Dave Knows: Pinball

Something tells me it’s not designed by Pat Lawlor.

France will be hosting the Rugby World Cup this year. They field a very good team, but have been drawn in the “group of death.” To help motivate them against a tough Ireland team (Six Nations Triple Crown winners) the team manager has promised them some perks, including permitting their wives and companions to attend all home matches and inviting them to lunch(!?). But that sort of motivation will only go so far:

The squad have also persuaded the management to provide them with a pinball machine and table football as well.

Yes, that is a pinball machine.

Can you imagine a first person shooter combined with a *real* pinball machine (not a video game)?

It’s the Furminator (via Kotaku.com). Watch the video on the “fur” website!

Remember Pinball 2000?

Remember how not soon after Williams released a couple Pinball 2000 machines (Revenge from Mars and Starwars Episode 1) they got out of the pinball business? TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball is a documentary about what happened.

Alas, I have not seen the film yet (though I just ordered a copy as a birthday present for my co-blogger Steve), so I’ll let the film’s website explain what it’s about:

IN 1998, COIN-OPERATED GAMES were in dire straits. Arcades were extinct, having long ceded their popularity to home video games. Yet pinball remained an experience you couldn’t get at home. The pinball designers at Williams of Chicago, Illinois—the world’s largest manufacturer of pinball—realized this; they knew that with a little rethinking, pinball could once again succeed.

In a short eighteen months, management planned to abandon pinball in favor of the booming video slot machine business…but not before granting their designers just one last shot at saving the game they loved. TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball is a documentary that tells the story of Pinball 2000, a clever attempt at resuscitating pinball that failed just at the moment a lot of people thought it might succeed.

Khoi Vinh at Subtraction has a review of the film too: Coin-operated, User Experienced.

If you watched Sesame Street in the 70s, you’ll remember this pinball counting song and cartoon. Enjoy!

Many of my friends think the Family Guy is the funniest thing on TV. I personally think they’re out of their minds.

And now Stern and Pat Lawlor Design have created a Family Guy pin.

Here are some of the features:

The FAMILY GUY pinball machine introduces a unique element to pinball—Stewie’s mini-playfield. Stewie’s mini-playfield is a small pinball playfield that sits in the upper right hand corner of the main playfield. It has mini-flippers that the player controls with the regular flipper buttons when the game is in ‘Stewie mini-playfield’ mode. The mini-playfield even has ramps and targets to shoot at while a toy of Stewie turns on its axis in front of the mini-playfield and taunts the player into believing they have no chance of beating Stewie.

Additional features on the game include: character figures of each of the six Griffin family members by Mezco Toys; a Patriot Ale can with a Brian Griffin toy standing on top that can be struck by the ball (the game owner will be provided with an extra set of decals if they want to change Patriot Ale to Patriot Root Beer); two captive pinballs, which spell out P-I-N-B-A-L-L when struck; and plenty of multi-ball features.

Chances are I’ll enjoy the pin more than the TV show.

Kevin Tiell takes beautiful photographs of pinball machines. That’s a small example on the left. He takes pictures of other things too, as you can see on his website: www.kevin.tiell.com

Portfolio 1, however, is the one you’ll want to check out.

There’s another batch of his photos here. This is from his artist statement describing this collection:

Hoping to showcase the beauty and design of pinball games, these images attempt to reveal the environment that has captivated players for decades. Color and composition were my initial motivations for the series, while capturing the reflections of a metal sphere posed an interesting technical challenge.

An article appeared in the Portland Tribune the other day about the Portland Pinball League. Anthony Ramos, one of the owners of the Ground Kontrol Retrocade manages the league these days, and it sounds like the league is still going strong.

One small inaccuracy in the article, however, caught my attention. The article states that: “The league was started in 2004.”

This may be true of the current incarnation, but my little brother and I played in the Portland Pinball League regularly in the late-90s (my little brother Steve was a perennial champ!). Competitions were held at the now defunct Jockey Club, a cinder block bunker, er bar, on N Killingsworth. Back then the league was run by Brinda and Sam, who also published the venerable (and also now defunct) pinball and rock & roll magazine Multiball.

Steve still runs the website, PortlandPinball.com, which he started in 2001, and which continues to be a vibrant forum for Portland pinball aficionados.