[North America] NEW SPLATFEST: Team Past Travel vs. Team Future Travel!

[Award]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of poorly-programmed ads online (including this very site) that can slow your computer down to a snail's pace, no matter how fast it is. I always wonder how fast the computers are for the people who make these ads if they see no problem in it.

I blame Adobe. In fact in most situations, no matter what it is, it's best to just blame Adobe. Though on this site I think it's trashy JavaScript. So blame Oracle, too. In fact, in most situations, no matter what it is, it's best to just blame Adobe and Oracle. The web designers that make this stuff are all using Macbook Pros. Every. Last. One of them. They're too cool and trendy for Windows. I blame Sega. ;)

If it concerns you (and personally, I think it should), you should also watch for suppliers who use conflict minerals. Currently, Sony and Microsoft have made statements to wean off of conflict minerals suppliers (Nintendo has not said anything about the issue and has ignored any outside groups asking about it). Conflict minerals are raw goods supplied from countries in civil war (and sometimes other kinds of war). One side in the war (or sometimes both sides) will seize local and other 3rd-party mines and force the miners to give them the minerals, often at gunpoint, so they can sell them to large companies. Essentially, these minerals are funding violence in a similar way to how drugs fund gangs. Right now, the biggest issue is tantalum, which is necessary for CPUs, and every major supplier of CPUs is currently getting tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is having exactly this issue from within. Tantalum is also fifteen times rarer than gold, so other sources are very hard to find. There are major deposits in Australia too, but those are more expensive.

While I can't disagree on this, there's the big elephant in the room nobody talks about. Electronics manufacture is almost squarely handled by China. Yes, manufacturers source the materials. But the problem is, if you're manufacturing your product in a country who makes it purely through what, in anything but a communist system would be called slave labor, does it really matter if you paid for the materials in someone else's blood? Not to mention leveraging it all on credit produced mostly by the systematic tanking of small nations economies and impoverishment of their populations to manipulate currencies. And then there's China itself who's sourcing and currency manipulations make everyone else look like amateurs. Complaining about the conflict minerals is like complaining there's a dead fly in your salmonella souffle. The whole thing is rotten from the ground up. And we've built the entire economy on it. When MS and Sony talk about weaning off the suppliers what they mean is they'll better launder the paper trail. Nintendo instead says nothing because they're not in a position to take the MORE expensive route, and they can't obscure their sourcing half as well as their larger competitors.

And let us not all forget Apple's suggestion to Foxconn (already one of the most evil manufacturers out there - yes, they made your Wii U too, they make almost everything electronic) of installing nets around the building to stop the epidemic of employees jumping to their doom. That was Cupertino, not Tai-Pei that came up with that nugget. In almost all cases "we're moving to more humane, sustainable business models" translates mostly to "awww **** we got caught, wasn't Ken supposed to move those funds through "acquisitions & real estate" first?" So to fix the situation they'll stop buying from Congo and buy from Singapore (who secured them through an equities trader in Cambodia who bought them from militants in Congo, but gosh darnit they complied with the legal requirements that mandate two channels depth of reporting! Those laws really should be changed for more transparency, don'tcha know (at which point they'll add a Tibetan middle man to fill in the extra layer)!)

The E-liter can definitely be used to ink. Its insane range means you can ink areas without even being in that area. I mentioned I use chargers to ink in stages like Kelp Dome and Blackbelly Skatepark. That being said, I am rarely the top inker when I'm using a charger or a Hydra Splatling.

Inking with eliter is possible, but inefficient. It only works if your opponents are not bloodthirsty. If they are and you take time to ink more than a shot here or there, you will be low on ink, and they will know it, and know hey can get past you. I've got caught too many times that way.

Needless to say, when I'm teamed up with people too scared to venture too far, coming in with a charger is useless. They depend on me to create space to move, and that simply cannot be done with a charger. They're too slow and the area they ink is too narrow. Usually, what they'll do is fill in areas behind me, but it also means I am going to have to deal with the opponents all by myself

Yeah, every now and again I'll get a team that instead of rushing out for battle fills in behind me. In theory a charger can work well, perched, holding the line for the rest of the team to catch up, but if they take too long to approach my line the enemy will have ganged up in force, and it won't work. Once they can push us to spawn it goes downhill. Its equally bad when my team rushes to the enemy spawn though as the effect is the same - I'm left alone to hold mid & base, except then the base behind me is NOT painted and there arent' even random inkers to intimidate foes.

I actually never noticed them either until I chose Team Planes for the Cars vs. Planes Splatfest. When I had terrible losing streaks, I decided to look atmy map more often to see what was going on, as well as traveling by my teammates to see what they're doing after I got splatted. That's when I noticed these Inklings looking at their feet shooting at little uninked areas. It REALLY didn't come to the forefront until a match in Kelp Dome where I saw someone use a Carbon Roller coming from behind me. He went all the way up to the border line between our ink and enemy ink, and immediately turned back around.

Since then, I've kept finding these people, and I had to give some thought about why they behave in that way.

LOL on that roller. What was he actually DOING if he painted only ground that did not have enemy ink? I mean how was it even fun for him? I actually will u-turn on hitting enemy ink when I don't know the are is under control with many weapons, but carbon is definitely not one of them - the fling on that thing is great for eating into unknown territory! But no doubt your little inker didn't even know he could fling - he just thought it was a faster roller!

Maybe I have some of them and just don't pay attention enough to them! But my bad rounds usually end with 1-2 of my team in enemy territory, not the other way around.

Most people are not item specialists in Mario Kart. They do at least hold on to their items and try to use it where it's most useful, which is more than I can say for SASRT, where most players just use their items as soon as they get them with no regard for if it's actually useful or not. Sounds like you've played SASRT. You probably know, then, that smart item usage is essential to finishing the single-player mode, and it is pretty much designed as an items tutorial. Considering that, it's weird to see people throw it all away when they're playing it online. I even wrote a detailed guide for using items on the SEGA Forums, which went mostly ignored. It seems the people playing SASRT do not understand items and do not want to understand them. The fact that hitting them repeatedly with items causes a lot of them to ragequit says a lot. (Some of them tell me they play SASRT to escape Mario Kart's item-related carnage, so I assume they run away because I put the item-related carnage back into their races.)


All in all, the items system is a seriously flawed one, but the intent is there: It's supposed to reward skilled and strategic item usage, and its usefulness is limited to close races. The biggest problem is that someone who falls far behind or pulls far ahead will stay that way. Little attempt is made to make races more even, which is the intent of items in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8.

Well, I tactically use items in MK so it carried over well to SASRT. I'm not an "item specialist" per se but I certainly don't waste them - however i WILL dispose of items if it's not one I want to use, or to save before getting to the next item pickup. I did finish SASRT single player, and tried to get a perfect score on all the courses - some of them I just couldn't manage it though.

I have heard a lot over the years about how people hate the items in MK and dislike it because of that. A solid kart racer that doesn't focus on items would definitely appeal to that crowd. They'd rather focus on racing technique. I can't say I blame them much, I'm not a big fan of specials in Splatoon and tend to prefer focusing on my main weapon & sub.

Now I want to play MK8 online again. Now you have me wanting ramen AND MK8. You're just trouble... :p

Interesting. I know very little about the arcade scene before I got into pinball, as my father never liked me hanging out at arcades. It's not because of the people who hang out there, but that he never saw the appeal in playing games. He just told me to watch other people play and figured it was just as good. At most, he'd give me four quarters and expected it to last the full two hours or so.

LOL, that's too funny! He invented Let's Plays before they were a thing, apparently! I never really went to arcades all the time. Once or twice a year. But it was always fun and memorable. The games looked and sounded pretty different there, and the controls were so different. Not to mention the different games, racing seat cabinets, mounted gun accessory cabinets etc that made it so different. Marble Madness with a real trackball! The real TMNT brawler game that didn't get released to console until years later. The bulletproof controls. It was a pretty different world. Imagine that being so awe inspiring today? Not to mention the dim lighting, loud machines, and ALL THAT NEON! It was like a casino for those below gambling age :D Todays kids just don't have a fine appreciation of neon and mirror ceilings. It's sad. :)

On a related note, pinball had just recently come out of the "public beta" phase as well: A lot of releases between 2006 and mid-2015 had unfinished code, which caused the games to feel somewhere between incomplete (Batman: The Dark Knight, Metallica) to near-unplayable (WWE Wrestlemania, The Walking Dead). Star Trek was literally unwinnable because nothing was programmed in past a certain point until several months later. What it took was a #WheresTheCode which went viral in a matter of weeks, and the next releases, Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons, Full Throttle, and Game of Thrones, released more or less complete, the only things needing changes later on being balance patches and bug fixes.

