down to 3 things. First, it certainly was playable, and at least somewhat enjoyable. Second, is that laser cutting is a viable way to make obstacles out of cardboard. Third, is that ramps are pretty easy to implement with thin enough cardboard. It was mostly technical knowledge, as the soundboards lacked a critical part: the part that makes sound.
That takes me to the less than stellar parts of our game. We didn’t have time to get any sort of art/decoration onto the playfield because we both had busy breaks. Second, Columbus Day delayed speaker shipment by 1 day, meaning the speakers came in the day AFTER the project was presented.
In the end, there was a silver lining though. It was still pretty fun to make vocal honk sounds at your opponent while playing.
Great ideas can come from anywhere. Including hitting a roadblock on ideas and firing up your switch to kill some time. After a play session of Untitled Goose Game I realized that for this head to head project I could make it goose themed with the express purpose of having an analogue of “Press Y to Honk.”
And so I got to work making a quick sketch. The premise of the game is that the players are opposed geese fighting for the pond. The marbles are an abstraction of their attacks against each other, where sending the marble to the other player’s playfield is a counterattack, while draining the marble on your side is getting hit.
The playfield with all its bumpers and the two ramps
If the playfield looks barren, that is because it is. I purposely left it fairly empty, as the examples I looked at had relatively simple playfields. I reasoned that a large portion of the fun came from the presence of a second player. Plus, I know that the Pinbox 3000 is quite a small unit, and has a correspondingly small playfield, so I can’t get too crazy either.
Honk, honk
The goose I walk past to get to class
This version with the red lines highlights the ‘bozo zone’ which are the two lanes that are easiest to shoot down. I decided to put the ramps to the other player’s side in those lanes because a head to head machine is not very exciting for both players if both balls spend the entire game on one side. So, the ball should be able to switch sides with relative ease, something players who find themselves juggling both marbles often will appreciate.
HonkHonkHonkHonkHonk!
The goose that is currently chasing me as I write
The main gimmick, past being a head to head machine, is the ability for players to honk at each other. I plan on installing a module on the side of each machine that consists of a battery pack, a soundboard, speaker, and button. When pressed, the button will trigger the soundboard to play the honk sound effect. The main intention is for the player to hit this button whilst both marbles are on the other player’s playfield, but players are free to hit the honk button whenever they’d like.
That’s it for my Named Goose Game, designed to test the idea that honking at another player while they struggle with two marbles is fun.
If you enjoy your work than you’ll never work a day in your life. Which apparently means theme your game on anime and a coincidence. But it was fun to make because of the choice of theme, so it wasn’t a terrible idea.
Starting with the theme and design that went into making Reach for the Star, having a theme made it really easy to place pins. All of the historical examples start to blend together after awhile, since the bulk of them are not strongly themed. There’s like 4, or 5 different patterns of pin placement, and sometimes divots too, and that was it for bagatelles when you break it down. My original design was quite boring, and quickly scrapped once I had my theme of Revue Starlight. I could use the theme to inform my design, so in an instant I had a unique pair of scoring zones in the form of stars, and a pachinko esque series of sand dunes.
Next up is the background, which worked better than I was afraid it’d end up. I decided to print each layer of the background as a separate item, cut them out, and glue them into place. The biggest draw back of this method is the time spent making it, as each piece has to be cut out by hand with a pair of scissors for broad cuts, and a blade for details and tight curves. And after cutting, was carefully gluing and positioning each piece. A little tedious, but overall not bad once you draft recruit a friend to cut things out for you.
Special note goes to the Starlight Logo in the middle of the playfield, which I drew in pencil with a compass and straight edge. Just to find out the marker doesn’t fit into the compass. I didn’t trust my own hand so I begged asked that same friend to trace over the pencil for me.
That left two things left, the spotlights, and the pins. Going off script, I decided to make the spotlights into toys instead of scoring zones, partly because the prospect of cutting holes into the board was much easier said than done, and I realized might not have had a net positive effect on the board. The only bad thing about the toy placement is that they’re too close to the edges, and could get marbles stuck on them unintentionally. I tried to mitigate this, but there was only so much that could be done on the left light.
Anyway, once the lights were placed, all that was left were the pins. And they were a time. One pin placed with bare hands and I had a moment of despair, thinking it would take two minutes per pin, with extreme effort taken to not pierce my own hand trying to punch through the cardboard. But then I realized I had a thimble, which was the real MVP of this build. It turned placing a single pin into a matter of seconds instead of minutes. Again deviating from the script, I replaced the holes with pins, as it would be able to save on time and the testing I had done at that point revealed the pleasant ‘plink’ sound the marble made when it impacted the pins. Between those two facts, I deemed pins to be a superior option to cutting holes in the playfield.
