Latest pinball machines shown

Press, 10 January 1987, Page 33

Latest pinball machines shown

By

ANDREW STERN

of Reuters through NZPA Chicago Inside the convention hall there was a cacophony of bleeps, blips and bells as men in business suits struggled over the buttons on the latest pinball and video game machines. Showgirls wandered about just as they do at scores of other Chicago conventions, but instead of giving out free samples they offered a joystick or a pinball plunger. It was the annual show of the Amusement and Music Operators of America mecca for what „ has become a multi-bil-lion dollar industry — an exhibition showing that pinball, electrified and i enhanced, is still king in spite of the challenge from electronic video games. In one part of the hall pinball machines called Pin-Bot, a robot-theme game that is the newest entry from Chicago-based Williams Electronics, attracted long lines. “It’s rad (radical),” said a young player. The boy’s, skateboard was nearby. He had been hired by Atari to highlight that company’s new Skateboard video game at an adjacent exhibit. Pinball machines held the edge over video games with more than - one million machines in use in 1985. The number of video games had declined 15 per cent since 1980 to 980,000 in 1985, according to a survey by “Vending Magazine,” which watches the games industry. All the games displayed at the convention were being played for free, and there was no reluctance among the international cast of game distributors and arcade operators to

play. The hall echoed with flat, synthetic voices emanating from both pinball and video games, along with the throb of pop music coming out of the latest concept in jukeboxes — laser disc players which combine the sound and pictures of music videos. With popularity in the United States assured, a purveyor of one brand of laser disc jukebox notes, “the one thing holding us back in Europe is the differences in the television signal.” Also represented at the 500-odd booths were manufacturers of minibowling alleys, pool tables, air cushion hockey, plastic darts, electronic poker games and makers of machines that purport to monitor one’s stress or “Love Quotient”. An explanation on the Stress Test says that a high score suggests a visit to the doctor is in order, but what can one expect for 25 cents? While the games may be childish, and the scores meaningless, the amusement game industry is serious business. When salesmen speak

of dependable revenues from pinball and video games in high traffic areas such as shopping malls, convenience stores and bars, they mean it In the United States alone, pinball and video games pulled in an estimated SUS4.S billion ($9 billion) in 1985 from two million machines. Pinball machines collected an average of SUS4B ($96) a week in 1985 in the United States, enough to defray in one year the SUS2SOO ($5000) cost of a machine. Video games, experts agree, were victims of market saturation and the ability of teen-age players to conquer the machines’ computerised predictability. But the computer programmers who design video games have not quit. Always on the leading — if offbeat — edge of computer technology, the designers have employed new graphics, sounds and strategies to produce an endless proliferation of new games. Cinematronics has produced ultra-realistic baseball and bowling games with spring-loaded joysticks, pitching and batting accuracy, and even

game statistics. Not surprisingly, World Series baseball game designer Medo Medeo says, “It’s a lot more fun creating video games than regular (computer) programming." Complaints that video games are too violent come not just from parents and psychologists, but patrons of the convention. One man was overheard saying about one game, “Aw, that’s just another shoot-em-up, I get tired of them.” “Violence is a popular scapegoat,” says Steve Prowler, of “Vending Times” magazine. “This is an issue that the industry will have to contend with. If anything, I think (playing video games is) a convenient release, a catharsis.” The bad reputation of these games designed to amuse extends back to the Depression-era pinball industry which was centred in Chicago when slot machines were being built here. Like slot machines, pinball was even outlawed for a time. Steve Kordek, aged 75, began working for the Gensberg brothers in Chicago when the industry was in its Infancy 50 years

ago and is responsible for several pinball innovations since. In his game "Triple Action” from 1948, Kordek placed dual flippers down at the bottom of the board to test players’ skills. He later came up with the “tilt" feature to prevent cheating, multi-ball play, and targets that fall when struck by the stainless steel ball — the only element that never changes. Competition among pinball manufacturers was fierce. “Sure manufacturers stole each others’ ideas and tried to infiltrate each others’ factories,” Kordek said. “But we always modified the ideas we stole for our own games.”