First Numeric Table Speculation

[shutyertrap]

Here's Williams Systems 4-9, tables in bold having been in TPA...

System 4

Pokerino
Phoenix
Flash
Stellar Wars

System 6

Tri Zone
Time Warp
Gorgar
Laser Ball
Firepower
Blackout
Scorpion
Algar
Alien Poker

System 7

Black Knight
Jungle Lord
Pharaoh
Solar Fire
Barracora
Cosmic Gunfight
Varkon
Warlok
Defender
Time Fantasy
Joust
Firepower II
Laser Cue
Star Light

System 9

Space Shuttle
Sorcerer
Comet

And then there's all the Bally machines from '78-'82

Baby Pac-Man
Black Jack
BMX
Centaur
Continental
Destroyer
Dolly Parton
Eight Ball Deluxe
Elektra
Embryon
Evel Knievel
Fathom
Fireball II
Flash Gordon
Frontier
Future Spa
Galaxy Ranger
Harlem Globetrotters
Hotdoggin'
Kiss
La Vie Parisienne
Lost World
Mata Hari
Medusa
Miss America '81
Mr & Mrs Pac-Man Pinball
Mystic
Nitro Ground Shaker
Outer Space
Paragon
Playboy
Power Play
Rolling Stones
Silverball Mania
Skateball
Space Invaders
Sparkz
Speakeasy
Spectrum
Star Trek
Strikes and Spares
Supersonic
Tahiti
The Six Million Dollar Man
Tornado
Vector
Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom
Xenon

Bally A084-91786-AH06 (6803)'s:

Beat the Clock (numeric)
Eight Ball Champ (numeric)
Lady Luck (numeric)


By the way, is anyone else blown away by how many freakin' machines Bally put out in that 5 year window?

 

[Citizen]

No problem. Here are a few other missing Ballys.

Black Pyramid
Centaur II
Cybernaut
Eight Ball
Fireball Classic
Freedom
Gold Ball
Grand Slam
Granny and the Gators
Kings of Steel
Night Rider
Spy Hunter
Viking
X's & O's

Man they were busy.

 

[shutyertrap]

Moved these lists over to this dedicated thread rather than hijacking the other. I'm very curious to know what people would want from here, especially since so many are rather obscure titles. One of the things I like about a lot of the Bally titles is they were getting rather experimental with layouts.

 

[Citizen]

One of the things I like about a lot of the Bally titles is they were getting rather experimental with layouts.

Agreed. While I don't feel that Bally's average level of quality in the 80s was on par with Williams and they did rapid-fire out a lot of mediocre tables, I have a lot of respect for the machines they tried to make unique from what Williams/Gottlieb/Stern were offering.

I'm hoping Zen recognizes that Bally of that era was highly creative and reflects that by selecting a few of the more unique Ballys that have a following for representation in FX3.

I'd be happy to see Elektra and Spectrum representing the "What is Bally even doing?" era.

 

[shutyertrap]

I know I'd like to see:

Firepower
Blackout
Alien Poker
Joust
Sorcerer
Centaur
Eight Ball Deluxe
Fathom
Flash Gordon
Medussa
Mr & Mrs Pacman Pinball
Spectrum
Vector
Xenon
Party Animal
Strange Science

...and all the widebodies

Embryon
Future Spa
Hotdoggin'
Paragon
Space Invaders

 

[shutyertrap]

Agreed. While I don't feel that Bally's average level of quality in the 80s was on par with Williams and they did rapid-fire out a lot of mediocre tables, I have a lot of respect for the machines they tried to make unique from what Williams/Gottlieb/Stern were offering.

I'm hoping Zen recognizes that Bally of that era was highly creative and reflects that by selecting a few of the more unique Ballys that have a following for representation in FX3.

I'd be happy to see Elektra and Spectrum representing the "What is Bally even doing?" era.

