My one-hour shift at Imagine RIT was surprisingly lively. Going into it, I expected just a few curious glances here and there, but our pinball table turned out to be extremely popular, especially with kids. It was fun, energetic, and a great trial run for what was to come later at the Strong Museum event.
Kids were pretty aggressive with the machines, but fortunately, nothing broke on mine during my shift. That said, by the next class session, I discovered some minor damage: the doodle monster at the top of my playfield had lost its teeth. I quickly crafted new ones and made the necessary repairs to get it back in shape.
Between the two shifts, I didn’t make many major changes to gameplay, but I did spend some time flattening out parts of the board where the ball tended to get stuck. These subtle tweaks helped improve the overall flow of the machine without altering the core design.
Strong Museum Pinball Day
The Strong Museum shift was a longer 3.5-hour experience. While it was a bit less populated than Imagine RIT because the event was indoors and the weather was rainy, it still had some great highs. There were plenty of families and kids, and seeing how excited they were about building and playing pinball machines was genuinely rewarding.
My shift was mostly spent stationed at my pinbox, ready to explain the design and talk about the class to visitors. Having already done Imagine RIT, I felt much more confident and relaxed. I’m typically a pretty shy person, but this event helped push me out of my comfort zone. I had real conversations with strangers about something I was proud of, something I built.
One of the first challenges of the day was addressing the rain damage my machine suffered during transport. Some components were slightly warped, but with a little help and quick fixes, I managed to repair everything before the event started. I even took the opportunity to make a meaningful upgrade to my design: I added walls around the ramp at the top of the playfield to prevent the ball from getting stuck, which had been a problem during earlier tests.
Perhaps the most inspiring part of the day was getting to see the pinboxes made by Ben and the other workshop leaders. Their machines featured some truly clever ideas such as fidget spinners as bumpers, ball bearings for dynamic motion, and other imaginative mechanics. It really encouraged me to think more creatively about what pinball can be. Seeing their work made me want to go back and push my own machine further.
Takeaways From the Class
Before this class, I wouldn’t have considered myself a pinball fan. I had played it a few times, but I held the same general opinion that a lot of people probably do: that it’s an old arcade novelty. This course completely changed my perspective.
Not only did I learn the rich history of pinball, but I also got a glimpse into a passionate and dedicated community I didn’t even know existed. There are people out there keeping this game alive, not just as a form of nostalgia, but as a living, evolving design space.
And now, I get it. Pinball is far more than just flippers and bumpers. It’s a blend of artistry, engineering, playtesting, and iteration. It’s storytelling through mechanics. Thanks to this class, I feel like I’ve joined a small part of that world. I’m leaving this experience not just as someone who knows how to make a pinball machine, but as someone who actually enjoys doing it.
Me and the Questball team decided that the best course of action would be to showcase our Questball Machines at Imagine/The Strong as opposed to our digital versions, since they highlighted the ‘character select’ aspect better than the digital ones.
I don’t have any photos of my setup at both places, but man, what fun events. The fact that so many kids came up and had so much fun fighting their siblings or even in some cases their parents. It was a little annoying having to rapid fire fix the machines since some of the kids were manhandling those machines. But Jacob had them up and working in under five minutes.
One of the best parts of the Strong Museum Experience specifically was the fact that we got to meet the inventor of Pinbox 3000 and he got to tell us PERSONALLY how cool he thought it was that we designed Questball the way that we did. I felt really proud and felt like our hard work was being properly recognized. I also loved seeing all the kids play our machine at The Strong and then instantly go to the workshop and try and make their own. It felt like a really good full circle of the creative process. Just like how we joined this class because we liked Pinball and got to make our own with Professor Jacobs, those kids were then further inspired by OUR work and wanted to make their own. That’s just straight up beautiful.
Thank you Professor Jacobs and I really hope Retirement treats you well!
Audrey: The one-hour shift was extremely fun, but ended up being way more exhausting than I expected lol. Either way, seeing kids try out the games and saying hi to friends stopping by made it a great experience!
Gabe: The one hour shift was fun, but also extremely hectic. I was surprised how many kids instinctually repeatedly smashed the flipper buttons as hard as they could, which led to a couple on the fly repairs. There were a couple times where people who kind of knew what they were doing would play our games, and it was very fun to watch them experience them! I did definitely learn that the spinners on Frog and Toad would wear quickly, and start to stick! The next day in class, we reinforced the spinner pins underneath with more cardboard and hot glue!
Brandon: Imagine RIT was a fun experience, although I mostly just helped with setup. I had the first shift, so I helped set up the booth, but I had to leave somewhat early for my other Imagine shift for my card game I’ve been developing, so my Imagine experience was pretty short
The main repairs we all completed after the demo involved a lot of gluing components such as the spinners on frog & toad and wires on the bagatelle back down. Additionally, the most common point of failure during Imagine itself was the rubber bands in the flippers snapping, so we had to do a significant amount of quick repairs during the shift itself. We also re-taped the cups on the underside of the pinbox back down.
