The Pinball Arcade on XBLA - Page 4

Also loving pinball arcade on the iPad 3. I've got a couple of pins and played various tables on visual pinball and this seems to be a fantastic sim of the real thing. The developer just needs to figure out spin.

I haven't donated to the kick starter project, but I plan to as it gets closer. It would appear that they will raise enough money to complete the next table, but what will the long-term plan be to make other licensed tables? A kick starter for each licensed table? I'm also curious if the license is just for this cycle of consoles or if it will include all future platforms? Hmm

tum

I think I can answer most of those... however I am not affiliated with FarSight... just a fan:

First of all, there is no reason to wait on the Kickstarter. They won't charge your credit card until the last day, and they won't charge anyone if they don't meet the goal, so there is no risk to getting yourself on the tally right now.

They have already stated that if the Kickstarter goes way over... they will have enough to fund Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball. So we will get both of those out of this one Kickstarter if it makes it to $110,000.

The Addams Family is the next in line, but they haven't secured all the license costs for it yet, but assuming they do, it will likely be even more expensive than TZ or STTNG. So it would get it's own Kickstarter most likely. TAF is the table I am most wanting, so I'll be contributing to that one if it happens, and my fingers are crossed.

Regarding the platforms, these licenses they are obtaining are for all platforms. So if they reach the goal, we will see TZ on iOS, Android, Xbox 360, PS3, PS Vita, 3DS, PC, Mac, and the upcoming Wii-U.

Regarding future yet-to-be-named platforms beyond that, who knows, but I would assume yes.

This is a really great game.

What would be nice is to have an actual pinball cabinet with an LCD screen for the play field and an LCD screen for the backboard display and have a PC run it.
Could work with the pinball arcade software or they could come out with a version just for the pinball cabinet.

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showforum=29

lots of stuff out there...

here's a sample:

Awesome.

My guess is someone's using the actual game ROMs with Visual Pinball and Visual PinMAME.

Seemed like the licenses to use the artwork and stuff were easier to get back then then they are now.

Something like that would be very good to put in an arcade. The cost to play would be whatever the original table would have been. I know if I saw one of those in an arcade I'd play it.

the visual pinball setups are not durable enough for the arcade. it's basically a big TV lying down. maybe if they put a protective glass above it.

as for the legality, I assume these tables are copyright infringement and the only reason why it hasn't been prosecuted is the such small numbers of people doing it that it's not viable for the pinball makers to pursue it as it's hard to know who to target. all the company did was make a pinball maker. it's the users that created all these facsimiles of real tables.

just like Konami kind of let Stepmania get away as being a DDR clone until it became extremely popular and started getting tons of replicas of DDR songs and steps as people began copying the actual songs. now you go looking for authentic songs for Stepmania and it's much much harder. Stepmania even discourages making steps for your MP3s.

I've read that they basically have an agreement (I'm sure not legally binding or anything) that they won't be prosecuted as long as they don't make tables for the most recent system that Stern (the only company left) is using.

It makes sense because the companies themselves aren't making money off the old tables any more. The only sales of them are used/ second hand at this point.

To get a little more on topic though, I just had my best game of Funhouse ever on the Android version.... and was pretty disappointed to see that it didn't even make it in the top 200 for the week.

Makes sense? Where in the heck did you read that?

In that case, there should be no royalties for anything ever made. Someone out there still owns the copywrites to those games, music, artwork etc.

Want to commercially make a new Star Wars video game, pinball game or a copy of something previously created? I'd like to see someone try without first getting permission with an agreement with terms to do so.

did anyone go through any of the tutorials for any of the pinball tables? wow! they put in a lot of work. there was like 350+ pages of info for the Theatre of Magic table! And it clearly shows all the goals, how to achieve the goals, where to put the ball, etc. It's really nice how they pan the camera around so you can see where you're supposed to send the ball.

I usually get to page 30 or so before I get tired and want to actually play. But some day, I'll get through an entire tutorial. There's a lot of love and care for the tables. I'm wondering if they had an official guide from the official company or just got an expert pinballer to document all this stuff.

