For some reason the floodgates of ideas came to me this morning. There's something about the pinball industry that's been bugging me lately. You have Stern who's been sitting on their throne for the last 12 or so years, letting quality and innovation slide more and more (while hiring more and more talent so they can crank out 3 pins every year). Slowly the masses have been getting fed up, some by voting with their wallets, some by starting their own companies. You have a small startup in spain (marsaplay) which has done some REALLY innovative things (LCD screen, like jersey jack has also implimented), you have PCB's underneath the playfield replacing expensive wiring (both in materials and labor), you have magnet switches instead of mechanical (no holes for dirt to get into, no moving parts). For a company out of spain, pretty damned impressive (even if they're first pin is a remake from the late 70's). Then you have jersey jack, taking 2 years to build up parts, design a layout, get a production area setup, really not too bad. Then you have Jpop teaming up with ben heck to work on pinballs (ben heck is a genius, his only negative attribute is he likes to finish a project in a week and move onto the next one). Jpop seems to be balancing him out, doing things right (eliminating ball lock, laying out clean and fun layouts).
So here's why it needs a reboot. All this new competition is all fun and good (hopefully Stern realizes they can't produce crap anymore), but there's still something lacking. Pinball, honestly, hasn't changed a whole heck of a lot since the mid 80's (other than DMD displays). Honestly, it hasn't changed hardly at all since the early 90's (I think it's gone downhill). You still have a custom CPU processor, you still have a driver board, you still have a sound board, you still have a giant (and HEAVY) linear transformer at the bottom of the cabinet, you still have a backbox with lights behind it, you still have miles of copper wire bundled up like kindling with similiar colored jackets, and it's so hard to trace where any wires go, or if those connections are any good (everything is still hand soldered). I also think a lot of people don't get into the hobby because they can't afford to pay a tech to fix it ($75 travel + $75/hour labor), and you thought the auto mechanic was taking a bath on you?
Cost reduction / simplify #1: Every pin is hours and hours of labor, really if you look at pinball machines they are the rolls royce of consumer product. Each one is hand built. Imagine if PC's were still through hole and hand soldered, we would still be paying $2,000 for a computer, but we don't. Know why? Some guy lays out a PCB in software, those boards are printed with silkscreen in layers, and the surface mount components are wave soldered (cheap cheap). That's why you can buy a motherboard for $30. Imagine applying that to pinball? Run all your traces through PCB (including high voltage). yes it can be done, you only need thick wires for high amps, not volts. If you took a playfield, and split it up into sub-assembly PCB's, and just had ribbon cables for data and power, you could clearly label (in plain etched text) what each trace is, where it's going, etc. If a pcb is having issues, replace it... or repair it, or send it out for repair (just like marsaplay canasta):
http://www.pinballnews.com/games/newcanasta
This also means much easier plug n play (playfield swaps would be a cinch!). Connectors have locking tab (no more solder joints getting cold). Makes labor to build a pin dirt cheap (couple dozen standoffs, connect some pre-made wires). You would have much better diagnosis because the cpu could pinpoint which section is having issues (which would be labeled), and then you could focus your attention on that one part (instead of treating it as a whole).
Cost reduction / simplify #2:One common platform. This probably isn't an issue 2 years ago (Stern is the only one, buy Stern cpu, Stern power supply, Stern driver board). Now that competition is back, it's back to having a bunch of platforms (each their own cpu, driverboard, soundboard, power supply, pop bumper design, flipper design, ball trough design, drop target design, etc etc). I'm talking about making pinballs like the auto industry is attempting to do. It used to be every auto company designed their own parts, right down to the dam door locks. Toyota and Suburu are sharing engines, many interior components are shared across manufacturers, companies are sharing hybrid technologies. Why? they were forced to. It's a global economy, and the only way for multiple car companies to survive is by teaming up, and sharing the design workload. This saves time and money (more parts, more volume, lower cost). Pinball needs to do the same thing. We need a single STANDARDIZED platform, perhaps open sourced, by which all pinballs are created. New CPU's can be designed (revisions), but would be backwards compatible with older pins. This would lower the cost of parts, would lessen product development (more familiar if you only have to deal with one system), and mean easier to replace (and diagnose). If I can pull a board from another pin to test with, it makes it easier to figure out what's wrong. In my collection, I have a data east (it's own hardware), and two williams (one is a system 11, one is a system 9), all 3 incompatible with each other.