Playing the Game
Overall the playtest went well. So well in fact that there was no negative feedback at all. Notably, the sound and placement of the pins was a favorite among feedback givers. Another liked the commitment to the color scheme. The closest thing to negative feedback is one player not knowing what the spotlights do, which is to say they aren’t supposed to do much. I suppose I could have assigned a point value for hitting them, but other than that they exist as decoration more than anything.
What Would I do Differently
I’d adjust the placement of the spotlights, and make their point of contact cleaner so it both looks and plays better. I’d consider installing a proper deflector at the end of where the plunger fires the ball to make it a touch more consistent, but the current one made of pins performs adequately. Lastly, I wish I had the time to install cool things like literal bells, or have improved graphics, but time was working against me, as there was plenty to do outside of class as well. Overall, I am satisfied with Reach for the Star though.
Sources
I actually did draw each of these on my own based on my memory of the show, and did not get to adding any character toys, so I guess there’s nothing to put here?
No One is Foolish Enough to Build a Theme Based on a Coincidence Right?
Sometimes coincidences can lead to good things, like happening to be in a town at the same time as your favorite musician is performing a free concert. Other times, you look at the design you slammed down in the middle of your original concept sketch because it was common on many of the classical bagatelles and then realize that it looks familiar despite never having seen a bagatelle earlier than this September.
I fall into the second of these very specific categories. I had fallen into a slump trying to figure out a theme and a design for the bagatelle that didn’t feel like a crude copy of an existing bagatelle, especially since historical examples rarely had a theme. One coincidence later, I decided that I’d theme my playfield with Revue Starlight because I had no other ideas, and I felt like it would be fun. I can say it was fun to make, though I suppose time will tell if it is any fun to play.
Solid black lines are rows of pins, large black circles are holes.
Getting onto the topic of designing this playfield, I ended up throwing out most of the original sketch. That sketch was based on historical examples and contemporary reproductions of bagatelles, though I wanted to try leaning on the theme more than traditional bagatelles.
As a brief aside for those not familiar with Revue Starlight, it is an anime about 9 actresses in a theater school who duel each other in supernatural auditions for the title of “Top Star.” Outside of these auditions they’re rehearsing to perform a play titled “Starlight.” Pink and magenta are the colors commonly associated with the play, as well as the protagonist, Karen.
So getting back to the bagatelle, I started with the background. Most of the playfield is designed to look like a backdrop in a theater, while the bottom has a stage, and there is a curtain bordering the playfield’s upper and lower bounds. I picked recognizable symbols from the show, such as the central insignia of “Starlight” as well as the two stars featured as the Magical McGuffins of the play. The play revolves around ascending the tower (and truthfully the idea of ‘ascension’ pervades the whole show), and claiming those stars for your own, so naturally I decided to make the center of the emblem, which represents the tower, worth 99 points, and the two main stars 100 points. That way, the player wants to reach for those elements as well. Instead of normal stars, I placed holes in the playfield with a small bit of score. Additionally, I made the spotlights on the bottom worth extra points, as well as the round pool near the bottom worth a little more as well just because I thought they’d be difficult to get to, so the player should have some reward for getting a ball into those targets.
Past those design decisions, I found some difficulties as well. The biggest difficulty I had designing this is the lack of flippers. I have had a lot more exposure to pinball as it is known today, where flippers are a defining trait of the game. It was difficult to say the least to switch to a much simpler game, where the ball will always be travelling in a generally downwards trajectory.
Another difficulty was trying to figure out what I can do to take it beyond traditional bagatelle. This was partially due to the lack of flippers mentioned above, but also there’s the difficulties from not having experience actually playing bagatelle. I have no gauge for what actually plays well at this point in time, so I will be largely flying in the dark with nothing but my own senses until a few playtests have happened.
As for feedback from class, all I got was a single comment that I had a great theme. But looking at the playfield again, I will be looking into replacing some if not all of the holes for stars with literal bells. Other than that, I may add a small bit of pinball tech in the form of a toy or two onto the playfield to add more decoration. They’ll be of prominent figures in the show, so one of the 9 Stage Girls, or the Giraffe running the auditions.
But for now, that’s all the time I have for now (and as much bagatelle as I have designed) so I will call it here. There’ll be plenty of updates and changes to the design once initial playtests happen I presume, so stay tuned for those as part of the next post on my game, when I have a finished product.-?
Tasked with looking deeper into three things related to pinball history, there were three things that stood out to me. First, was Williams, and the fate of the company after they closed their pinball division after the failure of the Star Wars: Episode I Pinball 2000 cabinet. What happened to the former giant once the turned their backs on pinball for good? Where did they go? I also looked into where they came from, when the company was originally founded.
