Quoted from Ricker

  .....of course even the smells of an older EM will evoke fond memories.

RIIIIGHTTTTT!!!! They smells soooo gooooooddddd!!!! Mais pas celle comme Sparky avait chez lui dont j'ai oublié le titre.... The mice's house one!!!

The following post may piss off a few sensitive people, but I am too tired to care.

I am in the same group as Pascal (AMX) and Dan (McMean), I truely enjoy the feel, the smell and the robust clatter of the EMs. I also understand why others dig the technologically "advanced" SS's.

As for the play appeal, - if you are going to be any good at pinball, the first step is to master aiming, timing and develope a strategy. I find this unpleasant to try and accomplish when you've got three to six balls on the playfeild at the same time, as you are being talked to, under a countdown of sorts and hence are basically forced into a survival mode as a form of excitement. This doesn`t leave much room for thought, let alone straedgy. Just leaves you in a reactionary mode as you accumulate points randomly in a senseless frenzy.Makes for a thrilling time ofcourse, but not much else except the occasional lucky unskilled save as your friends go "awesome save". Personally, I don`t like just reacting to situations. I believe in thinking, planning, aiming and carrying out what I have decided to do. The same goes for when I hunker down to play pinball. So needless to say, I prefer playing (and fixing) EMs, even though the appeal of certain single ball solid-state games can be equally challenging on my skill meter.

But what the hell, everything that is created goes along and reflects the times we live in.
All things which emerge depend essentially & largely on the context & groundwork from which they stem.

As for the technology aspect of this discussion/thread - Give me a few paperclips, a Swiss army knife and a blindfold and I will get your EM to work. Give me a voltmeter, a soldering station and loads of IC`s, transistors, connectors, battery holders, diodes and what not, and I will fix your solid state pin until something else unexpected gives out in a month. In the end, the differnece lies in the thinking and the feeling of the machine under your hands and grasp. I feel a shallowness when I play most solid state machines, a weird emptiness. With an EM I feel presence, weight and robust reliability for some reason, the sound of it tells me if it is working right, or whether it is about to fail.

While we're at it here, let us not refrain from examining a 1950`s Bally bingo machine weighing 500 pounds, and which essentially is an electro-mechanical computer. It scans and triggers search relays in a rhytmical sequence as it "looks" for winning combinations, finds one and immediately locks in and pays off to the mechanical credit counter with such authority, that there is no way I could feel that sort of real AC energy coming off a video lottery terminal or todays solid state driven slots. Another difference is that Donald Hooker (Bally bingo engineer) could tell you how everything, absolutely every little sequence took place in one of his machines, and that most solid state technicians couldn`t tell you how a switch matrix is affected/triggered and how the actual workings of all the ICs invloved in the process of serving the CPU. This to me is the biggest difference, it's the god-damn thinking that one needs to know, not the device itself.

In closing, (thank God, will this guy ever shut up) back in 1987 I found a Gottlieb 1947 Humpty Dumpty rotting in a garage on the south shore of Montreal. The guy who sold it to me was beginning to use the trim and legs for firewood. I gave him 50 bucks and took it away to put Humpty Dumpty back together again aesthetically. After plugging it into the wall socket and pushing in the nickel push slide, I was able to play a game without any substantial repairs. If you find a Theatre of Magic rotting in a garage in 2038, will it even power up without shutting down after a flash ? Who will be palying pinball in 2038 anyway, Humpty Dumpty or you ? Who knows really.

I work at a leading-edge technology company and the products we turn out are pretty amazing.  What amazes me just the same is looking at older EM style arcade machines and seeing what these guys did with so little to work with.  Modern technology is firmware upgradeable allowing even the pinball industry to ship it now & fix it later.  Old EM's only had to be perfect when they left the factory.  These days the games can be simultated & tweaked using software.  Granted the games now are much more complex, but I wonder how close they are to allowing customers to build their own games the same way we made our own tracks in Excitebike.

Quoted from Snazzy81

... but I wonder how close they are to allowing customers to build their own games the same way we made our own tracks in Excitebike.

I was a big fan of 'Stunts'

Quoted from OTTOgd

I was a big fan of 'Stunts'

I used to get my a$$ handed to me on that 360* loop  

Quoted from RAB

If you find a Theatre of Magic rotting in a garage in 2038, will it even power up without shutting down after a flash ? Who will be palying pinball in 2038 anyway,
Humpty Dumpty or you ? Who knows really.

At one point I had my 1959 Wms Crossword beside a TMNT (91?) and was wondering the same thing.... the Crossword was almost 50 yrs old, and playing perfectly... and I'm pretty confident that TMNT won't be remotely playable in 2041!

Quoted from RAB

       ..... After plugging it into the wall socket and pushing in the nickel push slide, I was able to play a game without any substantial repairs.
If you find a Theatre of Magic rotting in a garage in 2038, will it even power up without shutting down after a flash ?  

Ostie que c'est vrai!!

Quoted from Snazzy81

I work at a leading-edge technology company and the products we turn out are pretty amazing.  What amazes me just the same is looking at older EM style arcade machines and seeing what these guys did with so little to work with.  Modern technology is firmware upgradeable allowing even the pinball industry to ship it now & fix it later.  Old EM's only had to be perfect when they left the factory.  These days the games can be simultated & tweaked using software.  Granted the games now are much more complex, but I wonder how close they are to allowing customers to build their own games the same way we made our own tracks in Excitebike.

Won't be long I reckon.

And as the pinball MAME gets more and more popular and possibly becomes the ultimate in the complete pinball experience along with its' vast and impressive simulated library of titles all in one, the 20 year olds of that time are going to laugh their heads off at all the DMDs and the Pinball 2000's. They will be busting a few ribs (along with some of our vintage balls) at how cumbersome, unreliable and high maintenance those old pieces of crap are with all their moving parts. Time will tell I guess, as LEDs also become unreliable and worse than that, a thing of the past. The past "sucks & blows"  they will probably claim as an ultimate truth.

Hang in there boys, we are in for a hell of a ride.