I have a flipperless pinball in my basement called Bally Attention that was in the Brooklyn Naval Yards when LaGuardia banned pinballs and ordered them all dumped into the Hudson River. Two sailors caught wind of this and hid the machine in the back room of a candy store in the area where it stayed for 60 years until the candy store closed and the owner discovered the machine in the back. I bought and restored the machine,
@@SolaceonThe worst country on earth isn't doing shit, we're too busy banning women from using the women's restroom and making it illegal for people to dress as a different gender
I'm in Trinidad and Tobago and I was born in 1998. I've played in many arcades, I still remember smoking sections, malls are still bustling and successful here. I've never seen a pinball machine in my life. I thought pinball was just a computer game like in Windows XP until I was like 12.
I have watched severaldifferent documentaries about pinball. I can honestly say this is the first time someone has explained how it got the name pinball. Well done mate 👍
@@fathersunglasses6085Yes indeed. Thanks to all these shoot-em-up arcade games dumped into the ocean we now have killer whales. Well, still beats school shootings caused by these games.
I hope you get the chance to experience the joy of owning a real 1980's (or early 90's) solid state pinball machine. I have two. A Bride of Pinbot and William's Fire. My brother use to buy damaged pinball machines, restore them and resold the ones he didn't want to keep. He has a Stern Sea Witch I would love to buy from him. Digital pinball is nice but will never compare to an actual pinball machine. Other machines I would love to own is a Gottlieb Black Hole, Haunted House, Circus Voltaire and Elvira Scared Stiff.
First of all: I love a good game of pinball (with flippers!) now and then. I even wrote a software table in Visual Basic Script for the Visual Pinball platform based on my favourite comic strip. LaGuardia had a point with the payout machines being rigged to fleece you.The modern equivalent Pachinko in a so-called Pachinko-parlour is a sorry sight in my eyes. You see rows upon rows of people in front of "their" machine looking like zombies as they put coin after coin in the machine mindlessly watching as the metal balls ploink from pin to pin while the players are blasted by dazzling visual effects when they "score" points. The inserting of token coins is the only active part in "playing" Pachinko, except grabbing the occasional pay-out in tokens.
@@LarixusSnydes this is also why Pachinko and any other luck based gambling system is illegal in most countries outside Asia. But their love for pure luck based gaming isn't just limited to those stupid machines, they also infest many of the video games made in Japan and South Korea, with many of them end up in the west unchanged as long as they don't require real money to play the gambling components
For anyone not familiar with pinball but wants to get into it (probably a video game version)... the best and easiest tip to improve your playing is the Dead Flip! Basically it's where you intentionally don't flip the flipper, but you let the ball bounce off the 'dead' flipper. You quickly get used to when doing this is a good idea, and you wrestle that ball back under control. It will often lead to the ball bouncing across to the other flipper where you can easily trap it for a nice considered flip.
Yep! My favorite tip is for someone to cradle a ball with the flipper and try nudging to feel how it affects the ball. Then see if they can do a post pass. Once you get familiar with the feel, it almost feels like cheating!
I do that sometimes, but with the flipper raised. Also, if you get the timing exactly right and release the flipper at the moment of contact, you can literally suck all the momentum out of the ball!
Cradle the ball with a raised flipper, release the flipper and let the ball roll down to just the right spot on it, then launch the ball toward where you want it. Is this uncommon knowledge? That would be a surprise to this old player.
Pinball in the Seattle area has been legal, as long as the table is just for points. I grew up with them, and still to this day still enjoy the odd round in Pinball Arcade, as it is far cheaper than owning some of the tables I would like to have a physical version of. One of those tables being Doctor Who by Bally-Williams, and another being Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure by the same company
@Nostalgia Nerd The tokens that Safe Cracker dispenses can be inserted on a special token slot on the face of the machine. This triggers the 'wizard' mode.
I remember the first time I did really great at pinball in the mid 1970's. I was a pre-teen and my family was at a restaurant and they had a pinball that ran on dimes. I had racked up a lot of free games by playing all four players myself. When we went to leave with the won credits still on the game he came over and turned the game off then on and handed me a couple dollars for the credits.