While we didn’t make any changes to the physical machines, the digital one went through a few modifications. We realized that the top-right corner was a bit bare and uninteresting compared to the other sections of the playfield, so we mapped the multiball target there. We also added a ramp going up the side wall to hit the wizard on top of the tower, which opens after completing the challenges. We also added some additional texturing to the ramps and walls to make it look nicer. We also realized one of the last second changes hindered the ball movement in “BumperWorld” so we had to change that on the fly!
Strong Museum Pinball Day
Audrey: The strong museum shift felt a lot easier, despite it being longer. I think this was largely due to the fact that it wasn’t as busy at first, and only started to pick-up around noon. Thankfully fewer people playing the machines meant that there wasn’t any repairs that needed to be done at the time, though marbles were often being lost or stolen by the children.
Gabe: The people that came to our exhibit at the Strong museum were very fun to engage with. There were at least two groups of kids who couldn’t get enough of Frog and Toad and the parents of both groups told us we should market the game! There were a couple of times kids would hit the flippers hard (again) and I needed to swap out two rubber bands during the shift. We had a lot more time to work with individual people at the Strong, and was overall a more relaxed experience than Imagine RIT.
Brandon: The Strong expo was pretty long. I made the mistake of not eating breakfast that morning, and I was feeling it pretty hard by the end. But the kids that walked up were all super fun to talk with. Each person loved the frog and toad theme and the beautiful art. I think also our game being the only one colored brought in a lot of customers. It was a super fun experience overall
Audrey: I feel like I learned a lot more about explaining how to play the games in the simplest way possible to kids. Since they were on average younger than the people at Imagine, I had to simplify and shorten some of the rules. This made the bagatelle machine a lot more approachable for kids, as they were often confused about how to use the flippers on the frog & toad machine and got board quickly.
Gabe: It was very surprising for me to see, both here and at Imagine, how unintuitive Pinball is to most people. When we toured the Strong earlier, I laughed at some earlier pinball machines that felt like they had to point out where the flippers and buttons were, but after having some kids play our games who’ve probably never seen Pinball before it makes total sense. There were multiple kids that I had to show where the buttons were (or that there were even buttons at all!!) It was very fun to watch kids get into the groove of the game, and get competitive with one another!
Brandon: I got a lot of joy just watching new people, and kids, interacting with our pinball. I was feeling pretty worn out from classes for the semester, and working on the pinball machines. But watching people just enjoy our pinball machines brought a lot of energy back to me.
Audrey: I was really impressed by the machines Ben and the other leaders brought. They all did really well at showing the full extent of the pinbox’s capabilities, and all the interesting features you can include even without electronics. For example, I really liked the neon spaceship machine, which used lots of sloped pathways to let the ball build up speed and make the game feel extra snappy. The way they used elastic gates was also really interesting, in how hitting them once triggers them to open. My favorite out of all the machines they brought in though was Swamp Quest. While the gameplay itself was fairly simple and straightforward, GhostShrimp’s art really elevated it to the next level. It was also cool hearing their iterative design philosophy being best received in educational settings.
Gabe: I was amazed by some of the games Ben brought that they had made with the Pinbox 3000 kit. The mechanisms for drop targets and additional mini flippers higher up on the playfield were especially fascinating! It’s very easy to think “there’s only so much we can do with cardboard machines,” but seeing what the Pinbox team was able to accomplish with some creativity was really humbling!!
Brandon: I was flabbergasted by the machines Ben brought. There was so much detail and innovation that I would never have thought of. I mostly remember the pinball machine with palmtrees and the wooden door. I also really liked the tic-tac-toe machine, where you are trying to get 3 in a row in the tic-tac-toe board, which is ingenious. It’s hard to do scoring/objectives in cardboard and that one was super simple and fun.
Takeaways From The Class
Audrey: Overall I had a bunch of fun with this class! Going into it I knew next to nothing about pinball history, but have really gained a greater appreciation for the advancements in both technology and game design that have influenced the modern pinball scene. It was also incredibly cool discovering how much of a pinball hub Rochester, NY is. Brandon ended up hosting ‘Pinball Friday’ where we would go out and play pinball at Arcade 80’s. One of the highlights of the class was definitely the guest speakers, I really enjoyed hearing about the pinball restoration process from Ashley Ludwig, and George Gomez really reframed how I thought of playfield design. My only wish for this course is that I had more time to create playfield art or try to make a computer vision-based scoring system, but there’s always a chance for that in the future!
