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Comment by nh2 | Hacker News Reader

I wish somebody had as a passion project or company to build Space Cadet into a real physical pinball table.

There have been a few attempts at this. I think the most well-known one is probably this one [1].

While we’re at it, I’d love to see a physical version of the seseame street pinbal table [2], though that one might be a bit more ambitious. :)

[1] - https://spacecadetpinball.wordpress.com

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZshZp-cxKg

Many people have thought about this, IIRC it's not physically possible to build because there is a lane that goes under a bumper (which in real life they extend down quite a bit) https://files.catbox.moe/pnaeri.png

Hm what's the problem with that? I understand that the bumper extends down, but what else needs to be on the underside that makes this unbuildable?

I think it's because the bumpers on top (the white things with the blue dot in the middle) need a lot of space underneath and the line runs through the space that they would need.

Hm I understand the bumper part, but what does the line represent? Why does it need to run on the underside?

The line represents a physical tunnel through which the ball can travel.

Oh, there's a hole at the top of the line that leads to an underground lane? That makes sense, I couldn't make that out in the photo, thanks.

If you drain to the far left, and kickback is lit, the ball gets sent along the line and comes out the top (and IIRC, refills your fuel?)

Oh that whole thing is a higher level! I see now, I thought that top section is actually a ground section, thanks.

The purple thing is an overlay... There's the ramp, the three lanes (with lights), three blue mini pop bumpers, and then the ball drops into the inlane for the left flipper.

The kickback puts the ball into the left orbit, which is at ground level, the ball will hit the spinner and then IIRC cause it's outside the crop, it goes into the lanes at the top of the playfield, and into the pop bumper area there.

Assuming that it's about moving the ball unseen (which makes it much easier) from the sink hole higher on the table to the apparent ejection hole and kicker low on the table.

One could have the ball go quite low below the table surface and then use some kind of mechanical kicker to get it up to table level again near the bottom. It's possibly a unique problem, but seems to be much less work than building the rest of the table.

Or just have a different ball ready to come out of the exit hole, the top hole would swallow ball 1, and a different ball could exit after a realistic delay...

A bit like Star Trek teleportation.. is it you, or a copy of you?

Several real pinball tables do this, keep a hidden ball staged to make it seem to instantly reappear. The Rick & Morty machine in particular does this - you can shoot into a portal, and the ball (actually a different hidden one) reappears instantly some distance away.

Just put one pop bumper there, you could make it work

Pop bumpers on an elevated/overlay playfield seems like a nightmare in general, maintenance would be a big pain. I can't think of a machine that has a pop like that, but my internal pinball database is getting pretty dusty.

You might be able to make the kickback lane work with a subway or maybe make the machine a widebody and go around the mess?

I suggested this to a Stern employee 21 years ago, which obviously went nowhere. Back then they were trying to do a Halo machine, which also went nowhere.

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