4 ms·

I think the thing that turns me off to pachinko is the lack of flippers. Sure, Medieval Madness and Attack on Mars are essentially the same game, but the music

I think the thing that turns me off to pachinko is the lack of flippers. Sure, Medieval Madness and Attack on Mars are essentially the same game, but the music and table effects are some of what keeps me playing them... Pachinko is just loud and there isn't enough interaction to keep me interested.

toast0 4y ago
Well, the castle is a little bit to the left, and the trolls are in closer and only two of them instead of four martians, but yeah fairly similar, but also different. Taxi and Road Kings are a closer pair, but older, I guess. And then you've got stuff like High Speed and High Speed 2, or Pin-Bot and Jack-Bot. Or Shrek and Family Guy, I think it is?
- syntheweave 4y ago
  There are a lot of reused layouts and "sequels" in pinball, e.g. the three Black Knight games all share the upper playfield concept. El Dorado/Cities of Gold is another such example where there is a slight adjustment. They can still play different just because of rules and manufacturing changes. The AoM/MM layout tends to be called "fan" layout since it resembles a fan outward from the flippers. But then when prompted to define that the forum threads get very long. After all, most shots in pinball are going to be directly off the flippers and therefore will have fan elements - the games that don't respect that tend to be older EMs that emphasize the game-of-chance aspect. I think the main thing making "fan" games feel like that is just in the extensive use of ramps for controlled returns. When the ball returns freely down the playfield it has many possible trajectories, when it goes onto a wireform it rewards you with a clean return every time(barring the ramp shaking loose). So you end up making more of the same shots and you're tested to accurately hit what you know, vs your ability to recover a bad bounce. Drop target games from the 70's like El Dorado present a much different experience since not only are there open bounce trajectories, they change as the targets go down.

toast0 4y ago

Well, the castle is a little bit to the left, and the trolls are in closer and only two of them instead of four martians, but yeah fairly similar, but also different. Taxi and Road Kings are a closer pair, but older, I guess. And then you've got stuff like High Speed and High Speed 2, or Pin-Bot and Jack-Bot. Or Shrek and Family Guy, I think it is?

syntheweave 4y ago
There are a lot of reused layouts and "sequels" in pinball, e.g. the three Black Knight games all share the upper playfield concept. El Dorado/Cities of Gold is another such example where there is a slight adjustment. They can still play different just because of rules and manufacturing changes. The AoM/MM layout tends to be called "fan" layout since it resembles a fan outward from the flippers. But then when prompted to define that the forum threads get very long. After all, most shots in pinball are going to be directly off the flippers and therefore will have fan elements - the games that don't respect that tend to be older EMs that emphasize the game-of-chance aspect. I think the main thing making "fan" games feel like that is just in the extensive use of ramps for controlled returns. When the ball returns freely down the playfield it has many possible trajectories, when it goes onto a wireform it rewards you with a clean return every time(barring the ramp shaking loose). So you end up making more of the same shots and you're tested to accurately hit what you know, vs your ability to recover a bad bounce. Drop target games from the 70's like El Dorado present a much different experience since not only are there open bounce trajectories, they change as the targets go down.