Pinball machines as we know them have been available for a while now, most might remember them at the Arcades and grill bars where one could spend hours with mates and attempt to beat the highscore. The first tables, jumping back to 1850 where not coin operated or electricity powered, they didn't have any flippers like we recognize them these days. When the introduction of electromechanical bells, chimes, lights and buzzers in the late 1930's, the interest of pinball grew quickly. Humpty Dumpty from 1947 was the first table to have the so called flippers, this is known as the golden age of pinball. From then on tables later expanded with features like ramps, multi balls, matrix dot displays and digital sound effects. The older tables where mostly quite hard but for 1 game you got 5 balls, where as newer tables you only get 3 balls per game. The pinball's are not as available today as the golden era. Stern are the only company still producing tables and it seems like a rare sight to see a machine. However it is possible to play these tables on a computer, even the older tables from 1930's. A vast amount of these tables are emulated. Tables as 4Square, No Fear, Indiana Jones and many more are playable. So anyone out there in the hunt for Pinball games for your PC, look no further. Visual Pinball is free and many recreate or even share their own original tables which are available to find on the internet. Its a friendly community. If you like, you can also start programming your original pinball game with VP. The graphic interface allows you to easily drop ramps, flippers, bumbers and other Pinball elements. You can create the graphics with your favourite image editing program and later import them in VP. Sounds are also easy to import. As for the technical side such as a scoring system, this will need to be programmed. It can help to load other tables as references and learn from these.
Irina Pinball is one example of an original table made with Visual Pinball which tries to highlight the charm from the older tables while still mixing in the modern features as we see them today. There are extraballs, combos and multiballs. The table has theme of a Russian Ice Skater and the majority of the music in the game being classic music. The goal in the table is to beat the highest score. This is done by winning the gold medal, scoring the perfect 6.0 score. All in all a friendly pinball game made for all ages. Have fun and enjoy Pinball on Ice!
