What are your most-wanted EM tables?

[Brian Clark]

I played it on the Wii, and yes, it's 50Hz. The ratings don't mean much to me because I don't know who is doing those ratings or their criteria. If the real machine is faster I guess that would help, but I didn't find speed to be an issue in other tables in that collection (bar Genie, which also didn't do much for me). My main problem was the layout and not being able to get into any kind of scoring flow. I take it you enjoy this machine?

My point with the ratings is that they show that somebody likes the game, which is what was asked. I haven't played the real table, and I like what I played of it in Future Pinball, but I need to play a real machine for an opinion. I watched videos of the PS2 UK version of the Gottlieb collection and it definitely looks slower than the US version on Wii. I saw videos of the real table in action and it definitely looks much faster than the video of the PS2 PHoF.

 

[Richard B]

One thing about EMs is you don't need to worry about emulation. Just get the rules, layout, and physics right and you're good to go. This would also give them ample opportunity to use their Gottlieb license. They lost their mojo in the SS era, but were the king in the EM era.

 

[Kolchak357]

My memory is not to good on these. I don't know if it's just the passing of time or if I just didn't find this era of pins that memorable. But I do remember playing Mata Hari and Spirit of 76. All that red, white, and blue on Spirit of 76 really caught your eye.

 

[JPelter]

One thing about EMs is you don't need to worry about emulation. Just get the rules, layout, and physics right and you're good to go. This would also give them ample opportunity to use their Gottlieb license. They lost their mojo in the SS era, but were the king in the EM era.

Just as a note here, but while I'm not an expert on the subject from what I've heard out of farsight and others I'm pretty sure that it's actually a lot more work to make the table work like the original if you have to build up everything yourself instead of emulating the ROM. Syncing every single event on the table to be close to the original instead of letting the emulation deal with it is a large task. It is probably easier with old tables due to no DMD to worry about, but likely still more work than smashing out a new table you can use the ROM from.

Also, Dragon.

 

[Brian Clark]

At least EMs have simpler layouts to deal with.

 

[Kolchak357]

Canada Dry is obviously a license, but, as the table was originally designed to advertise the drink, I don't think it would be too hard to obtain permission from the company to give them free advertising.

Maybe the makers of Canada Dry would even kick in a little something for the promotion they would receive? I looked it up on YouTube as I have never seen the Canada Dry version. I think it would be fun to have that version instead of El Dorado. I've never played either, but I enjoy drop target heavy tables.

 

[JoshuaKadmon]

01) Skylab [Williams 1974]
02) Big Shot [Gottlieb 1973] *
03) Fireball [Bally 1972]
04) Slick Chick [Gottlieb 1963]
05) Four Million BC [Bally 1971]
06) Doozie [Williams 1968]
07) Central Park [Gottlieb 1966] °
08) Royal Flush [Gottlieb 1976]
09) Triple Strike [Williams 1975]
10) Fast Draw [Gottlieb 1975]

* Already confirmed for near future release
° Already featured in PHoF and likely for TPA update

At first, I felt like TPA should stick with all-SS, but honestly, I would rather see a full representation of modern pinball over the last four or five decades. That should include a handful of high-quality EMs to balance out the alphanumeric SS selection (my personal favorites) and the more recently popular DMD tables. I think five to seven great ones would be more than sufficient.

 

[Dutch Pinball ball]

My interest level is very low for all of these. I hope they go for recent machines.

 

[Sean]

I'm definitely burning out on the newer machines. Really need to see some older stuff or I'll start skipping releases - thankfully someone at Farsight agrees; really looking forward to Big Shot in the next update - hopefully the second Elvira table is better than the one we just got.

 

[gooche77]

The racist table with minstrels on it. Wtf?

 

[heberts811]

my question is What are they going to do for Goals in EM tables? There are only so many shots you can make in Big Shot.

Gary

 

[Matt McIrvin]

Some of the goals for Jive Time in PHoF were viciously hard. You can always do "make this shot N times" and "score N points", I suppose.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

The racist table with minstrels on it. Wtf?

