The video game is now a ubiquitous part of American pop culture. Pinball, however, is still much cooler. Though there’s been a lot of consolidation in the pinball industry in recent years, the quality of modern games keeps improving. This is due, in part, to improvements in technology–though not at the expense of first rate playfield design. Pinball went through a few lean years during the early years of the video boom, when designers tried to cram as much stuff onto the playfield as possible, perhaps feeling the clutter was needed to replicate the video game experience. In recent years, however, designers appear to have concluded–and rightly so–that pinball cannot be a video game, nor should it want to be. . . . → Read More: Great Pinball Machines: Bally’s Cirqus Voltaire

There’s no shortage of bad celebrity themed pinball machines. This time we wont rank them, well look at several different genres of bad celebrity tie ins: . . . → Read More: Bad Celebrity Themed Pinball Genres

For most of the 20th century it seemed that pinball was sort of the ‘cockroach’ of the amusement industry–just too tough and/or too adaptable to kill. It survived wars, economic downturn, moral outrage and most recently video games. Despite the changing cultural climate, it was still a shock when WMS Industries, the dominant player in the industry for the past decade and the maker of Williams and Bally machines, announced that it was getting out of the business several years ago. WMS wasn’t in any sort of financial peril, but rather they wanted to focus on their more lucrative slot machine and video poker business. . . . → Read More: Pinball Struggles To Survive In A Digital World