Ouch, who was selling pinball machines with completely unfinished software? That sounds industry-destroying (or an industry that gave up assuming it had no customers to begin with.)

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

I blame Adobe. In fact in most situations, no matter what it is, it's best to just blame Adobe. Though on this site I think it's trashy JavaScript. So blame Oracle, too. In fact, in most situations, no matter what it is, it's best to just blame Adobe and Oracle. The web designers that make this stuff are all using Macbook Pros. Every. Last. One of them. They're too cool and trendy for Windows. I blame Sega. ;)

I'm using a MacBook Pro from 2014. It has 8 gigabytes of RAM and a processor at 2.9 gigahertz, and the ads make my computer feel like it's on dial-up.

Yeah, every now and again I'll get a team that instead of rushing out for battle fills in behind me. In theory a charger can work well, perched, holding the line for the rest of the team to catch up, but if they take too long to approach my line the enemy will have ganged up in force, and it won't work. Once they can push us to spawn it goes downhill. Its equally bad when my team rushes to the enemy spawn though as the effect is the same - I'm left alone to hold mid & base, except then the base behind me is NOT painted and there arent' even random inkers to intimidate foes.

It is unfortunate that I so often find myself as the first line of defense. I'll inevitably find multiple opponents coming at me, and unless I get real lucky, I'm not getting out of that situation in one piece. When I get splatted, my teammates become sitting ducks.

Yesterday, I had a Turf War match where someone on the opposing side disconnected at the beginning, before they emerged from the spawn point. I thought I had that one in the bag, but I was wrong. Although I got an initial splat, I eventually got all three of them on my tail and they took me out. What was odd was that my team was losing ground, according to the status up top, as the three of them were chasing me. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they got complacent and let their guard down, but still, we were overrun and put into Danger! status about halfway through, which we never climbed out from. They had completely overrun us. From what I can see, they mostly ignored the opponents. They went around painting the place like the opponents weren't there, though by the last minute, I saw them running away from the opponents.

LOL on that roller. What was he actually DOING if he painted only ground that did not have enemy ink? I mean how was it even fun for him? I actually will u-turn on hitting enemy ink when I don't know the are is under control with many weapons, but carbon is definitely not one of them - the fling on that thing is great for eating into unknown territory! But no doubt your little inker didn't even know he could fling - he just thought it was a faster roller!

Maybe I have some of them and just don't pay attention enough to them! But my bad rounds usually end with 1-2 of my team in enemy territory, not the other way around.

Kids have fun in the strangest ways. Really, if it was a little kid, they get entranced by the factthat you can push a button and someone on the TV will do something. I once had a cousin over, who had just turned 6 years old at the time. He saw me playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl and wanted to play some. Upon realizing he didn't have much of a concept of controller input, though he had a blast anyway, I just let him "play" the attract mode with an unplugged Gamecube controller. He never knew he wasn't actually playing.

When they're that young, they don't care about winning, losing, or the status of their characters. They're overjoyed at the fact that they're playing.

Well, I tactically use items in MK so it carried over well to SASRT. I'm not an "item specialist" per se but I certainly don't waste them - however i WILL dispose of items if it's not one I want to use, or to save before getting to the next item pickup. I did finish SASRT single player, and tried to get a perfect score on all the courses - some of them I just couldn't manage it though.

I have heard a lot over the years about how people hate the items in MK and dislike it because of that. A solid kart racer that doesn't focus on items would definitely appeal to that crowd. They'd rather focus on racing technique. I can't say I blame them much, I'm not a big fan of specials in Splatoon and tend to prefer focusing on my main weapon & sub.

Now I want to play MK8 online again. Now you have me wanting ramen AND MK8. You're just trouble... :p

Yeah, SASRT was able to pick up the crowds who didn't like how Mario Kart items were powerful and allow you to pull ahead easily, and they really didn't like how 1st place is rarely safe in a Mario Kart game. (I personally think that a Sword of Damocles like the Blue Shell is necessary to keep races interesting, but that's a discussion for another time.) I just take kind of a schadenfreude-like joy in bringing Mario Kart back to them, though my original intent was to demonstrate that the SASRT item system can be effective, but only if you're strategic about it.

LOL, that's too funny! He invented Let's Plays before they were a thing, apparently! I never really went to arcades all the time. Once or twice a year. But it was always fun and memorable. The games looked and sounded pretty different there, and the controls were so different. Not to mention the different games, racing seat cabinets, mounted gun accessory cabinets etc that made it so different. Marble Madness with a real trackball! The real TMNT brawler game that didn't get released to console until years later. The bulletproof controls. It was a pretty different world. Imagine that being so awe inspiring today? Not to mention the dim lighting, loud machines, and ALL THAT NEON! It was like a casino for those below gambling age :D Todays kids just don't have a fine appreciation of neon and mirror ceilings. It's sad. :)

See, most of my friends visited arcades to play the games there, and I felt kind of left out. My father always told me that I was a better person than they were because I didn't play them though. (He didn't mean that he disliked people who played arcade games, but that he had more respect for people who shared his tastes.) The arcade, to me, felt like this place where I could enjoy a lot of different things that everyone else got to play, though I guess by then, video arcades were in their twilight years.

Ouch, who was selling pinball machines with completely unfinished software? That sounds industry-destroying (or an industry that gave up assuming it had no customers to begin with.)

During that era, Stern was the only manufacturer of pinball machines, though a random Spanish company popped up and created New Canasta (a remake of Canasta from the 1970's). The reason why Stern did this was because Stern specializes in licensed themes with an emphasis on movies, and it's important to get the machine available to the public while interest is still there and while it's still relevant. The other reason, however, was because Stern lacks a complete testing team, and the initial release is more or less late beta testing.

The real incentive popped up in 2012, when Stern received real competition: Jersey Jack released its first game, The Wizard of Oz, which, while far pricer than Stern's (Oz begins at $9,000), is far more complex in its layouts and rules, and it shipped complete (though again, it needed balance patches and bug fixes, but that's unavoidable). In 2015, another competitor appeared: Heighway Pinball released its first game, Full Throttle. Currently, there are at least three other companies manufacturing new pinball machines yet to be released (Silver Castle with Timeshock!, Dutch Pinball with The Big Lebowski, and Elwin Bros. with Archer--notice that all of these companies wisely chose themes that do not need to be released at a specific time), so the pressure has been put on Stern to not be lazy. Stern has also moved away from time-specific movie themes and is now doing mainly TV shows (which run for years at a time) and music from the 80's and 90's (whcih are already past their prime but are popular with Stern's middle-aged demographic).

 

[Award]

I'm using a MacBook Pro from 2014. It has 8 gigabytes of RAM and a processor at 2.9 gigahertz, and the ads make my computer feel like it's on dial-up.

Despite my dislike of most things Apple (they have a beautifully designed exterior packed with 4 year old hardware for twice the price of current hardware, all sold with a holier than thou marketing engine) - I have to say the one thing that makes me ALMOST consider a macbook is it's still the only laptop with a half decent keyboard, at least short of the Thinkpad line which tends to have features I don't want and doesn't have features I do.) But it would be such a mess getting it to play nice with just about everything else I use unless I dual boot it to Windows, and then there's really so little point dumping money on it. My laptop keyboards cause so many typos...

But yeah, surprising that even the MBP struggles so badly with the ads since I figured it was the test platform. I get a lot of failed script errors from this site, which then kills the ad and then its better for a while. My guess is the ad scripts are subcontracted to some overseas vendor and they aren't actually tested at all as long as the bid is fulfilled.

It is unfortunate that I so often find myself as the first line of defense. I'll inevitably find multiple opponents coming at me, and unless I get real lucky, I'm not getting out of that situation in one piece. When I get splatted, my teammates become sitting ducks.

Yep, that's often true for me. Though the survival rate depends on the weapon mix. With Carbon I can often evade and escape, or fall back to an ambush position. With Hydra, it's so situational, it depends on my charge status, ink status, positioning. And with eliter I'm SOL. Eliters can't do 3 simultaneous enemies, ever.

Yesterday, I had a Turf War match where someone on the opposing side disconnected at the beginning, before they emerged from the spawn point. I thought I had that one in the bag, but I was wrong. Although I got an initial splat, I eventually got all three of them on my tail and they took me out. What was odd was that my team was losing ground, according to the status up top, as the three of them were chasing me. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they got complacent and let their guard down, but still, we were overrun and put into Danger! status about halfway through, which we never climbed out from. They had completely overrun us. From what I can see, they mostly ignored the opponents. They went around painting the place like the opponents weren't there, though by the last minute, I saw them running away from the opponents.