Second, I was curious about one of the core selling points of the Pinball 2000 machines, the optical illusion of Pepper’s Ghost. Pinball 2000 was the first and last machine to use the Pepper’s Ghost illusion, and I happen to like optics.
Finally, above all else, I wanted to know more about advanced techniques to playing pinball. I wanted to know more about what set the good players apart from the rest of the world, who could unlock all of the secrets the game held.
First up is WMS Industries, formerly pinball giant Williams Manufacturing Company, today is a slot machine and gambling manufacturer and developer. A sad end to the tale of their now defunct pinball division. We all knew it closed in 1999, when Jar-Jar killed pinball. In class, that was the end of the story. And as far as pinball is concerned, it is. Of course, I wanted to know what happened to Williams after the death of pinball. If anything out of a general curiosity, since it’s been 20 years since WMS left pinball for good. It certainly is no small amount of time, given the fact that accounts for 95.23% of my entire life at time of writing.
To answer that question, we actually have to look at what Williams was up to before 1999. Early into the 90s, pinball sales were declining as machines had a long lifespan, and buyers didn’t see a need to replace them with the new machines being made by the pinball giants, including Williams. Their video game subsidiary Midway Games was enjoying the profits of arcade cabinets such as Mortal Kombat. As we know already, the Pinball 2000 project was created as pinball’s final chance at Williams. So we can take away the fact that Williams had diversified into hotels and video games to supplement the dwindling pinball sales. In fact, WMS doubled down into gaming, by getting into gambling with slot machines in 1994. In fact, as a company, WMS was doing great into the 2000s with their video games and gambling-especially as they introduced digital gambling games.
The latest leg of their story began in 2013 when they were bought and soon after merged into a larger conglomerate, Scientific Games. Today, as I said at the beginning, WMS makes their money off slot machines and gambling. Ultimately, I find the story to be ironic, and a little tragic. When pinball was labelled as a form of gambling, WMS and the other pinball manufacturers were forced to skirt around making games that were considered gambling. And today, WMS wholly embraces gambling as their main income via actual gambling games and machines, and distancing themselves from what used to be their pride and joy. Their business is completely unrecognizable to the one built by Harry Williams. It’s almost as though the company has been losing its soul over the decades, one cabinet at a time.
That got a little heavy, sorry about that. Let’s move onto the next topic: the backbone of the Pinball 2000 project. That is to say, Pepper’s Ghost. It’s an optical illusion where you can combine two images into a single view. Apparently the illusion isn’t the second image, as that exists in reality, but in the audience not seeing the glass in most cases.
Of course, in the context of Pinball 2000 Pepper’s Ghost is used in lieu of true hologram technologies, as that didn’t truly exist in the 90s, when Pinball 2000 was in development. At least, not in a form small enough to be practical in a pinball machine. We do have to remember why such measures were being taken in the first place. If Williams was to stay in the pinball business going into the 21st century, Pinball 2000 had to set itself apart from every other pinball machine that had been created before it. They needed something new, something eye catching to get their old customers back in the door. Without true holograms viable for large scale use in a pinball cabinet, this old illusion could achieve the desired effect. Certainly much cheaper than hologram technology as well. Overall it was fun looking into an optical illusion that made waves in the pinball industry. Even if Jar Jar was too powerful for Pepper’s Ghost in the end.
Lastly, and more directly connected to pinball and its history, are the advanced techniques to playing the game. The talk last Thursday about the kinds of things highly skilled players can do with the leaf switches that pinball machines have always used made me want to know more about the kinds of techniques these players know. I decided to look them up, as I am not even close to being anything more than a pinball novice. I’ll mention specific techniques that are the most interesting to me, and then talk about the kinds of choices and knowledge a player needs to have to pull off advanced techniques as a whole.
First of the advanced techniques is the Bounce Pass, where you have to flick the ball from one flipper to the other. It only works on balls moving up to moderate speed, and if they’re close to the middle of the flipper that’ll be performing the pass. If the ball is moving too fast, it’ll bounce off the flipper too hard and fast, and likely go down the drain. If the ball comes in too far from middle, it’ll just follow the flipper straight down the middle and into the drain.
Second, is the Chill Maneuver, is reliant on there being a center post between the flippers. It’s called the Chill Maneuver, because you’ve got to keep your cool as the ball goes straight down the middle and bounces back up onto the flippers. If you flip too soon you’ll miss the ball and it’ll sink into the drain. It requires a large degree of trust that the ball will bounce back, especially since it has to hit close enough to the center to bounce back up instead of ricocheting off to a side and going down the drain for sure.
Third, is shaking and nudging. Unlike an arcade cabinet for a video game, physical contact with the pinball machine will affect gameplay. In fact, it’s within the rules that there’s a certain amount of tilt and shake that can be done and remain legal. My favorite way to determine levels of tilt are the plumb bob tilt detectors but other exist as well. It takes a certain amount of knowledge to know to nudge with the ball instead of against it, since you can only nudge so hard without tilting your ball out.
