8 ms·

Ask HN: Why is there no modern successor to the 3D Pinball games of yesteryear?

• relwin 3y ago
  Maybe a hybrid approach using Tilt Five headsets https://www.tiltfive.com/ https://www.tiltfive.com/ . Easy to retheme a playfield, and your friends can watch in 3D as well.
• PurpleRamen 3y ago
  Pinball is boring and old school by todays standard, so not much money is made with modern pinball-games. And not enough money being made, means not many have enough resources and motivation to invest into a high end-implementation. And high end-cards like the 4090 have not that units around either, so the market is even smaller. Though, you probably don't need high end-cards and big money for a high end-pinball today. Maybe just some motivated well skilled small team would be enough?
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  There is this https://store.steampowered.com/app/547590/Pinball_FX2_VR/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/547590/Pinball_FX2_VR/ but it's getting old but it is out for the quest https://www.meta.com/experiences/1995306573932043/ https://www.meta.com/experiences/1995306573932043/ like it or not the quest is the mainstream of VR, I kept away from it because I didn't want to log in with a Facebook account but I am likely to get a Quest 3to support 3D software development, stereogram viewing and stuff like that.
  • eigenvalue 3y ago
    Yeah I mean my interest is less in having a fun arcade game and more in having a ridiculously realistic complex simulation that really leverages the modern marvel that is current gen GPUs.
• baldgeek 3y ago
  Visual Pinball and Future Pinball are keeping digital pinball alive from a emulation/simulation perspective. Pinball FX is a commercial answer.
• necovek 3y ago
  I don't see it being hugely popular considering real life pinball machines are not so ever present in game arcades (now dominated by computer games).
  • eigenvalue 3y ago
    Yeah I guess this would be more in the domain of those demos that Nvidia used to release with every new generation of Geforce card back in the day highlighting the new features. But I do think it could have a lot of educational value (especially if it were open source).
• phreezie 3y ago
  We're working on something like that using Unity[1]. It's nice, because contrarily to the commercial platforms, we don't need to support low-end devices like the switch. And yes, the DXR features will make a difference[2] (sorry, I don't have a more recent video). Concerning physics, we're using VPX's engine, which is very well tuned to pinball. Not sure if the breaking the glass is going to be a thing, but PR welcome if you think so. ;) [1] https://github.com/freezy/VisualPinball.Engine https://github.com/freezy/VisualPinball.Engine [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CfZImFl1ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CfZImFl1ME
  • karaterobot 3y ago
    Wow, that looks really good!
  • xattt 3y ago
    So would this be extended to physical cabinets with flipper buttons?
    • phreezie 3y ago
      Absolutely, that's the main goal. I've built my cabinet over 10 years ago, so testing is assured. ;)
      • cududa 3y ago
        For a physical build, just curious if you've thought about integrating something like OpenTrack to track head/ eye position of the player and modify the camera position - to make the table look even more real when it's in a physical cabinet?
        • MegaDeKay 3y ago
          Support for something like this already exists for Visual Pinball thanks to BAM. Use a Kinect V2 for best results. https://www.ravarcade.pl/ https://www.ravarcade.pl/
        • 3y ago
• mikepurvis 3y ago
  The class of games that "PC Pinball" fell into has been subsumed by mobile games— the criteria fit in terms of small numbers of inputs, ease of learning, friendliness to short play sessions, and over the top graphics/scoring/progression. Even if Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Flight Control, Subway Surfer, Candy Crush, Temple Run, and their thousands of descendants are not anything like actual pinball-based games, I expect that they're occupying much of the mindspace that would be filled by pinball in the market. Even indie games trying to do pinball-y things are having to build considerably on the formula to make a "big" enough game, eg turning it into a Metroidvania a la Yoku's Island Express.