LOL, yeah, I've lost some 4v3 rounds as well. I'll never understand how we could do that badly with that few team mates. (To my team's credit though I've seen an increasing number of matches were we lose by 2-10% only to find that we were down a member, so that's actually pretty good to have a close game with only 75% of the team. )

I will OCCASIONALLY see a player ignore enemies, and I know one or two players who do so - Mostly they're so focused on ink they didn't see the enemy. But my opponents are usually brash and in our base as soon as possible so it's hard to miss them, even if you're an inker. I never see mine run away though, usually because they're not there at all. Yesterday in Depot our base was being overrun badly, I was fending them off but there were 3 of them and they just kept coming back in (I had Carbon I think) and I kept spamming "c'mon" but of course, no one came, they were busy in the enemy base. Of course we lost.

With eliter, in depot, I've taken to standing in the middle of the two pits and running back and forth watching BOTH sides, because if I don't, nobody else will watch the other side.

Kids have fun in the strangest ways. Really, if it was a little kid, they get entranced by the factthat you can push a button and someone on the TV will do something. I once had a cousin over, who had just turned 6 years old at the time. He saw me playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl and wanted to play some. Upon realizing he didn't have much of a concept of controller input, though he had a blast anyway, I just let him "play" the attract mode with an unplugged Gamecube controller. He never knew he wasn't actually playing.

When they're that young, they don't care about winning, losing, or the status of their characters. They're overjoyed at the fact that they're playing.

LOL, that's funny. Though I think it only works if they're completely new to gaming entirely. It's amazing and awe inspring if they've never done it before. But I think they catch on VERY quickly what the goals of the game are supposed to be. Heck I was as noncompetitive as you could possible get as a kid. But I played my games to beat them. And beat them often, I did. There wasn't a 2D platformer I couldn't beat in a week. :D (Ok, Castlevania II doesn't count, neither does Zelda II...that was a WEIRD set of games.)

Then again with Brawl, the menus and modes were so chaotic and confusing I'm not sure *I* would know if I was playing or not. ;) SSB Wii U is a lot more sensible, though I loathe, loathe that single player mode. Not being a good fighting game player I can't help but feel SSB U was a waste of money for me. But I loved Brawl! Most played Wii game hands down. But SSB U? I make Reggie look pro. :p

Yeah, SASRT was able to pick up the crowds who didn't like how Mario Kart items were powerful and allow you to pull ahead easily, and they really didn't like how 1st place is rarely safe in a Mario Kart game. (I personally think that a Sword of Damocles like the Blue Shell is necessary to keep races interesting, but that's a discussion for another time.) I just take kind of a schadenfreude-like joy in bringing Mario Kart back to them, though my original intent was to demonstrate that the SASRT item system can be effective, but only if you're strategic about it.

LOL! There's a valid argument for both sides, I actually prefer MK since it's a much more tight experience that only Nintendo could do, however I also tend to lean toward the SASRT players opinion on items. It's not much of a racer if your racing skill doesn't count for much in the hands of items. Blue shells invalidate whatever skill was demonstrated in racing just because the RNG made it possible. On the other hand the race is more interesting for the other players.

See, most of my friends visited arcades to play the games there, and I felt kind of left out. My father always told me that I was a better person than they were because I didn't play them though. (He didn't mean that he disliked people who played arcade games, but that he had more respect for people who shared his tastes.) The arcade, to me, felt like this place where I could enjoy a lot of different things that everyone else got to play, though I guess by then, video arcades were in their twilight years.

IMO arcades were seen as seedy back then. And the were. The "big kids" would always be at the machines in the back, and in retrospect, though I didn't know anything about such things back then, they were probably all high as a kite and selling pot back there. They were great fun, but there was also a dark side I was oblivious to. It really WAS a casino for kids after all. though that was probably part of the appeal.

It's true that they were on their way out then. The PlayStation was the official kiss of death for the arcade, followed by Saturn. In the 16 bit and 8 bit eras there was a disconnect. Arcades offered something totally different you couldn't get at home. The graphics, the sounds, the motion, the inputs, it was a whole different world, and played like a different thing. Consoles had games, sure, but arcade graphics were REAL looking (in retrospect, they still weren't of course, but they were quite a bit better. ) And the sound - we all had little 13" CRT tvs with tinny speakers - and in the arcade there were VOICES in the games! And clear sounds and bass rumbling! By the time the Playstation came out the sound and graphics reacned near parity and the arcades had many of the same games. Their appeal rapidly waned.

If VR really is the next big thing, I think you'll see the arcade resurge. Market though they might, VR and Occulus is still not VR. You need a perfect room setup to make it truly work. Only the big expensive machines/rooms at an arcade can really do it still. It offers something you can't get at home again. (Though in Japan, the arcade never waned. They're quite popular there, and I'd do anything for a play at the Luigi's Mansion arcade box!)

Though, as someone who actually played Dactyl Nightmare on the Atari 1000CS, primitive though it may have been, my only response to VR is "meh." Yeah I know it's "better" now, but there's nothing pleasant about having 3lb strapped to your head and wired sensors strapped all over your body, nor the 4 minutes it takes to strap in, then wander around a cage. It's very disturbing, actually. And wireless now would be even worse for hardcore gamers, that's a lot of radio transmitter strapped to your limbs. I thought Virtual Boy would be better, and it was, but the strange disorientation when leaving it and the odd isolation you feel when using it is still unpleasant. Miyamoto has commented as much (and the Virtual Boy was originally his idea that he kept begging Yamauchi to take on) as well.

Holodecks or bust!

During that era, Stern was the only manufacturer of pinball machines, though a random Spanish company popped up and created New Canasta (a remake of Canasta from the 1970's). The reason why Stern did this was because Stern specializes in licensed themes with an emphasis on movies, and it's important to get the machine available to the public while interest is still there and while it's still relevant. The other reason, however, was because Stern lacks a complete testing team, and the initial release is more or less late beta testing.

The real incentive popped up in 2012, when Stern received real competition: Jersey Jack released its first game, The Wizard of Oz, which, while far pricer than Stern's (Oz begins at $9,000), is far more complex in its layouts and rules, and it shipped complete (though again, it needed balance patches and bug fixes, but that's unavoidable). In 2015, another competitor appeared: Heighway Pinball released its first game, Full Throttle. Currently, there are at least three other companies manufacturing new pinball machines yet to be released (Silver Castle with Timeshock!, Dutch Pinball with The Big Lebowski, and Elwin Bros. with Archer--notice that all of these companies wisely chose themes that do not need to be released at a specific time), so the pressure has been put on Stern to not be lazy. Stern has also moved away from time-specific movie themes and is now doing mainly TV shows (which run for years at a time) and music from the 80's and 90's (whcih are already past their prime but are popular with Stern's middle-aged demographic).

Your world is so alien to me. On my world, pinball machines are manufactured by Bally, Midway, Williams, Data East, Gottlieb, and Sega. On my world these shall forever be the pinball manufacturers. It's distressing to hear these things referred to as past - to me, it's present day. I didn't even know it changed!

(On topic!) There's another reason to support Team Past over Team Future - the feeling of landing in the future only to discover that which you know to no longer exist is and be considered past is...disturbing. Whereas in the past you know it just hasn't happened yet (but will!)

 

[PrinceOfKoopas]

I have ad-blocker on for Squidboards.

I posted a Forum Support thread many months ago saying that the ads on this site slow my computer to a crawl so I HAVE to have ad-blocker on. No replies, and I don't think anyone looked at it. >_>

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

I have ad-blocker on for Squidboards.

I posted a Forum Support thread many months ago saying that the ads on this site slow my computer to a crawl so I HAVE to have ad-blocker on. No replies, and I don't think anyone looked at it. >_>

To support this site, I have AdBlocker make an exception for Squidboards. I have to close the tabs after some time though, because the longer they remain on, the worse a toll they take on my computer.

LOL, yeah, I've lost some 4v3 rounds as well. I'll never understand how we could do that badly with that few team mates. (To my team's credit though I've seen an increasing number of matches were we lose by 2-10% only to find that we were down a member, so that's actually pretty good to have a close game with only 75% of the team. )

I do feel that sometimes, people will feel overconfident if they see someone get disconnected, and overconfidence leads to a fall.

