Retronauts - 776: The Golden Age of Pinball

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Believe it or not, in nearly 20 years of Retronauts, we've never produced an episode dedicated to pinball. And the topic has barely been mentioned in passing! While pinball isn't necessarily a "video game," it shares the same spaces as arcade cabinets, and has incorporated screens with things happening on them for the past 35 years—so it's definitely within our wheelhouse. And, despite the supposed death of the silver ball, we're kind of in a mini-Renaissance right now? This week on Retronauts, listen in and prepare to nudge the nearest machine gently as Bob Mackey and guest Andreas Bernard (author of Same Player Shoots Again: A Biography of the Pinball Machine) discuss 100 years of knockout holes, drop targets, and trying desperately not to tilt.Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 100+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

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Start your free trial today. This week on Retronauts, we play the Silver Ball. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie. And this week, we are talking about pinball. And we're actually talking about pinball for the first time in our nearly 20 year history of making this podcast. So pinball is a type of gaming experience that dates back to the 1930s, at least in its modern form that we know it as. So we're on the brink of its 100th anniversary. And also we're living through a sort of small scale pinball renaissance. There's a whole lot to cover here. And while I personally love pinball myself, I have brought on an expert who knows way more than me. and he wrote a very great book about the activity known as Pimball. Andreas Bernard, welcome to the show. Hi. Hi. Thanks for having me.

I'm very happy to be there. And yes, Andreas, your book is called Same Player Shoots Again, A Biography of the Pimball Machine, currently out in stores and I believe online today. Right, right. And can you explain the premise of your book, Andreas, what inspired you to write it? I've noticed there aren't many books about Pimball compared to the amount of books I see about video games, just the general subject of video games? Yeah, I think the idea is pretty old.

I mean, it dates back to maybe even the time when the big pinball companies closed in the late 90s or around the turn of the century. And then I was around 30 years old and I've been playing pinball for, I don't know, 25 years. And already then I thought it could be ideal to cover a life alongside of pinball games. And then over the years, the idea got more shape. And then I wrote it in German. I'm based in Berlin, in Germany.

And then I wrote this book maybe four, five, six years ago. And it was just the idea to narrate a life, to narrate a biography, a long set of pinball machines because it's something like a red thread in my life. So I've been, I started playing it at the age of my life. maybe six or seven. And basically I've been playing it until today. And so it's kind of a threat of my life. And that was the idea, like autobiography of a pinball player. Great. Yes. I read the book. And what I found very fascinating about it is it's a complete

different perspective than what I'm used to because I grew up in America. I live in Vancouver, British Columbia now. But your book offers a German perspective and a generally European perspective because you did travel a lot and experience Pimball in many different countries. But I did notice even though we were living in very different worlds and in different time periods, the essential experience was not too dissimilar. Yes. And I think it's because American popular culture was very, very visible and very important for us. So I was born in 1969 and my first Pimbal memory state maybe back to 1976 or 1977.

and pinball machines were all over the places in Germany. And since pinball was forbidden in some American cities in this time, it was even more visible. I read an interview with a manager of Bali, one of the big manufacturers. And he said that in the 60s and early 70s, more machines have been shipped to Germany or France than there were in the U.S. itself, you know. So, yeah, it's just, as you know, Western Europe in the 60s, was very, very fond of American pop culture. So they were just there all over the places. And I don't want to spoil too much of your book, but much of it is about your personal relationship with Pimball, where you found the machines, what you were doing at the time growing up with Pimball. Can you

give our listeners an idea of where you first encountered it? What really drew you into Pimball in general. Yes. So I grew up in Munich, another big city in Germany, and on the one hand, my father, my father worked at the main station in a travel agency. And like always around the main station, there were a lot of arcades and a lot of shady pubs where there were pinball machines. And sometimes he kind of smuggled me in and I could play with him. On the other hand, there was a youth center. I was in a soccer club and another soccer club in Munich at a youth center. And so the most, you know, the biggest authorities of youth, then like the motorcycle rockers who were maybe 14, 15, 16 years old, I was 8 years old. They played pinball. And they had one machine, an electromechanical

machine in the youth center. And I wanted to play with them because I kind of admired them. They were like the big motorcycle rockers. And so this was maybe the atmosphere. in the second half of the 70s in a city like Munich, the real cool, little dangerous youth people, they played pinball and I wanted just to join as a kid. Yeah, my experience was very different because I was born in 82, so 13 years younger than you. And by the time I experienced pinball,

I guess it was viewed as safe, or safe enough to put in an arcade where many children would gather. Yes, and pretty boring too. And I guess when I was growing up, we had generally gotten over the idea that arcades were dangerous. That was more of like an early. 80s idea. I feel like they were being more and more sanitized as things went on. But I noticed

when I was going to arcades in the late 80s for the first time the adults, the parents would gravitate towards the pinball. It'd be like sort of in a back hallway while the kids would play the more traditional video games. And I remember the first ones that really hit me, and I'm sure you're familiar

with these, Andreas, Comet the 1985 Williams table. Of course. And Funhouse also by Williams. These were the first ones that I couldn't stop watching other people play and I eventually dove into them myself. And the one that really hooked me, this should not surprise you or anyone listening, is the Adams family table. Yes. Became very obsessed with that. And it's so nice to know that that is considered one of the greatest tables and is, I think, might be the best selling table of all

time in pinball history. Right. So for a long time, it was the machine called Eight Ball, built in 1977. This was manufactured 20,000 times. So there were 20,000 copies. And then Adam's family, I think in 1992 had 21,000. So until this day, it's like the pinball machine with the most copies. Yeah, I guess it also really shows you how limited these runs were because these are very big tables that require a lot of manufacturing. So even the biggest ones ever made, there were only 21,000 in the world. And I do remember that table especially because I was very used to games costing a quarter in America.