Gabe: I wasn’t very sure what to expect going into this class, but it far exceeded what I thought it would be! I had very little experience with pinball prior, only playing a couple of times and struggling to keep balls alive without much more thought, but after learning more about it and being exposed to it more I’ve grown a deep appreciation for it! A couple machines I played through my discovery really stood out to me like Medieval Madness, Lord of the Rings, and most of all, Funhouse. All of these games are super different and showed off variety that I didn’t know was possible in pinball! There’s just something about the physicality of pinball, and the feeling of manipulating a real ball with real physics, that is hard to replicate in any other way. I loved all the amazing opportunities we had in this class at the Strong (both presenting and getting a behind the scenes look!), Imagine, and the presentations from multiple relevant people in the modern pinball scene. Talking with George Gomez especially was fascinating, and was really awesome! As fun as it was, my one wish for the course, would be to cut the time working on the bagatelle machines a little bit to make more room for visual pinball time! This was a fantastic experience and I wish Professor Jacobs a happy retirement!
Brandon: My biggest takeway from the class was the discussions and thought on the readability of games. I hadn’t played much pinball before, and I had previous thought that pinball was incomprehensible, even though I hadn’t really seen much pinball machines. But pinball machines has a lot of effort in telling the player how to play the game. There’s not much room for actual rules, and players won’t read text anyway, so a pinball playfield has to be understood while playing. I really like that type of design in general, and I got the opportunity to think about it a lot in regards to designing our pinball machines.
Questball’s Imagine RIT debut was a hit with many of the kids there, they all loved bringing over their friends and family to face off against them and send marbles flying way too far outside of the board. Flippers were smashed to bits, but in a good way, as the kids loved flinging the marbles onto the other players’ boards. I think it’s safe to say that Imagine proved that our idea was in fact fun, for the kids at least, because the level of competition that some kids had with each other was wonderful and exactly what we were aiming for with our Pinbox designs.
The Strong Museum
The Strong offered a similar perspective, the kids loved the game, and loved to bring over their friends and family to play against them. We got a lot of comments from people that never really thought pinball could work the way that we had made it work, and that made me feel pretty good about the work we put into this project. Lots of people thought the idea that different boards were a different classical fantasy class was very fun and interesting, and gave pinball a cool little spin.
Overall, with the feedback and “playtesting” at both Imagine and the Strong Museum, I think Questball made a great showing. I’m super proud of the product we were able to produce as a team, and I think this Quest was a success… ball.
Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival is a highly popular annual event held on the main campus of Rochester Institute of Technology where I, along with my peers, got the chance to show off our pinball games as part of our own exhibit.
I worked the exhibit during the 12:00pm to 1:00pm block, plus a little bit longer alongside a couple of other people. During my time there, I let visitors of the festival play Pin-8-Ball – Visual Pinball X Edition on my laptop.
I learned a lot from this experience at Imagine RIT. Due to circumstances in class that did not allow Pin-8-Ball – Visual Pinball X Edition to receive an adequate amount of playtesting, this was its actual first time being played by other people. Unfortunately, at first, I think a lot of people were naturally scared to touch my laptop, so I didn’t get a lot of players in the beginning of my time at the exhibit. Crowds soon came in, however, and I ended up getting a lot of players.
While watching others play, I observed that the rules were definitely too lengthy and complex to understand right away. I had to do a lot of clarification and explaining to help people out while they played the game. Interestingly, however, I also noticed that children were significantly better at the game than adolescents and adults, including myself. After an initial explanation to them, they seemed to pick the game up rather quickly. There was even one kid who enjoyed it so much that he had to be pried away from it by his parents.
Luckily, because I displayed my virtual game instead of the physical one, there were no repairs to be made. I did make sure to thoroughly sanitize my laptop, however.
Overall, I generally received positive responses in regards to Pin-8-Ball – Visual Pinball X Edition. Those who played it this time around who had also played Pin-8-Ball – PinBox 3000 Edition appreciated the user interface because it kept track of all of the game’s information for them. It was also generally a lot easier to explain and understand in the virtual format than it was in the physical format. They also really liked the graphics and design of the game, all of which I made myself. I ultimately decided that this version of the game was already good enough to bring to The Strong National Museum of Play, so I didn’t make any changes to it. I also left the physical game as is for the same reason.
Players play and react to the PinBox 3000 and Visual Pinball X exhibits at our station
Strong Museum Pinball Day
The World Video Game Hall of Fame Celebration at The Strong National Museum of Play is an event that celebrates video games. In conjunction with the PinBox 3000 Workshop and this event, we, as a class, got the opportunity to show off the pinball games that we’ve been working on all semester. For myself, that meant that I got to display both Pin-8-Ball – PinBox 3000 Edition and Pin-8-Ball – Visual Pinball X Edition.
All of us in the class worked this exhibit from 10:00am to 2:00pm. While here, we got to show off our pinball games and let visitors play them. Additionally, beforehand, we got to meet Ben t. Matchstick, who is one of the cocreators of the PinBox 3000.
