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Chicago Has Become the Nerve Center of Competitive Pinball

• nthitz 8y ago
  Shameless plug but there is plenty of competitive pinball in the Bay Area as well! Selfie leagues are fun for beginners, you can play at your own pace and snap a selfie of your score and submit it online. There are selfie leagues in San Francisco [1] , Oakland [2] and South Bay [3] But that's just the tip of the iceberg! There's also a more competitive league, the SFPD [4] as well as a fun team league style format [5] It's a great community and there usually ends up being a tournament of some form almost every weekend. [1] https://orangenex.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/san-francisco-super-selfie-league/ https://orangenex.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/san-francisco-sup...? [2] http://oaklandpinballwarriors.com/ http://oaklandpinballwarriors.com/ [3] https://www.facebook.com/BAPASelfieLeague/ https://www.facebook.com/BAPASelfieLeague/ [4] http://sfpins.org/ http://sfpins.org/ [5] http://baybridgepinball.com http://baybridgepinball.com
  • driverdan 8y ago
    To add to your comment there are pinball leagues in most cities now. Even if you haven't played since you were young it's still fun to go check them out.
• centizen 8y ago
  It only makes sense really, Chicago has been the ground zero for pinball since it's inception. Chicago Coin, Stern, Bally, Gottlieb and Genco were all operating out of that area. Stern is still operating today and is the main company pushing competitive pinball.
  • bluedino 8y ago
    Chicago has a ton of coin-op history as well. Midway made games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat there. Is game dev still happening in Chicago?
    • dvtrn 8y ago
      Midway Games is still around actually in its new and evolved form: NeverRealm Games and Mortal Kombat 11 is coming very soon. Their offices are a short bike ride away from where I live on Chicago’s northwest side. Happy to report they’re doing very well and releasing as great of fighter game as they did back in the good ol days :)
    • sct202 8y ago
      Jackbox is in Chicago.
    • cableshaft 8y ago
      Nowhere near as much as it used to be. A lot of companies shuttered and talent left the area a couple of decades ago. Off the top of my head, the main companies that are still in the area are NetherRealm, Wargaming.net, Barbaroga, WMS Gaming, JackBox, Iron Galaxy, and in the suburbs are Raw Thrills, Incredible Technologies, Play Mechanix, and High Voltage. That might be it. Only a few of those companies seem to be actively hiring. Midway closed (and part of it became NetherRealm), there used to be an Electronic Arts office, a Disney Interactive office, Robomodo, Sega was around when they did arcade games, Game Refuge might still exist but it's barely still kicking, Yuke's used to have a satellite office here but that shut down, probably a bunch of others, but nowadays it's difficult to be a game dev and live in Chicago. Part of the reason I'm not in the industry anymore.
  • njepa 8y ago
    > It only makes sense really Surprisingly few places seem to culturally benefit from the presence of companies. But I guess selling heavy equipment for public use helps.
• tptacek 8y ago
  We also have (I believe) the largest arcade in North America, at Galloping Ghost, which includes a bunch of pinball tables and also that terrible hologram time travel game from the early 1990s.
  • vanadium 8y ago
    Correct. And it has _both_ terrible holographic Sega games. Galloping Ghost Pinball just opened up the other week down the block a bit. Can't wait to see the new Stern tables at the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee this weekend.
  • korethr 8y ago
    And here I was, beginning to think I had imagined that (incredibly cool looking) thing into which I sank far too many tokens trying to understand what the hell I was supposed to even do.
  • jandrese 8y ago
    There was apparently a home version of that hologram game. It has a dubious honor. The DVD version of the game was the only title to receive a 0/10 score from Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine.
  • honkycat 8y ago
    Logan Arcade has become a mecca for pinball/arcade enthusiasts as well. I always maintain it is the best bar in Chicago, and EASILY the best arcade bar. edit: arcade/video games instead of pinball/arcade.
    • tehwebguy 8y ago
      Plus, Killer Queen!
      • SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
        I was at my local arcade and I was lucky enough to come across a group of friends that met up every week to play Killer Queen. They had the full 10 people and someone asked me if I wanted to sub in while they went for a beer. One of the most exciting arcade experiences I’ve had in a long time. You get 10 people hunched over that game and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen or done before.
• Animats 8y ago
  Chicago was always the center. Stern is the successor to Chicago Coin and Williams, having bought up the assets of those companies in bankruptcy.
  • subway 8y ago
    The history of Stern is a little crazy. Sam Stern founded Stern Electronics with the assets from Chicago Coin and Seeburg. Seeburg had previously owned Williams, but spun it off into its own company when Seeburg went bust. Sam Stern had manged the Williams division, but didnt get the assets to it when Seeburg went under. Stern Electronics went under in the 80s and folks ended up at Data East, then Sega. Eventually Sega got out of pinball and sold the assets to Gary Stern, Sam's son, to form Stern Pinball. This was about the same time Williams got out of pinball, and I think their assets ended up at a German company.
    • joezydeco 8y ago
      Pretty good synopsis, but a few things: Gary Stern started Data East Pinball with the remains of Chicago Coin (and then ripped off the electronic design from Williams). DE did indeed become Sega and then became Stern in 1994. Williams shut their pinball division down in 1999 and the assets have been licensed out to various entities in the 20 years since. The remaining slot machine company (WMS Industries) was purchased by Scientific Games in 2013. SGI also owns...wait for it... the remains of Bally Gaming.
• olivermarks 8y ago
  http://www.goldenstatepinball.org http://www.goldenstatepinball.org Next month in Lodi California http://www.caextreme.org http://www.caextreme.org San Jose
• reificator 8y ago
  Yeah, but can anyone compete with that deaf, blind, and dumb kid? https://youtu.be/4AKbUm8GrbM https://youtu.be/4AKbUm8GrbM On a serious note, I played a lot of pinball growing up, it'd be nice to find some old favorites and new tables to play on. My family actually fixed up pinball machines/arcade cabinets and resold them while I was growing up, so we had a bunch of them in the house. If I had the space, and demand was still there, I'd probably have started doing it myself by now.