And the Adams family was the first game I ever played that cost 50, sense. And I'm not sure if there was similar inflation going on in Germany, Andreas. Can you speak to that? Of course. It was always, you know, and that's so interesting because every pinball player, I don't know if it's to the same extent for arcade game players, but for every pinball player, it's very similar that you always remember the first machine, you know? It's like the beginning of a big love affair or so. So you always remember the first machine you played on, like you remembered Comet and Funhouse. And then, of course, you remember. how much it cost when you discovered it.

And for me, I remember that it was two games, was one Deutsche Mark when I started. And then maybe two or three years later, it was one game, one Deutsche Mark. And again later, even more expensive. And I had this one threshold that a couple of years ago in the US, I discovered a pinball machine where you could put in a bill, a one dollar bill.

And this was kind for me was a total, you know, not imaginable to feed a pinball machine with a bill because it only was coin operated. It's even called coin operated business. So this was a big threshold that you can put in builds now. Yeah, and I guess everything now, if you go to a modern arcade, you're given a card and you're not really sure how much anything costs, at least in America in some parts of Canada. It's just like, here's your game card, you put money on it, you put points on it, and I guess you can do the math yourself to figure that out.

I was going to ask, what is the state of pinball where you currently are? because I'll talk about what's going on in Vancouver, but just maybe a month or two ago, a nice little pinball arcade open near me. It's been very nice to be able to go there and check it out because pinball is kind of scarce in Vancouver, British Columbia. And I do want to give them a shout out here. They are Van City Pinball and Arcade in Vancouver,

a fairly new, and I think really the only freestanding arcade I've experienced here since I started living here. Yeah, there's a big Renaissance, I would say, you know, because as you know, when in 1999, the big Chicago manufacturers all stopped producing pinball machines. There was kind of a gap for a couple of fees where almost anybody played pinball. And then for a lot of years, you had pinball machines only for a small crowd of private collectors and of tournament players.

And now I would say since maybe four or six years, there's a big renaissance of public places covering pinball machines and this new type of venue called Barcade, like the mixture of bars and arcades and the place like you were just mentioning in Vancouver. There are a lot of places, especially in the US and Canada, but also in Europe, it's getting a little more visible again. And that's good because pinball really was, as far as a public phenomenon, was really dead for a lot of years. and now it seems to come back maybe as an antidote to digital games, you know,

that maybe a lot of people, younger people, they really want to feel the materiality of the pinball machine. I think it's kind of a counter-movement to a digitization that would be maybe my hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, it's an experience that really can't be replicated digitally. You kind of have to be there with all of the moving parts. And I do want to talk about the different era as a pinball first, but Andreas, in your book, you do cover a lot of tables. that you love, and I do want to go over those.

But first, I wanted to run a few of mine, my favorites by you to see if you have any opinions. And there are a lot of tables out there, so it's okay if you might not know of some of these, or maybe some of them didn't make their way to Europe. But I did want to name just a handful that I'm always drawn towards whenever I am in an arcade or I see it in the wild. So I would say one of my first favorites is Junkyard, 1996 Williams.

You can tell the error that I thrived in the early to mid-90s. And Junkyard, I think I am a, attracted to elements, just like very gimmicky elements of pinball tables. In this case, there is a swinging, wrecking ball in the middle of the playfield that is just so fun to hit. I'm not sure if you have experience with this one. Sure. I will go to Austria tomorrow to a big European tournament and I have to play it. Awesome. Okay. So, yeah, I'm not talented to play chunk here. I always suck totally when I played,

but I also like it because it's such a great layout with the chunkyard and all the pieces. of garbage and then you have very cool video modes, you know. You remember when the dog is chasing you. Yes. You have to escape. And then there is this girl in the bath too. And then it's also funny because it's kind of a self-referential pinball machine. Because you can hit saucer on the right.

And then there is a time machine. And then you play modes of previous pinball machines. For example, also Adam's family. Oh, cool, cool. And that's interesting because for a very long time, of course, it was, let alone technologically, it was not possible to refer on a pinball machine to other previous pinball machines. It's like a meta level of pinball. And that's also interesting in Chunkyard, that it's kind of combining previous machines with this one. Yeah, I don't think I experienced that element of the table because I should admit at this point, I'm kind of bad at pinball.

And in reading your book makes me feel like I'm even worse than I imagine. because there are certain things in pinball that I just can't really do. But I'm mainly just like I'm there for the experience for the artwork for the themes and everything like that. And Junkyard has some great themes. And I just love the idea of like mission-based gameplay and pinball is really fun. And this one you're building a time machine. Another favorite of mine was Gilligan's Island, the Midway game from 91. I found this.

It was a story similar to the ones you're telling in your book, Andreas, where most of the time I would find these games in arcades. I go to an arcade to play a game. This one I found when I was camping, it was at the commissary where you buy your treats, you buy your toiletries, whatever. They had a Gilligan's Island table, and I was very obsessed with that. And I believe it is the only pinball table I finished, in that you can finish a story in a pinball game. This one didn't make it to Europe. So I have never seen it in the 90s when it came out. I saw it sometimes in tournaments, when I drove to the U.S. to play tournaments.

But since I didn't know it when it came. out, I really don't have a relation to it. But it's great that you say that you came across at the camping place because maybe we talk about it later, but that is a big theme also in the book. Do you face pinball machines in the arcade where there are a lot of them, or do you face them at some place where there's only one pinball machine? That's a great difference for every pinball player. Yeah.

In many cases it is the one pinball activity. activity you can do in any given space. So you become fixated on it. It could be often more fun than anything around it, which is often not the case in an arcade. So there's that. Also, just a few more I want to mention here. Dr. Dude and his excellent Ray from Midway, 1990. This is one, I'm more fan of the arts in the game.