Love that outro song. Arcades and pinball spots are hard to find here in rural southwest Indiana. Luckily in nearby Evansville there's now a bunch of places to go. That's only a recent phenomenon mind you. Still tho, I miss the good ol days of the mall and strip mall arcades. The kinds they have now are just ticket redemption crap. 😢 Never gonna happen but if I ever won the lotto (big national one, not the smaller state version) I'd want to create an actual arcade and amusement tech museum. Couldn't hold all of the games it's just not possible, but I would like to showcase the technology that went into it in order to preserve that knowledge for future generations. Plus I'd want to see if it's possible to start a CRT production facility.
I’m a seaside town near me, an arcade purchased a South Park pinball machine, around the time that the show was becoming popular. The first time I used it, Mr. Hankey had popped out of the toilet. When I went back, a few weeks later, the toilet opened, but all that popped out was a metal bracket. The arcade owner had clearly instructed the handyman to remove Mr. Hankey from the playfield.
I love when the government just transparently embraces the fact that they're literally nothing other than the biggest racket there is. The honesty is refreshing, y'know?
Some things of note: There were some flipperless machines that had slot machine style arms on them to pay out (OD Jennings Sportsman for example). Also, look into bingo machines.
Yes, speaking of pinball I learned about how bowling used to be banned as well. It’s really interesting and like it wasn’t unbanned until the 60s or some thing it’s really interesting you know which is weird.
To be fair, America has always been quite puritanical, despite it's proclamation of FREEDOM! I live in a dry county (still), which would just dumbfound an Englishman.
Another fun video from Nostalgia Nerd. Loved looking into the history of Pinball. I'm more for arcade machines but do enjoy all the amusement games and what they can offer. This video further inspires me with my own video projects so I'm grateful.
The regulation of pinball reminds me a bit of how bowling used to be associated with gangsters and racketeering,until the 50s where it got heavily sanitized and became a common pastime (for the better,in my opinion)
I like the one dollar coin slot in the video on that pinball game. Unlike the one pound coin in Britain, it is flippin' hard to find one dollar ones used anywhere in the USA. They do exist, but there are precious few in circulation.
We welcome you back good sir! Edit: My dad got himself a used pinball machine when I was a little kid back in the 80's. I loved playing with it. And his atari 2600. Funny he kinda stopped playing games in the 80's and I kept on loving games and tech. Oh man that pinball counting animation hit all the nostalgia feels. I haven't seen or heard that in 30+ years but I can't get it out of my head now
I had read many years ago some of the history of pinball and that there were laws concerning the gambling element. It wasn't until I sawr a story on Mysteries at the Museum that I learned about the New York City ban and I quite agreed with the ider behind it. Sad that one has to agree with a ban on something one loves because we can't have nice things.
My mom managed a few bars in a small town back when I was a kid in the 90's. ALL the bars in town had pinball machines that would payout. The way it worked was you would collect points by doing certain things in the game and the counter would go up and it also had some sort of slot mechanics as well. I dont remember the exact conditions you had to hit before a payout would happen but I do remember you were paid based off the number on the counter. For example if the counter said 100 you were paid 10 dollars. The Pennsylvania liquor control board would occasionally come in and raid the businesses to see if they had machines that people were gambling on. Most of these bars had video poker as well. When the PLCB would hit one bar it would call and warn all the other bars that they were in town and everybody would scramble to hide the machines quickly.
There is an episode of the honeymooners TV show, which was filmed in the 1950s, which shows Ralph playing a pinball game in New York City. And that is where the show was filmed
As an european, some context to the Kinder Egg anecdote. First of, the FDA used to consider any candy with toys inside a safety hazard. This got changed, but to be safe Ferroro changed the toy holding capsule to contain breathing holes. Alledgly said breathing holes meant people could easily smuggle drugs in the capsules by swallowing them though. I dont know how much of the last part is urban legend and how mcuh is true though.
It's interesting to think that in the 70s, if you wanted to make a kid in a movie look rebellious or carefree, you'd show them in front of a pinball machine at the local pizza joint. Never mind that nowadays, pinball almost seems like something very straight-laced, some good clean fun to be had. It's like chewing gum - something that was once seen as trashy, rude on principle, piggish, or perhaps unladylike - used in cinema for some time to suggest a rebellious (for better or worse) persona, only for it to become ordinary - perhaps a personal sensory choice or a way to freshen your breath - not something that is supposed to convey subtext about the character.
If you're a game collector, just go to the ocean to get rare games. edit: the context is that the video name was "millions of arcades machines are underwater"
Awesome! Any plans to mod your ALP? The OTG experience with VPX, Zaccaria PInball in Steam, and Pinball FX3 are all fantastic. It's a lot of work to get set up just right, but it's worth every minute.