  • jacobush 8y ago
    Demand is there
    • reificator 8y ago
      Perhaps. It wasn't in my area last I checked, but that was a few years ago. Space, however, is not there anymore. I have more space than I strictly need, but certainly not enough for cabinets and pinball tables.
• subway 8y ago
  Chicago has nothing on Seattle (OK, except for a manufacturer, and the Sharpe brothers promoting pinball). Monday Night Pinball in Seattle now has 26 teams with 10 players each, plus a massive pool of substitute players. We've grown to the point of splitting into upper and lower divisions with promotion and relegation. https://www.mondaynightpinball.com https://www.mondaynightpinball.com And that's just one weekly event. There are a ton of events: http://www.skill-shot.com/calendar http://www.skill-shot.com/calendar
  • debatem1 8y ago
    I was about to say, the size of the pinball scene in Seattle is unbelievable. Two of the top ten ranked players in the world live here, and probably 10 more of the top 100. That's versus 3 in the top 100 for Chicago.
    • subway 8y ago
      Since the start of 2018 those numbers have gone down quite a bit, mostly due to the shake out of "dollar gate", leading to some of the popular local tournaments no longer reporting results to the IFPA. Despite the local rankings dropping a bit, it feels like the community has grown drastically.
  • tjr225 8y ago
    Huh- a few hours ago I was just playing some pinball at my local watering hole and noticed a zine on top of the change machine promoting Seattle's pinball scene!
• joshdance 8y ago
  I read this as paintball and got excited. Pinball is still cool.
• meruru 8y ago
  How does pinball even have enough depth, with such simple controls, to sustain a competitive scene?
  • asark 8y ago
    As far as depth, it's largely sequences. Most machines past the very early ones have tons and tons of sequences of actions you're trying to take—hit that ramp three times, then drop the ball in that hole over there, then the door opens, put the ball through that hole three times, skill shot, now such-and-such mode starts, complete it, now you've completed the first of eight parts of the machine's "story" or whatever. So you have any of several sequences available at a time, offering different possibilities (advance toward multiball, set up a multiplier or bonus for a later ball or even a later game[!], go for some really high-scoring combo, activate extra ball, one or more "story" lines of actions to complete at any time, and so on). You might go for high score, you might go for "finishing" the story, some personal challenge ruleset. It'll affect what you're trying to do. But it's also a hand-eye coordination game, and one of carefully physically manipulating the machine to bump the ball this way and that, so things don't always go as planned and you're thinking of contingency shots, or just trying to get the ball back under control, or shooting it one place because you need it to be somewhere else to make some other shot. Most machines have some tricks to discover. Intentionally "flub" your plunger shot at the right time on Addams Family to lock a ball for multiball in The Swamp, for instance. Better to wait out some mode to technically complete it rather than trying to do what it wants for extra points, because it requires some risky shots or puts the ball on a part of the table that carries a high risk of a hard-to-stop drain. That kind of thing. Plus stuff you just have to figure out by lore (hold the ball for a bit to stop temporarily stop The Power long enough for one shot on Addams Family, say). Then there's the feel. Every machine's different. Some have great flow (and that might vary by player), some have awesome theme, some have an incredible melding of theme and play—take Black Knight and its sequel, Black Knight 2000, in which you're "dueling" the Black Knight, which is both a fictional robber-knight and the machine itself, which taunts you ("give me your money!"), with the board structured such that you're on the "offense" when the balls on the elevated, upper playfield with a secondary flipper, and "defense" when it's on the lower board and at risk of draining, but that's not explicit, it's just a natural result of the theme and board design coming together. So, for competition: physical skill, thinking on your feet, planning, knowing and having your shot timing down for the particular machine. And you can still have an "on" day or an "off" day, just like anything else. I'd put it up there in complexity with your average competitive FPS, certainly. Shares a lot in common, in fact. Plus, even on machines where the two flipper buttons are the only useful inputs when the ball's in play, they don't always only control flippers. Watch the lights :-)
• KingFelix 8y ago
  I am pumped for the new Black Knight sword of rage, my local pinball bar is getting one.
• ada1981 8y ago
  I did a road trip back in 2003 with my Ultimate Frisbee coach and we stopped in Chicago to visit his old CMU Roomate, Wes. Wes was a pinball engineer at Stern and took us to the factory late night and we played games for hours. My coach and Wes were extremely impressive players — they would put in a quarter and walk away hours later with dozens of free games racked up on the machine. One of my favorite memories from my early twenties.
• Mtinie 8y ago
  “Belsito is hunched over the game. He’s just shot the right orbit, and if he can hit all the major shots to fill Deadpool’s chimichanga punch card, he’ll be able to fight the T. rex for a chance to shoot the scoop and win the mode, bringing him one step closer to a Mechsuit Multiball. And then all hell will break loose—in the machine and on the scoreboard. He’s engaged in a rare three-way-tiebreaker to advance to the next round—one step closer to pinball glory, a championship belt, and $2,500. Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies is helping with play-by-play commentary and the room smells a little like a middle school gym class.” My inner (and outer) nerd loves everything about this paragraph. I’ve never played a Deadpool machine but with my moderate knowledge of the comic and my past experiences playing other pinball games I can imagine in my mind’s eye what the sequence looks like. Kudos to Lindsey Quinn.
• trw999 8y ago
  I wonder what the average age is for the people competing and if the sport will go through a generational crisis as the people who presumably grew up with pinball die off.