  • FreezerburnV 3y ago
    A more niche mobile Pinball game that I like (gacha game with surprising complexity) is called World Flipper. It does exactly what you said: Builds a lot on standard pinball with RPG elements and party building. The unfortunate reality is that it's a pretty simplistic "pinball" and that framing for the game takes a heavy backseat to all the other things it's doing. I'd personally love a game that leans more heavily into being a pinball game but still having the really nice complexity of what World Flipper offers.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• atum47 3y ago
  I was watching a video [1] about pinball machines the other day and thought about creating a pinball using my "physics engine" [2]. I was able to create a simple billiards [3] game using it. I've been pretty busy with work and other personal projects, but I've been meaning to get back to program for fun. 1 - https://youtu.be/ue-1JoJQaEg?si=hlZxp2yI-BSTYmOY https://youtu.be/ue-1JoJQaEg?si=hlZxp2yI-BSTYmOY 2 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/sphereCollision https://github.com/victorqribeiro/sphereCollision 3 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fingerPool https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fingerPool
  • djmips 3y ago
    I find it difficult to get a sufficient velocity in the pool game to enjoy.
    • atum47 3y ago
      The force is based on how fast you drag the cue ball
      • djmips 3y ago
        I know. But that didn't work for me. I could never get it to drag fast enough.
        • atum47 3y ago
          In the words of AI Trump: Skill Issue.
  • eigenvalue 3y ago
    Hah! That video was the inspiration for my post. Great Youtube channel.
• CSSer 3y ago
  I just realized that a pinball game with Sony Dualsense support (or similar, I’m not sure about Microsoft controllers) would also be pretty amazing simply because of the haptic triggers.
• IvyMike 3y ago
  No expert, but someday I hope to build a full-on digital pinball machine inspired by Jeff Atwood's blog post a few years ago: https://blog.codinghorror.com/your-digital-pinball-machine/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/your-digital-pinball-machine/ For software he mentions both https://store.steampowered.com/app/238260/Pinball_Arcade https://store.steampowered.com/app/238260/Pinball_Arcade and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball . They both looked quite good even back in 2016. Not sure how they've aged.
  • t0mas88 3y ago
    About the GPU: > but I plan to play only fully 3D pinball sims and the 1050 Ti gets excellent reviews for $140, so I went for it That's $ 450+ for the 4050 Ti now...
• Apreche 3y ago
  Try some Zen Pinball (especially the Star Wars tables) on a big iPad.
• gjsman-1000 3y ago
  Windows used to come with so many cute games that my family (and kids who couldn't afford video games) loved. I spent so much time on Inkball for Windows Vista; my siblings loved Purble Place and Chess Titans. Windows Vista and 7 were peak in that regard. Then with Windows 8, no more fun allowed.
  • sumtechguy 3y ago
    what was more annoying was the version check they added in so many of them would not even run in newer versions.
  • bluedino 3y ago
    A little further back, us kids loved DOS shareware games like Epic Pinball (yes, that Epic) https://www.mobygames.com/game/263/epic-pinball/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/263/epic-pinball/
• GuB-42 3y ago
  My guess is that most of the people who are interested in pinball mostly enjoy the clunky parts. Maybe for these virtual pinball tables that use a screen instead of an electromechanical table, but with all sorts of stuff to give some tactile feedback and actual mechanical sounds. There are typically accelerometers and tilt sensors in there too, so you can bump the machine and the software simulates the effect on the ball.
• sshine 3y ago
  I’d look at retro fantasy consoles: PICO-8: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php WASM-4: https://wasm4.org/ https://wasm4.org/
• hnlmorg 3y ago
  I think the main reason is simply because most people buying and playing games these days haven’t grown up around physical pinball machines. So there isn’t the same demand for virtual tables like there once was. I’m not saying the market is zero though, but small enough that even most indie studios wouldn’t see any profit.
• PurelyApplied 3y ago
  I don't know anything about markets or why things trend certain ways, but I am an avid pinball player. In fact, as I write this, I've traveled halfway across the country to attend the Chicago Pinball Expo with a buddy of mine. I note that Full Tilt! released in what is often referred to as The Dark Ages of Pinball. There was a slump there in the 90s where every manufacturer of pinball tables folded, except for Stern, and they subsisted on making a pretty thin, bog standard sequence of tables. Pinball would resurge in the mid-to-late '00s. I think the 90s was a moment where there was a group of people who enjoyed pinball, but it was hard to find venues that took care of tables. You certainly weren't getting very cool new tables every year. Full Tilt may have filled that gap. Nowadays, you can just look up your area on pinballmap.com and find tables near you. That wasn't an option in the 90s. If you didn't know of an arcade with good tables, your only option was digital. Stern releases a new, awesome, KME-designed table every year or two. Multiple other manufacturers have emerged to answer the increasing demand. A new company just announced a Labyrinth that I am so, so stoked to try. Personally, I don't much care for digital pinball. The physical nature of the game is core to it. The simulated nudging doesn't do it for me. The consistent kickouts on many virtual pinball tables makes it a bit samey. I think they're great for learning and internalizing the rulesets of classic tables, and certainly there are things that a digital medium can do that the physical medium just can't. That's just my two cents.
