Arcade Collecting > Pinball
Stern layoffs
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on December 08, 2008, 03:37:18 pm ---For as well as SWEP1 and RFM did, don't forget they were outsold by South Park.
--- End quote ---
Meh... Ops afraid of the new concept. Tons of potential for new directions that South Park could never have had. I'm hoping the NuCore guys will open things up a bit so homebrew minigames become possible.
Mauzy:
--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on December 08, 2008, 07:39:31 am ---Steve Ritchie's take on it ... when I was reading it, I thought he was channeling Xiaou2 ...
http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.games.pinball/msg/557be0c8fd315b20?hl=en
--- End quote ---
Thanks for posting that! Hearing it from someone on the inside adds a lot of credibility to the Stern bashing. Its kind of funny to me though that I almost found myself star struck reading something written by THE steve ritchie himself (Ive only known who he was for 6 months but the fact Ive played and enjoyed his games blows me away) until I realized he's not freakin eddie van halen... Hes a guy who does a job that happened to reach a relatively modest audience. I still enjoy reading something "from the inside".
RayB:
Chad, that's one example. Too bad LCDs screens weren't cheap enough back then. They could have avoided the heat problem, weight and bulky "head" profile.
With today's cheap LCDs they could integrate small screens in all sorts of spots, even directly in the playfield and play full color video sequences off a hard drive (traditional or flash). Add to that some really cool lighting with LED sequencing. The more I think about it, the more I realize how stuck in the "traditional" past they've kept it all... hmmm
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPo3aE412F8[/youtube]
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: RayB on December 08, 2008, 09:41:13 pm ---Chad, that's one example.
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Sure, it is only one, but one example of did is worth a billion could haves.
Cakemeister:
--- Quote from: RayB on December 08, 2008, 09:41:13 pm ---Chad, that's one example. Too bad LCDs screens weren't cheap enough back then. They could have avoided the heat problem, weight and bulky "head" profile.
With today's cheap LCDs they could integrate small screens in all sorts of spots, even directly in the playfield and play full color video sequences off a hard drive (traditional or flash). Add to that some really cool lighting with LED sequencing. The more I think about it, the more I realize how stuck in the "traditional" past they've kept it all... hmmm
--- End quote ---
It would have been easy. Just put in a LCD where the DMD currently goes, run the machine on an Atom processor or similar, store programming code in flash, design something simple to control the lights, solenoids, and flippers, and you're done. Software updates would be easy, too. With current LED lighting you could even have color-changing flashers, something not currently available.
The LCD alone would have kept things interesting.
Back in 1999 maybe LCDs and multicolor LEDs were too expensive, but that's isn't an excuse now. Stern should have been innovating. They didn't, and now they're dead. Sucks for us pinball fans.
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