Friday, February 24, 2012

I AIN'T SEEN NOTHING LIKE HIM:  R.I.P. Chicago's Steve Kordek, 100, whose pinball innovations include the two-flipper pinball machine (1948), drop target (1962), and multiball mode (1963).  As he explained to the Trib in 2009, "The secret to designing a good game is to attract the player, What attracts a player, first, is the pictures on the backglass of the game. Second, if what he sees on the play field is different, that's a success. And when the features are so exciting that he wants to put more money in it, you've got him."

20 comments:

  1. <span>I love pinball. In my fantasy house I would have a pinball machine and a skee ball machine. It's possible that my fantasy house is a </span><span>nickel</span><span> arcade.</span>

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  2. Eric J.10:19 AM

    All time favorite pinball machines?

    Fireball II
    Black Knight

    and I have a soft spot for the oversized Hercules game.

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  3. isaac_spaceman10:42 AM

    Black Knight is awesome.  In Alameda, about 15-20 minutes from my house, is the Pinball Museum, where for $10 adult or $5 per kid, you can play unlimited pinball on maybe 200 machines from the advent of pinball to the present.  Everything from single-flipper games with Central Park picnic scenes (scores change in increments of one or five) to things with holographic video built in (Mars Attacks!). 

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  4. Lethal Weapon 3
    Addams Family
    Demolition Man
    Black Knight

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  5. Marsha11:05 AM

    I love pinball, but the only time I get to play any more is the rare trip to Chuck E Cheese with the kids. My favorite machine I've ever played is called Cyclone - had a Coney Island roller coaster theme, and I loved it. There was a Cyclone machine in the basement of our student union in college and I missed many a bus because I had to play just one more game.

    Ditto on Addams Family -that's a great one. And SkeeBall!!!! That's the other thing I do at Chuck E Cheese. Lots of SkeeBall.

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  6. isaac_spaceman11:19 AM

    They have Cyclone at the Pinball Museum.  It's really hard.  You have to get up into the Cyclone on both sides to get the bonus, and the giant clown head is pretty distracting.

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  7. Cyclone was my hands-down favorite back in my pinball-playing days.  Addams Family was a really good one, too.

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  8. Pinball Construction Set, FTW!  Ah, the three-ball-stacker.

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  9. Trivia that I did not know before now: that's The Pointer Sisters singing.

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  10. gtv20001:22 PM

    I played a lot of pinball in college in the 70's, the last of the full electromechanical machines - no LED scores, no IC's, no recorded sounds, just the score rollers and all relays and stepping switches and bells.  I bought a 1976 Williams Grand Prix a while back and got it working completely.  However having only one machine to play repeatedly got kind of old and I sold it.  Plus, those things are HEAVY to move around.

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  11. Adam C.1:26 PM

    Yep - it's on the Songs from the Street box set (which is a pretty good collection overall).

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  12. Jenn.1:57 PM

    One trip to Chuck E. Cheese was plenty for me.  Ugh.

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  13. Eric J.3:53 PM

    Have not thought about that in decades. Remember when Electronic Arts was just about the coolest, consumer-friendliest software company imaginable? (Well, they were probably behind Beagle Bros. and Infocom, but still.)

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  14. Marsha5:56 PM

    @Isaac - it is hard. The hard is what makes it good.

    @Jenn - Chuck E. Cheese is awful, but when you've been at the grandparents' house for a week in the winter, it's a good way to get some yayas out. And I get to play SkeeBall.

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  15. Marsha5:58 PM

    Just think about this song the next tiem someone tells you that children's music has to be dumbed down. There's some complex jazz chord structure going on in there.

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  16. BEAGLE Brothers!  Also, Activision.  And Broderbund.

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  17. Eric J.8:28 PM

    If you're feeling nostalgic: http://beagle.applearchives.com/

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  18. isaac_spaceman11:37 AM

    Oh, Broderbund.  The original Prince of Persia.  And didn't they publish Myst?   

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  19. Maria8:41 AM

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