  • jxramos 3y ago
    Neat website, what's your take on the virtual pinball cabinets that try to simulate some of the physical behavior of the real thing? Can you elaborate on the "samey" point? stuff like this guy's build https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxilHoceiNo&list=PLrqlHbqP7FIO5P8e8HtrBB01xqQtAWpJ5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxilHoceiNo&list=PLrqlHbqP7F...
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• acomjean 3y ago
  Called "vitrual pinball" where the playfield has been replaced with a screen. I've heard about this but never played on. There are little virtual desktop units, some people have taken old pinball machines and retrofitted them. https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualpinball/ https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualpinball/ they sell pre builts. I can't attest to the quality. https://www.amazon.com/Multiple-Games-Licensed-Invaders-Bluetooth/dp/B0BN285THC/ref=asc_df_B0BN285THC/ https://www.amazon.com/Multiple-Games-Licensed-Invaders-Blue... edit: apparently there is kinda like "MAME" for pinball. Its called "Visual Pinball". Its a pinball emulator and people make tables for it. A world I didn't know existed.. "Simulates pinball table physics and renders the table with DirectX or OpenGL" And its on github. https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball A website thats mostly forums. https://vpuniverse.com/ https://vpuniverse.com/ "VPUniverse is a site dedicated to digital pinball simulations and anything pinball in general. Our primary focus is on Digital Pinball formats including Visual Pinball, Future Pinball, and many more pinball simulators. All content is provided on this site for free to all registered members."
  • mrandish 3y ago
    The open source "Visual Pinball" engine is pretty amazing and also constantly improving with an active community of artists and devs releasing new 3D pinball tables nearly every week for free. I have a virtual pinball cabinet with a dedicated PC driving the playfield screen and I love it. The quality of the visuals and the precision of the physics are impressively good (and I have real pinball machines next to it to compare). The quality and capabilities of the entire platform (especially physics) have greatly accelerated just in the last couple years so I highly recommend sticking to the latest version of Visual Pinball called VPX and tables made (or updated) specifically for it - of which there are now hundreds. Visual Pinball is the visual rendering and scripting engine that runs on top of PinMAME, which is based on MAME, and dedicated to emulating the ROMs, inputs, lights, etc of real pinball machines. As far as the ROM code knows, it's running on real hardware and connected to physical solenoids, relays, switches and lights. Visual Pinball turns all the outputs into real-time rendered visuals. All the best real pinball machines have been lovingly recreated by the community and there are a growing number of entirely original virtual pinball tables being released which never existed as physical machines. On a graphics card from the last three-ish years or so, VPX can render 120fps 4K HDR and beyond. It's easy to download everything necessary for free to try it out on any decent PC with just a keyboard or USB game controller, although adding some dedicated pinball controls does elevate the experience to another level. Another good site in addition to the ones you mentioned above is https://www.vpforums.com https://www.vpforums.com. Additional Note: ROM code from real commercial pinball machines falls into the same legal gray area as MAME video game ROMs and thus aren't bundled with the open source engines. However, full ROM sets are downloadable from the same kinds of places (torrents, www.archive.org, community sites, etc.)
• sjducb 3y ago
  Check out the Japanese Pachinko machines. Pachinko is massive in Japan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko
• ggggggggaaa 3y ago
  I could imagine pinball machines would be a good use for VR, but honestly I wouldn't enjoy playing ultra-realistic-looking pinball on a TV. What's the point? I can't bump the machine. I can't change my perspective to view the machine from different angles.
