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Internet Message Format | 2000-03-21 | 15KB

From:  "Gregory A. Swarthout" <[e-mail]>
Subject: [PS] Editorial from The Tower of Pin
Date: 16 Mar 2000 08:19:17 -0700

Sometime,

I'm rather clueless which editorial in the order this one is, but who cares. Some sad
news to report then, was kicked out of the BRUSA league last month... damn ;)
Nah, just kidding. :) The league finals don't seem to have been played yet, so I
don't know who won yet. Well, a new league is in the works anyhow. If you are
interested in joining check out the brusa league page (there's a link to it on the club
page). This time as I've understood it there will be three different divisions of
players (kind a like in football I guess), the players in division 1 will play to reach
the Championship part where they play for first, second and third place while
division 2 and 3 play to move up one division so they will have a chance to play in
the Championship the next season.

Otherwise, IS ANYTHING happening!? Slamtilt Resurrection seems to really
need resurrection, I expected it to be released sometime during the end of the last
year... I've played a prerelease version of it and while it does have some letdowns
it's still a good pinball simulation and it would be nice to see out on the market,
which seems to be quite thin right now... As I guess no pinball fans have missed
Williams stopped making real pinballs last year, and the situation right now as I
have understood it is that there's only one company, Stern, left in the US making
pinballs. And it doesn't seem like Stern is one of the best pinball makers either to
judge by the comments I've seen? I understand they (Stern then) are for the
moment working on a sports themed pinball (bah).

If pinball is a niche market then real pinball is in a serious downslope right now,
why I wonder!? Does noone - or not enough people play real pinballs? I mean, if
there's an arcade nearby, do you go there to play video games or to play pinball?
Pinball ofcourse! If you have computer at home, what do you play on it, Pinball
ofcourse! :) Ok, maybe that's no 100% true, but still, I don't think this will last for
long, some new company will come along or Williams will resurrect their pinball
dept in some smaller manner. And if something can really resurrect the real pinballs
in the arcade then it is the pinball simulations, as I think that if you have never
played a real pinball and find a great sim then you might feel tempted to try a real
one too, works the other way too! Which is maybe why the release of pinball
simulations is a bit slow right now... might be problematic then as none of them,
simulated or real, appear to be very strong outwards right now, which is a
completely false picture as both genres are as popular as they've always been (says
who you wonder, says me! and I don't base anything on facts :). Well, I don't
know, I just don't think thing will stay like they are for very long!

The pinball simulation market might seem still (which is why I said IS ANYTHING
happening earlier) but the truth is it isn't dead, it just doesn't make as much fuzz
about itself as the Quake styled games. Sure it appears now only 2 publishers are
interested in pinball, Empire Interactive and 21st Century but only 2 years ago
Apogee create their Pinball Wizards division (which is still around), apparently
pinball was considered still popular then by publishers. Unfortunately they've only
published one pinball so far... I wonder what they are waiting for? Things seems
still, but I'm quite sure more will happen... Just look back at the history a little:

Pinball Dreams started the upslope of the pinball simulation market when it came
1992 for the Amiga, that because it had fun themes and offered an interface
(scrolling tables) that worked. The next thing to increase popularity of pinballs was
the first Pro Pinball title, The Web, which came out 1995, it was then what really
kept the popularity of pinballs at the top for the following years (not true exactly,
sierra did a lot there, but I'll get to that). Before The Web many different pinball
sims had been released, most noteably (besides DI's Trilogy then) is probably
LittleWing's Solid State series, it is a kind of classic series among pinball
simulations. The first title in the Solid State series was released 1991, before
Dreams! LittleWing released Crystal Caliburn in 1993 which must have been a
perfect timing as Dreams/Fantasies had then awaken the interest in pinball for a lot
of people (and gotten rave reviews in magazines), the next year LittleWing released
Loony Labyrinth their third title. Otherwise before Pro Pinball: The Web (1995)
there are few titles worth mentioning apart from Digital Illusions Trilogy (Dreams,
Fantasies, Illusions). Some attempts at an interface with 3D tables had been made
before the first Pro Pinball title (Tilt!) but had failed terribly.