I just love this very maximalist late 80s, early 90s graphic design. Very tasteless in some ways. But just the pure design of all of those elements really draws me to the machine. I don't think I'm very good at this one either, but there's just something very appealing in a late 80s nostalgic way. Yeah, I mean, that's great that you choose this machine because I think this is paradigmatic for a certain era of the absolute visual abundance of the pinball machine. You know, when you grew up with, let's say, the machines of the mid, late 70s, they were very, very sparse and not many things, maybe a couple of drop targets, couple of bumpers, of orbits and like these neon pop culture 60s 70s aesthetics and then if you take this doctor what's the full name of the machine it's a very convoluted name a doctor dude and his excellent ray right

and if you if you watch this pinball i mean there are like thousands of pictures and dozens of characters and and also on the play fields like so many levels and so many ramps and so many rams and so I always, I felt a total abundance every time when I saw this machine. And I must say I'm also not good at this. So the machines which have a bigger meaning for you. So Gilligan's Island and Dr. Do, that two machines were never played well for some things. Yeah, I guess we have that in common.

I guess I did finish Gilligan's Island, but I feel like that was a fluke. I was just 11 years old and at the right place of the right time. The last one I want to mention is Red and Ted's Roadshow 1994 Williams. And it's another one with a very gimmicky element in that it feels like an evolution of the classic Funhouse table. In Funhouse

you have the one head who's sort of mocking you. It's like a dummy, a ventriloquist dummy's head. In this case, it is a man and a woman, construction workers who are kind of like supporting you. And I love that element of the game. There's a lot of chatter, a lot of back and forth between them. And it is, again, a very mission and

objective base. And I do love just the design of this table. And I think, like, I am, I'm kind of good at this one. So I do, I do gravitate towards it. Yeah, that I like to. And I also like to play it. And I like the graphics. And this is also an example of what you said for the, for the mission type game or the narrative of the game that you start in the East. I don't know, in Miami or in New York. I think there are two paths. And then you can go to the West. And I really like the machine. and you have different strategies and you can do a lot of points. But I mean, I had this really interesting encounter because I thought I would play this machine well. And you know, if you have a really good game and you do a lot of cities and you do a lot of checkpots,

then you have maybe, let's say, 600 million points, 800 million points. Maybe if you're really, really good, you go to one billion. And then I went to a tournament and there was one of the best players in the world, a guy from Belgium. called Timber Anglebyn. He's one of the 10 best players in the world. And he just did 11 billion points. I mean, I think he played one hour with one ball. So then I thought, okay, there are a different level.

Yeah, I mean, you are obviously a much better pinball player than me. I could not even attempt to play a game at a tournament even casually. I would just stand back and watch an awe as everyone is just completely dominating these machines. I'll be trying to learn their secrets in the background. Well, yeah, those are just a few of the machines I want. wanted to list, Andres, to see your opinions on them. But I want to kick things off by talking about pinball in general. How do we explain this to people who might not understand its many nuances? What's the appeal? And how can this very basic style of gameplay, basic, I guess, at first glance,

how can this remain interesting over nearly 100 years of pinball as we know it? Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, if the audience of this podcast, of course, is socialized by video and computer games. So maybe the big difference, as we already said, is the materiality and the gravity. You know, you have a table which stands pretty steep and you have the ball which runs down. So you have two factors.

You have the materiality of the machine, the ball, the bumper. So it's not virtual. It's material. And then you have gravity that you know, like the machine will win because the ball will go down and you can you can kind of combat against it for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes

but the machine will win and I think the goal which is really very fascinating and encouraging is that you want to get control in the uncontrolled and then in

Germany in Germany it's not called pinball it's called flipper the machine is called like the arms in English you only call the arms called Flipper. And in German the whole machine is called Flipper. And in German it's a metaphor for chaos, for the uncontrollable. You know, if there is a soccer game, for example, and the ball comes from one player to the other and it's like chaos,

then the commentator says, ah, flipper and the defense, you know, so it's a metaphor of not having control. And I think the absolute fascination of this game, is to try to get control because it's so hard to control because of the bumpers and the slings, you know. And that's maybe the fascination even for a very long period of time because in the early times of pinball, there weren't even flipper. I'm sure you know this, right? That the first Bimor machine, which had flippers, was built in 1947. Yeah, and I believe, like, it goes back to centuries before we called it pinball, but I think like 19,

1931 is generally decided as the first traditional pinball table. But in that case, it's a plunger you pull back. The ball hits pins, goes into certain holes. It's not anything like the experience we have today. Right, but it was always the same principle that there is luck, there is chaos, there's like the uncontrollable pathes of the ball. And you try with nudging and with your like the sensitivity of your hands, nudging it. You try to put it in the right direction.

And I would say this is the fascination. which is a little different from video and computer games because of the materiality and the gravity, you have at least the imagination that your movements, that your hands, that your sensitivity can control the ball. I would say this is the fascination. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot going on with the pinball table, obviously, and there's no time for a tutorial.

You're also probably in an arcade or a bar. You can't really hear a lot of what's going on. if the machine is trying to give you instruction. So I feel like people, a lot of people generally understand I keep the ball out of the drain, but they also don't understand like I'm being guided towards certain targets. I'm activating missions where I then have to hit certain goals. I feel like a lot of people can't get through the general chaos of what's happening. But I feel like over time you generally learn like, okay, there's a method to this madness.