• MegaDeKay 3y ago
  Start here. The latest nFozzy physics is very good, there is VR support or simulated 3D with anaglyph glasses, you can do head tracking via Kinect2, build your own dot matrix display with Hub75 Panels and drive it with ZeDMD, have animated backglasses on a second monitor, etc etc etc. https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball Historically this has been windows only but support for Linux, MacOS, Android in work and shaping up very nicely. https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball/blob/standalone/standalone/README.md https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball/blob/standalone/standal... Then check out the incredible multitude of tables for it here. Some of these are phenomenal: https://virtual-pinball-spreadsheet.web.app/ https://virtual-pinball-spreadsheet.web.app/ And then when you decide you want to build your own table, you go here. But be careful, it is a slippery slope, and before you know it, you're buying a 42" OLED TV for a display and a pretty capable gaming PC to run the show http://mjrnet.org/pinscape/BuildGuideV2/ http://mjrnet.org/pinscape/BuildGuideV2/
  • Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    How is the VR support? I'm lucky to live near a huge pinball spot but it's 20 min away from me. I'd love to play pinball in VR.
    • MegaDeKay 3y ago
      I don't have a VR setup but my understanding is it is really good. Best to check out the Visual Pinball Discord where there is a channel dedicated to VR. https://discord.gg/B7pG7pRD https://discord.gg/B7pG7pRD
• Kapura 3y ago
  Two points: 1) PC Pinball games have basically been done to the platonic ideal, unless you're intent on recreating something in like VR which would truly change the experience. The reason PC pinball games emerged early is because the physics of a solid, heavy sphere of uniform density are pretty well known from classical mechanics. The fact that a ball is a sphere means that it can be rendered as a circle, and the fact a pinball machine can be rendered entirely without the need for 3D processing means that you can build a large degree of fidelity into that physical simulation. Adding more 3D gimmicks or raytracing BS does not improve the core pinball experience (and is more likely to detract, truth be told). 2) The market for a "high-fidelity PC pinball" game is not large enough to justify development costs. A 3D game is significantly more complex than a 2D game. A modern AAA game has artists specialized down to making materials that other artists can then put onto geometry. All these people need to eat and pay rent in order for the game to exist, and it's a hard sell to get people to pay $40+ for a pinball game when the platonic ideal has existed from the 90s.
  • wincy 3y ago
    Even in VR, there’s already an excellent VR pinball game on the Meta VR store with fantastic pinball machines. You can buy new machines as DLC and put them in your virtual arcade. I think Pinball FX? I guess the ultimate step there will be the introduction of this to augmented reality, where you can have a box where the front looks like a pinball machine and it just projects the image over it.
    • Kapura 3y ago
      Then it's just... a worse pinball machine. A pinball machine without the charm of mechanical engineering or physical craftsmanship.
      • reaperman 3y ago
        My favorite pinball game machine costs $7,000. https://sternpinball.com/game/deadpool/ https://sternpinball.com/game/deadpool/ I won't be buying that any time soon, but I can absolutely grab a $20 pinball simulator for my $300 VR headset.
• proee 3y ago
  Adding Virtual Aquariums from the early 2000s to this list. When those came out I was mind blown! Today, I haven't seen much better. Would be cool for someone to create a "push-the-boundaries" virtual aquarium that can be played on a large format display. (Maybe it's just easier to pull up a youtube video of a fishtank on a 6 hour loop.)
• aardvark179 3y ago
  Flipnic came out, and what could ever truly top it?
• hitpointdrew 3y ago
  All the kids that played the Pinball game that came with Windows have grown up, become hipsters, got jobs, now have a little money, and either build their own pinball machines made with LCD screens, or have legit old retro machines. There are expo's and stuff, people love this shit. In pinball there is a real strong connection to a physical (either with LCD, or mechanical) machine, it just isn't nearly as good on a computer, phone, tablet or in VR.
• adamrezich 3y ago
  pinball in general is long overdue for a resurgence in popularity. lots of indie games today are becoming more arcadey and pinball-like in many ways, if you squint. in many ways, pinball is the original "roguelite"—I fully expect indie pinball (both in video game form and even in physical form) to take the scene by storm, any day now, as soon as someone makes the Vampire Survivors of pinball games.
  • mrandish 3y ago
    > pinball in general is long overdue for a resurgence in popularity. It is already surging to the moon. In the last three years prices for good, used pinball machines have roughly doubled and many newly built machines are sold-out and on back-order. They simply can't make them fast enough. These days you're lucky if you can find a new one at only MSRP. My wife fell in love with the new Stern Godzilla pinball and we finally just got it after a year and a half on the waiting list (and it cost >$10k).
