http://www.pinballnews.com/games/wheeloffortune/index2.html

-Dan Berger

As freakin' absurd this sounds, that game looks awesome.

I like the wording about the $5K wedge: "the highest value on the wheel that can be multiplied."

Agreed. For the pinball/game show fans, what a way to merge em!

/It really is a Magnificent Marble Machine.
//Hey, that sounds like a good idea for a game show!

Judging from the "1-2-3-4" picture, I get the impression that Stern either couldn't afford Dan X. Solo's 24 Moderne Display Fonts CD-ROM and book from Dover Publications, which contains the Chesty font (which looks like the true source of the show's logo, except for an altered uppercase R) or thought that the freeware Fortune Wheel was the only such font available.

If one uses the flipper buttons to select letters in solving the puzzles, there had better be a generous time limit (about two minutes, but inversely proportional to how many letters are showing), or no time limit at all.

Cool... but 75 cents a play? Ouch! That would be an awesome centerpiece for a game room. Remember when games cost a quarter? I still kid my wife that when she finds a spider in our basement, I ask if it was making the noise from Centipede. In our house they're worth 300, 600 or 900 points depending on how big they are!

I wonder if a DOND machine will be next. Lots of possibilities there for mini-games there with taking deals, removing cases, et al. for given actions. Oh, and 26 numbered targets, each with a case on them!

Matt

Some high-res pictures.... I bet we'll see this as a Prize Puzzle prize or Wheel prize eventually (Those pinball machines are about $5,000 a pop...)

Ah pinballs! I remember when bowling alleys and mall arcades were lined with Bally, Gottlieb and Williams machines. Has only Stern survived?

Wikipedia Article

No chance in hell. Wheel strictly wants trips for those.

Adam
-The prize-gathering temp

Shouldn't it be "depending on how close you're willing to get to it before you kill it?" :)

Pretty much. The Second Arcade Crash wasn't pretty.

That looks pretty sweet. But wait, the wheel is way too close to that puzzleboard! BOYCOTT!!!1!

Seriously, I like what I see, but I have the same problem that I have with the D/ND arcade game: a little too much to pay for one game.

And is this the first Wheel game to actually feature Pat's mug in addition to Vanna's?

Okay, but don't blame the designers for that; that amount is settable by the machine's operator. I'd be VERY surprised if the minimum for a credit was 3 coins.

/hopefully it'll show up for Visual PinMAME soon and I can find out

I remember when you got three plays for a quarter, thank you very much.

--A much older "Matt"

Did they have balls then, or were you smacking around a really round rock? :D

Yeah, the 75 cents a play is on the high end...for places that still use quarters, it's usually 50 cents for one play, or 5 for $2 (and it's about the same amount at places where you swipe a card, like Dave and Busters and Gameworks..)

I've read some stuff on rec.games.pinball (which has known about this since late last year apparently)- it's really split down the middle with the hardcore pinball fanatics- some people think it will be really popular, some people think it will tank...

Yeeee ouch. I call for yer bannantion. :)

/comic genius

I would, but it's just such a damn funny line.

As a not-so-young-guy anymore, who grew up on old-school rotary-scoring pinball....that was damn funny.

Line o' The Day awarded.

Matt, you made me look older than you! I remember going up to the local Uncle Bill's discount store in Cleveland in the first half of the 70s and was able to play pinball games for either a nickel or a dime!!! And you got 5 balls per game!!!

If any of you ever come out to (or pass through) Colorado, the Front Range has 2 excellent pinball arcades with many of the classics on either side of Denver: Lyons Classic Pinball in Lyons, west of Boulder and the Arcade Amusements in Downtown Manitou Springs, just West of Colorado Springs.

Both places are high on my "to do" list, but either one is about a 5-hour drive for me (grrr...) in good weather.


And that was pretty much my summer vacation enjoyments when I was a kid: Pinball & Game Shows!

Unfortunately, IIRC, there's an embargo after a new game comes out. It took awhile for Monopoly to be ported to VPinMAME after it was released.

That said, I'm excited nonetheless. Around here there really aren't any more arcades anymore. The closest to me would be the Woodfield Gameworks.

/I miss e-m scoring reels
//Jack*Bot FTW
///Wonder if there'll be a TPiR machine now that Drew's in the picture

I mention every now and then that I was once really good friends with this guy. We've lost touch (I'm afraid I cost him some money on a business deal that went south, and our friendship never really recovered), but I have some wonderful memories of playing many of his classic games.

