Chicago Has Become the Nerve Center of Competitive Pinball

Is game dev still happening in Chicago?

Surprisingly few places seem to culturally benefit from the presence of companies. But I guess selling heavy equipment for public use helps.

Can't wait to see the new Stern tables at the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee this weekend.

  The DVD version of the game was the only title to receive a 0/10 score from Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine.

I always maintain it is the best bar in Chicago, and EASILY the best arcade bar.

edit: arcade/video games instead of pinball/arcade.

Stern Electronics went under in the 80s and folks ended up at Data East, then Sega. Eventually Sega got out of pinball and sold the assets to Gary Stern, Sam's son, to form Stern Pinball. This was about the same time Williams got out of pinball, and I think their assets ended up at a German company.

So you have any of several sequences available at a time, offering different possibilities (advance toward multiball, set up a multiplier or bonus for a later ball or even a later game[!], go for some really high-scoring combo, activate extra ball, one or more "story" lines of actions to complete at any time, and so on). You might go for high score, you might go for "finishing" the story, some personal challenge ruleset. It'll affect what you're trying to do.

But it's also a hand-eye coordination game, and one of carefully physically manipulating the machine to bump the ball this way and that, so things don't always go as planned and you're thinking of contingency shots, or just trying to get the ball back under control, or shooting it one place because you need it to be somewhere else to make some other shot.

Most machines have some tricks to discover. Intentionally "flub" your plunger shot at the right time on Addams Family to lock a ball for multiball in The Swamp, for instance. Better to wait out some mode to technically complete it rather than trying to do what it wants for extra points, because it requires some risky shots or puts the ball on a part of the table that carries a high risk of a hard-to-stop drain. That kind of thing. Plus stuff you just have to figure out by lore (hold the ball for a bit to stop temporarily stop The Power long enough for one shot on Addams Family, say).

Then there's the feel. Every machine's different. Some have great flow (and that might vary by player), some have awesome theme, some have an incredible melding of theme and play—take Black Knight and its sequel, Black Knight 2000, in which you're "dueling" the Black Knight, which is both a fictional robber-knight and the machine itself, which taunts you ("give me your money!"), with the board structured such that you're on the "offense" when the balls on the elevated, upper playfield with a secondary flipper, and "defense" when it's on the lower board and at risk of draining, but that's not explicit, it's just a natural result of the theme and board design coming together.

So, for competition: physical skill, thinking on your feet, planning, knowing and having your shot timing down for the particular machine. And you can still have an "on" day or an "off" day, just like anything else. I'd put it up there in complexity with your average competitive FPS, certainly. Shares a lot in common, in fact.

Plus, even on machines where the two flipper buttons are the only useful inputs when the ball's in play, they don't always only control flippers. Watch the lights :-)

That being said I've never heard of competitive pinball before, and it surprised me as well.

[1]: Robotic arm traversing the squares sequentially, press button to pick up piece and press again to release.