Well, of course I meant as long as it's not being done for commercial use. Like I said, there's nothing legally binding, but it does appear that there's sort of a gentleman's agreement between the two parties.

They probably do what is commonly done with some old arcade machines that have multiple games that are able to be played. I saw a couple old arcade games about 3-4 years ago at the skating rink I go to done that way where many games could be selected.

I think that's enough threadjacking. if you're interested in visual pinball, there are forums for that. to discuss that further here is basically adding posts that have nothing to do with pinball arcade. luckily, there aren't pages of posts for this thread but I'd rather have posts be about the pinball arcade title and its tables.

Okay, let's see if I can transition us from the off topic discussion back to Pinball Arcade...

I think it would be absolutely amazing if the PC version of Pinball Arcade could have a "table mode" with all of the features Virtual Pinball has. But just like was mentioned above, it would not be commercially viable. Not enough people would buy the game specifically for this purpose to boost their PC sales, and even though they have all the basic elements already done, it would still be significant effort to add all the features to Pinball Arcade that Virtual Pinball has, and it would probably open up a big can of worms support wise.

But maybe something less than that, but still unique to the PC version would be doable. Something simple like have one of the camera angles be full screen portrait on monitor 1, and if there are two monitors, have the second one display the back glass and DMD. With something like that you wouldn't even need to build a table, just rotate one of your monitors (they have stands that do that) and viola, you have a poor man's pinball simulator on your main desktop.

That might actually boost sales, as currently, I am content with the iOS version and Xbox 360 version. But if the PC version brought something new such as the above, I'd buy it all over again.

Yep it would be awesome and a good way to use cabinets from pinball games where the game itself is beyond economical repair or someone can make a cabinet with the monitors + computer built in even have a real replay knocker that hits the side of the cabinet for those games which use it. Have the ball plunger use a sensor to allow it to function like a real plunger does and of course have a button to launch the ball for games that don't use a plunger.

Having it use Pinball Arcade would make it perfectly legal for commercial use I suppose. Having a monitor for the backglass would be good for games that use scoring displays other than a dot matrix display.

Woohoo!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...e/posts/235330

Looks like they are going to make it... I sure hope they can still raise enough for Star Trek: The Next Generation as well.

This site shows trending, and if you click the little Pi symbol at the bottom, it also shows projections: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/106...twilight-zone/

Worse case on projections is $64,000. Trending makes it appear they would reach $110,000 and then some, but I think the projections are probably more realistic, and that has a high of $95,000, so we need to evangelize this more. Too bad Touch Arcade won't do a story on it, but if you know any gaming news sites, send them a tip to cover this.

I think a lot of the negativity about Kickstarters in general really doesn't apply here. Most of the arguments against go like this:

- If the dev's don't want to take a risk with their own money, why should we donate?
- What if we give money, and then the dev never delivers what they promise?
- From a news site: What if I run a story on this, and then the scope changes to not include the platform my site is about?

So in this case: The devs already know they can't make money on these tables without help on the licensing. We already know they are fully capable of doing this right since we have other tables already playable. And finally, we already know the platforms that Pinball Arcade runs on, and will run on, and it's pretty much every current gaming platform, so anyone that cares about pinball, and wants to preserve the BEST and most popular tables in history should be promoting this.

The top 3 user-rated tables of all times are what we are talking about here (no promise yet on Addams Family, but if this one is successful, the chances are way better they would do it): http://www.ipdb.org/lists.cgi?anonym...ue&list=top300

Approaching the point where I bet even if it ended today, they'd jump in at the last minute and make up for the shortfall themselves rather than not see the project funded just because it's slightly short.

I'm skeptical that it will go significantly beyond 55k though. I just hope they're patient before doing another one of these things. People aren't going to be jumping in to fund another game every couple of months and I think they're going to find people a bit less generous going forward.