Like with Imagine RIT, I learned a lot from being a part of this exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play. Because we were there for a long time, lots of people got the opportunity to try out both of my games.
Similarly to what I observed during Imagine RIT, players had difficulty understanding the rules of both games at first. I received some comments that indicated that they were too long to bother reading, which is likely what contributed to this. Additionally, some players thought that the game was simply just too hard. This time around, I did not notice a particular difference in skill for the games relative to age, which I was a bit surprised by. Instead, most players, regardless of age, did not perform super well. This indicated to me that they were too hard.
I also learned a lot from Ben and the other workshop leaders. They believed that I had a fun and unique game, however the rules that I had established were far too long to read. This ultimately resulted in a lot of the misunderstandings of the game’s functioning that many, including Ben, had while playing. Looking at the games that they brought along with them, I learned that magnets are a very versatile and interesting feature to include in a PinBox 3000 build. They were utilized with balls that were attracted by them on one machine, and on another they were used to hold obstacles in place while giving them the ability to slightly shift.
The class checks out the games that Ben t. Matchstick and the other representatives brought[1]
All in all, though, the general reactions to both games were once again positive. Visitors of the museum expressed admiration for the theme of them and they liked the designs that I gave to them. Players certainly picked up on the rules better in the visual version of the game in comparison to the physical one, but I expected that due to the user interface that it features.
Me sitting at the exhibit with Pin-8-Ball – PinBox 3000 Edition and Pin-8-Ball – Visual Pinball X Edition on displayMe talking to guests at my exhibit[2]
Takeaways From The Class
As someone who walked into this class knowing almost nothing about pinball besides how to play it, it’s hard to say that I haven’t learned a lot this semester. From its extensive history to its many shapes and forms, pinball is so much more influential than I originally thought it was, and it certainly is quite intriguing. I had a lot of fun in this class, and I’m super glad that I took it.
Creating these games has certainly been a fun process, and I can’t believe that History and Design of Pinball is already over!
Pin-8-Ball – PinBox 3000 EditionPin-8-Ball – Visual Pinball X Edition
I learned a few valuable things from my experience at Imagine. The main thing was that you shouldn’t wait until the last minute to try to install visual pinball on your laptop. I also learned a lot about my pinball machines. One issue with my Hole 18 Pinball was that I had a wall to block players from hitting the target by going up the very left side, but the ball could get stuck on this wall, which I didn’t realize. I had to compromise a little of the “skill” required for my game to fix this issue.
The wall the ball would get stuck on
I also realized a few things about my Visual pinball machine, MarioPinball. The main one was that when players would get the ball in Luigi’s Mansion, they wouldn’t realize that they got an extra ball that they had to launch. Sometimes this would happen to me when playing a real pinball machine, I’d think the ball got stuck somewhere and then after a few seconds, check the launcher and see a ball there. I believe that because it was a student project, people were more likely to assume that it was an error that caused the ball not to come down. It’s also possible that this happened because a lot of the playtesters were children and they just didn’t have enough experience with pinball to check for that kind of thing. Those were the main takeaways I got from Imagine.
I learned a great deal from people playing my games at the Strong Museum. The first main piece of feedback I got was on the Hole18 Pinbox machine. I have two main lines, Hyzer and Anhyzer that players could try to use to hit the basket, but multiple people showed that when the ball went back down the Anhyzer line, it would shoot right into the middle and instantly lose the game. Because of this, I tried to bend the Anhyzer line so it pointed closer to the edge so it wouldn’t drop the ball down the middle.
Anhyzer Line dropped the ball to the middle.
One piece of positive feedback I got about Hole18 Pinball is that it is very beginner/child-friendly. There are 2 simple shots to go for and there isn’t a lot going on. I was happy to hear this because the goal was to have the 2 main shots be the focus and the fact that the other aspects of the box didn’t distract from this was a huge positive. Originally, I had a lot going on with scoring, but when I simplified the scoring to just, +1 for hitting the basket, the box came together. The scoring needed to match the simplicity of the box for a more unified product.
I received a lot of feedback about Mario Pinball. One small bit of feedback from one of my classmates that meant a lot was that the red coins in the center of the machine were perfect for the theming. I have to give some credit to Kai because he recommended putting something in the middle of the machine; it was looking empty before I added the coins. It was great to hear this kind of positive feedback.
The biggest issue with Mario Pinball was that the game didn’t give enough information to the players. All the layouts and shots were clear, but I didn’t get to scoring, so it wasn’t clear that the players were making real progress. I also didn’t have any instructions about a win condition. The lack of a back glass on my machine really hurt it. I had to narrate what players should be going for as they used my machine, which was fine, but the game should speak for itself. The last small issue with Mario Pinballl was that when players would win by completing all the challenges and then getting the ball into the castle, the ball would shoot back to the players like nothing happened. I did have lights on a Bowser statue in the corner to try to convey that he had “fallen into lava” but because the ball was released after 1 second, players didn’t have time to focus on that. They expected “winning” to mean they didn’t have more to do, which is a fair assumption, so they were surprised when they got the ball back. I made a small change that the ball would just be kept if they won, which is what it should have been from the start. Other than that, most of the feedback was very positive!