A plumb bob tilt detector. If a machine is tilted or pushed too much or too hard the plumb bob will touch the ring that surrounds it, and complete a circuit that disables everything on the playfield for a guaranteed ball out. http://www.pbresource.com/tilt/de-500-5023-00.jpg
To sum up the advanced techniques, they require a certain level of knowledge and split second judgments. Is the ball going too fast? Is it going to the right part of the flipper? Will it bounce back if I let it go or do I try to stop it now? It’s shown me an amount of depth I’d never have known with my current skill level.
That’s all I have time for today. First we started with where Williams went after pinball, becoming the very thing it swore it wasn’t (the slot machines had the high ground after all). Next, was optical illusions and why Pinball 2000 relied on not real holograms. Finally, I decided that I do not have enough cool to pull off a Chill Maneuver, even as someone who plays airsoft for fun; which is to say someone who gets shot at for fun. See you all next time.
Sometimes you just like bad things, like playing Dustbowl in Team Fortress 2, or using the Kraber Sniper Rifle in Titanfall 1 and 2. Other times you just want to try something so you know what old things will be like, knowing it can’t stack up to the later improvements and developments, like playing the original Killing Floor mod just to see how far Killing Floor 2 has come. Me playing Swing Time was the latter of these two cases.
Before I get into talking about my experience with this game, we should get to know the cabinet I’m talking about.
Name: Swing Time
Date of Manufacture: May 20th 1963
Manufacturer: Williams
One of my favorite part of old cabinets are the literal bells and whistles used to make sound. I’m just a sucker for the sound of the old bells these cabinets use, among other retro aesthetics. Aside from playing a machine that probably would have earned the approval of my grandpa if he were still around to see it, I did want to know what early machines were like. For the sake of science, I grabbed my tokens and dove head first into this old machine.
My phone simply doesn’t have the specs to properly photograph this cabinet’s lights
I was off to a great start, as the moment I stepped up I realized I had no idea where the coin op was. After a bit of help I learned it is the slot near the top of the front panel, offset to the left of center. Second, I learned that the ball return is manual, unlike every other machine in the exhibit. The manual ball return actually felt pretty nice, with a solid ker-chunk sound and feel every time it was pushed in to load a new ball.
“Amusement Only” No gambling here officer
$0.10 a play? That’s half the price of playing today if you buy 100 tokens for $20
Next was a quick double check of the rules. It was as basic as expected for an old machine, with the most notable mechanic being spelling “TIME” by shooting the ball through the letters at the far end of the playfield. In the year of 2019, we’ve seen this mechanic a dozen times at least so I’ll move on.
From there, I could start playing the game. The flippers were quick and responsive, but they were very short. I felt like the gap between them was way too large for the size of flippers they used. Between the sparse field of unpredictable bumpers and that gap, it felt like the game mostly played itself, and I even had balls roll into the gap right off the break so that ball was just about wasted.
Easily the most barren playfield of all the cabinets on display at the Strong Museum of Play
Meanwhile, the other half of that equation, the bumpers, felt a little too powerful and sensitive. They made the game feel more random than anything else I played that day because of how much they bounced the ball around. Especially the ones right above the flippers, which felt inconsistent when they bounced the ball. Sometimes, the ball looks like it’ll roll by just fine when the bumper shoots the ball into the gutter opposite it. Other times I’m sure that ball is about to get shot into space and it rolls straight into my flippers.
That’s not to say I didn’t have fun at all playing the Swing Time cabinet. I did enjoy the number of bells the bumper roulette that the far end of the playfield used. And the flippers could make good contact with the ball, which helped it feel responsive despite the age. I couldn’t do much other than hit the bumpers a lot and spell “TI,” “IE,” or “IM” with each ball, nor could I light up all the three big bumpers in a single play. So really, I never did complete a single objective on the field, but there weren’t many to begin with either. I started to slowly get a feel for how it played, but unlike some of the younger games in the exhibit it just didn’t play as well or as intuitively. A lot is learned in 20-30 years after all.
To sum up playing Swing Time, it was fun as long as I didn’t think about it to much. As machines of this era were, the theme of the machine was just a skin that could have been replaced by any other skin and would have had no effect past changing the look of the cabinet and playfield. It was annoying when it felt like I got screwed by random bumping or my flippers being too short. It was a perfectly ok experience, not too bad but not too good either. Would I play it again? Yes, but only as a guilty pleasure. I don’t think it’s nearly as good a game as pretty much any of the other cabinets on display at the Strong Museum, but like I said before: Sometimes you just like bad things.
If you’re interested in knowing more information about Swing Time, here’s the IPDB entry
