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