Takeaways
I am so happy I got to take this class. I learned a lot about the history, design process, and industry of pinball. The biggest takeaway that I got was that taking this class felt like being a kid again. We did “crafts” working on the Pinboxes, and we went on a field trip to the Strong Museum. This class had a feeling of fun to it, which is not common for a college course. It was a great experience and the things I can take away from this course, both my knowledge and the pinball machines I built, are so cool and make me incredibly proud. For this course, I give a 10/10, would recommend.
My Visual Pinball you can find here, <- Although it was not shown at either for reasons of software issues and technical difficulties with mobile ports of VPX ( S.J. knows)
Imagine RIT General content
This was during my shift. I arrived shortly thereafter
My shift was the first one of the day on Imagine show day. I never was able to get a picture of me there with my table on my shift. The middle picture was during my shift and taken a moment before I arrived. The idea of tabling wasn’t new to me as I had done it all 4 years up until that point. I didn’t get to stay for too long past my planned block as I had to attend my capstone most of the day (9-5), and didn’t have a laptop (despite the fact it never got to run my VP project) as I was running that same capstone project hosted from my laptop the whole day in Gannett
I made some repairs ON my arrival. The machine looked more like the one above and I had added all the large walls and edges around the outside that are on my final. I was still in a “playtest” phase because I wanted to get more usage data to see how hard or where players were hitting and where it went off the table. While I didn’t get a formal player feedback documentation and not a ton of people to play the machine in that short hour, I was able to see how people interacted with it and what needed change or rework immediately. I saw the plunger needed strength and stability as an example. Older and very young play testers tended to struggle with the finesse the one rubber band and my playfield internals were set up. I made that note and change among others for Strong.
Made the walls permanent (you can see them in the final version at the Strong) and added more rubber bands to my launcher to increase pull back tension and power.
Strong Museum Pinball Day
This did feel like a long time. I did have some trouble arriving (showed up late into the first hour) because of needing to pick up a laptop from the library when it opened to install and run my VP. This attempt ALSO did not work and left me only being able to run .vpt which was not what I had setup. So I just wanted to perfect my Visual Pinball based on what I saw that day. Linux on my daily laptop did become the bane of my digital project :(.
I learned a lot more people than I thought were very adverse to playing because they were in “hands off” mode since most of the parts of the museum are record keepsakes that can’t be touched. It made people more reluctant to use our machines despite no issue
I learned that the designers and I had similar areas when adding created “branding” to the tables. On close inspection, I did see their elements were a lot higher print quality, but got feedback from Ben that said he really enjoyed the smoothness of my playfield heavyweight print, which made for good ball physics. He and his team also complimented a small but favorite thing about my table which was my “ball save peg” in the middle of the flippers on my cabinet that was heavily inspired by machines I love to play with that feature.
Takeaways From The Class
I GOT TO TAKE A PINBALL CLASS!! Just that fact alone was pretty darn cool. I hadn’t had a physical or tabletop-akin design and development class: I had wanted to take one and this course gave me that opportunity. ALL WHILE BLENDING PRIOR INTEREST AND PASSION! I loved the craftmaking and print-marketing design work I used and it made me feel truly confident in my creation skills. It made me feel comfortable (aside from Linux package things) and knowledgable enough to play or work on VP, tables which were something I had heavy interest in before this class but didn’t know where to start. It was also a joy for me to learn the history, see The Strong pinball behind the scenes, and “talk shop” about favorite tables others and I have. It was a blast of a class and something that lived up to my internal hype. And it never ceased to suprise someone: “YOU CAN TAKE PINBALL AT RIT??!”
An Anonymous RIT Student Playing Dungeon Delver PinballThis Young Man Could Not Contain His Excitement When Playing Dungeon Delver Pinball!
I spent two hours at Imagine RIT showing off my Pinbox build, Dungeon Delver Pinball. The goal of the event was to show off our projects and advertise for the Strong Museum of Play’s pinball events the following Saturday. My shift did not feel like two hours while I did it. However, I did feel the drain soon after leaving the table. I am an introvert and am not built for events like this. My main jobs at the table were supervising guests playing the pinball machines, answering any questions, and handing out fliers for the Strong Museum’s pinball day. The people most interested in the fliers were parents who brought their kids, with some even signing up for the Pinbox 3000 workshop before they even left the table.
The cardboard machines were very popular with kids, but most of the adults did not interact with them much. Some of the kids could be rather rough, pounding on the flippers and pulling the plungers too far back. I had to swap out all the rubber bands afterwards so they would hold up at the Strong Museum. But as long as the kids had fun, it was all worth it.