So here's my grand scheme overall picture idea. The market is slowly shifting from arcades to homes.. it's just a fact. Pins in public are rare (occasional bowling alley, maybe a pizza joint, a gameworks if your in a major city). If your really lucky, someone has decided to fix up an older pin and route it in a bar (and keep it maintained). For the most part, I believe Stern's biggest customer are home buyers. Even though the buying market has skewed and changed, the pin has not. They still build them as if they are going on route (locked doors, coin boxes, etc). Here is what I sketched up today:
Basically you would have a base (generic) cabinet. You would have your standardized common CPU, power, driverboard, soundboard, sound amplifier, speakers. Then an LCD screen replaces the backbox. I know people will complain about not being pure, but we're talking about revolutionizing pinball here. LCD's (HD at least) are really good these days. they talk about retina resolution (so many pixels per inch, it looks like paper). If you put that behind glass, Can you honestly tell me you can notice the difference while playing? Some people say things like "yea, but when they're off, you have a black screen". If this is really an issue, maybe in 2-3 years e-ink displays this size will be comparably priced, and the energy to run them will be zero (e-ink only uses power when the display changes). Now, the only thing you swap out is the populated playfield. That's right, you keep the same cabinet, swap out a rom chip (which would be like a cartridge, not EEPROM.. think robust like a nintendo cartridge). Arcades started doing this with cabinets to reduce operator cost. They'd have mortal kombat, MKII comes out, they add a button, swap out the CPU inside, and voila! MKII for cheap! There is NO reason pinball couldn't do this same thing! "Oh but what about the cabinet artwork?!" people will say as they raise their torches. Two things:
1. If you have a big collection, your pins are stacked right against the other one, and you don't even get to see the side artwork (hence why toppers are gaining popularity).
2. Artwork gets scratched up during shipment.
My suggestion (if you really must have artwork) is have a plexiglass sleeve on the side where you can slip new artwork into. This means artwork is never tied to a cabinet.
Another bonus of a system like this: Saves space. Yea, believe it or not, the whole world doesn't live like most americans (1600+ sq feet of space), not everyone can live in the burbs. If I live in the city, most likely I will live in less than 1,000 sq feet. Unless I rent an expensive warehouse of some sort, I have no place to put my pins. If I had a system like this, I could have one cabinet, and probably 3-4 populated playfields in storage. You look at places like japan, UK, netherlands, they all live in small spaces too
Do I think this will replace the traditional cabinet? No, people still drive rolls royces. People still buy $200k ferrari's that are handbuilt by a pair of technicians that dyno an engine and mate it with a hand picked transmission. Most people buy a mass produced car, a car that is made on an assembly line, cranked out in mass quantities, and with good quality and nice features. The world needs a toyota pinball company.
So here's why it needs a reboot. All this new competition is all fun and good (hopefully Stern realizes they can't produce crap anymore), but there's still something lacking. Pinball, honestly, hasn't changed a whole heck of a lot since the mid 80's (other than DMD displays). Honestly, it hasn't changed hardly at all since the early 90's (I think it's gone downhill). You still have a custom CPU processor, you still have a driver board, you still have a sound board, you still have a giant (and HEAVY) linear transformer at the bottom of the cabinet, you still have a backbox with lights behind it, you still have miles of copper wire bundled up like kindling with similiar colored jackets, and it's so hard to trace where any wires go, or if those connections are any good (everything is still hand soldered). I also think a lot of people don't get into the hobby because they can't afford to pay a tech to fix it ($75 travel + $75/hour labor), and you thought the auto mechanic was taking a bath on you?