I have to exert what a little control I have and just kind of keep an eye on the dot matrix screen or the video screen that will let, me, you know, like, okay, now you're on this mission, you have to do this, or make sure you activate these things. I find people don't really understand how much is truly going on with the game beyond simply keeping the ball in play. Yeah, and of course, the younger, the newer, the machines are, the more complicated they are, right? So you have like these different epochs of the pinball machine before the computer chips

came in, so let's say prior to 1977, the PILMA machine didn't have any memory. So you just started every ball new, and what you saw was the thing, you know, there was no deeper level. And then from the late 70s on, you had like a very elementary memory of the PILMA machines. For example, if you had a pool table, then the PILMA machine kept in mind how many balls you already hit it, how many targets. But like from decay to decade, it became more complicated. And the machines now, let's say the last five to ten years, you really have to play, I would say, three hours a day for a couple of weeks until you understand everything. And that's, that was the point where I personally, I stepped out. So I don't, I don't understand the rules of the machines of the last

five years. It's too complicated for me. Well, I also wanted to ask you, we're talking about how there's a lot going on with pinball more than you would assume just by looking at the game. What mistakes do you think first timers make? Something I notice is people who are new to pinball, they tend to try to hit both flippers at the same time, which is like

I think the most instinctual thing you do. Another mistake and this is a tip to all of you out there. People, they never stick around after they lose to see if they win a free game. So if you go to a pinball arcade, you can probably find at least three machines with a free game just waiting for you because people lose, they walk away and they don't realize that they have won.

Yeah, both very true. I mean, maybe you remember the passage in my book in the second chapter where I'm writing about my first machine. And I did exactly the thing you were describing. I had this kind of pinball teacher, one of the motorcycle rockers. And I did my first game. And of course, instinctively, I pressed two buttons at the same moment. And I pressed two of the flippers. And then he said, no, only one.

And this is maybe the first thing as your ability to play pinball. You have to think about only hit one flipper at a time, you know. And then I think like I'm talking about the pinball playing technique, it's all about control, you know. So you have different controls, how you cradle the ball. You know, the ball comes from the slings or from the bumpers and you want to just cradle it. And there you have different techniques. And the other thing is if you want to transfer it from one flipper to the other, so let's say you have to put it to the right flipper to hit something on the left,

but it's on the left flipper. What do you do? And then you also have three or four options, how you can transfer the flipper, the ball from one flipper to the other. And these are the techniques which result in better playing because you then are more controlled. And then you have also the ability to not. because if the ball is in dangerous parts of the machine that it can drain on the right or left side, you give it a notch that the ball turns back to the middle or so.

So these are the basic elements of pimble playing technique, I would say. Yeah, I'm sure that I was doing the same thing as you when I first started playing, and then over time you learn, okay, it's not about hitting them both at the same time. It's about using the flippers strategically. And then it's also not about constantly hitting the ball away. It's about catching the ball, passing the ball, trying to hit it in certain directions. So I feel like with time, people do pick up on these skills. But at first, it does seem very, very overwhelming.

In your book, we mentioned this earlier, you really focus on the appeal of finding machines in the wild, as opposed to going to a dedicated space for gaming. And this is where, like, so many of your memories come from. and while so many of these machines are special, not just how they play, but where you were, what you were experiencing, what was around you.

Can you go more into that? Yes, and I would say this is the historical part of it, you know, because since pinball machines disappeared from the public as a really very well visible element of public sphere in the cities, before they disappeared, I would say, in the late 90s, and they were really, like in their,

many bars and cafes and bowling alleys and when when I was a kid and a friend of mine and me we started like every Friday evening after school we did our straws with the more twilighty quarters of the city and not whether whether what a slaughterhouse was or where the where the big supermarkets were like a little darker quarters of the city and then we we we tried to develop a certain feeling where could a pinball machine be and for example in fancy restaurants we know they there wouldn't be a pinball machine but if there were like some shady pubs or shady restaurants we had this sense okay this is it and then we went in and we were like 10 or 11 years and of course we were not allowed to go there and then we said hey could we go to the toilet for a moment because we knew that the pinball machines in most of the cases were close to the toilets, like in the rear of the pub or downstairs, you know. And then we were in, and most of the time we were right, we had the right sense.

There were the pinball machines. And then our mothers gave us two or three marks for the afternoon. And then we put it in. And then if we were lucky, we played the whole afternoon and without being caught, you know, by the people who run the pub. So this was great. Yeah, it was a very different experience for me because it wasn't so much pinball as it was growing up right after the golden age of the arcade.

I was born in 82, like I said, that's around the air of Pac-Man. And then by the time I'm of age and able to, like, reach an arcade machine, there's basically a Pac-Man anywhere you look in every corner of every department store, and just in general in the mall here and there. But Pinball never truly encountered it in the wild in that area. It was always like, you're in an arcade, here's the one hallway where the pinball tables live. Right. And I think that's really like the 13 years between your

birth and my birth, I think these were really, like, very important years for an adventurous encounter of pinball machines and then maybe also of early arcade machines, you know, because of course I remember very well these years, let's say, between 1980 and 83, where the pinball machines were replaced by the early arcade games, but they also had this little, you know, little adventurous, little dangerous surroundings. And so this is maybe kind of the historical

layer of the book. For people maybe your age who were a little too young to have this perspective on pinball machines, that it was really because you were not allowed as a kid to go into these places. These were like shady

shady cups and shady drinking spots. But for some reason we managed it to go in. And then we had like a very good time to play pinball. And one thing I wanted to bring up, there's a sort of dark age of pinball, the era of pinball prohibition, which I think is unknown to a lot of people, even pinball enthusiasts. It was something that I feel like I only learned about maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

And it is a fascinating subject. So to let our listeners know, like starting in the early 1940s, various cities began to enact pinball prohibition. It was tied to like gambling and truancy and mafia activities. It was a big scapegoat in other words. And it wasn't really until the famous 1976 pinball hearing that pinball began to truly enter public spaces again. This is definitely worth reading about it. There's like a newish movie about it.

But essentially one man proved in front of a city council pinball is not a game of chance. It's a game of skill. You are manipulating the events on the playfield in order to achieve certain scores. And I guess to be slightly fair to the people who enacted these bylaws, when a lot of these were put on the books, pinball did not have flippers. So it's easy to conflate the pinball machine of that time with a slot machine. Right, right, right. And I mean, I played a lot of pinball in my life, but I never heard about the story. The first time I heard about the story was maybe 10 years ago.