• rvba 3y ago
  Oh you brought memories of playing Slam Tilt (which just had great design) and 3d ultra pinball creep night (not that great, but nice music). I wonder why games like "where is my water" disappeared. It is probably one of the best mobile games.
• ashbee 3y ago
  Visual Pinball X [1] is a free modern pinball simulator. It also supports VR, and comes pretty close to feeling like the real thing (sans realistic bumping). There are hundreds of VPX format tables available online including original works, replicas of physical tables and replicas of existing digital tables. I've played dozens of hours of Stern's Tron Legacy both on a physical table and in Visual Pinball X, and I prefer VPX over the real thing. There's also a high quality remake of 3D Space Cadet [2] available. Playing that one in VR feels like stepping into a PC in the 90s. [1] https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball [2] https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16091 https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16...
• kkaranth 3y ago
  There's a really fun game from 2018 called Yoku's Island Express where the core mechanic is pinball-like. It's a 2d side scroller, looks gorgeous
• ericskiff 3y ago
  I've got a virtual pinball machine standing next to me running Visual Pinball X - it's a fun hobby finding and setting up new tables on it. It's also worth noting that Zen Studios is best known for Pinball FX which is available in various flavors for just about every platform. https://zenstudios.com/games/pinball-fx/ https://zenstudios.com/games/pinball-fx/ Good for a casual pickup on your xbox or ipad or whatever you like, and they put a lot of effort into their tables, although it can be pricey to buy a lot of them.
• paxys 3y ago
  There are plenty of new pinball games released on Steam every year.
• syntheweave 3y ago
  It would be that hard to do. The state of the art is currently represented by Visual Pinball and Pinball FX. The first is open source and relies all on homebrew content, and most are remakes of existing games as you would expect, with MAME software emulation for the digital games. The software package contains a painful, CAD-like tool to define the playfield - very precise but hard to work with. You can make a new playfield in probably a month of effort, and then tinker with the game's rules for much longer. The second, Pinball FX(which dropped the numbered titles in its fourth version), has a mix of licenses and originals, and which it's definitely become more accurate, the goal is primarily a visual showcase. It already pressures a modern GPU reasonably well when you crank the settings. Neither one is doing anything to push the physics simulation further. Visual Pinball's physics rely on analytic methods for each mechanism, and while it has little details like computing the movement of the skirt on the pops as the ball rolls over them, it does not simulate whole-table vibrations, which are actually essential to gameplay because control is achieved through nudging the entire cabinet. And there's a huge realm of details that emerge from that where thousands of physics objects, down to the individual screw, need to wake up and interact in very fine detail, and the force creates a directed wave across the playfield, the wood needs to be able to wobble a bit. Adding a force to the ball is not sufficient. And actually achieving that means you now have to model everything the game has, including the insides, which is far more work than a playfield and magic mechanisms. Pinball FX is not open source but I already know it isn't trying to be that detailed either. But when you ask the broader audience about pinball video games, they point at Demon's Tilt. Which is not even trying, as far as the simulation goes - it is a video game, through and through. The problem is that broad demographic isn't really there because people who don't play pinball don't know the difference, and the niche of people who do, go play real pinballs. Which leaves a tiny space for roughly three or four companies that are focused mostly on licenses. Of those, the pinball video game I play the most is Pinball Deluxe Reloaded, which is all originals, but most importantly, it's intentionally 2D and ideal for phones. And the sim quality is decent. And just by doing those things, it's done something none of the competition achieved, even in their mobile ports, because they put the sim first and have a 3D camera and no way of getting a simple flat projection.
• keithnz 3y ago
  There is virtual pinball.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0DXlcbVsWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0DXlcbVsWg
• mrrsm 3y ago
  There are options where you can buy a full pinball cabinet [0] that is 100% virtual. There are fairly large communities around virtual pinball using future pinball [1] and virtual pinball [2] as the emulators. The community has gone very far in adding details into the tables as well as making VR tables as well. [0] https://virtuapin.net/ https://virtuapin.net/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Pinball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Pinball [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball
• PeterisP 3y ago
  I think part of the reason is a whole generation of people for whom a realistic simulation of how nudging the entire cabinet causes vibrations and wobble would be an anti-feature, because they aren't intuitive to the current majority of gamers who have never ever handled a physical pinball machine, and they would rather mechanics that are more visual and less tactile, focusing on the gameplay that can be fully represented on the screens and devices they use instead of attempting to simulate a real, physical machine. The market niche of people who'd appreciate insane fidelity of physics simulation in pinball is shrinking every year, so we'd expect less games now than yesteryear, and even less such games in future. On the other hand, there could be a market for more 'gamey' mechanics (as you say, smashing the glass with a hammer) in the style of many 'physicsy' virtual reality games, but the preferences of that market is probably the opposite of what pinball purists would want.
