Emulation and History of Pinball

Before the video games became available to the public, it was possible to enjoy Pinball machines at the arcades. Pinball machines have always been a fun way to challenge our skills and reflexes. The first tables, dating back to 1850 where not coin operated nor electricity operated, they didn’t have the flippers like we recognize them today. On these old tables, a player would flick balls up a ramp and on the play area where holes where a ball would drop in and award you points. With the introduction of electricity in the mid 1930′s, the popularity of pinball tables grew largely. The Humpty Dumpty table from 1947 was the first table to have flippers, for lots of people this was considered the golden years of pinball. This created a whole new level of relation between player and its table. The table designs changed quickly and we began to experience ramps, bumpers and digital sound-effects which also are a part of today’s Pinball tables. Still the interest in Pinball machines is not what it used to be and it can be rare to find a machine to play on.

A positive note is its possible to play the many Pinball games on PC’s, even the old ones. People recreate famous Pinball machines with Visual Pinball and its easy to find them around the net. You could also try to make your own Pinball machine with Visual Pinball, these are known as original tables where as recreations are copies from real machines. The graphical user interface allows you to simply drop ramps, flippers, bumpers or other Pinball features. The more difficult part is the programming. It is great help to look at the scripts from other tables and learn from the programming language.

Irina Pinball is one of the many original Visual Pinball tables. The table has a combination of both new and old Pinball features. This table is a tribute to the Russian ice skater, Irina Slutskaya. A large part of music in game are tunes from famous classical music. To win a gold medal in this game you must beat the highscore which is the main goal in the game. There are ramps, highscores and multiballs.

Tagged as: pinball, visual pinball tables