And for me, as a European player, it was very surprising because, of course, in Germany, we always thought this is an American thing. And, you know, for example, the Italian film director Pierre Palo Pazolini, he always said America is television and pinball. As he said this in the 1970s. And for me, it was very fascinating to learn that pinball in the U.S. and in the motherland of pinball, what I considered, was forbidden for such a long time. And as you said, it began in Second World War, for example, the then mayor of New York City. He was a important person and he banned all pinballs and melted them down to transform it to to war material and to weapons. And then I think in as you said in New York and the ban was came to an end in 1976 and Los Angeles in 1973.

There's this great movie, Likouris Pizza. Have you seen it by Paul Thomas Anderson? It's about about the end of the Pimball Band in LA in 1970. Okay, I didn't know there was a pinball aspect to it. Now I'm very interested. Last night, actually, I just watched Pinball, the man who saved the game in 2022 film about Roger Sharp and his life and his involvement with Pinball. Yeah, but there's liquorice pizza is also about Pinball. And even in Chicago, like the hometown of Pinball, it was banned until the 70s, you know. And that's from a European perspective, it's interesting because it's counterintuitive. And so for some reasons, it's maybe consequent. that a German, a European person wrote this book because in the 60s and 70s pinball was played more passionately in Europe than in the US for funny reasons.

I mean, it's really counterintuitive. Yeah, it feels like it was kept alive elsewhere when it was banned in the States. And in the movie and in certain writings of Roger Sharp, he does point out that he grew up in Chicago. That is where all the pinball tables were manufactured. But he did not actually play pinball, was not available in Chicago.

And it's important to point out that many cities took a very long time to get these anti-pimball bylaws off the books. So not too long ago, I was living in the Bay Area in California. And it was in 2014 that Oakland, California finally repealed their anti-pinball prohibition. So just within the past like 12 years, pinball has been legal in Oakland, California, a very liberal place. But I guess it just takes people to finally sit down and say, all right, let's figure this out, let's get these off the books. And I was looking at my own city's bylaws in Vancouver, which are very restrictive to this very day.

They were enacted in 1982 as sort of like a countermeasure to the growth of arcades and the golden era of arcades. And if you look at these laws, which I think are slightly being real back, you can see how draconian they are because they basically state like, oh, if you have more than three amusement machines in a room that is now a gaming parlor, no one under the age of 19 can be there, no one can be drunk, there could be no alcohol in that space. It is really surprising.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm not like, with the existence of that pinball arcade in my city now, I feel like things are being reeled back, but they've been fighting against these anti-pimball or sorry, just anti-gaming laws in Vancouver for a very long time. I just showed up like in 2023, but I've been learning about it because I'm like, where are all the arcades? But it's interesting because I had family in Los Angeles and I went to Los Angeles as a kid every other year. So I spent the summers there of, I don't know, 77, 79, 81.

And then for me, it was pinball heaven. But in hindsight, it must have been like the first years after the band, you know, which I didn't know, of course, as a kid. And when I went to Los Angeles as a 10-year-old in 1979, I remember these arcades with like dozens of machines, which I have never seen. And then there was always this great fact that in the U.S. and there were five balls a game. And in Germany, there were three balls a game. And so this was kind of a metaphor for the total lush abundance of California for me that even the pinball machines had five balls instead of three.

I guess L.A. was more free with their pinball than Oakland. They were more liberal with their pinball, very conservative Oakland. But only from 1973 on, you know. Yes. Yeah. So it was very new then. I believe, I believe, yeah, we talked about licorice pizza. This is probably included in the movie.

but it sounds like L.A., they repealed their Pimball Prohibition right before New York. It was like 73 in L.A. and 76 in New York. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't aware of this aspect of Pimball until I went to the Pacific Pimball Museum in Alameda, California. And I first played these very old games from the 30s and 40s. And many of them have like a placard or a sticker that says, this machine is not to be used for gambling purposes. And I just laughed at that.

I think, I thought like, oh, who would gamble on pinball? then you learned the history and it was it was treated very seriously yeah and do you know the story because um i think all the listeners are familiar with the tilt mechanism on a pinball machine that if you notch too hard then then you can't play anymore because the flippers they stop working i mean i think that that's something which is known by everybody but but what i read is how this started and it started in this era you were just mentioning in the in the 30s before pinball's had flipper And then John, I think it was called John Williams, like the founder of one of the big pinball companies, he always watched people just lifting the pinball machines, you know, to manipulating the path of the ball.

And then he put in nails from the surface down that if people did this again, then they have bloody fingers because of the nails. And this is like the prehistoric form of tilt, you could say. Yeah, yeah. And then it evolved into, I believe, something called a stool pigeon, which was a ball that sort of was sitting in a saucer that if it dropped out of there, then the machine would stop working. And then I believe now it's probably like an accelerometer now. But before that, it was like a pendulum. It graduated to a pendulum system, I guess. Right, yeah, until very recently, yes.

Yeah. I don't think we mentioned this yet, Andreas, but what elements do you look for in a pinball game? Like how important is the theming to you? Is your affinity to the IP or the brand it might use? Is that important at all? Does that help you enjoy a Pemball game? I would say it depends how old the machine is, you know, because when I go back to the machines of my childhood

or even older machines, which were manufactured before I was born even, then the aesthetics are really important for me because I like, I really, I think from an assessment, aesthetic point of view, the most interesting period of time in pinball history were the 60s and 70s, because it was such a great visual art, like pop art. And if you watch these old electro-mechanical pinball machines with like the neon colors and this great 60s art. So I think if I play an old machine, the aesthetics are really very important. And with the younger machines, it's more, I think it's, I would more consider them like, like, like, you know, like it's a sport that you, you play competitively, you think about, can I, can I handle the machine, how is it played?

