Twilight Zone pinball Kickstarter

[mmcirvin]

I've been playing, and talking about, Farsight Studios' Pinball Arcade, their multi-platform game project to release simulations of classic pinball machines as periodic DLC.

Thus far, nearly all of their releases have been of machines with unlicensed themes (I think Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, probably a relatively cheap license, is the only exception). But some of the all-time fan favorites (Twilight Zone, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Addams Family) are media tie-ins with presumably expensive and complicated licenses to negotiate. I'd assumed we'd never see them.

Several days ago, though, having determined that they couldn't make it work with their revenue stream, Farsight announced a Kickstarter to raise the license fees to do The Twilight Zone. I'd have dismissed this as a quixotic act of desperation, were there not a response that raised a substantial fraction of the required $55,000 in just the first few days. The contributions have leveled off since then, but with 18 days to go, I'd say they have a good chance of making it. They've already acquired the physical machine and are clearly serious about starting development.

I actually kicked in a few bucks, mostly for sentimental reasons. The Twilight Zone isn't my personal favorite pinball (that would be Star Trek: TNG), but it's a good one and historically important. And they specifically mention doing Star Trek: TNG if this succeeds. (The Addams Family sounds like a tougher case.)

Comments

[kodi]

Thanks for these posts. I finally checked out Pinball Arcade for Android, and it's remarkably good - although I'd played it less than an hour before I was checking to see if there were any public machines left in Dallas.

I'm kicking in a bit, myself, even though I generally prefer tables from the 1980s. But they do such great work.

[spatch]

I may have to chip in. Pinball Arcade is great and I've enjoyed their XBLA releases so far.

I'd chip in lots more if they included a "Credit Dot/Crappy Maintenance" mode where the clock is busted and the upper playfield flippers are insanely weak, because that's how you had to play at Good Time.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think Pro Pinball: The Web (a great old Mac/PC sim whose table layout seemed loosely inspired by Star Trek: TNG) actually had something like that.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a Twilight Zone with a working clock. It was notorious for breaking under the heat from the lightbulbs inside it. People who own them like to do an aftermarket mod where they give the clock LED lighting.

[secretagentmoof]

How would you say it's historically important, other than being one that Kibo played quite a bit in the mafiarcade? (Admittedly, it's a Pat Lawlor...)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Addams Family and TZ were, I think, really the two that set the standard for crazy Nineties tables with DMDs and a lot of toys and modes.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Even if this fails, btw, they've got a lot of good stuff in the pipeline:

http://pinballarcadefans.com/showthread.php/194-Latest-NEWS-And-INFORMATION-From-FarSight-Studios-Concerning-The-Pinball-Arcade

Several of the announced tables are the same ones that were offered in various versions of Pinball Hall of Fame. These are allegedly wholly new implementations with the revised physics engine, though that probably won't be enough to make me re-buy all the tables I can already play in PHoF:W on my Wii, since I'm perfectly satisfied with those versions.

Still, there are a lot of new-to-me ones announced as well, and I'm looking forward to the much-belated arrival of the already-released DLC on the XBox 360.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Another note on the Kickstarter: Farsight just emailed backers saying that, following negotiations with Microsoft, they can now offer the XBox 360 version of the table as a reward (they'd previously claimed they couldn't do this). Unfortunately Kickstarter supposedly won't let them edit the text of the reward listing to clarify this, which seems bizarre if true.

[mutantlog.livejournal.com]

Well that news pushed me into my first Kickstarter. Now to keep waiting patiently for Dr. Dude to be released as I spent 4 months working somewhere with a Dr. Dude and never felt like I truly beat it...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've only ever seen a Dr. Dude once, a few years ago. It strikes me as having the most instantly and hilariously dated theming of any pinball ever made. At the time, it seemed cringeworthy, but now just enough time has gone by that that's kind of endearing.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Though there are more levels, since the humor was clearly supposed to be self-mockingly ironic in the first place... aggh, I'm getting too old for this.