a boat that rolls from left to right as an upper playfield.Pirates of the Caribbean, JJP’s third production and second license, pushed the envelope: It’s up to you to see if you like it or not, but in any case this machine has made history. Jersey Jack Pinball has taken the opposite view. Speed is Stern’s trademark, and we appreciate their hard-hitting flippers and shots that send the ball flying at 10,000 miles per hour. The JJP “touch” announces a more composed game, more in control than in reactivity. We can address only one reproach to Wizard of Oz : the slowness of the ball. Moreover, we are not talking about a tiny LCD, but a panel that occupies almost the whole width of the front panel! Still today, this particularity makes it a recognizable pinball machine from far.Īnd this playfield, Pinheads, this playfield… Honestly, it’s so full of toys that it looks like one of Zen Studios‘ virtual pinball machines. He knows his stuff on the technical side: WoZ machine scrapped the antediluvian light bulbs to put LEDs instead, and welcomed the first LCD screen in the history of pinball. Playfield of WoZ The WoZ, its screen, its set, already a legend.īut also, it was the first machine of JJP, which announces the color: Jack, the founder, didn’t set up his company to play with Homebrews. First of all, it is elected far ahead of the others in the pinside poll (but not in the top 100, strangely). We didn’t rank the pinball machines, but if we had, Wizard of Oz would have been the #1. We love them, these little wonders of Chicago Gaming, but a big part of their success is due to the original models, so that would be cheating. Because another criterion played a role: the originality, the innovation that the machines brought, even if some have defects that many will find prohibitive. We did not include 100% of the top rated machines in these lists. A pinside survey dedicated to the pinballs of the decade in question.Pinside’s Top 100, purged of pre-2010 machines.More seriously, we tried to compare our opinions with external sources: With a lot of bad faith and bias of course! How can you get an editorial team with such disparate tastes to agree? It’s impossible! Honestly, not many of them are doing well, it was a very dark time… How do you rank pinball machines? Maybe we’ll do an article on the 2000’s machines, but I doubt it. No more teenagers in arcades, welcome executives and professionals! It was a sign that the pinball industry was not dead and that it was going to renew itself definitively by seducing a smaller clientele with enough purchasing power to afford a new machine at home (and to find a place for it, which is even more difficult). The pinball world in which we live was forged more than 10 years ago, with this renewal of competition. Moreover, its founder, Gary, understood the shift from operators to private customers.īut then, why 2010? Because a new era began at the beginning of that decade, with the arrival of new players: American Pinball, Spooky Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, just to name the main ones. Stern Pinball was the only one (I’m simplifying, don’t quibble!) to maintain a production in the 2000s. At the end of the 1990’s, they came very close to becoming part of history like the telescope, the dial telephone, the crank cars… In short, to become collector’s items, all the more rare as there were, no new ones marketed. Part of Ghostbusters’ playfield Why 2010 and not 2000?Įxcellent question, dear reader! The history of pinball can be summarized as follows: first, they were mechanical, then electromechanical, then electronic. Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast – Stern – 2018.Total Nuclear Annihilation – Spooky Pinball – 2017.The Big Lebowski – Dutch Pinball – 2016.Metallica : Master of Puppets – Stern – 2013.We don’t classify them, we list them by year of release and that’s good enough: Afterwards we will talk about the nuances and we will justify our choices. True to my principles, I’ll give you the result right away. 10 And my favorite pinball machine, where is it?.9 Total Nuclear Annihilation: the advent of a small but strong manufacturer.7 What is Tron: Legacy doing in this ranking?.6 Jurassic Park and Ghostbusters, the deep codes.5 Stern, not surprisingly, very present on the podium.
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