At the Museum of Pinball in Banning, CA they have a bunch of these oddball Bally machines. Though few really stick out (no doubt they cranked out a bunch of mediocre stuff), they do offer a nice alternative to the better known stuff, a sort of cleansing of the palette that lets you admire once more the good stuff. It's kind of why I wanted Swords of Fury in TPA, if for nothing else than an odd layout. I'm gonna have to look at photos of all of them on IPDB.org to even remember which I've played, as a lot of the titles sound familiar but I'm just not sure.

If Zen were to do any of these, it'd be critical that they replicated the flipper and slings strength. These things feel very underpowered in comparison to Williams of the same time period. And especially with those widebodies, because those play s-l-o-w. Obviously the two companies were not sharing many parts yet, and the flipper mechanics were certainly different.

 

[kimkom]

Love Gorgar as it was the first pin I ever played

I would like to see Barracora being given the Zen treatment

 

[wilbers]

Never knew there was a Space Invaders pinball machine so had a look at https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2252 Noticed it says some elements on it weren't correctly licensed - wonder if Zen got a license for the Alien and Space Invader elements if that would make a digital recreation legal even if the original strictly wasn't. Either way it doesn't look likely to be high on Zen's to do list.

 

[shutyertrap]

Oh I doubt anyone would go through the hassle of trying to legalize Space Invaders, especially after having played it! Still, it’s a good bit of nostalgia.

In all honesty, I doubt Zen will tackle hardly any of these. A lot suffer the same problem most EMs do...nobody remembers them just by name. And then there’s the gameplay itself, which typically is lacking in any sort of mode play. There’s a reason we know the titles we do, because they more closely resemble in rules what we know as pinball today. Meanwhile there’s 33 System 11 tables (of which 5 are completely forgettable) for Zen to get to in addition to licensed DMD machines. Call that 2 years before we see these. There might be some exceptions made, say for Centaur, EBD, or Firepower (tables cherry picked already by TPA), but I’d bet Zen moves forward with Stern or something before they start scraping this particular barrel. Which is a shame.

So, when they are done with DMD and moving to alphanumeric, people are going to need to raise a stink about some of these numeric gems in order for them not to get list in the shuffle.

 

[Citizen]

Hopefully being licensed and numeric doesn't doom Flash Gordon, because that table is amazing. I'll definitely raise a stink for numerics to be included alongside the alphanumerics when they get to them.

I'll be asking Zen for:

Flash Gordon
Barracora
Centaur
EBD
Gorgar
Alien Poker
Embryon
Xenon
Paragon
Fathom
Spectrum
Elektra
Vector
Sorcerer

If everyone sends Zen the list of numerics they want when the alphanumerics start coming out, maybe we'll get lucky and they'll see enough overlap with a few of them to pull the trigger on them.

 

[Kolchak357]

I’d prefer Zen hit us with some of these that we haven’t seen in digital form before, especially some of the widebody pins. But there are so many interesting choices that would be fun to see.

Top of my want list would be Embryon, Future Spa, Medusa, Barracora, Spectrum, and Flash Gordon (if possible).
Frontier, Mata Hari, Playboy, Comet, Evel Knievel, Eight Ball, Speakeasy, and X’s & O’s would be my second tier wants.

But if I had to guess what we will see first, I assume it would be something we have seen before like Space Shuttle.

 

[shogun00]

My top three:
Flash
Stellar Wars
Comet

 

[wolfson]

I’d prefer Zen hit us with some of these that we haven’t seen in digital form before, especially some of the widebody pins. But there are so many interesting choices that would be fun to see.

Top of my want list would be Embryon, Future Spa, Medusa, Barracora, Spectrum, and Flash Gordon (if possible).
Frontier, Mata Hari, Playboy, Comet, Evel Knievel, Eight Ball, Speakeasy, and X’s & O’s would be my second tier wants.

But if I had to guess what we will see first, I assume it would be something we have seen before like Space Shuttle.

Kolchak , with you all the way ,thumbs up !!!

