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Pinball isn't as random as it seems (2018) [video]

by manaskarekar on 10/26/23, 7:41 PM with 18 comments

• by toast0 on 10/29/23, 5:08 AM

  I only watched a little bit, but pinball machines have been trying to tell you all this for decades. Sometimes the instruction cards go missing, but if they're there, on the left side of the apron, you'll have a summary of the rules / what to do, and the right card should tell you the pricing.

  Additionally, many pinball machines will tell you on the displays what to do. I've got a Pin-Bot (1986) and in addition to the instruction card, the attract mode has a detailed description of rules you can see here [1] this video doesn't show it, but while it's telling you what to do, it also flashes the lights near the feature it's describing. Pin-Bot only has alphanumeric displays for the top displays, so it takes a while to get through the whole thing.

  I don't think all machines have that detailed instruction, but I don't think it was only Pin-Bot.

  But, the rule of shoot at the flashing lights basically works.

  You can also get a lot of mileage out of not doing anything. To practice that, if you've got access to a machine on free play or at lost cost, try playing one handed, moving your hand from button to button. You'll miss a ton of shots because your hand is on the wrong button, but a lot of the time, more often than you'd expect, it'll be ok, or at least, the ball will take longer to drain than you'd think it would.

  [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SxSI-SsuEg&t=135s

• by zoklet-enjoyer on 10/29/23, 5:06 AM

  Is this something that people commonly believe? I don't think I've ever heard anyone make a comment about pinball being random. It's a game of skill and I just don't understand how someone who has played pinball would think otherwise.

  Cool video though. I like the clear explanation of goals and all the flashy lights.

• by TeMPOraL on 10/29/23, 11:35 AM

  It's definitely not random, because arcade games are never random. They're usually worse than random. Whatever its position on a "game of chance" vs. "game of skill" spectrum, the machine has rules about how much winning the customers are allowed to get away with, and/or how much profit it's supposed to generate in a day; once the threshold is crossed, it'll happily interfere with your play to guarantee you lose.

  Like, you thought you suck at reaction time games despite playing them a lot, because you always hit the button a split second too late or too early? Your reaction time was likely stellar - it's the game code that rejected your hit and animated it as near-miss. You'd never know without a high-speed camera - but these days those are ubiquitous, and YouTube has plenty of recordings of games cheating this way.

  It's one of those things you learn as an adult and realize that people suck much more than you thought when you were a kid.

• by seanhunter on 10/29/23, 10:19 AM

  How could anyone who has played even a single game of pinball and/or observed anyone who is skillful at pinball think that it's random?

• by mark_l_watson on 10/29/23, 2:06 PM

  Of course the ball motion is not random. When I was a kid, probably around 1962, my brother and I bought a real Gotlieb Brothers pinball machine from a neighbor who didn’t want it. Over the years I got so tuned into that machine that I would about once a month ‘max score’ the machine with just one ball. It got to be relatively easy to max score it with the allotted 5 balls per game.

• by puzzledobserver on 10/29/23, 6:03 AM

  I've never played on an actual pinball machine, but spent a lot of time playing Space Cadet Pinball when I was a kid.

  I think I initially saw it as a random thing with bright shiny lights and funny sounds, but I eventually understood the game. I was never very good at it, but it is most certainly a game of skill.