My God, this thread has made me realize how much I miss pinball. I grew up in the '80s and '90s piddling away my quarters on pins while my friends were all up in the Street Fighter II Ultra Turbo Alpha Champion Edition or whatever. And now, even at the few arcades left, the lone pinball machine (if there is one) is the dirty little secret, poorly maintained with a bum flipper and half its lights out in an out-of-the-way corner. I was at a store the other day, and as part of the kitschy retro charm vibe they were going for, they had a Rollergames machine set up for display. Took all I had not to hug it and beg the clerk to plug it in.

/Ah, High Speed and PinBot.
//And of a more recent vintage, Cirqus Voltaire and South Park.
///What's this vPinMAME all aboot?

Stern introduced its new pricing plan with its "Spider-Man" game that came out a few months ago. The last one off the line with factory set 50c pricing was "Family Guy", which is a "freakin' sweet" game.

But I'm so excited about this new WOF machine, I just may call my local Stern distrib and see if we can work a trade for a couple of the old games sitting in my garage (plus some cash... two old games can't overcome the $4300 or so purchase price).

To those asking about a VPinMAME version, the embargo period is three years after a game is released. I'm still waiting for a port of "The Sopranos", which I hear is due in the spring. So, if you want your WOF, wait till 2010, if they're still even using VPinMAME by then.

/I wind up hitting the Lois target more than others
//Giggity

If VPinMAME is anything like regular MAME, it's an arcade pinball emulation program. (IIRC, MAME does arcade video games)

At least it's not $1 a play.

The real hardcore pin simmers are now using something called Future Pinball, which really works well if you have a screamingly fast machine with great graphics and processor capabilty. One advantage to Future is that the ball can't go through the flippers.

/"Arte! You let the ball go through the flippers again!"
//"Can I have my dime back, Art?"
///(in a German accent)

Ooh. Didn't know about this. I'm going to head out to the living room and install it.

Do people emulate commercial tables with this, though? The appear of VPinMAME to me is the ability to play Twilight Zone and Addams Family and JackBot and such...

Seems to me most of the Future Pinball sims are EM's (non computerized machines). I don't think they've gotten to the point where they can marry it to MAME just yet. You'll have go to VPinMAME if you want to play TZ or TAF or JackBot (a nice machine).

I'm surprised no one has mentioned one other famous (infamous?) game show-pinball connection—The Magnificant Marble Machine on NBC 1975-1976. And some arcades featured a giant pinball machine about the same time. The Hawthorne Mall (LA area) for one had one. Incidentally, the Hawthorne mall has been boarded up for some time now.

Fortunately, I already have that working. Alas, not so much with FP...I installed it, launched a table, and it doesn't act turned on, nor does it respond to any keyboard commands. Ah well.

Mainly because it's been covered quite a lot before you joined us. It's kinda implied at this point.

Yep. Hercules. Unrelated to the game show, tho.

I'm sure just about everything "Game Show" has been discussed before!

Well, close. I'm sure a few things have been missed between here and there. But certainly enough that when someone says "I'm surprised nobody mentioned...", chances are, we have. :)

I wonder if there is some correlation between the game show and pin ball heydays occurring about the same era.

Probably not, but it is a bit of a co-winky-dink how the scoring mechanisms have kept up with top prize money on game shows over the years and vice-versa:


1960's -- Game Show Top Prizes were maxed at around $10,000...

...In Pinball, the score would roll back to zero if you surpassed 10,000 points (in pinball lingo, you would have "flipped", or "turned over" the machine once past 9,999)

1970's -- Game show top prizes were around $100,000...

...In pinball, the analog scoring dials went as high as 99,999.

1980's & 90's -- Top Game Show Prizes at $1M...Pinball went to 6-digit analog and digital scores, maxing at 999,999

2000's -- Top game show prizes now at $10M...Pinballs now go to 9,999,999 and beyond, pretty much eliminating any chance of 'flipping' a machine anymore.

I can tell you pins were already passing 10M without a rollover in the '90s. Jack*Bot was released in the 90s, right? That's a game that can/will go into the BILLIONS.

Attack from Mars (1995) also comes to mind as a machine on which I've scored well over 1 billion. Scores these days are actually a little more reasonable than that.

Anyway, then there were the days before the scoring wheels, when scores were kept with lights only...

Here's a machine from 1950 that has scores up to 4,900,000.