I also spent a lot of time explaining the Zodiac Bagatelle game to guests. It is not my machine, but the professor chose to leave it out for the entirety of Imagine because it was the best of the bunch. A lot of the kids were a little upset at the lack of flippers and had little interest in my little history lesson on bagatelle. Maybe it is for the best that I decided to major in game design instead of teaching. Once I explained that it was a fortune telling machine, the kids had some fun with it. Unfortunately, most of their fortunes read “leeches”.
The other person at both of my shifts opted to present their Visual Pinball games on their own. Most of the guests did not interact with them unless the owner gave them the go ahead. I will remember this for when we present everything at the Strong Museum. I assume that most people did not want to be touching expensive laptops without permission, which makes sense. I’ll be sure to let people know they can play my Visual Pinball at the Strong Museum. There wasn’t space at the table for me to present both my Pinbox and Visual Pinball machines, so I was unable to get any playtest results on it, and as such had no changes to make.
Overall, it seemed that the kids just wanted to play and the adults wanted to know the details about the machines and the course. Most of them were surprised to find out that we were presenting class projects, they had assumed we were part of a club. There were even a couple RIT students that wanted to take the course, but unfortunately the future of the course is not set in stone.
Strong Museum Pinball Day:
Both the Pinbox 3000 (Left) and Visual Pinball (Right) Versions of Dungeon Delver Pinball
The showcase at the Strong Museum of Play was not what I expected. The original plan is that us students would take shifts helping representatives from the Cardboard Technology Institute run their Pinbox 3000 building workshop and showcasing our own Pinbox and Virtual Pinball builds. In the end, they did not need much help from us, so our whole time was devoted to showcasing our projects.
The representatives from the Cardboard Technology Institute came and looked at my game. One of them even played it. He said that he liked my bumpers with the rubber bands wrapped around them, they created a satisfying sound when hit. He also liked that I used the included graphics from the kit for my pieces. Though I was a little disappointed that none of the representatives offered any criticism, I cannot grow as much as a designer without knowing where I can improve. I wish I had a better analytical eye to draw from the machines the representatives brought. They managed to use the space much better than I had, but it was also a little too crowded to spend much time analysing.
Less people approached our table than at Imagine RIT. Our Imagine table had almost constant visitors who all wanted to chat and/or play some pinball. Most of the people I saw at the Strong Museum were parents with toddlers, for which marbles are a pretty significant choking hazard. Most of the people who would have been the most interested in our showcase were preoccupied with the Pinbox workshop down the hall. It is also possible that some museum guests did not know that our machines were open for play. At least one parent told their kids not to touch as they walked by, and several people were hesitant to touch anything until we told them it was ok. Even then, most guests opted to play the cardboard machines over the Visual Pinball machines.
I think the difference in guest behavior is mostly due to the difference in venue. Imagine RIT is a full-on showcase space where it is expected for guests to go up to tables to talk to presenters. The Strong Museum is more of a looking venue, most museums do not allow for much touching. Also, at Imagine, we had a big sign behind our booth that explained what our display was for, which we did not have at the Strong Museum. All guests could see at first glance was that we had pinball machines and laptops, but there was no indication of who we were outside of the odd RIT jacket.
Most of the people who did approach our table were parents with kids ranging from four to twelve years old. There were not very many college students besides us presenters. The kids had the most interest in playing, with their parents mostly helping them to learn how to play or use the plunger. Like at Imagine, most of the younger kids just slammed on the flipper mechanism repeatedly, trying to keep the ball alive. The few adults that played used a lot more finesse, trying to hit specific shots. While the kids played, parents would ask some questions about how we build the cardboard machines. They were very interested to hear that they came from the Pinbox 3000 kit, probably because it is something they could make with their kids.
Some of the kids preferred the Visual PInball version of Dungeon Delver Pinball because it was easier for them to time the flippers. Most of them just spammed the shift keys like they did with the flippers on the physical machines, but they still had fun. I just wish they would listen when I told them hitting the key harder did not make the flipper flip faster or plunger launch faster. I also realized early on that I should have programmed a reset function that could trigger at any point, not just when the game was over. Most of the kids played until they lost a ball, then gave up and walked to another machine.
In the end, I think the longer shift wore down on everyone. I know as an introvert, I had a hard time keeping up a peppy facade towards the end. Luckily, Jay was there to cover for the rest of the table. Since everyone was there at the same time, we were all getting slowly worn down over the course of the day. I think a lot of people also woke up much earlier than they normally would have on a Saturday, so the overall energy was a little low from the start.
Overall, the Strong Museum was a good experience. I just wish it could have been a little more constant like Imagine was. The longer periods of downtime were not good for morale and people started itching for things to do. Most guests did not go to each table to see all the machines, so we did not always have something to do. It was nice to watch the families have fun and to see the surprise on people’s faces when we told them we took a pinball class. I think if the kids had fun, it was worth half a Saturday in the end.
