Pinball Question

[97thruhiker]

I have recently been enjoying playing the many tables available on visual pinball.  I have found that I have liked many of the older tables as much as the newer ones replicated.  My question deals with the scoring aspect on the newer (late 70's on) machines.  Is there a reason why on these tables the scores are incredibly high?  You basically launch the ball and hit two bumpers and score is already registering in the millions.  I'm sure there was some marketing study with the conclusion that if you give higher scores people will play more which would increase the money collected on the table.  Anyways just looking for some insight on this from those of you who may know as my knowledge of pinball is not to high. 

[zudmsc]

That sounds about right to me.  I will not play the Dot Matrix versions of pinball, just no fun.  I am a late 80's fan of Williams pinball.  I played these in high school before they came out to the public.  (Williams was down the street)  I own a F-14 Tomcat and my high score on that is 6.9MM, very hard to get.  The newer dot matrix ones you get 6MM by hitting just a few bumpers and end up with scores over 100MM.  Not fun in my eyes.

Michael

[Buddabing]

I think that you have a lot of high scores with space-age themes. Attack from Mars and Stargate, for example.

I don't think Sopranos or Elvis have super high scores.

I personally find all the eras of pinball fun, from pre-EM to today.

[menace]

I treat the scoring as all relative--its not like you can compare one machines scoring style to the next--for instance on stargate my record is 1.2Billion--laughably huge number but I would never expect to get that on a williams high speed or other one from that era.  (secretly though i do enjoy getting 50 million for hitting a ramp--in my generation of large reward for minimal effort its extremely gratifying )

[ClubNinja]

Yep - I greatly dislike DMD era games and scoring is one of the reasons.  Others include the 700 ramps and the goofy little toys all over the playfield.  Give me a bank of drop targets, a triangle of bumpers, and some interesting rules and I'm good to go.  *Maybe* one or two small ramps, or an elevated playfield area, but that's it.  Back on topic, I don't care how many billions of points a modern game will give me for simply standing there - just breaking one million on a game from before 1987 is far more fulfilling for me. 

[ChadTower]

The newest machines are back down in scoring... just played World Poker Tour, Elvis, and Nascar this morning and probably averaged about 8 million across the board.

[Ken Layton]

I remember playing my favorite machine: a 1964 Gottlieb "Ship Mates". The scoring was 3 digits and the highlight was scoring enough points to turn on the 1,000 light in front of your score to indicate 'you rolled it over the top'.

[ChadTower]

That's much of the reason i've always loved and wanted a high end Pitch and Bat.

[grantspain]

You know this is very sad but we did a survey in the U.K on this very topic,it turns out that the customer playing the pinball gets a kick from seeing millions on the score as opposed to thousands thus giving them a sense of victory-hey look i scored 20,000,000 on my first ball as opposed to look i got 2000 on my first ball,and sure enough the higher scoring pins tend to be the better earners on revenue.

[RayB]

My question deals with the scoring aspect on the newer (late 70's on) machines. 

I think you meant late 80's? Maybe even early 90's?

That's when I noticed "score inflation". For me, breaking a million used to mean something. Then slowly, each new pin Williams and other companies released would give you higher and higher scores. It got to the point where my score felt "meaningless".

[TheOtherBob]

I don't care about my score whether it is 300k, 3 million, or 5 billion.  All I care about is hearing the knocker....

Oh, and having fun too.  I like anything pinball.... old, new, or in-between...

[GreenKnight37]

I believe this topic came up on Rec.Games.Pinball at some point in the past.

If memory serves me correct, it was mainly because the companies wanted gamers to feel like they were scoring incredibly well, which could contribute to them putting in more quarters. 

The scoring for each game is relative.  A million on one machine could be just a few hits on another one.  Just keep track of your high score per machine if you have more then one.

[APFelon]

A good pin is a good pin. I liked High Speed II - The Getaway so much that I bought one. It's a high scoring game, but the score aspect isn't THE aspect. Even if they lopped off a few zeroes from the score, it'd still be a good pin.

APf