I will OCCASIONALLY see a player ignore enemies, and I know one or two players who do so - Mostly they're so focused on ink they didn't see the enemy. But my opponents are usually brash and in our base as soon as possible so it's hard to miss them, even if you're an inker. I never see mine run away though, usually because they're not there at all. Yesterday in Depot our base was being overrun badly, I was fending them off but there were 3 of them and they just kept coming back in (I had Carbon I think) and I kept spamming "c'mon" but of course, no one came, they were busy in the enemy base. Of course we lost.

Okay, so you DO get those inkers from time to time.

LOL, that's funny. Though I think it only works if they're completely new to gaming entirely. It's amazing and awe inspring if they've never done it before. But I think they catch on VERY quickly what the goals of the game are supposed to be. Heck I was as noncompetitive as you could possible get as a kid. But I played my games to beat them. And beat them often, I did. There wasn't a 2D platformer I couldn't beat in a week. :D (Ok, Castlevania II doesn't count, neither does Zelda II...that was a WEIRD set of games.)

When I was little, I averaged about one month to complete a game. I don't remember if it's because I didn't play them that much per day or if I was really bad at them. I do know I was very thorough though. I found every robot generator in Sonic CD without any external help (for those familiar with the game, yes, I indeed found the one at Wacky Workbench 1 without assistance), and that has always been my preferred method to the good ending, even though I hear some people say it's the harder one.

LOL! There's a valid argument for both sides, I actually prefer MK since it's a much more tight experience that only Nintendo could do, however I also tend to lean toward the SASRT players opinion on items. It's not much of a racer if your racing skill doesn't count for much in the hands of items. Blue shells invalidate whatever skill was demonstrated in racing just because the RNG made it possible. On the other hand the race is more interesting for the other players.

Needless to say, as an item specialist, I like my items potent and powerful. I am an average driver in Mario Kart at best, but I compensate for that by making efficient and strategic use of items.

I eventually stopped playing SASRT because it got so boring. I actually finished about half of all races in 1st place, far into the lead without anyone else having a ghost of a chance of overtaking me. Hence, once I took the lead, races started feeling like I was there all by myself. Unless it's Burning Depths. I am horrible at that course.

If VR really is the next big thing, I think you'll see the arcade resurge. Market though they might, VR and Occulus is still not VR. You need a perfect room setup to make it truly work. Only the big expensive machines/rooms at an arcade can really do it still. It offers something you can't get at home again. (Though in Japan, the arcade never waned. They're quite popular there, and I'd do anything for a play at the Luigi's Mansion arcade box!)

It may be the pinball fan in me but I think pinball is due for a resurgence. That is something you cannot effectively replicate at home. You need to be there to experience it.

Your world is so alien to me. On my world, pinball machines are manufactured by Bally, Midway, Williams, Data East, Gottlieb, and Sega. On my world these shall forever be the pinball manufacturers. It's distressing to hear these things referred to as past - to me, it's present day. I didn't even know it changed!

Not very often I find people outside of pinball circles able to identify all of the major manufacturers of the 90's. Bally and Williams merged in 1989, by the way, and were part of Midway. Data East's pinball department was sold over to SEGA, which eventually became Stern. Gottlieb remained Gottlieb all the way until it went bankrupt in 1995 though. In 1999, Midway cast off Bally and Williams as their own companies. Both are still around today, but in different businesses. Bally now makes yachts and runs fitness centers (Bally Total Fitness is indeed the same Bally that made World Cup Soccer '94 and Theatre of Magic), and Williams, now WMS Electronics, makes gambling machines and was purchased by Scientific Games for $1.5 billion. Bally also makes gambling machines, which Scientific Games also bought, meaning Bally and Williams are once again under the same company doing the same thing.

By the way, one other thing that makes Oz a real game-changer: Instead of a dot-matrix display, it has a big bright 27" LCD monitor. It is VERY attention-grabbing, and when a non-pinball person comes up to a lineup of machines, and Oz is one of them, most often they will gravitate to Oz first.

 

[Award]

I do feel that sometimes, people will feel overconfident if they see someone get disconnected, and overconfidence leads to a fall.

It's hard to tell if it's overconfidence or if it's their normal race to danger that gets them killed no matter how many enemies there are! :)

Okay, so you DO get those inkers from time to time.

Possibly! Or they could just be working on inking at that moment before they fall back. It can be hard to tell. At different stages of the map I can be mistaken for an inker when I play carbon roller since I'm VERY intent on setting up my defensive zones to dig in and fall back to as my top priority. So at the start, I'll go out and ink, I'll run right by an enemy if I can get away with it, I'll ignore them, let them chase me if I must as I roll out a nice pool of ink to lurk in. Then I go dark. ;) I try to set up the defensive perimeters, literally a line in the sand and specific areas in which to move. I will make sure that's a solid sea of ink/appropriate paths which makes it a lot easier to hold that territory. But I could see how someone might think I'm in inker seeing me just rolling around ignoring what's going on around me.

When I was little, I averaged about one month to complete a game. I don't remember if it's because I didn't play them that much per day or if I was really bad at them. I do know I was very thorough though. I found every robot generator in Sonic CD without any external help (for those familiar with the game, yes, I indeed found the one at Wacky Workbench 1 without assistance), and that has always been my preferred method to the good ending, even though I hear some people say it's the harder one.

IT depended in the game for me. Most I'd get through in a week (but didn't want to) - some like Yoshi's Island I didn't understand that the point was to collect all the "stuff" - I just ran to the end like a Mario level. Some like A Link to the Past and Super Metroid I played it, starting over numerous times since it released. I finally beat them two years ago. On Wii U VC. :p Only 20-something years to beat a video game. Not bad, right?

Needless to say, as an item specialist, I like my items potent and powerful. I am an average driver in Mario Kart at best, but I compensate for that by making efficient and strategic use of items.

I guess like with Splatoon I like focusing on the main draw. Like my playing Custom E-Liter because I'd rather focus on sniping with the main weapon than burst bombing things, And ignoring specials too often because I'm focused on the main weapons. I like honing the primary skill most of all I guess :)

It may be the pinball fan in me but I think pinball is due for a resurgence. That is something you cannot effectively replicate at home. You need to be there to experience it.

I'd like that. i don't know if I can see the space it takes up becoming popular though. It would take a new compact easy to fit pinball to make it faddish again. Something that's vertical and looks like a pachinko machine could make it appear more often. But I don't see the era of stores everywhere having arcade machines ever returning unless it's in a new package. I think for the mainstream pinball is that 70's thing that was kind of ugly.

Not very often I find people outside of pinball circles able to identify all of the major manufacturers of the 90's. Bally and Williams merged in 1989, by the way, and were part of Midway. Data East's pinball department was sold over to SEGA, which eventually became Stern. Gottlieb remained Gottlieb all the way until it went bankrupt in 1995 though. In 1999, Midway cast off Bally and Williams as their own companies. Both are still around today, but in different businesses. Bally now makes yachts and runs fitness centers (Bally Total Fitness is indeed the same Bally that made World Cup Soccer '94 and Theatre of Magic), and Williams, now WMS Electronics, makes gambling machines and was purchased by Scientific Games for $1.5 billion. Bally also makes gambling machines, which Scientific Games also bought, meaning Bally and Williams are once again under the same company doing the same thing.

LOL, yeah, I'm weird like that, I always paid attention to this stuff. I'm not a pinball enthusiast, but I always LIKED pinball and would study the board and the machine whenever one was around while waiting for food or something. It's funny, I don't remember what machines most of them were other than that I'm sure they were all 80's-tastic, probably a good number of 70's leftovers too, and a few early 90's models. But I do remember pouring over every detail of them, even though I didn't get to play many of them, but just looking through the glass at the elements and tracing paths for the ball in my head. I had a toy pinball machine at home I loved :) Just a little table top thing. But it was kind of neat for what it was. But I always paid attention to the manfuacturer's logo and all along with the physical details of them. They're all burned into my mind.

That's some great history on the brands, I wasn't aware of what happened with most of them. Bally I was familiar with of course. The fitness centers aren't new - they had Bally's Gym back in the pinball days too, and their big industry has always been their casinos. They made the casino machines back in the pinball days as well, and they also run their own casinos and did at the time. They're kind of Konami-West in a way. The arcade chain I mentioned that was seedy back in the 80's was ALSO owned by Bally, and as to why it was seedy, that probably explains it. It really WAS run by a casino operator and was decorated accordingly. Lighting was extremely dim, with neon along the walls and ceilings, change machines around, of course making that "slot machine" money dropping sound, along with the loud sounds from the arcade machines, etc. VERY dim lighting. A competing chain opened near some of their locations that was brightly lit. It was never as cool or popular though. These places were pretty big, including the large sit-down racer cabinets they had probably 30-40 video game cabinets including 4 racer cabinets in rows and a good 8-12 pinball machines all in a line at the back (not all of them made by Bally!) And little step stools for young kids to reach the pinball machines. Your pictures from the expo of the pinball machines all in a row seem completely normal to me, that's how I remember them! And a line of 6 skee ball lanes with prize tickets next to the prize counter. The staff wore uniforms very much like the rabbit in 3DS Badge Arcade.