The police needed to raid LaGuardia's pantry and kitchen cabinets. Which was obviously more dangerous for him feeding his fat face and pose more of a threat than the "gamblers". Good to know the cop's would just go along with any crazy thing.... with zealous malice... Who could have ever guessed
Has Peter launched a Kickstarter with the goal of fixing up someone else's boat to try and find these machines at sea but still make the backers pay to play them yet?
26:50 still enforced in Toronto Canada. Someone tried to open an arcade in parkdale and local businesses complained to city council who forced them to close.
The law banned having more than two pinball machines and then when they finally agreed to just have two the local councilor pushed thru a ban on any new restaurants in the neighborhood. Once the arcade owners gave up and sold all their vintage machines the same council repealed the ban. Canada is a very corrupt country btw. No doubt the city councilors wanted a payoff
8:15 Naturally, they would ban kids from playing "Billiards, Bagatelle, or any other game" in Jackson County, GA. To keep them safe and happy, children worked in the textile industry instead.
The Who movie, Tommy, was released in 1975. It heavily featured pinball and contained the 1969 song, Pinball Wizard. I wonder if that didn’t influence lifting the NYC ban in 1976.
Oakland CA is home to a real cool Pinball museum. They have a ton of machines from the 60's to modern ones. My favourite ever is still The Black Knight.
in Denmark, only machines that have a payout are considered gambling (otherwise video games would be illegal), and the laws regarding them is very strict. Thus you normally will not find payout machines in an establishment that have machines without payout - thus no pinball or video games next to the slot machines. We otherwise have very relaxed regulations for pinball and other machines - they can be as expensive or difficult as they want, but if they cost money to play they must be beatable
Have you done a video on Dollz, from the late 90s. Internet paper dolls. It was extremely cool back then, kids would print theirs off and bring them to school to show off and put in the special clear sleeve on the front of the binder. ❤
In a way, this goes back to when slot machines had to become fruit machines to avoid gambling laws. It wasn't too long ago that collectable card games like _Magic: The Gathering_ were banned from school because cards could be anted up (if the players elected to do so), thus a form of gambling.
Bro here from Venezuela, Glad you mentioned that stupid law, and believe me that shit has 0 effect on many gamers over here, as the mayority of us has downloaded games from shady websites (no wonder why many computers over here completely riddle with viruses thanks to some kid who tried to download San Andreas), and thats mostly because we have no choice, to this day its hard to find a legitimate copy of older titles (especially PS2 or Xbox 360), and even with the advent of steam and other similar online services we still have to resort to piracy to play some games because there are way to expensive (and if for some reason you had the money, find a way to PAY it it's a nightmare), anyway thanks form your excelent video, and sorry for my bad english, greettings from Venezuela.
The reason why Kinder eggs are banned in America is simple, there's a blanket prohibition on non-food items being completely encased in food. Yes, it's unlikely something like the capsule in a Kinder egg would be eaten mistakenly/choked on, but you can't tell me that's a bad law to have, and rewriting it specifically to make exceptions for Kinder eggs is nobody's priority.
TotalAV? Really? The one with the notorious "FREE" version that nags like hell to upgrade and then expires if you don't, the one some other AVs will block as badware? Now ok, credit to Total AV, they HAVE been included in the tests they claim to be and results are adequate, but they do not cover themselves in glory with their dubious marketing
that mayor was ahead of his time. he should have been sent to the future to give cement shows the board members who promote lootboxes and pay-to-win mechanics in videogames, and throw them in the sea.
Laws around coin operated games are still a thing in the US. I know a couple local retro arcades in the Chicago suburbs who had to go to entrance fee/free play system because they couldn’t get the gaming license required to allow Coin op play.
The thing at 1:06 was really weird. IIRC it was just after a guy shot some people at the movie theater showing Fight Club, a couple months after the Columbine shooting. They found Doom and Duke Nukem 3D in the computer of the guy, someanime stuff and then a few games were blacklisted. With Doom and Duke 3D it also had (IIRC again) Mortal Kombat, Everquest and Postal. At the time they said a lot of things about Carmageddon too. You may live over there but the whole thing would turn into a great video if somehow you decide to make it.
the irony is that later on when the Mortal Kombat 2 arcade machine came along, they programmed it to cheat against the human player..and got away with it. no dodgy wiring needed there!