 

[kimkom]

In all honesty, I doubt Zen will tackle hardly any of these. A lot suffer the same problem most EMs do...nobody remembers them just by name. And then there’s the gameplay itself, which typically is lacking in any sort of mode play. There’s a reason we know the titles we do, because they more closely resemble in rules what we know as pinball today. Meanwhile there’s 33 System 11 tables (of which 5 are completely forgettable) for Zen to get to in addition to licensed DMD machines. Call that 2 years before we see these. There might be some exceptions made, say for Centaur, EBD, or Firepower (tables cherry picked already by TPA), but I’d bet Zen moves forward with Stern or something before they start scraping this particular barrel. Which is a shame.

Possibly, Zen may test the water a little first and release just one or two (alpha)numerics to see how they sit with the current generation of PFX3 players. Depending how that goes, we may see a larger one-off pack of 6-7 cherry picked (alpha)numeric tables before moving onto newer licenses. We'll see how it goes...

One thing that may be in favour of Zen producing more of these types of tables is that Mars, their original table, continues to be one of Zen's most popular releases due to it's more simplistic gameplay and design.

 

[wolfson]

kimkom , I love Mars . goes to show simple things amuse simple minds !!!!

 

[kimkom]

kimkom , I love Mars . goes to show simple things amuse simple minds !!!!

wolfson, just for the record, I didn't say you were simple. Ha ha

I enjoyed Mars back when I had it on xbox but I haven't felt the need to purchase it again for PC. Come to think of it, I don't think I've purchased any of Zen's original tables again for PC. I'm purely in it for the Williams/Bally stuff now.

Updated physics would have swayed me but it sounds like Zen are now only considering it as an option for any future platform that may supersede PFX3.

Shame, but I can understand their reasoning, given all the work involved.

 

[Nomorestalker]

That's a good idea to drop a bulk pack of older tables once or twice a year since they wouldn't require nearly as many assets. But I think the best use of an older table would be the known quantity of the black knight 3 pack potentially being the first, it would contain a new stern, to pad the sale of two non dmd tables. Or I guess an elvira three pack would work too as you get potentially one of each ( new (rumored) stern, dmd era and a system 11)

 

[Crawley]

From that list wouldn't mind seeing the following tables in Zen:

Solar Fire - Favorite Black Knight layout pin of that era
Defender
Space Shuttle
Sorcerer
Centaur
Fireball II - Love the manual center save kick out and just the table layout in general
Medusa
Skateball - Lots of drop targets
Vector - Fun theme. And pop-up drop targets
Atlantis

Honorable mentions for BMX where I still have no clue on the scoring of that table but I love having to hit secondary buttons to fill in the out lanes so the ball doesn't drain. Also Algar might be fun. It's not a great table but I find myself playing it each year at VFW getting a bit better of it and a bit more understanding. It's such a mishmash of different features plunked on a table.

 

[wolfson]

wolfson, just for the record, I didn't say you were simple. Ha ha

I enjoyed Mars back when I had it on xbox but I haven't felt the need to purchase it again for PC. Come to think of it, I don't think I've purchased any of Zen's original tables again for PC. I'm purely in it for the Williams/Bally stuff now.

Updated physics would have swayed me but it sounds like Zen are now only considering it as an option for any future platform that may supersede PFX3.

Shame, but I can understand their reasoning, given all the work involved.

no worries ,kimkom , I was only making fun of myself haha . keep an eye out on steam , they do have great specials a couple times a year for Zen tables . Mars was my fave from day 1 .

 

[trash80]

That's a good idea to drop a bulk pack of older tables once or twice a year since they wouldn't require nearly as many assets. But I think the best use of an older table would be the known quantity of the black knight 3 pack potentially being the first, it would contain a new stern, to pad the sale of two non dmd tables. Or I guess an elvira three pack would work too as you get potentially one of each ( new (rumored) stern, dmd era and a system 11)

Older (less bell & whistle and limited ruleset) tables actually require MORE in house developed assets and enhancement. Regardless of the original era that the these tables come from they must compete with the other tables in the collection and Zen seems to have a very specific baseline for table presentation.

And dropping a larger sized pack that then lowers the per table price expectation is a bad idea. When more than likely the Stern tables will be at an increased price per table when they arrive.