But despite remembering the line of pinball machines there, my focus was on the video arcade. And I"m glad since pinball is still around and video arcades are not. :)

By the way, one other thing that makes Oz a real game-changer: Instead of a dot-matrix display, it has a big bright 27" LCD monitor. It is VERY attention-grabbing, and when a non-pinball person comes up to a lineup of machines, and Oz is one of them, most often they will gravitate to Oz first.

That looks pretty cool, and I imagine it would stand out! i wonder how they intend to use the screen for the game? Just an updated version of the amber matrix display, or more interesting uses? Personally I'd find the most 80's tastic machine I saw, but that's me :D

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

It's hard to tell if it's overconfidence or if it's their normal race to danger that gets them killed no matter how many enemies there are! :)

As I don't see us lose THAT often when we outnumber our opponents, I'd have to say at least some of it must be overconfidence. I always try my best no matter who gets disconnected because I know they can still turn things around. I only really cut back when they're severely behind in Turf War and there's no point in fighting any further.

It depended in the game for me. Most I'd get through in a week (but didn't want to) - some like Yoshi's Island I didn't understand that the point was to collect all the "stuff" - I just ran to the end like a Mario level. Some like A Link to the Past and Super Metroid I played it, starting over numerous times since it released. I finally beat them two years ago. On Wii U VC. :p Only 20-something years to beat a video game. Not bad, right?

I see. I would try to go for 100% status where possible. Of the early Sonic games, Sonic CD had the most drawn out ones, with unlockable extras available via its Time Attack. For instance, getting below 25 minutes total for all 21 stages in Time Attack unlocks Visual Mode, which lets you see rough sketches and animatics used during production. If we're talking about complete and total 100% status beyond what you could unlock, Sonic CD would be that too. I never collected all of the Time Stones until I played the remake. Similarly, it took me 12 years after getting Knuckles' Chaotix to complete all of the Special Stages in that game.

Admittedly, I usually don't bother to collect all of the Heart Pieces in Zelda games either, at least not without a guide. I am so glad the Paper Mario games provide in-game hint services for collectible items. In the first game, for instance, there is one character, a fortune teller, to whom you pay a certain number of Coins, depending on the item, and she will tell you exactly where to find it and how to get to it. It'd be hair-pulling otherwise.

I'd like that. i don't know if I can see the space it takes up becoming popular though. It would take a new compact easy to fit pinball to make it faddish again. Something that's vertical and looks like a pachinko machine could make it appear more often. But I don't see the era of stores everywhere having arcade machines ever returning unless it's in a new package. I think for the mainstream pinball is that 70's thing that was kind of ugly.

Smaller machines were tried in the 90's, namely with Safe Cracker. It didn't really work. The environment then and the environment now is different though. I do believe smaller machines can work today.

But what I think is a more pressing barrier of entry is the price. Heighway Pinball's machines begin at $5,000, and they're currently the cheapest option. Stern's machines begin at $6,000. Jersey Jack's begin at $9,000. Dutch's begin at $10,000. John Popadiuk's begin at the mind-blowing $26,000. These prices severely limit who can buy them, and even for operators who can afford lots of them, it's going to take a while to make back that money. In addition, pinball breaks down more easily than other arcade machines (comes with the territory when the purpose is to hit delicate electronics with metal balls) and doesn't have the incentive of winning prizes the way redemption machines like Barber Cut or Key Master have.

That's some great history on the brands, I wasn't aware of what happened with most of them. Bally I was familiar with of course. The fitness centers aren't new - they had Bally's Gym back in the pinball days too, and their big industry has always been their casinos. They made the casino machines back in the pinball days as well, and they also run their own casinos and did at the time. They're kind of Konami-West in a way. The arcade chain I mentioned that was seedy back in the 80's was ALSO owned by Bally, and as to why it was seedy, that probably explains it. It really WAS run by a casino operator and was decorated accordingly. Lighting was extremely dim, with neon along the walls and ceilings, change machines around, of course making that "slot machine" money dropping sound, along with the loud sounds from the arcade machines, etc. VERY dim lighting. A competing chain opened near some of their locations that was brightly lit. It was never as cool or popular though. These places were pretty big, including the large sit-down racer cabinets they had probably 30-40 video game cabinets including 4 racer cabinets in rows and a good 8-12 pinball machines all in a line at the back (not all of them made by Bally!) And little step stools for young kids to reach the pinball machines. Your pictures from the expo of the pinball machines all in a row seem completely normal to me, that's how I remember them! And a line of 6 skee ball lanes with prize tickets next to the prize counter. The staff wore uniforms very much like the rabbit in 3DS Badge Arcade.

But despite remembering the line of pinball machines there, my focus was on the video arcade. And I"m glad since pinball is still around and video arcades are not. :)

Arcades are still around, just in a diminished form and with a different focus. Chuck E. Cheese's is obviously still around, as is Dave & Buster's. Round 1 is an upstart, specializing in import Japanese games and niche western arcade games. They're the only locations with Neon FM machines, for instance, an arcade rhythm game from the people who made the Guitar Hero games, only this one has an EDM flavor. Round 1 is also the first to have Pokkén Tournament machines. These arcades are decidedly NOT seedy and are clean and well-kept. There are still a few seedy arcades around here though. Their pinball is similarly dilapidated. Here's a blurb from Pinball Map regarding the Spider-Man at Family Arcade:

"some burned out lights in playfield make it challenging to know what needs to be collected. top flipper bent upward about 20 degrees...in addition to the upper flipper being misaligned, the plunger is faulty, with all three balls in the plunger...mode start not working, ramps do not register (aside from venom ramp). more than half the lights are out on the playfield. piece of clear plastic on left orbit blocking ball from making full orbit, if not bumped drains to right outline everytime. game is so screwed up it's a waste of time to keep listing the ways"

That looks pretty cool, and I imagine it would stand out! i wonder how they intend to use the screen for the game? Just an updated version of the amber matrix display, or more interesting uses? Personally I'd find the most 80's tastic machine I saw, but that's me :D

The Wizard of Oz uses it not just for score, credits, and such, but makes it a full heads-up display and allows you to check on multiple things at once. It also lets them put in more detailed instructions and descriptions of game states. Here's a video demonstrating it.

The monitor, along with the color-changing LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs, makes Oz look like something from the 21st century. As their upcoming Hobbit machine will use a monitor too, and Heighway uses one on both the playfield and the back for Full Throttle and Alien, and Stern has announced they will be switching from DMDs to monitors, I suspect this will be the future.

 

[Award]

I don't see us lose THAT often when we outnumber our opponents, I'd have to say at least some of it must be overconfidence. I always try my best no matter who gets disconnected because I know they can still turn things around. I only really cut back when they're severely behind in Turf War and there's no point in fighting any further.

Yeah, I fight as a normal round regardless of status. I've had my team lose 4v2 matches, so anything can happen. Though I never seem to win 3v4... :p

I see. I would try to go for 100% status where possible. Of the early Sonic games, Sonic CD had the most drawn out ones, with unlockable extras available via its Time Attack. For instance, getting below 25 minutes total for all 21 stages in Time Attack unlocks Visual Mode, which lets you see rough sketches and animatics used during production. If we're talking about complete and total 100% status beyond what you could unlock, Sonic CD would be that too. I never collected all of the Time Stones until I played the remake. Similarly, it took me 12 years after getting Knuckles' Chaotix to complete all of the Special Stages in that game.

Admittedly, I usually don't bother to collect all of the Heart Pieces in Zelda games either, at least not without a guide. I am so glad the Paper Mario games provide in-game hint services for collectible items. In the first game, for instance, there is one character, a fortune teller, to whom you pay a certain number of Coins, depending on the item, and she will tell you exactly where to find it and how to get to it. It'd be hair-pulling otherwise.