• fidotron 3y ago
  In my universe Xenotilt https://store.steampowered.com/app/2008980/XENOTILT_HOSTILE_PINBALL_ACTION/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2008980/XENOTILT_HOSTILE_... has been quite popular and well received, but it makes no claim of realism. Where I am the retro arcade scene has been almost completely taken over by physical pinball machines and collectors, and everyone notices that kids that are exposed to it seem to be amazed. Those of us that prefer basking in glowing phosphor seem to be in a very distinct minority.
• crtified 3y ago
  There are many modern successors to the 3D pinball games of yesteryear. The scene may not be part of the official commercial world, but underground pinballers have built massive resources, over the past couple of decades of PC pinball development. If you want to play your favourite pinball game in 4K, or VR, right-now-today, chances are that you probably can. Not necessarily in the OPs vision of "full nvidia 4090 pizazz", but that'll come, as those standards percolate down through the masses. Licensing is one of the bugbears, where recreations of actual tables are concerned. Many of the most popular tables contain images, voices, IP, of some pretty huge individuals and companies, and the rights to use each were painstakingly negotiated and carefully limited, originally. Who now will go to Schwarzenegger? to Universal Studios? to the casts of Star Trek and the Addams Family?, and ask "how much?" - nobody without a very fat wallet could even dream to. This also comes with the less-spoken implication that parts of the semi-anonymous underground modern scene take liberties (and, as such, must stay 'underground') that commercial projects could not.
  • phreezie 3y ago
    If you're in for a deep dive into this "underground" community, I've co-authored an article about it last year. https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/a-peek-into-the-digital-creator-community/ https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/a-peek-into-the-digital-cr...
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• fourteenfour 3y ago
  Pinball FX by Zen Studios is close. They have a large amount of fantasy tables and after getting the Williams license from Farsight they are slowly releasing more real tables. They also have some newer tables from Stern available. Farsight had far more real tables but they really let their software languish, hopefully Zen keeps improving.
  • thegolyo 3y ago
    Interestingly, Zen studios just announced a layoff of 32 staff members https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-pinball-fx-i-dev-zen-studios-lays-off-32-employees https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-pinball-fx-i-dev-z...
• ethbr1 3y ago
  If you're younger and have no idea where the poster is coming from... let me tell you about the beginning of the CD-ROM era. Everyone thought "Gee, we've got all this storage space! What should we build?" ... and everyone answered "A pinball game!" I have no idea why, but essentially every PC game magazine demo disc, bargain bin "20 games!" collection, etc. had at least one pinball game. It was bizarre. I guess the game design space was constrained enough for pinball games that fly-by-night companies had no problem getting funding to build one? My most bizarre memory was actually playing a ton of Outpost Odyssey pinball. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz24m_5Zki4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz24m_5Zki4 Which was a Sierra pinball game... built in the theme of another Sierra game (Outpost)... that itself was a bit harder scifi SimCity. I guess it was good pinball?
• sleepybrett 3y ago
  Pinball FXn is great if you want simulated pinball. I prefer: https://store.steampowered.com/app/422510/DEMONS_TILT/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/422510/DEMONS_TILT/
• stevage 3y ago
  My guess would be that very few people are around who ever played physical pinball machines. Can't trade off the nostalgia any more.
• two_handfuls 3y ago
  New Pinball games have been made, they didn’t go in the direction you suggest though, they made pinball in virtual reality.
• sargstuff 3y ago
  3d AR glasses running 3d pinball games with ability to use interpret hand/arm or other movement jestures isn't a modern successor? Or more like star trek holo-emersion and you're the pinball take on dance-dance, sprinting to keep up with where to move cues? Or video project 3d pinball game of choice onto surface?
• ktbwrestler 3y ago
  I wonder the same thing about Asteroids! We have https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum... as a multiplayer variant but I can't find anything else!