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The keyboard controls are: a LEFT d RIGHT 1 1P 2 2P j FIRE 5 COIN t TILT TILT! I was surprised and amused to see

The keyboard controls are: a LEFT d RIGHT 1 1P 2 2P j FIRE 5 COIN t TILT TILT! I was surprised and amused to see that there's an actual tilt sensor input. I think most people with a passing familiarity with arcade machines know that pinball machines had "tilt" sensors. People would smack, shake, tilt, etc. the tables in an attempt to change the trajectory of the ball. Or, perhaps they just abused them out of frustration. So, there were tilt sensors built into pinball machines that would end your game and light up a "TILT" message if tried those potentially damaging shenanigans. After all, those machines weren't cheap. I had no idea they were built into early solid state games like Space Invaders as well. That's hilarious. I guess people tried jiggling the machines in order to help them avoid the aliens? Or Taito, at least, feared they would?

colejohnson66 5y ago
Were tilt sensors a damage prevention thing? I always assumed it was just an anti-cheat
- toast0 5y ago
  Most pinball machines have two tilt sensors, one is the regular one that, in modern incarnations, chides you for tilting and if you do it too much will end your current ball. There's a second, the slam tilt sensor that mostly detects kicking the coin door, etc, and reboots the machine (ending the whole game and maybe dropping any existing credits)
- spicybright 5y ago
  I'm wondering if it was just "vestigial" from whatever boards they were using. I imagine a pinball machine base overlaps a fair amount with it's coin mechanisms.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  I'm just guessing... I suspect it was damage prevention, much more so than cheating. Cheating only affected the arcade owners if you were cheating on a busy machine, and somehow cheating well enough to actually extend your game. Longer games = less quarters. But, really, how many people were cheating at pinball well enough to extend their games? I think that would take some serious skill. I think most people banging the machines damaged the machines far more often than they extended their games. So I think it was mostly about that.
ahefner 5y ago
The irony of the pinball TILT sensor, at least in my personal experience, is that if you don't understand what the "TILT!" indicator on the backboard means - which childhood me and my aunt, trying to play a game of pinball in probably a Pizza Hut in the late 80s and stymied by a mysterious "TILT" light, clearly did not - is that one might misinterpret it as an instruction to attempt tilting the machine, thereby facilitating exactly the sort of damaging behavior which the malfunctioning sensor was intended to guard against.

colejohnson66 5y ago

Were tilt sensors a damage prevention thing? I always assumed it was just an anti-cheat

toast0 5y ago
Most pinball machines have two tilt sensors, one is the regular one that, in modern incarnations, chides you for tilting and if you do it too much will end your current ball. There's a second, the slam tilt sensor that mostly detects kicking the coin door, etc, and reboots the machine (ending the whole game and maybe dropping any existing credits)
spicybright 5y ago
I'm wondering if it was just "vestigial" from whatever boards they were using. I imagine a pinball machine base overlaps a fair amount with it's coin mechanisms.
JohnBooty 5y ago
I'm just guessing... I suspect it was damage prevention, much more so than cheating. Cheating only affected the arcade owners if you were cheating on a busy machine, and somehow cheating well enough to actually extend your game. Longer games = less quarters. But, really, how many people were cheating at pinball well enough to extend their games? I think that would take some serious skill. I think most people banging the machines damaged the machines far more often than they extended their games. So I think it was mostly about that.

ahefner 5y ago

The irony of the pinball TILT sensor, at least in my personal experience, is that if you don't understand what the "TILT!" indicator on the backboard means - which childhood me and my aunt, trying to play a game of pinball in probably a Pizza Hut in the late 80s and stymied by a mysterious "TILT" light, clearly did not - is that one might misinterpret it as an instruction to attempt tilting the machine, thereby facilitating exactly the sort of damaging behavior which the malfunctioning sensor was intended to guard against.