Collect-a-thons and "time attack" mutliple objective type things never quite clicked with me, I think because in the early NES days when I started games were very linear and those concepts didn't exist. So I got used to that early in how I approach a game and never transitioned into the "complete the same objective multiple times/ways" concept. These days I'm more aware of it, but I avoid content I see as "padding" or "filler" I'll complete all subquests in an RPG, but not one like Xenoblade where there's so many and they're mostly all redundant fetch time wasters. I'll try to find all the items in Wooly World, but I won't drive myself crazy for every last stamp if I missed them once or twice. And like the Zelda hearts, I never go searching in far flung places just to collect all the "things." Some of that stuff is just annoying how difficult and obscure it can be. In Assassin's Creed games I never "collected all the feathers", or even many of them, but collected all the notes/story/sidequest item based things. I don't like when games drag on without the feeling of real purpose or progression. I guess I can say I complete all the "main" content of a game but not the stuff they added just to pad it out so that there's "something" to do that's new if you want to keep playing. Splatoon's scrolls are "main content" IMO. Only 4 left, then I'll take the final boss and get my Dynamo at last! :D

But what I think is a more pressing barrier of entry is the price. Heighway Pinball's machines begin at $5,000, and they're currently the cheapest option. Stern's machines begin at $6,000. Jersey Jack's begin at $9,000. Dutch's begin at $10,000. John Popadiuk's begin at the mind-blowing $26,000. These prices severely limit who can buy them, and even for operators who can afford lots of them, it's going to take a while to make back that money. In addition, pinball breaks down more easily than other arcade machines (comes with the territory when the purpose is to hit delicate electronics with metal balls) and doesn't have the incentive of winning prizes the way redemption machines like Barber Cut or Key Master have.

There's the factors, cost, space, and appearance. In the heyday of pinball machines it wasn't casinos, hotels, and "multi-use entertainment complexes" (a.k.a movie theaters) that had them, it was pizza shops and delis, and restauraunts, and all kinds of every day places. There's zero justification to buy an expensive machine that yields a slow profit, that by most modern standards is intensely hideously ugly, consumes a lot of floor space, is noisy, and encourages customers to stay when you don't want them to. I don't see it's return unless it becomes a quicker paced "time waster" that looks better and takes less space. Sadly I see "video pinball" a more possible reality in that capacity than real pinball. Especially as everything moves to chains and away from mom&pops where the shop has a pinball machine because the owner simply likes pinball machines. Arcades, theaters, etc, that still have them is probably really where they're going to remain. Technically it was kind of weird they were so widespread when the were though, so who knows. I think Pinball Wizard kind of gave them a few free decades of common acceptance they otherwise wouldn't have had.

Arcades are still around, just in a diminished form and with a different focus. Chuck E. Cheese's is obviously still around, as is Dave & Buster's. Round 1 is an upstart, specializing in import Japanese games and niche western arcade games. They're the only locations with Neon FM machines, for instance, an arcade rhythm game from the people who made the Guitar Hero games, only this one has an EDM flavor. Round 1 is also the first to have Pokkén Tournament machines. These arcades are decidedly NOT seedy and are clean and well-kept. There are still a few seedy arcades around here though. Their pinball is similarly dilapidated. Here's a blurb from Pinball Map regarding the Spider-Man at Family Arcade:

"some burned out lights in playfield make it challenging to know what needs to be collected. top flipper bent upward about 20 degrees...in addition to the upper flipper being misaligned, the plunger is faulty, with all three balls in the plunger...mode start not working, ramps do not register (aside from venom ramp). more than half the lights are out on the playfield. piece of clear plastic on left orbit blocking ball from making full orbit, if not bumped drains to right outline everytime. game is so screwed up it's a waste of time to keep listing the ways"

Yeah, Chuck E. Cheese is possibly the last holdover of the real arcades from the real arcade era. Nasty, dirty, pizza slimy kid haven though it may be, I consider that to still be a genuine leftover/holdout from the real era that managed to endure. The old Bally's chain I mentioned was bought by Namco back in the arcade era and technically Namco-Bandai still owns it but they have I believe all of one location left. Dave & Busters, yeah ,it actually is a real arcade (sort of) with a focus on booze and feel more like an actual casino as a result - but it's legit enough that it's actually the only place that's actually getting the Luigi's Mansion cabinets. Shame they're not much more widespread!

I didn't mean run-down or low budget or anything by "seedy" The Bally's chain was in fact quite high budget and kept pretty meticulously, as you could guess as the outlet for one of the equipment makers themselves. It was seedy by INTENT actaully. The lighting, flooring, etc, all being intentionally cansino-esque to very clearly cater to a crowd that would be seedy, loiter, and ultimately spend more money. It's seedy in the same way any casino with $14M in marble, gold and Waterford crystal in dim lighting is. It's as ritzy as you can get, and as seedy as you can get. (No the arcade was neon & mirrors, not crystal and marble ;) )

Sad to hear about that poor pinball machine. That's the problem with pinball versus any other arcade machine. Not only to they break often not just from hitting metal balls around, but the servo motors and everything else are mechanical and going to break, but they're so finnicky from a leveling standpoint. I love the machines but I can see how to any shop owner, they're such fragile old tech...

The Wizard of Oz uses it not just for score, credits, and such, but makes it a full heads-up display and allows you to check on multiple things at once. It also lets them put in more detailed instructions and descriptions of game states. Here's a video demonstrating it.

Now THAT sounds cool, and something Pinball needed. Did someone say dual screen gaming?

Actually most people don't even know how pinball is played. When I was a kid, I didn't either. I thought the goal was to keep the ball on the field as long as possible. That's what most people thing. Nobody knows there's actual objectives outside the pinball circles (and veteran gamers who had waaay too much wait time to look at machines as a kid in later years), and the LCD screens might be just the ticket to change that.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Collect-a-thons and "time attack" mutliple objective type things never quite clicked with me, I think because in the early NES days when I started games were very linear and those concepts didn't exist. So I got used to that early in how I approach a game and never transitioned into the "complete the same objective multiple times/ways" concept. These days I'm more aware of it, but I avoid content I see as "padding" or "filler" I'll complete all subquests in an RPG, but not one like Xenoblade where there's so many and they're mostly all redundant fetch time wasters. I'll try to find all the items in Wooly World, but I won't drive myself crazy for every last stamp if I missed them once or twice. And like the Zelda hearts, I never go searching in far flung places just to collect all the "things." Some of that stuff is just annoying how difficult and obscure it can be. In Assassin's Creed games I never "collected all the feathers", or even many of them, but collected all the notes/story/sidequest item based things. I don't like when games drag on without the feeling of real purpose or progression. I guess I can say I complete all the "main" content of a game but not the stuff they added just to pad it out so that there's "something" to do that's new if you want to keep playing. Splatoon's scrolls are "main content" IMO. Only 4 left, then I'll take the final boss and get my Dynamo at last! :D

Heh, you can probably tell that I'm the sort of person who loves sidequests, especially if they flesh out the world as they do. That's why Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game. It's mostly world-building via sidequests. You can literally complete the game, from the intro to the end credits, within 90 minutes.

There's the factors, cost, space, and appearance. In the heyday of pinball machines it wasn't casinos, hotels, and "multi-use entertainment complexes" (a.k.a movie theaters) that had them, it was pizza shops and delis, and restauraunts, and all kinds of every day places. There's zero justification to buy an expensive machine that yields a slow profit, that by most modern standards is intensely hideously ugly, consumes a lot of floor space, is noisy, and encourages customers to stay when you don't want them to. I don't see it's return unless it becomes a quicker paced "time waster" that looks better and takes less space. Sadly I see "video pinball" a more possible reality in that capacity than real pinball. Especially as everything moves to chains and away from mom&pops where the shop has a pinball machine because the owner simply likes pinball machines. Arcades, theaters, etc, that still have them is probably really where they're going to remain. Technically it was kind of weird they were so widespread when the were though, so who knows. I think Pinball Wizard kind of gave them a few free decades of common acceptance they otherwise wouldn't have had.

They're still found mostly in pizza restaurants, bowling alleys, movie theaters, and such. The major difference now is the rise of the barcade, a bar that has an arcade built into it. They tend to have retro video game themed names, like "1-Up" and "Another Castle." Namco even has its own chain in the United States, called 257 (named after the final level of Pac-Man--and indeed, both Pac-Man pinball machines are in every location: Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man and the rare Baby Pac-Man).

It depends on the region though. Seattle has them mostly in bars, whereas pinball machines in New York City can be found practically anywhere, with one large collection in a laundromat. Pinball Map is a good resource to find these machines, as well as report machines not listed there. I have added about 15 locations to the Los Angeles area, for instance, and about 50 machines total. When I started adding locations, other people started adding them in at accelerating rates. Due to that I get the impression that pinball, at least in L.A., is the sort of thing people don't realize exists here and there, and what they need is the knowledge that they're there.