Well, as I said Pinball Dreams came for the amiga 1992, the pc became the more
popular platform some years later (the pc was already quite popular in 92, but not
the "number one" - if such a thing exists at all - gaming platform). The mac I think
has always been popular, besides DI's Trilogy the mac has both the Solid State
series and the Pro Pinball series and as such has some of the best pinballs available
for it, but not much more... Anyway, as the pc became the more popular platform
and Dreams had grown quite popular, publishers wanted to put out "Their" pinball
for the pc, and their pinball was to be new and different but still based on what was
popular, and because of this a storm of 2D Scrolling Funhouse and Nightmarish
themed (bad plagiats of the themes in Fantasies) tables (30-40 pinballs in total?)
were released for the pc over a period of 5-6 years (1992-1998). In 1999 it
slowed down....

During the period (1995 to be exact) Sierra picked up on the pinball franchise
(same year Pro Pinball came out) and after that during 1995-1998 released ~3
more titles in the 3D Ultra Pinball series. Sierra advertised the titles very very good
and made sure a lot of copies of their titles were on the shelf's in stores, thus their
pinballs were the ones noticed most and the ones "casual" buyers bought, which
resulted in the fact that their title sold a lot of copies, and that directly brought forth
that the red line indicating the popularity of pins stayed up. Sierras pins are not that
good though, the pro pinball titles are good and have class (quality), as such the
older 3dup titles no longer sell as well, at least noone goes to any lengths to find a
copy of 3dup1(?), but those who have gotten an interest in pinball simulations and
haven't played the first pro pinball title still try to find that title as it has a rumor not
of being the most popular pinball, but one of the best. This is something I wish
publishers thought of, quality holds and sells longer.

Besides DI's Trilogy, Pro Pinball and Solid State, at least 18-20 more pinball
simulations were published by various publishing houses. Most of them were pretty
mainstream. Some of these pinballs were great, most noticeably among them was
Codemasters' Psycho Pinball and UDS/Liquid Design's Slamtilt. Some good
pinballs that came out at the end of the 92-98 period were Addiction Pinball and
MPA. Addiction for one had a lot of good things with it and was imo a very serious
and good attempt at putting out a fun pinball with some themes not as ordinary as
the "other" companies put out. M. Pinball Arcade was another nice attempt, the
team that developed the pinball really wanted to do something good and different.
While the physics and realism of the tables in the MPA package isn't the most
fantastic the tables are still fun if you like the classic styled tables and attracted
attention because they simulate/emulate real tables.
And ofcourse the number one publishing house for pinball simulations, 21st
Century, had released at least 10 pinball titles (including DI's). Roughly counting
that makes for a total of 30-40 titles released during the period 1992-1998. Some
uncertain numbers for past years are: 1999, 4 pinballs released for PC; 1998, 9
pinballs released for PC; 1997 about 7... But in 1998 21st went out of business,
their us part still lives on but have not released anything yet. Still 1998 saw the
release of a number of interesting pinball simulations, namely M. Pinball Arcade,
Addiction Pinball and Pro Pinball: Big Race U.S.A! Was a good year! During
1999 LittleWing released the english version of two of their pinballs and Cunning
came out with their fourth pinball title. Devil's Island, a "lost" BOS table and Sci-Fi
Pinball was released.

This year the release list features one expected release Slamtilt Resurrection...
Cunning Developments is still around developing their sims though, and for the past
years those sims have imo been the only great sims on the market. You don't need
to compare those sims to anything, they are the best simply because they are fun
and have great physics. So hopefully a fifth Pro Pinball title, as have become
custom, will come out at the end of this year. Though as I've understood it Cunning
is currently working on on some other non-pinball related title (will be interesting to
see what that is). That might cause the next pro pinball title release to be delayed? I
don't know, just guessing. All I know is that there will be more pro pinball titles!

You might wonder if I'm implying that before 1992 pinball didn't exist? Have a look
at the history pages and study the C64 history and you'll see how wrong that is.
Pinball Simulations have always been with! Things might looks slow, but it will pick
up!! But it's not like one can ask for another Pinball Dreams to come along right
now and just swing the pinball market back to it's top peak, but as long as new
pinballs are developed there will always come along some title that stands out and
becomes popular in one way or another. A genre never really dies (text adventures
still live, don't they?).

