Total Recall thoughts

I should have never blogged about it last night because I couldn't get it off my mind and I had a hard time falling asleep (also couldn't keep my mind focused at work today).  I find this interesting because I'm sure the guys at Data East at the time had the same thoughts.  So here's what I went into deep thought about:

Cabinet design: Looks straight forward right? Build an odd shaped cabinet, done.. Nope, there's no way an operator would be happy trying to lift such an awkward cabinet as one piece, and the home market would hate it even more as it would make lifting into a basement nearly impossible.  I'm thinking it really needs to be 3 pieces, one pentagon shaped piece in the back where the top playfield would reside, and then the 2 cabinets.  As for the glass it would also need to be 3 pieces with a plastic trim to join the 2 lower panes with the upper.

Gameplay: One obvious thought is how to deal with balls from each cabinet being shared between sides.  As far as the live playing, it could simply autofire a new ball in the opposite playfield after one drains in yours (very much like the 2-player joust).  I don't remember what happens on joust when the game ends, does it fire any extra balls into the opposite side to make them even?  Makes it a little harder when the playfields are side by side but it's certainly feasible.

I think I'm going to go ahead and model up the cabinet the way I think it SHOULD be feasibly built, who knows how far I'll take this.  I do think it would be a neat project to make for real.  I doubt I would ever go so deep as to create an entire ruleset and custom alphanumeric displays, but I could see buying a generic CPU like an alltek, wire up some targets to existing score points.  I think just having built the cabinet and a semi-playable game would blow people's minds at a pinball show.  They wouldn't care if it's not as Data East intended, they would just love playing what could have been.

Only thing is I would effectively have to run two separate pinballs (so you could start a parallel 2 player game), and because most likely you wouldn't want to try running 6 flippers off an old power supply (but 3 flippers would do just fine).

Also came up with this parody logo