But because of their price and large size, peopleput pinball machines in public because they want to do that. Only a fool would do so to earn money. Some L.A. operators are like that though. Modern machines are definitely not ugly though. They do attract attention pretty well. You saw what Oz looks like. Even a modern Stern DMD-based machine still looks rather nice. At least, I think they do.

Yeah, Chuck E. Cheese is possibly the last holdover of the real arcades from the real arcade era. Nasty, dirty, pizza slimy kid haven though it may be, I consider that to still be a genuine leftover/holdout from the real era that managed to endure. The old Bally's chain I mentioned was bought by Namco back in the arcade era and technically Namco-Bandai still owns it but they have I believe all of one location left. Dave & Busters, yeah ,it actually is a real arcade (sort of) with a focus on booze and feel more like an actual casino as a result - but it's legit enough that it's actually the only place that's actually getting the Luigi's Mansion cabinets. Shame they're not much more widespread!

I didn't mean run-down or low budget or anything by "seedy" The Bally's chain was in fact quite high budget and kept pretty meticulously, as you could guess as the outlet for one of the equipment makers themselves. It was seedy by INTENT actaully. The lighting, flooring, etc, all being intentionally cansino-esque to very clearly cater to a crowd that would be seedy, loiter, and ultimately spend more money. It's seedy in the same way any casino with $14M in marble, gold and Waterford crystal in dim lighting is. It's as ritzy as you can get, and as seedy as you can get. (No the arcade was neon & mirrors, not crystal and marble ;) )

Would Dave & Buster's have that kind of seedy look? I'm guessing you mean something different.

By the way, did you know Chuck E. Cheese's was founded, and is still run, by Nolan Bushnell, creator of Pong? If there's one guy who knows the arcade scene very well, it's that guy. He has knowledge on how to run both sides of the arcade business, both making games and how tomake them attractive in public.

For the record, there are some Chuck E. Cheese's here and there with pinball machines. They tend to be family themes, of course, like Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Now THAT sounds cool, and something Pinball needed. Did someone say dual screen gaming?

Actually most people don't even know how pinball is played. When I was a kid, I didn't either. I thought the goal was to keep the ball on the field as long as possible. That's what most people thing. Nobody knows there's actual objectives outside the pinball circles (and veteran gamers who had waaay too much wait time to look at machines as a kid in later years), and the LCD screens might be just the ticket to change that.

Pinball is moving forward and adapting to modern gaming and modern technology in other ways too. Dutch Pinball is going to add in online leaderboards and global events. Operators in the American Northwest (namely Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland) are going to be using near-field communications technology to pay by credit or even by app. And as you can see, every company has abandoned the old, dim, yellow incandescent bulbs and have switched to LEDs, which are brighter, more reliable, cheaper, and cleaner. Color-changing LEDs, in particular, can make something stand out. It is kind of ironic, though, that the pinball machine to move the industry forward is themed on a movie from 1929 though.

Technically, they'd be correct if they just want to keep the ball from draining. You could theoretically beat anybody on any pinball machine as long as you don't drain. But yeah, a lot of people don't know there are rules. Games like The Wizard of Oz make it clear that there are, and I think I'm seeing more people understand that in areas near a public Oz.

 

[Award]

Heh, you can probably tell that I'm the sort of person who loves sidequests, especially if they flesh out the world as they do. That's why Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game. It's mostly world-building via sidequests. You can literally complete the game, from the intro to the end credits, within 90 minutes.

LOL, when it comes to RPGs you and I probably play similarly. I play FOR the sidequests and avoid the main story. When I played TES: Oblivion, I'd played every side quest in the game, BEFORE the skies turned red. Which after I found out that the skies turn red for half the game, and then half the imperial city is in ruins after the campaign, I was very glad I played that way since it would have annihilated the fun in the beautiful thriving world if I did it during/after the campaign. That's just bad design. Games the bore me or drone on with too much grinding/padding I don't play all the side quests. Or games like Xenoblade where it's clear you're not intended to play them all they're there to provide opportunities for money/exp (XBX sounds a little different though...someday....someday I'll be done Splatoon and play it....someday...)

Same with majora. I never had an N64 (I got my Virtual Boy, thought it was the next console, it flopped, and that was that.) so I never played OoT until 3DS. I have my 3DS MM copy....but haven't played it yet...because Splatoon. And It feels like it has a killjoy atmosphere so I want to play it at the right time.

But because of their price and large size, peopleput pinball machines in public because they want to do that. Only a fool would do so to earn money. Some L.A. operators are like that though. Modern machines are definitely not ugly though. They do attract attention pretty well. You saw what Oz looks like. Even a modern Stern DMD-based machine still looks rather nice. At least, I think they do.

Only a gamer and/or pinball fan could find that thing anything but ugly ;) As gamers we have a very different sense of interior decorating than most people. Then again, Nintendolife launched their new hideous unusable layout today. I find it unusable and will probably stop even checking their site. But their comments (if you can find them) feature people heaping praise on the horrid thing, so who knows? :)

Generally, though, coin-ops are added to make money. If they don't make money, that's probably why pinball machines are scarce. :) Floor real estate is VERY expensive, you don't waste it on losing propositions unless it's there to bring in the audience you want to sell something else to.

Would Dave & Buster's have that kind of seedy look? I'm guessing you mean something different.

By the way, did you know Chuck E. Cheese's was founded, and is still run, by Nolan Bushnell, creator of Pong? If there's one guy who knows the arcade scene very well, it's that guy. He has knowledge on how to run both sides of the arcade business, both making games and how tomake them attractive in public.

D&B is a bar-sino. The seedy comes built right in. It's more of a real "casino" though, many locations have real slots & video poker, but no card/dice/roulette tables.

Yep, I did know about Bushnell. As a result, I'm surprised Chuck E. Cheese actually still runs. Bushnell is the man that can almost single highhandedly credited for the Great Video Game Crash, and the near permanent demise of the very concept of video games had Nintendo not salvaged it, and is directly responsible for the creation of and need for the Seal of Quality

And his "creation" of Pong is...well...he paid a guy to clone a game he saw somewhere else with a few tweaks. He's the living model upon which the entire mobile industry is built (and their emulation of his work is the reason they will crash as his did.)

On the other hand he managed to addict kids to junk food in a way that would make Ray Crock worship him as an idol :p

All that said, I'm still glad that Chuck E. Cheese endures as it's truly the last of the genuine old-school arcades, even if it is kid-focused.

. It is kind of ironic, though, that the pinball machine to move the industry forward is themed on a movie from 1929 though.

Technically, they'd be correct if they just want to keep the ball from draining. You could theoretically beat anybody on any pinball machine as long as you don't drain. But yeah, a lot of people don't know there are rules. Games like The Wizard of Oz make it clear that there are, and I think I'm seeing more people understand that in areas near a public Oz.

LOL, very true. It was kind of shocking to hear THAT was the theme of one of the great new machines. I mean it was crazy popuar as a theme....in the 1930s....and 1950s... But I never imagined the "latest in tech" would feature Judy Garland in the credits. :p

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

LOL, when it comes to RPGs you and I probably play similarly. I play FOR the sidequests and avoid the main story. When I played TES: Oblivion, I'd played every side quest in the game, BEFORE the skies turned red. Which after I found out that the skies turn red for half the game, and then half the imperial city is in ruins after the campaign, I was very glad I played that way since it would have annihilated the fun in the beautiful thriving world if I did it during/after the campaign. That's just bad design. Games the bore me or drone on with too much grinding/padding I don't play all the side quests. Or games like Xenoblade where it's clear you're not intended to play them all they're there to provide opportunities for money/exp (XBX sounds a little different though...someday....someday I'll be done Splatoon and play it....someday...)

I'll just say that I never finished Disgaea. The amount of grinding to do in that game is ludicrous even to get to the end of the game. You begin at Level 1 like any other RPG, and the game scales up about five levels gradually with each chapter (and EXP gain is exponential, of course). Once you're two chapters from the end though, the in-game enemies' levels pretty much double, and you have to do a ton of grinding. Then, on the last chapter, they double again.

This is a game where Level 1 characters have single-digit stats, but you can grind so much that you can have levels in the thousands and stats in the millions. This sort of grinding is necessary to defeat optional bosses.

The entire series is like this, and it seems to appeal very well to people who like grinding. Me, I don't have the time or the dedication to do that.

Only a gamer and/or pinball fan could find that thing anything but ugly ;) As gamers we have a very different sense of interior decorating than most people. Then again, Nintendolife launched their new hideous unusable layout today. I find it unusable and will probably stop even checking their site. But their comments (if you can find them) feature people heaping praise on the horrid thing, so who knows? :)

Generally, though, coin-ops are added to make money. If they don't make money, that's probably why pinball machines are scarce. :) Floor real estate is VERY expensive, you don't waste it on losing propositions unless it's there to bring in the audience you want to sell something else to.