Mid 20th century America, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

I'm definitely burning out on the newer machines. Really need to see some older stuff or I'll start skipping releases - thankfully someone at Farsight agrees; really looking forward to Big Shot in the next update - hopefully the second Elvira table is better than the one we just got.

Scared Stiff is nearly universally considered a superior table to Party Monsters, although a lot of that is just progression in technology - they were able to put more Elvira sound bites in there, gave her some DMD animations, and greatly increased the music quality. (Scared Stiff has a very atmospheric multiball tune.) And of course they added mode-based play, a wizard mode, and the backglass spider. Neither table has a particularly deep ruleset - you'll never mistake either one for a Lawlor table - and both tables tend to drain a lot and have shorter ball times.

Party Monsters is one of those transitional alphanumerics where you start seeing an increase in complexity over earlier numeric-only SS tables, but Lawlor hasn't come along yet and unleashed FunHouse and Whirlwind on the world, much less anything mode-based like TAF. This whole transitional period is kind of the red-headed stepchild of SS tables: too complex to appeal to EM/early-SS fans who want their "pure" pinball, yet not interesting enough for those who grew up on DMD machines. There are a few gems in here (Taxi, F-14 Tomcat, etc.) where the gameplay is strong enough to overcome the presentation, but in general I prefer the Lawlor alphanumerics to the earlier ones.

 

[Sean]

Party Monsters is starting to grow on me so it's cool. Agreed though these "halfway" machines are a mixed bag. I do prefer stuff like Gorgar and Black Hole to Funhouse and Taxi.

I suspect that EM tables will be rare just because the actual machines are rare - it all depends on how serious Farsight is about buying the physical table before digitising it. Maybe they'll make an exception for the EM tables with the caveat that things might be further removed from the real thing because they didn't get to play it?

 

[Kolchak357]

I believe the only people that don't crave Fireball are those that have never seen or played it. Beautiful design.

Edit: added a link to a YouTube vid of Frieball.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hE9vjGm0W4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[Matt McIrvin]

I believe the only people that don't crave Fireball are those that have never seen or played it. Beautiful design.

This comment made me look up a video of Fireball. Wow, it's an ingenious EM. With multiball.

It's interesting that Bally not only produced a solid-state sequel, Fireball II (which I have played), but also did a solid-state remake of the EM table years later as Fireball Classic. Though Fireball Classic had SS-style long flippers instead of those moving zipper flippers.

 

[Sean]

I also looked up video and I can remember seeing the backglass in arcades, but not the game itself. It's certainly worthy of preservation, but I have to ask: where are the drop targets?

 

[bossyman15]

The racist table with minstrels on it. Wtf?

Which table are you talking about?

 

[Brian Clark]

Which table are you talking about?

Minstrel Man

I suspect that EM tables will be rare just because the actual machines are rare - it all depends on how serious Farsight is about buying the physical table before digitising it. Maybe they'll make an exception for the EM tables with the caveat that things might be further removed from the real thing because they didn't get to play it?

Not sure what you are getting at here. Many EMs aren't rare and even sell for much less than SS tables. There are some EMs with production numbers around 10,000, especially some Gottlieb ones like Royal Flush. The odd thing is that Big Shot is only 2,900 units, but Hot Shot, the 4p version is more common with a production of 9,000 units. I hope they don't make that exception for EM tables. Lack of ROMs will make some things harder, but many EMs aren't expensive and it's very likely that FS has played a few EMs, especially since they often visit PHoF in Vegas. I don't think games should get special concessions just becuase they are older.

I would like to see the arcade room again. I'm curious if they have a Big Shot or are using a Hot Shot as a model since it's the same layout.

Edit: Just to be clear, I don't expect the recreations to be 100% perfect, but with the recent issues with tables like Black Hole and Medieval Madness (and in this case, they have the real tables), I definitely feel FS should use the real tables for help with the recreations.