Real Life Pinball Comparisons

[Matt McIrvin]

One of the first things I noticed when I tried TPA's version of Black Knight on my phone (and posted about earlier in other threads) has to do with how a plunged ball comes off of a held right upper flipper. In PHoF, it'd just roll right up the left side of the upper playfield, and when it rolled back it'd always set up an easy shot into the lock. Do it three times, and you get an easy multiball. In TPA, though, it'll always bounce a little, making that shot much harder to get consistently.

Well, today I spent some time playing a real Black Knight at Weirs Beach Funspot, and... yeah, TPA is the one that gets it right. The shot's possible but it's not a trivial lock. Black Knight is actually a fairly difficult, fast game, and the PHoF version felt relatively tame; the TPA version, for all its faults discussed elsewhere, has more of the feel of the real machine.

Of games I've played in simulation, they've also got a Gorgar, a Pin*Bot and a Funhouse, all of which are tremendously fun games in real life as well as in the virtual world. The real ones are, as always, harder, but learning the table rules in TPA and/or PHoF helps a lot.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

Of games I've played in simulation, they've also got a Gorgar, a Pin*Bot and a Funhouse, all of which are tremendously fun games in real life as well as in the virtual world. The real ones are, as always, harder, but learning the table rules in TPA and/or PHoF helps a lot.

Oh, yeah, I remembered the other thing I was going to say: It may be just the wear on these machines, which are all quite old, but it seemed as if the real plungers weren't anywhere near as powerful as they are in PHoF or TPA when it comes to skill shots. In TPA's Funhouse, getting the ball into Rudy's Hideout off the plunger takes some extreme finesse. On Funspot's Funhouse, I was getting it in there surprisingly often just by pulling the plunger back all the way and letting fly.

Similarly with Pin*Bot: for a while, my daughter was operating the plunger, and she was actually getting it into the middle hole on the spiral ramp for the big skill shot award about half the time. In Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection, plunging at maximum strength will always get it in the top hole. (Also, on that real Pin*Bot there's a significant chance that it'll jump off the spiral entirely, and just fall into the pop bumper area.)

 

[lettuce]

It's more a matter of timing than force (except on machines like Whirlwind with two-stage upper flippers), and this is TPA's chief area needing improvement. There are little flick passes and other nuances you can do with the flippers by quickly releasing and repressing the button, and thereby not allowing the flippers to travel all the way down and back up again. In TPA, even the slightest release and repress of the flipper controls will cause the flipper to travel its full distance, thereby launching the ball into the stratosphere. On a real machine, you wouldn't get that.

I guess this type of movement on the flippers will be impossible on the mobile device and only possible on the consoles and pc when using a pad with analog shoulder buttons like the 360 pad, that way you can add more or less pressure to the flipper buttons and thus not allowing the flippers to travel their full distance

 

[bavelb]

I guess this type of movement on the flippers will be impossible on the mobile device and only possible on the consoles and pc when using a pad with analog shoulder buttons like the 360 pad, that way you can add more or less pressure to the flipper buttons and thus not allowing the flippers to travel their full distance

Not really, pinballbuttons were/are digital (on/off) as well.
It's more a matter of time: if you quickly press the button after releasesing it the flipper won't travel as far thus gaining less momentum and therefor force. In TPA this movement is close to instantaneous so the flipper gains a bit too much momentum too quickly.

 

[RetroDude]

Not really, pinballbuttons were/are digital (on/off) as well.
It's more a matter of time: if you quickly press the button after releasesing it the flipper won't travel as far thus gaining less momentum and therefor force. In TPA this movement is close to instantaneous so the flipper gains a bit too much momentum too quickly.

You are mostly right, but not completely.

The previous poster was talking about a specific game that has "two stage" flippers.

Push the buttin in half way, it triggered ONE leaf switch... and one flipper but pushing the buttin in all the way triggered a second leaf switch... and the second flipper.

Yes, both of the switches, along with the flippers controlled by them are on/off switches, and not anything variable... BUT... the button action of those particular machines can not be replicated by a simple (read SINGLE) on/off switch.

Using analog controls would allow a fair representation of a two-stage flipper button. Basically, light pressure would trigger the first switdh to on, while more pressure would trigger the second stage switch to on.