Takeaways From the Class:
I chose to enroll in the History and Design of Pinball because I needed advanced elective credit, it sounded unique compared to most of the other advanced electives, and I hoped that it would have a fairly low workload. I was initially worried when I had to wait a few weeks for a working schedule to be posted, since that meant less time to spend designing and building pinball machines. I managed to finish all three projects, so everything worked out.
I wish there was more time spent on pinball design theory. Almost all of it came from a presentation by George Gomez (Chief Creative Officer at Stern Pinball, and I am still in disbelief he had time to talk to our class over Zoom), who obviously knows a lot, but he only had 50 minutes to teach us as much as he could. When it came time to build my Pinbox machine, I was a little lost at first. It was also challenging to figure out what I could actually accomplish without the electronics and mechanisms that make pinball machines work and that communicate information back to the player. I think this course could benefit from having more lecture material to help guide the early design process so students have a stronger foundation when building their machines.
Overall, this course was very valuable. I got to learn a lot about a topic that is glossed over in game design and game history. Building bagatelles and pinball machines is fairly similar to level design, a career that I am heavily considering embarking on. Both have a lot of constraints with area and need to find a sweet spot between open and closed spaces. For both disciplines, placement of gameplay elements is key, as the player needs to be able to find everything they need to interact with. I am glad I had the opportunity to take a course that expanded my skill set differently than most of my peers. Plus, it was a lot of fun!
I absolutely LOVED presenting at Imagine RIT! My shift was from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, and it was almost constantly busy. The hour flew by, and I honestly didn’t want to be done when my time was up. I loved talking to the parents and kids alike.
I had to cannibalize some of the rubber bands from my playfield to help DJ, since the rubber bands in his machine’s flippers had broken twice due to rough play from kids. Afterward Imagine, I put some new rubber bands on my machine and all was well.
I didn’t present my digital pinball at Imagine as I wasn’t finished with it, and I was more proud of my physical machine. I did finish my digital version before the Pinball Event at the Strong Musuem!
Strong Museum Pinball Day – 05/03/25
In comparison to the Imagine shift, the 3.5 hour shift was much slower. There were less people overall, and the table I was sitting at got the least amount of foot traffic due to where it was situated. It was honestly more tiring than the Imagine shift, even though I was talking and doing a lot more during the Imagine shift.
I know I need to not be so hard on myself regarding my work, as people did enjoy my visual pinball version of my physical game, and I learned that if something has a good design, people will understand how to use it even without words or explanation.
It was great to see so many ways to make a successful pinball machine with the examples brought by the Pinbox 3000 team. Some were artsy, some were more traditional, some had a goal like to hit a certain target or land in a specific area, while some used a point structure. I loved seeing the different art styles and elements brought from each machine, and I could tell that Ben and Pete really had a passion for how Pinbox 3000 can connect people.
The most “fun” machines didn’t have the most toys and complex rules- but ones with a solid concept and a few well-placed elements can be just as memorable as fancy professional machines.
Takeaways From The Class
Learning about the rich history of pinball was something that I never imagined that I’d do in college, or maybe in my entire life. However, after this semester, I can definitely say that I will be on the lookout if Stern Pinball has any open positions!
Before this class, I had a very narrow understanding of what pinball is and what it can be- flashing lights, metal rails, and sound effects to a ricocheting silver ball. However, (as alluded to before), you don’t really need any of that to have a successful pinball machine.
The hands-on approach of this class was definitely my favorite part. Drafting, tinkering, and tweaking my playfields for my bagatelle and pinball game were probably my favorite project of the entire semester. I also really appreciated the cultural history of pinball besides it’s plain factual history- “Pinball Wizard” has become a permanent fixture to my playlists.
Thank you again to Professor Jacobs for this amazing experience, and I wish him all the best for his retirement- he deserves it!
For our final, instead of a typical exam, our final was in the form of presenting and demonstrating our pinball tables at two events: Imagine RIT, RIT’s signature showcase events, and a pinball workshop hosted at the Strong National Museum of Play. As such, I had brought Storm the Castle! for demonstration, both in its physical layout and the version made with Visual Pinball.
Imagine RIT
Imagine RIT was hosted on April 26, 2025 across the entire RIT campus, showcasing all the various aspects of student activity at the university; for us, it was a place to show off what we’ve been working on all semester.
There was more than just this sign, believe me.
I showed up a bit early, mainly to make sure I was there, but also to get the gist of how others were running the table. It was mainly just answering questions or explaining how the Pinbox 3000 kits worked, but it also served as a way to promote the upcoming workshop at the Strong Museum, which was exactly one week later.
Being at the table was a very interesting experience, all things considered. We had people of all ages show up, but there were a significant amount of children; I anticipated seeing children, just not to the extent that we got.