The fact remains though that few pinballs are to be found in the computer store
shelves right now (at least that's the picture I've gotten), but what does that matter?
You can always order from some webstore that's sure to carry it, who goes strictly
by what is available on the shelves? The shelves only hold what the store thinks is
popular, just like publishers publish what they consider safe (which supposedly
somehow involves "popularity" and what "everyone" wants, not exactly the right
approach, just look at how this approach is forcing all adventure games developers
to make 3D styled adventures), hardly any publisher go by what is liked (liked, not
the most talked about thing on the market) by many and will sell for a long time.
And, well, if pinball doesn't become popular on the shelves in a near future that
doesn't matter that much as there is always other ways of buying the titles, the
shelves aren't that important anymore. The shelves nor the publishers don't
develope the pinballs, the programmers do, and there will always be pinball fanatic
programmers around! Say no more.

Just a sidenote, I guess it's no news that there's a new msgboard, should be easier
to read now. Also I've added the comments field to the hiscore page so that when
you submit a new hiscore you can also enter some info about the hiscore, how you
got it, if you used any special strategy and such. If you look at the hiscore lists
themselves you'll see new hiscores in the list are in light blue and scores for which a
comment exists have a small icon (you can click on the hiscore or the icon to find
out more about the score).

Not sure how the release of FJ is progressing, don't think the MAC version has yet
been released? The US release of FJ (PC) should be happening now, but it seems
to me it isn't available in that many stores in the US yet (can't say I've seen it in any
stores where I live either, but that's less surprising as there's no major computer
stores or similar around).

Well, if you have anything of interest to say, let me know.

Never, Forever?
Sam Gabrielsson


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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [PS] Fantastic Journey
Date: 21 Mar 2000 08:04:49 -0600

Well picked up another Pro Pinball game "Fantastic Journey" here in the USA.
Had a couple of gripes to point out.

1.) Another Pro Pinball release and yet still no option for GAMMA correction.

Does everybody play these things on 17" or larger monitors at 1024 x 768 ?
On a 15" monitor 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 its just way to dark. This has been
a problem with all 4 titles.

2.) The Timeshock manual was great. What we get now is a quick ref sheet
and a manual on the disc in Adobe format.
Moving around the Adobe viewer is a joke at best. BIG SELLOUT......

3.) After a full install / looked like it took up almost 700 meg
   (18+ MINUTES ON MY MACHINE !!!!!!)
They still want the damn cd in the drive in order to play the game.
When will these companys learn ????????

[e-mail]
Mr.Waf

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Andy Fielding <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [PS] Fantastic Journey
Date: 21 Mar 2000 15:48:51 -0800

Yo eastereg (& the rest of you guys),

>Does everybody play these things on 17" or larger monitors at 1024 x 768 ?
>On a 15" monitor 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 its just way to dark. This has been
>a problem with all 4 titles.

I play them on a 17", and no problem.  (In fact, sometimes I turn down the
brightness to make it creepier.)  Sorry to hear you're having trouble.
I've seen them on friends' 15"-ers, and they didn't look dark to me.  Do
you think it's the way your particular monitor displays them?

>2.) The Timeshock manual was great...

Hey, where can I get a copy too?

>3.) After a full install / looked like it took up almost 700 meg
>   (18+ MINUTES ON MY MACHINE !!!!!!)

Wow.  No wonder new hard drives are so ridiculously big.  (Like, what's the
norm now?  12 gigs?)  But I guess the graphix are so complex 'n' realistic,
the co. didn't think they'd be smooth enough running off the CD.  (As the
owner of a particularly flaky drive, I can tell you they were probably right.)

>They still want the damn cd in the drive in order to play the game.
>When will these companys learn ????????

Can't somebody write a patch for that, like they have for other games
(RollerCoaster Tycoon, etc.)?  Should be easy enough.  Don't ask me,
though---I just started learning Visual Basic...

Cheers,  Andy

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