Cost reduction / simplify #1: Every pin is hours and hours of labor, really if you look at pinball machines they are the rolls royce of consumer product. Each one is hand built. Imagine if PC's were still through hole and hand soldered, we would still be paying $2,000 for a computer, but we don't. Know why? Some guy lays out a PCB in software, those boards are printed with silkscreen in layers, and the surface mount components are wave soldered (cheap cheap). That's why you can buy a motherboard for $30. Imagine applying that to pinball? Run all your traces through PCB (including high voltage). yes it can be done, you only need thick wires for high amps, not volts. If you took a playfield, and split it up into sub-assembly PCB's, and just had ribbon cables for data and power, you could clearly label (in plain etched text) what each trace is, where it's going, etc. If a pcb is having issues, replace it... or repair it, or send it out for repair (just like marsaplay canasta):
http://www.pinballnews.com/games/newcanasta
Cost reduction / simplify #2:One common platform. This probably isn't an issue 2 years ago (Stern is the only one, buy Stern cpu, Stern power supply, Stern driver board). Now that competition is back, it's back to having a bunch of platforms (each their own cpu, driverboard, soundboard, power supply, pop bumper design, flipper design, ball trough design, drop target design, etc etc). I'm talking about making pinballs like the auto industry is attempting to do. It used to be every auto company designed their own parts, right down to the dam door locks. Toyota and Suburu are sharing engines, many interior components are shared across manufacturers, companies are sharing hybrid technologies. Why? they were forced to. It's a global economy, and the only way for multiple car companies to survive is by teaming up, and sharing the design workload. This saves time and money (more parts, more volume, lower cost). Pinball needs to do the same thing. We need a single STANDARDIZED platform, perhaps open sourced, by which all pinballs are created. New CPU's can be designed (revisions), but would be backwards compatible with older pins. This would lower the cost of parts, would lessen product development (more familiar if you only have to deal with one system), and mean easier to replace (and diagnose). If I can pull a board from another pin to test with, it makes it easier to figure out what's wrong. In my collection, I have a data east (it's own hardware), and two williams (one is a system 11, one is a system 9), all 3 incompatible with each other.
So here's my grand scheme overall picture idea. The market is slowly shifting from arcades to homes.. it's just a fact. Pins in public are rare (occasional bowling alley, maybe a pizza joint, a gameworks if your in a major city). If your really lucky, someone has decided to fix up an older pin and route it in a bar (and keep it maintained). For the most part, I believe Stern's biggest customer are home buyers. Even though the buying market has skewed and changed, the pin has not. They still build them as if they are going on route (locked doors, coin boxes, etc). Here is what I sketched up today:
1. If you have a big collection, your pins are stacked right against the other one, and you don't even get to see the side artwork (hence why toppers are gaining popularity).
2. Artwork gets scratched up during shipment.
My suggestion (if you really must have artwork) is have a plexiglass sleeve on the side where you can slip new artwork into. This means artwork is never tied to a cabinet.
Another bonus of a system like this: Saves space. Yea, believe it or not, the whole world doesn't live like most americans (1600+ sq feet of space), not everyone can live in the burbs. If I live in the city, most likely I will live in less than 1,000 sq feet. Unless I rent an expensive warehouse of some sort, I have no place to put my pins. If I had a system like this, I could have one cabinet, and probably 3-4 populated playfields in storage. You look at places like japan, UK, netherlands, they all live in small spaces too
Do I think this will replace the traditional cabinet? No, people still drive rolls royces. People still buy $200k ferrari's that are handbuilt by a pair of technicians that dyno an engine and mate it with a hand picked transmission. Most people buy a mass produced car, a car that is made on an assembly line, cranked out in mass quantities, and with good quality and nice features. The world needs a toyota pinball company.
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