So I would say the younger the machine is the less important for me are the aesthetics. Plus you have to say the motives and the themes have changed. And this was also something I was interested in when I was working on the book, that if you, I mean, You have like a pinball history in the modern sense from the 1960s to now. And if you see, like if you watch the topics of the motives, then it's an interesting representation of American culture because you can ask yourself what is represented by pinball machines and what not. So for example, there is no single hip-hop pinball machine in history.

But there are around 60 or 80 rock music theme pinball machine. And that's interesting. Because you can think about what audience is the Pimba Machine looking for. And so you can say they absolutely are looking for a white audience and not for a black audience. Because, I mean, as everybody knows, the most interesting and most maybe popular music since the 90s is hip-hop or house music or R&B. and no one of these artists is represented by a pinball machine, but every rock band is represented. And these are questions which I find interesting as a cultural scientist.

I'm as well, you know, I'm like a pinball player, but I'm always also a person who works in cultural studies at the universities. And that I find interesting. What kind of culture is represented by the history of pinball machines? Now that is a shocking fact It sounds it sounds wrong when you hear it But then you think for just five seconds And you say oh I've never seen

The Tupac pinball machine or the The Run DMC pinball machine or whatever But I've seen you know Aerosmith and Metallica An ACDC and all of these other very white rock bands Even like like more marginal bands like rush I mean rush is a well-known band But it's not like a like a world star band Like the Beatles on it's happening

And even they have a pinball machine And so even, so if you say there are made, let's say there are 3,000 pinball machines made since the 70s or 60s. And as far as I know, there are only three or four which even have black people on the backlist. You know, there's an Ali pinball machine. There's a Shaq O'Neill pinball machine. There's a Harley Clubhouse machine. And that's it. So it's interesting, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. It's a very white, very white entertainment machine. Yeah, I just keep that in mind next time I am playing pinball. Just like who is here? Is this trying to find a white audience? Is it just these are the kinds of machines that became popular? In terms of like IP though, I was just thinking that it can often be a draw to me. Like I like these characters.

I like this world. I like the pinball machine. But often I'll be drawn to a machine that either doesn't really work out for me or I'm really bad at. Like I believe you mentioned the Star Trek, the next generation machine in your book. I love that machine in theory. I am so bad at it that it is always a huge bummer whenever I play it

that and also the Terminator 2 machine I feel like my time with those machines lasts maybe like 30 to 45 seconds and I really want to see more of them but I just have to figure out like what am I doing wrong? I can give you an advice if you want Oh please please

because you know sometimes it's interesting if you play a lot and if you play a machine a lot and you watch great players playing it You figure that everything shrinks to one shot or to two shots. And you could just, you know, you could extinct the whole playfield except for these two shots because you don't need more.

And as to Tadricks the next generation, you only need the spinner on the left and the side ramp. And that's all you have to do. And then when you plunge, you have to choose a warp factor on the right. You choose that. And then you only go with the right flipper, left spinner. side run, left spinner, and then you have a billion points, and then you win. Okay, I think I just overthinking, and I'll keep that in mind next time I see it,

because I do want to finally enjoy that machine, because I love Star Trek the next generation, and I feel like that's a big hurdle I need to get over, because it's such an attractive machine. But that's, you know, that's so interesting when I played, because there was a time for three or four years when I played a lot of tournaments, and I traveled to the US a lot to play, and then I played against the world best players, and then I always saw they only focus on one shot, And then I did this too And then sometimes I became better But then I lost fun playing it

Because then I thought Okay, what I'm doing here I traveled 10,000 kilometers to a pinball tournament And now I played like a worker on the assembly line You know I play just every So where's the fun in playing pinball So that gave me some thinking

I can see that if you're just focused on doing the one thing over and over You can just train all the fun out of it and you're only seeing it as, okay, this is the one target, everything else is irrelevant. Any other events that are happening around me are meaningless, except for the one thing I need to do to get a high score? There is, like, the machine, Doctor Who, this is maybe the most famous example, because the only thing you have to do is to shoot with the right flipper, you shoot the ball in the left orbit, and it comes back,

and then with the left upper flipper, you shoot the side rim, and then it goes back to the left orbit. And people do this. One great bear, he did it, I think, 120 times in a row. And that's like assembly line. Yeah, I guess the score you get is meaningful, but actually the play looks very monotonous and probably just feels very monotonous when you're in the moment.

I did want to ask you, you talk a lot about penball tables you like. I wonder if there are any that you despise or really disappointed you because we've been talking about what we find attractive. We've been talking about, I like these tables. I feel like it's personal failure that I'm doing poorly at them. But what are negative elements of a pinball table? what don't you like to see? I mean, if we go back to the first real crisis of pinball,

the first real crisis of pinball, of course, where the years where the arcade games came up, right? So the first very bad year of pinball was 1982, because everywhere you had asteroids and Pac-Man and Galaxy and the pinballs, the machines, they faded. And then the manufacturer thought, okay we have to do something new. And then, for example, one company made a machine called Orbital One.

And it was like a moon, a moon, how do you call it in English, like the surface of a moon? So like very uneasperatory? Yeah, great. And so this was like the pinball table was a grader. And so you couldn't control the ball anymore at all because it was not even, you know. So this machine I hate, but everybody hates it. Or then you had these hybrids of pinball and video game. So for example, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man also from, I think, 1982,

it's a video game included in pinball. And then when I played this hand, I decided to play pinball, not arcade games. Why should I play arcade now when I play pinball? So this was a very disappointing epoch of pinball, I would say, 82, 83. And I would say now the last machines, for me, they are very difficult because they are so complicated. There's one machine from 2017. I also have to play tomorrow in the Austrian tournament. I'm already very nervous.

