Pinball as a medium is a wonderful mix of visceral sounds and feelings layered with restriced exploration. The lack of total control is what makes the machine challenging and the visceral elements like lights, sounds, and vibrations create immersion. The merging of challenge and immersion in this scenario creates fun. I wanted to try my hand at pinball machines to gain a better understanding of fun in a physical space. As a kid, I used to visit arcades once a week. I'd dedicate $1.50 to pinball every time I visited. When I saw that RIT was offering a pinball seminar I jumped at the opportunity for a nostalgia trip. The image to the left is blake. He is an engineer with no ties to the game degree at all. Blake had a wonderful time playing my pinball machines at our evening festivities, where I'd always entertain the masses. Enthusiasm like his keeps me going in game design.
My first machine was a take on bocce, my favorite game to play with family. I chose bocce because the assignment was to make a bagatelle(basically a flipperless pinball machine). when thinking of interesting ways to make the balls fall onto the field I was immediately reminded of the systems in bocce. These tables and machines were best enjoyed in bars and at parties so bocce felt like a great fit. I wanted to encorporate hills in some way so that players could knock eachothers balls out of position. Additionally, I wanted the hills to have some give in them so that it felt a little more like grass. Lastly, this was a party machine and it needed to look good in party lighting. The final product was made of book covers and golf tees. The rules allowed for up to four players. Like bocce, one player shoots a white ball and then everyone tries to get close to that one. Each player shoots two balls for the round one at a time in rotation. At the end of a round you score. If two of your balls land in a way that they touch or are in the same pocket, that is an automatic point. If one of your balls is the closest to the white ball, you get one point for each ball of yours closer than the rest to the white ball. You play to five points.
This machine was a head-to-head machine. I was working with a partner and we both agreed that we wanted a battle machine concept. We wanted to recreate the hectic fist-flurries present in Dragonball Z. We started by drafting layouts to eventually put together all of the things we liked about each of them. Eventually, we decided on a few things: shots should focus on the middle of the field to promote player interaction; the field should be symetrical and easy to parse; each round starts with an 8 ball multiball for both players; gameplay should be twitchy and fast with a low barrier of entry with regaurds to thought. We wanted people to walk up to the machine and really just slap stuff around to their hearts content. The final design featured teeth at the top to prevent you fromshooting the ball along the sidewalls and into the connection in the middle. There were also ramps that connect the two sides on the right and left toward the middle. The only rules are: The person with the least balls on their side of the field when all of them drain is the winner and each player starts with an eight ball multiball.
When building Mountaineer Madness I wanted to create a machine that could keep score for you electronically. I used three sanwa buttons as drop targets and a spring as a bumper. Hitting a drop targets will light the corresponding LED. Hitting all three with no mode activated will increase your score multiplier. Hitting the spring three times will activate a mode. Modes will be a random choice of three. The first mode is a "hit the target" mode. One of the lights, chosen at random, lights up while the others will turn off. Hitting this target iwll award you a rising amount of points and briefly light the other two lights. This mode lasts 30 seconds. The second mode is a time freeze mode. Lights will be half lit for the whole mode. Hit the drop targets as many times as you can to accumulate your time freeze bonus, matching the amount of points you earn during the mode. Hitting the spring again will un-freeze time and award you the time freeze bonus, effectively doubling the amount of points you earned in the mode. The last mode is a jackpot mode. The lights will all turn half on for this mode. Hitting each target will light the corresponding light and hitting all three will award you a jackpot of 10000. All point awards will be multiplied by the multiplier.
This is a digital table that I made based on an album, MemeStreet. The point of the MemeStreet machine was to put songs that most people don't like in contexts where they fit the theme and gameplay. I also wanted to make a machine that mimiced the design of bally machines like BlackWater 100 and Medusa. The thing that sets this table apart is the bouncy wall piece on the right. The hardest shot on the table is the one off the wall and into the upper right blue tunnel. Hitting the tunnel three times starts multiball. Clearing all of the drop targets increments a multiplier that effects the whole machine(points earned = amount*times cleared) and also earns a jackpot during multiball. Shooting the U-loop increments a flat point boost to all elements on the board which is equal to 1000*amount of passes through the loops. Hitting the U-Loop twice also increments the song. This bonus is applied before the multiplier.