Best if they wait a year or so I'd say before trying to replicate this if they want a similar turnout. At least make sure people have had several months to enjoy the fruits of this effort before asking for people to jump into another Kickstarter.

kickstarter is not a good model for this. they can't expect people to keep funding future tables like this. the well's going to eventually run dry.

the number of pinball players are small and dropping slowly over time. the biggest money for a kickstarter is early on and when the early numbers for the table was kinda low, I knew that it wouldn't kill the $110K mark. I still have good hope that it does cross the $110K mark so we can have both tables. But it won't be a slam dunk like with Double Fine's project.

when you see people balking over $2 songs for Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc., you can't expect people to pay $10+ just for the licensing of a pinball table.

and I suspect that a lot of 360 owners are not contributing since they don't get the table as part of their contribution like with the other platforms. people are constantly weighing cost benefits when making purchases and if they're just magnanimously donating money, why not fund the arts, the sciences, the homeless shelters, etc. rather than donating toward a digital product.

That right there is the sole reason I refuse to donate. If Microsoft wasn't so money hungry.....

One thing I find really strange about the Microsoft DLC issue is that a lot of the games offer a code for DLC when you pre-order or some other promotion. I have also seen DLC go “on sale” for free for other games. So I don’t understand why M$ won’t let FarSight give always a table. I doubt it’s as simple as a miscommunication, but it almost seems that way. Does anyone know more specifics about the situation?

Probably see this as a way to make them more money because they know this is really the only legal way to have eventual access to pretty much every pinball table ever made.

I haven’t seen the DLC pricing on Xbox 360 yet, but if it’s the same as iOS, the table is worth $3. $5 at the most I am guessing.

So you could rationalize donating like this: Whatever tier you were thinking about, just subtract $5 from it. Even a $1 donation helps.

If they miss the goal, you won’t ever get to play TZ, and if they miss the stretch goal, it’s likely ST:TNG, and The Addams Family will never happen either. These 3 tables, especially being the top 3 user-rated tables in the Internet Pinball Database just really need to happen.

And on a selfish note: TAF and ST:TNG are my top 2. So I personally REALLY want to see them hit $110K.

Good point.

I love TAF and Creature From the Black lagoon. What I would like to see is TAF gold as well. Never have played one as there were only 1,000 made.

I'm in for $10 but I don't see myself participating a second time. IMHO funders of game projects should get the end result at a discount to the final price. That's a fair trade off for paying far in advance. Paying twice as much (probably) is a bit annoying.

Since Microsoft will not allow us to be given free DLC for contributing then they should give each person who contributes a year of Xbox Live gold or something along those lines.

I realize that everyone wants something back for their investment... but they can't really give anything back that would cost them just as much as your donation, or the donation doesn't really help them get closer to licensing these tables.

So the way I rationalize it is, if we agree to contribute, we are helping to preserve the world's greatest pinball tables. Having to pay an additional $3 to $5 more when the table(s) do become available is peanuts. It's less than a fast-food meal.

I have seriously thought about trying to buy a real Addams Family pinball table. But there are so many financial and practical roadblocks; it just isn't going to happen:

- Availability of the table
- Cost of purchase
- Where to put it
- Skills/time/cost to maintain it
- Availability of parts

So at the end of the day, donating even a few hundred dollars towards the possibility of having my own copy of this table to play with decent graphics and physics is well worth it (to me). If it never happens, I won't regret helping The Twilight Zone happen which for an even higher percentage of people is the best table. I never had a chance to play TZ more than maybe once or twice, so it never grew on me, but I'm sure I will love it too when it comes out.

Remember they don't charge your credit card unless the goal is met, so there is no risk of giving money and not getting to play the table you are donating for.

I agree there, but given Microsoft will not let the DLC be given away free, but the table will be given for free on all other platforms... Maybe the developer can give those who play it on an Xbox360 something else.

Pinball has been around for a long time. Many tables are extremely rare and I suspect many more are extinct from earlier decades. And some of those earlier recreations have been the least popular inclusions in their compilations due to many modern pinball fans requiring lots of flash to enjoy their games.

Even with tables from the 1970's onwards that interest most fans, I doubt they're ever going to cover more than a tiny fraction of those tables. Just too many.

I think if they walk away from this someday with upwards of 100 titles done, that will be an amazing effort. But that's still just a drop in the bucket.