It's the newest Star Wars pinball by Stern. And this is so complicated because you have to know that if you shoot one orbit, then you fix a certain value. and then you have to shoot three other orbits and then you defix and then you have an action button between the flippers and it's like you know it's really like math you have to do the math all the time and that's that's too complicated for me but maybe because I'm too old already

yeah there are a lot of distractions now on modern tables there's a lot of HD video there's I mean as much as I like the hypermaximism of Dr. Dude it is all just 2D images on a playfield for the most part and it's easy to parse everything and you're mentioning that Pac-Man hybrid video game, I believe that's Baby Pac-Man,

and that's what I wanted to call out. And that era does seem pretty miserable, because whenever you see that, it seems like it could be interesting. Like, this is an interesting novelty, but it's a bad arcade game, and it's a bad pinball game. And I never thought I'd walk away

from a pinball game that still had balls left because I was bored. And it feels like whenever you play Baby Pac-Man, it feels like it will never end. It is like a complete misfire. But on that note, there is like a very gimmicky table from that era. I think it's from this era.

It is the joust pinball table where you are playing two-player. I'm not sure if it's good, but it's wacky enough that it kept me interested after seeing it for the first time at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo not too long ago. But that's exactly, that's exactly the period of time where they were totally, like the pinball industry was in despair and they tried to do new experience and experiments. Do you say joust or juiced? I don't know how to pronounce. Oh, sorry, it's joust. Jouse. Based on the classic arcade game.

Right. And I think there were 50 or 100 machines made. So it was an absolute, not in success. And then you had, for example, you had a machine. It's called Spectrum. And it's this game, how is it called in English, where you have to keep in mind you have five different colors of sticks. And you do them in a little, like in a, so the one player makes a combination, which the other one does not see.

And then you have to guess the combination of the colors. You know this game? Oh, no, I've never seen it, but it sounds very convoluted. And it's a cardboard game. And they transformed it to a pinball. And it was also a disaster. I think they produced 10,000, and they had to destroy 9,500 right away because nobody wanted it. Yeah, I guess that explains why I have only seen joust once at a classic gaming convention,

because not a very popular game. And, yeah, it's interesting that so many of these newer games involve all of these the high-tech elements. We have the HD video, although these ideas were kind of leaking into pinball as early as 1991. I remember I interviewed the curator of the Pacific Pinball Museum, and he was devoted to the electromechanical era of pinball. When I really grew up in the solid state era of pinball, I believe I'm getting these terms correctly. And I love the idea of the dot matrix screen where you often have the mini games, you often, you're even a lot of information there, lots of fun animations. I really love. like that era. The pinball games have like soundtracks and sound effects. And it sounds like, Andreas, you might gravitate towards machines that are a bit older than that based on when you first encountered them. Yes, because I think the secret is maybe that you always love the machines most you experienced as a kid. Wouldn't you say this? Oh yeah, I totally believe. Yeah, totally agree. If you were born in 82, then of course you love the machines you discovered in 92 or 94,

you know, because then you were 10 or 12. And I was born in 69, so I loved the machines I encodined in the year 79 or 80 or 81, you know. So it's always the magic of the first machines you encodeled as a child, I would say. And I would assume that the guy from the Pacific Pimbaugh Museum is maybe again 10 years older than I am. And so he discovered the electromechanical machines as a kid, you know. You always stick to this magic.

you know, because you as a 10-year-old, you have a total different sensitivity if you're for the first time going to an arcade and you see the blinking machines. And this is like these are impressions you never forget. And it just gets deeper than what you discover when you are 20 or 30, I would say. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I mean, I also think that some of these neuromachines are like impossibly complicated. And I enjoy just like how much is going on, but I really can't. Like you said, you need a lot of time with these to fully understand what you should be. doing what the best strategies are.

And I just, I like, I like that solid state era because I feel like there's enough of a high concept there that got me into the idea of pinball where in a lot of these machines, you are just getting a high score. But, and then later in that era, it's like, well, there is, there's all these metaphors working like you are actively trying to complete missions. There is a story. There are characters. And it's people that don't have an affinity for pinball or don't really know about pinball,

might think that's crazy to hear like, oh, this, this pinball game has a great story. Or like, here's what, here are the objective. you're trying to achieve. It's not just about hitting bumpers with numbers written on them. There's a lot going on. Yeah, and that's so important what you're saying, because this is one of the most important caesuras of Pimbal history, like the moment when Pindexams began to have an objective, you know?

And I think you can date it to maybe to the early 90s, I would say, you know. Like the first machines who really had an objective. objective were in the early 90s, when you had missions like in Star Trek or or in Indiana Jones or in junkyard, we had it before that you have to collect stuff. And before that, there was no narrative. There was no story to tell. And this is really a big threshold in history of Pinball. And now it's so interesting, if you go to a big tournament like the one in Austin,

Austria this weekend or in January in Southern California there's always the Open World Championship. It's called Never Drains in California ice game with words. And I go there every year and I was there in February or this time it was maybe even March. And the best players, they are all younger than 20 now because they learn they are all sons of collectors. And they learned these complicated machines when they still have their diapers on, you know,

and they play with a little stool because they are too small to play when they two or three or four years. And then they like it's their mother tongue. They speak the mother tongue of Pinmore. And people like you and me, we have to learn these newer machines as grownups and we will never speak the mother tongue of modern Pimble. That is sort of like when you, with traditional video games, if you try to play an online first-person shooter, you will just get killed immediately by a nine-year-old. There is no hope. You cannot keep up with them.