Most of the questions came from adults asking about the class, or the design process that came behind making the tables. A lot of the times the only things we’d say to the kids were to just be more gentle with the machines, as they would mindlessly smash the flippers on the Pinboxes. In fact, I had to replace the rubber bands on my table because kids wouldn’t stop being so aggressive. (I don’t think Storm the Castle! would’ve been my final concept had I known most of the people trying it would be kids…)
Since I spent more time at Imagine RIT than I initially anticipated, I left the Visual Pinball version of Storm the Castle! at the table for people to look at; there weren’t as many comments on that, but I suppose that’s fair given the fact that there were cardboard pinball tables right next to it, and those are definitely more of a rarity.
Refinement
Since we had a week between Imagine RIT and the Pinball workshop at the Strong Museum, we had one last class before Finals Week to tweak any issues we had with our Pinboxes or Visual Pinball tables. Since I’d basically already finished the latter already, I just used that time to repair my table; I set some more hot glue on loose spaces, replaced the broken rubber bands on my kit, and fixed up the bent flag on the castle. Besides that, there wasn’t much left to do besides bag up the Pinbox and get it ready for a trip to the Strong.
The Strong National Museum of Play
In case you’re not from around the Rochester area, The Strong National Museum of Play is a museum dedicated to, well, playing; whether it’s toys, board games, video games, the Strong is a place for people of all ages to understand this sort of entertainment. Because of the large impact that games have on play, they’re featured very prominently, and pinball is no exception to that. The Strong has Pinball Playfields, an exhibit dedicated to the history of pinball, with many machines available for anyone to play (given they have the tokens, of course.)
Being at the museum before opening felt very liminal.
On May 3, 2025, our class helped with a workshop all about making Pinbox 3000 kits just like the ones we made for our class, assisted by none other than one of the co-creators of the Pinbox 3000 kit (and founder of the Cardboard Deck Instantute) Ben t. Matchstick. Not only were our kits showcased for people to see, but several other kits made by the Cardboard Teck Instantute team were also present, executing ideas that I wish I could’ve come up with. It was a really pleasant delight to meet with some of the team there and talk with them a bit about the kits that we’ve grown familiar with over the semester.
A cardboard sign for a cardboard pinball table. What an absurd idea.Some of the tables created by the Cardboard Teck Instantute team.Swamp Quest, with visual assets done by renowned artist GhostShrimp (NehruvianDoom,Adventure Time).This table (no name, as far as I know) impressed me the most; they literally thought outside the box with this one.The Sesame Street design was very cute.
We had demo tables up just like the ones at Imagine, but this time the Visual Pinball tables we made had a bit more of a highlight. Passers-by noticed the Pinboxes more, mainly due to the concept of making a pinball table out of cardboard. Ben came by and played all of our tables, and having one of the creators of the Pinbox 3000 system compliment your idea and execution for a pinball table was a very nice feeling. Of course, because the Strong is all about play, more children were present, which meant the ever-continuing struggle of making sure they don’t smash in the flippers to the point of breakage. Besides that, both the workshop and our showcases went off without any hitches.
Storm the Castle! in its two forms, ready for action at the Strong.
After that, we had the rest of the time to ourselves, so I just went around the Strong Museum and its numerous exhibits (mainly getting some calories burned on the StepManiaX stage) until the others in my carpool group had enough.
Postmortem
Since the Strong Museum workshop was our last real “assignment” for this class, there aren’t going to be any more posts or updates from me here. I’m deciding to use this last post to talk about my time with this class.
I chose to take this class as I was still in need of filling up some free electives, and I had gotten an email from the IGM department in regards to some classes that would be available for the spring semester. Since this email came to me at the right time, I decided to take a look. None of the classes really stuck out to me, save for a class called “History and Design of Pinball”. I think you know what happened after that. I emailed Professor Jacobs, he allowed me to enroll in the course, and it all started to come together after that.
I enjoyed my time putting everything together for this class, from the Skee-Balltelle to both incarnations of Storm the Castle!, and while there were some notable crunch times to get things done (one hour is not enough to get any work done in this class, sadly), I’m still very happy with what came out of my efforts, and it seemed like others enjoyed them, which matters a lot more to me. In fact, it seemed like a lot of people held Storm the Castle in high regard amongst the class’s Visual Pinball tables, which gave me a feeling of solid satisfaction.
This class allowed me to exercise some creativity on something this semester, which was already full of required classes that gave me some significant stress, and honestly just learning about the history of something like pinball is fascinating. If you find yourself needing a free elective and you’re even only slightly interested in pinball, try and sign up for this class. You won’t regret it.
Professor Jacobs also announced his retirement at the end of this semester, so I’d like to wish him the very best in the future, as well as thank him once again for allowing me to take this course.
The Mr. Potato Head tap dancing on the sign for the Toy Halls of Fame will never leave my mind.
