Pinball in tilt

This week I went to a local practical class on the classic, mostly-mechanical game, pinball. The course went over the history of this game, including the time when it was banned in many places as a quarter-stealing form of automated gambling, like slot machines (which connects very much to my post about arcade game history a two months ago).

We then watched a few videos about techniques, saw the insides of a few machines - showing that the electromechanical structure is still very involved, even on a modern machine with extensive solid-state electronics - and then practiced a few techniques and then competed with each other over many of the machines. I learned a few things from all this.

Before this class I didn't realize that the danger of the machine complaining about tilting and losing you the rest of play with the current ball did not mean that you weren't supposed to shake the machine at all - in fact, "nudging" the machine in order to save the ball when it is close to a "danger zone", or to move the ball towards a flipper when it runs the risk of falling down the middle is entirely standard practice.

I also wasn't really thinking about the machines' gameplay structure before when playing. I would sometimes try to aim at targets, but mostly I would be frantically attempting to avoid letting the ball drop, with limited success. But they have rules, there are arcs of gameplay and patterns - all things that make for interesting targets to aim at once my skill becomes better. Right now, I am still not at the level where I'm comfortable letting the ball damp down so I can catch it with a flipper and control it at my leisure - one of the important, basic elements of higher-level play.