Heh, so you didn't like how Game of Thrones Limited Edition looked? I like the shiny glass, framework, artwork, blinking lights, and all.

That being said, what I had in mind was it in a public location. It's hard to find good quality photographs of public pinball though, as they tend to be in dark areas, and people always get blurry pictures, tiny pictures, or something else is wrong. You're focusing on it as a home-pin;I mean the machine itself in a vacuum, or in a place where lots of strangers will pass by.

LOL, very true. It was kind of shocking to hear THAT was the theme of one of the great new machines. I mean it was crazy popuar as a theme....in the 1930s....and 1950s... But I never imagined the "latest in tech" would feature Judy Garland in the credits. :p

I'd bet Oz was chosen as a theme because it's evergreen. By now, it's clear it wasn't some kind of fad that will become irrelevant in a decade. Oz, as a movie, has withstood the test of time. Thus, during production, they could've had as many delays as needed and would not have missed the boat.

Can't say much for Jersey Jack's second game though, The Hobbit. It's been delayed for over three years.

(gameplay starts at 40 seconds in)

 

[Award]

I'll just say that I never finished Disgaea. The amount of grinding to do in that game is ludicrous even to get to the end of the game. You begin at Level 1 like any other RPG, and the game scales up about five levels gradually with each chapter (and EXP gain is exponential, of course). Once you're two chapters from the end though, the in-game enemies' levels pretty much double, and you have to do a ton of grinding. Then, on the last chapter, they double again.

This is a game where Level 1 characters have single-digit stats, but you can grind so much that you can have levels in the thousands and stats in the millions. This sort of grinding is necessary to defeat optional bosses.

The entire series is like this, and it seems to appeal very well to people who like grinding. Me, I don't have the time or the dedication to do that.

Eurgh. Every single thing about that series is just sooo wrong. I know it has huge fans, who absolutely love it and think of it as the best thing since sliced bread. I don't understand why. To me it represents the absolute worst mix of all the worst elements stereotypically Japanese games can get panned for, and fairly so. I don't mean the story or setting or characters. I mean the gameplay, the grinding, the economy and items, the complete lack of focus and obsession with grinding and grinding and grinding on what amounts to the same exact gameplay for endless hours to get anywhere. And the gameplay is too complex on its own to have to sit there grinding through it. Disgaea 3 was my entry point into the series, and after about 2-3 hours with it I ran screaming as fast as I could. And that says something since I'm a Fire Emblem, classic XCom, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri fan. I may suck at Fire Emblem. Badly. But I still love the series. Disgaea....ewww.

It's the fans of games like that that Miyamoto was referring to when he lamented over Japanese gamers not appreciating action games enough and mistakenly referred to them as "pathetic" in what would be the last interview he'll give in English without a translator due to how the press blew up his choice of words after that. In my opinion, his word choice was probably accurate ;)

Heh, so you didn't like how Game of Thrones Limited Edition looked? I like the shiny glass, framework, artwork, blinking lights, and all.

That being said, what I had in mind was it in a public location. It's hard to find good quality photographs of public pinball though, as they tend to be in dark areas, and people always get blurry pictures, tiny pictures, or something else is wrong. You're focusing on it as a home-pin;I mean the machine itself in a vacuum, or in a place where lots of strangers will pass by.

I'm an 80's/90's arcade nerd, of course I love how it looked! :D But most "normal" people would take one look and thing they just walked back into a 90's arcade and not be happy about it. :) Most business owners would not want one near their place of business (unless it's in the corridors of a mall or something.) In "entertainment complexes" they'd fit right in. In the "modern pizza shop" they're no longer seen as inviting. It immediately makes any place appear to be very low class. Which is kind of ironic considering the jaw dropping costs of the things.

I'd bet Oz was chosen as a theme because it's evergreen. By now, it's clear it wasn't some kind of fad that will become irrelevant in a decade. Oz, as a movie, has withstood the test of time. Thus, during production, they could've had as many delays as needed and would not have missed the boat.

Can't say much for Jersey Jack's second game though, The Hobbit. It's been delayed for over three years.

That makes sense. And there are very VERY few things that do NOT become irrelevant in a decade. AND nobody can ever call the machine "dated looking" if it started out that way. It's dated in an ironic hipster way! ;)

I wonder with The Hobbit if there's licensing issues going on. I can't imagine they'd have that much material problem with the table if they're successfully producing Oz.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Eurgh. Every single thing about that series is just sooo wrong. I know it has huge fans, who absolutely love it and think of it as the best thing since sliced bread. I don't understand why. To me it represents the absolute worst mix of all the worst elements stereotypically Japanese games can get panned for, and fairly so. I don't mean the story or setting or characters. I mean the gameplay, the grinding, the economy and items, the complete lack of focus and obsession with grinding and grinding and grinding on what amounts to the same exact gameplay for endless hours to get anywhere. And the gameplay is too complex on its own to have to sit there grinding through it. Disgaea 3 was my entry point into the series, and after about 2-3 hours with it I ran screaming as fast as I could. And that says something since I'm a Fire Emblem, classic XCom, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri fan. I may suck at Fire Emblem. Badly. But I still love the series. Disgaea....ewww.

It's the fans of games like that that Miyamoto was referring to when he lamented over Japanese gamers not appreciating action games enough and mistakenly referred to them as "pathetic" in what would be the last interview he'll give in English without a translator due to how the press blew up his choice of words after that. In my opinion, his word choice was probably accurate ;)

They're for people with a lot of time on their hands and like doing repetitive tasks. But really, most of Nippon Ichi's output is for the hardest of the hardcore of JRPG fans. Most hardcore centers of fandoms are utterly incomprehensible to a normal person like how you describe.

It's like how Japanese fighting games, and by that I mean the ones meant strictly for Japanese players, like the Guilty Gear series, the Melty Blood series, or the School of Ragnarok series, require a comparable amount of dedication to even play competently in and not look like an idiot. Or the guy I encountered one time who, in the span of about two and a half years, logged 10,000 hours of F-Zero GX, nearly all of which was in Time Trials mode. That averages to about 5 hours 30 minutes per day.

It's that sort of person that the Disgaea games are aimed at. They are a niche, but they are a ridiculously dedicated niche. Looking at sales numbers, they are also a very stable niche, which is likely what Nippon Ichi's business strategy leans on.

I'm an 80's/90's arcade nerd, of course I love how it looked! :D But most "normal" people would take one look and thing they just walked back into a 90's arcade and not be happy about it. :) Most business owners would not want one near their place of business (unless it's in the corridors of a mall or something.) In "entertainment complexes" they'd fit right in. In the "modern pizza shop" they're no longer seen as inviting. It immediately makes any place appear to be very low class. Which is kind of ironic considering the jaw dropping costs of the things.

If you haven't looked it up already, give Pinball Map a try. I don't know if you live near any of the regions covered, but Pinball Map is a tool used to find pinball machines in public locations, added in by users. Currently, as far as public locations go, the lion's share are in bars and family entertainment centers. A number of pizza chains have them too, with Round Table Pizza being the most prominent nationwide chain to be likely to have them, but some mom-and-pop pizza places have them too. If you look at the maps for places like Portland, OR or Seattle, WA,they are everywhere. Pinball is a common sight for everybody in these locations.

What makes them a hard sell to operators is not their appearance, but their tendency to break down in ways the operator might not understand or is too expensive to deal with.

That makes sense. And there are very VERY few things that do NOT become irrelevant in a decade. AND nobody can ever call the machine "dated looking" if it started out that way. It's dated in an ironic hipster way! ;)

I wonder with The Hobbit if there's licensing issues going on. I can't imagine they'd have that much material problem with the table if they're successfully producing Oz.

The Wizard of Oz was delayed for way longer than The Hobbit. The delays there were due to unforeseen things that happen with any company's first project. For The Hobbit, rights issues delayed the game for about a year and a half (it was nearly entirely artwork-related--consensus is that the finalized artwork approved by Warner Brothers is way better than any previous one shown). The other year and a half was fine-tuning the game itself. When it was made available to play as a test game around the time An Unexpected Journey came out in theaters, it got a lot of complaints: The rules were unbalanced, there were big unused areas on the playfield, the ball's movements were too floaty, the rules felt incomplete (no duh), the artwork was bad, the game was too easy, the ball had too much horizontal movement etc. Jersey Jack went back and addressed every one of those issues, and now it's finally entered mass production to be distributed to owners.