And yeah, they grew up with these more advanced games from birth, basically. Right. And it's not good for your dignity. I mean, you know this with video games or computer games. I remember when I first played against the player who is now number one in Germany since five or six years. and now he's 18. And I played against him for the first time, I think, when he was eight. And he was pretty small and he still needed this stool to stand upon,

to even be able to play. And then he just destroyed me. And I was 45 years old or so. And then you think, is this really a good idea for me to play pinball turning? If I get destroyed by an eight-year-old. So yeah, so pinball is like a Zen activity. to practice, you know, dignity and passion and everything. So we've touched on traditional video games a little bit in this podcast, Andreas,

and also you mentioned them in your book. I'd like to know, like, what do you think about video games? And I'm wondering if you have any stance on the attempts to emulate pinball via video games. Like the Pinball FX series is very popular, and they license a lot of tables. try to recreate it as best they can. I mean, I'm not a specialist, so I would also ask you, because I always had the impression that virtual pinball is not a success story, but maybe I'm wrong, because you are the specialist and you just said it's a huge success, so then I may be wrong, but in my

impression, I always thought that the ambition to transform pinball to a computer game, was not successful because of the necessity of the materiality of the machine, which we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation. So my take would be it's consequent that virtual pinball was not a huge success because it's like the categorical difference between video games, computer games on the one side and pinball on the other that it has to have the materiality. But maybe I'm wrong because you just said it. It's a success story.

Yeah, I feel like it's found in audience. And over time, of course, you're losing the physicality. You're using the presence of you being in front of a machine, watching the ball physically hit objects and being part of that experience. But over time, the physics emulation has gotten a lot better. They've been able to replicate the physics of a real pinball on a table. And even if the experience is not the same, I think what makes it interesting is you are preserving these tables forever in their own way.

And as much as I prefer to play a table in reality, it's also very nice to finally get to hear, like, I can finally hear all the music and all the sound effects and just kind of be in a vacuum with this table in a way that you often cannot be in the real world. So I feel like nothing will replicate that real life experience, but in terms of preservation and just seeing all the elements in their best, most pristine shape and just getting into just like taken all the art with no one waiting for a game behind you. because I often will like want to pause my game and just look at everything. And I know I'm annoying people who might want to play. So I feel like that is a great appeal. But you are, I think we both agree that you cannot replicate this. That is the one,

that's the one element that I think will keep Pimball around forever. You have to be there. You have to be in front of a machine. Yeah. And it's, it has an interesting philosophical side on it. Because I would say pinball, like it,

then there is this necessity. of presence, you know, like your presence at this site and this second in front of the machine. And that's interesting. And I think the revival or the Renaissance of Pinball has something to do with this need. That maybe, I don't know, would you as a specialist, would you agree that the Renaissance of Pinball has to do exactly something with this, that maybe people who have been, socialized with computer games for years and decades, they now kind of really want to have this notion of presence and physical presence.

Yeah, I feel especially, I can't speak to what's going on in Germany, but especially in America, we're losing the idea of like the public space and we're losing the idea of community and we're all becoming very isolated and getting all our food through food delivery systems and rarely interacting with people as much as we used to. And I feel like people are now seeing the appeal and going to a space with people and interacting with them. Or even if you are not talking to anyone, you're still out in the world. And now that holds a lot more novelty than it used to.

Right. And do you know what's interesting? We haven't, I mean, it's interesting. We've been talking for 60 minutes, but we haven't been talking a second about the gender differences in Pindran. Because it used to be such a masculine, thing playing pinball. So when I was a kid or youth,

girls never played pinball. And now the renaissance of the pinball community is driven by women. Especially in the US, a lot of pinball clubs and arcades and tournaments, they are run by women

and there is a women pinball league and everything. And that's, in my opinion, a very interesting thing that this renaissance, of pinball is connected to a shift in the gender order of pinball.

That's very interesting. Yeah, that's great to hear. I feel like a similar thing happened in video games in the like 40 years I've been playing them where when I was growing up, the Nintendo Entertainment System

was out, the Famcom, and very marketed gender towards boys. This is the boy toy, girls have dolls, boys have video games that consisted throughout the 90s in early 2000s,

but then there was a shift And now basically everyone plays video games, but I feel like women are like as much a part of that world as men are. And boys are as part of that world as girls are. So I feel like these activities aren't nearly as gendered as they used to be. Right. And it's interesting when there are tournaments with the old machines, then there is this little collision because often when the old machines are used, they have this sexist aesthetics, you know. So there are three or four pinball machines by playing. boy and then you have the playboy bunnies and everything and now a lot of women and girls

were involved in the tournament scene played this and I always think to myself isn't this awkward for for for girls or women playing a playboy pinball machines which really was designed for men so that's interesting yeah I mean we mentioned uh Dr. Dude earlier in this podcast he would be canceled today there would be no Dr. Dude and yes a lot of a lot of the uh the artwork is very sexist it's made to appeal to men you can see why I drew that audience. Then they knew who was playing these games and what would appeal to them. But now it sounds like, I don't see that style of game as much anymore with these newer games in the past 15 years. I feel like they realize it is, everybody is playing these games. Let's try to appeal

to a broad swath of people if we can. Absolutely. Well, Andres, thank you so much for coming on Retronauts. I really appreciate it. And this is honestly, like the first chat we've ever had about Pimball. I think it was a great success. And you lent so much to the conversation. Your book is excellent. Please plug it here and let us know if you have anything else you want to plug. As I said, I'm totally flashed that you decided to do this show on pinball and on my book. And I hope it was interesting for the American audience also to have this European perspective. And yeah, it's really great that we have this conversation. And thanks again for that. It's great. So Andres is off the line now. I want to thank him again for coming on

the show. And please check out his book. It's called Same Player Shoots Again. I biography of the pinball machine. If that is a mouthful for you, check out the show notes posted with this podcast. There will be a link to where you can buy it in that description. But as for us, if you want to support Retronauts and get a ton of great bonus stuff, head on over to patreon.com slash Retronauts and sign up at the $5 level. And when you do, you can access all these podcasts one week at a time and add free. And you'll also access a vast quantity of exclusive podcasts behind the Patreon paywall. Since the beginning of 2020, we have been putting out two exclusive podcasts

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