Pinball Struggles To Survive In A Digital World
For most of the 20th century it seemed that pinball was sort of the ‘cockroach’ of the amusement industry–just too tough and/or too adaptable to kill. It survived wars, economic downturn, moral outrage and most recently video sports meeting . Despite the changing cultural climate, it was still a shock when WMS Industries, the dominant player in the industry for the past decade and the maker of Williams and Bally machines, announced that it was getting out of the business several years ago. WMS wasn’t in any sort of financial peril, but rather they sought after to focus on their more lucrative slot machine and video poker business.
At one top , pinball dominated the arcade. During the mid to late 1970s and on the heels of the movie version of the Who pinball themed rock opera Tommy arcades nationwide featured row upon row of gleaming new machines from one of over a half dozen US manufacturers (with many others made worldwide). The first salvo of the video game industry was honestly innocuous”Pong didnt do much to dent pinballs popularity since it didnt exactly offer the same immersive challenge. Besides, it took two to tango when it came to Pong, so that game and its progeny had more of an impact at the home level (and paved the way for what would become a huge industry). The first challenge to the popularity of the pinball machine in the arcade started with Midways Space Invaders and Ataris Asteroids. These sports meeting could be played alone, and existing the same sort of escapism that pinball provided. For the arcade title-holder , these sports meeting took up less space, required less maintenance, and existing a higher customer turnover.
Pinball hung in there, but , and owing to the early eighties continued to make some solid sports meeting . The ones that come immediately to mind are sports meeting like Firepower (which helped launched the now ubiquitous multi-ball feature), Black Knight (offering an early version of the looping ramps found on many present machines) and a couple of fun machines from Bally Quintessence and Flash Gordon. For awhile, the choice between pinball and video sports meeting was similar to the choice between Pepsi and Coke: both were equally pervasive and it was simply a matter of personal preference.
In the late 1980′s, but , pinball started to lose its way. Gottlieb and others made simple, traditional sports meeting that just couldnt compete with their video counterparts. Bally and other manufacturers went the opposite route”by cramming so much onto a playfield that the game hardly resembled traditional pinball. Some of Ballys late 1980s sports meeting ”with so much playfield gimmickry going on”were nearly unplayable. By this top video sports meeting had taken over the arcade. Some larger arcades continued to offer a few pinball machines to pacify hardcores, while some eliminated pinball altogether.
In the 1990′s, pinball started to experience a bit of a answer driven by well designed, enjoyable sports meeting that irrevocably got the balance between traditional gameplay and present technology right. Williams was at the forefront of the return to exceptional design and gameplay, and its hard to reckon of a Williams game from this period that wasnt a fun game to play, if not a borderline classic. The mainstream media started to notice the renaissance, and noted that the mean pinball machine received much more repeat business than the mean video game and about the devotion of the pinball player.
The final nail in the tomb , but , were a number of societal changes beyond the pinball manufacturers’ control. For one, video sports meeting and video arcades became less profitable as companies like Sony and Nintendo were able to transform a lot of the high end gameplay to the home platform. Fewer people were going to malls, and they werent staying as long when they did. Mega-malls like the Mall of America and the Forum Shops at Caesar’s were the exclusion to this, but there just werent enough to these to sustain demand.
So what now? Stern Pinball is still committed to building new sports meeting , and is starting to get some traction both among retail owners and home collectors. Still, it appears that the only hope for pinball players is that some effort will be made to preserve the machines that already exist. With the capital investment required for a new company to get into the business, its hard to envision any new manufacturers popping up.
Ross Everett is a respected ad hoc novelist experienced in travel, casino gambling and sports handicapping. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for as long as daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, fencing and deep sea diving. He lives in Las Vegas with four dogs and a pet coyote.
