Monopoly Pinball history: after a day or two of mechanical tweaking and code bombing, we're going out on test. Pat is friendly with a few bar owners in the area so we hide #1 away in a roadhouse near Woodstock, Illinois. #2 will be somewhere more visible and the net kids will find it for sure.

If you go by Atari's internal newsletter Coin Connection, today is the 50th anniversary of Breakout, their most popular title since Pong at the time and such a massive hit in Japan that it spawned a bunch of clones and inspired Space Invaders. Granted, other internal sources say April 76, but hey

Oh no

Arrrgh total fakeout using the Jack*Bot flyer image...

@aaarpinball.com created the awesome new pinbetween.com which reminds me of that old classic Kittenwar: www.kittenwar.com

As a GenX I feel compelled to share this bad news with you about this new epidemic: Hacky Sack is back. It's already in the high schools. Save yourselves while you still can.

Found the Harem Cat flyer in my files! (TOTAN research) @cpi.pinball.horse @universalfacts.bsky.social

Monopoly pinball: Now that prototypes are being completed, the pressure is on to get it to test. We spent a day or so getting last-minute fixes done and getting as much code into the game as possible.

Time to get back to Monopoly #pinball: The work intensifies through the summer as we get closer to production. We've already gotten some extra time from Stern because Austin Powers is doing pretty well. Then, one morning, Pat drives to Melrose Park and picks this up:

The leading indicator of a quality pinball room is a clean and working Mata Hari. 😍

Was driving across Indiana today and stopped into Wizard's World. This has to be the most immaculate collection I've seen in decades. Every game clean, waxed, and running. And some old friends in perfect running condition... Simply amazing.

I choose to believe this is how most 90s arcade race tracks were initially conceived #gaming #retrogaming #arcade

Holy crap a @noobde.bsky.social cameo in the trailer!

Monopoly Pinball: after a quiet period of heads-down design work, finished parts start showing up. The best day is when you hold the 1st screened p/f in your hands. I might need @heyrocker.com to help me on this: did we convince Stern to use spot color instead of CYMK here? Or is Youssi that good?

More Monopoly #pinball development. It's April 2001 now and the heavy work is going into art, dots, code, speech, mechanical drawings, etc. We're finalizing things on the whitewood and showing it at Stern one more time. Finished parts will be showing up in a month or two.

AI execs love to be like "Uh no one get alarmed but my company may have just created God 😳😳😳" and then you look and it's just a chatbot that can't do division.

Patrick's post reminds me that I also need to tell the tale about this monstrosity...

Great cover recommended by a great pinballer! You should check out this video and this table.

Macos: i have no idea where your document is Windows: “your” document? These are onedrive’s documents Linux: /opt/fakevm/mounted/tmpfs/vmlinuz/ubuntu-36.0.01_x86_also-arm.0.21.013/snapd/docx-exporter.sx/0028492748901.txt.converted.bak/v/9/ms/1/0.out

Hey @namcohistory.bsky.social, is this anything?

The new pinball room here kicked it off by inviting Roger to come and recreate The Shot. That's pretty nifty. www.instagram.com/reel/DWp74Jv...

Brinda Coleman sent me a copy of this 7" for doing an interview with Multiball and I wish I could find it. Grrr.

This popped up out of the blue. Nice.

It's the 50th anniversary of The Shot. April 2nd, 1976. Send your pinball love to @sharpe52.bsky.social even if he doesn't check Bluesky that often. It's an honor to know him personally, even though we only worked together for a few years.

Shout-out to every other Gen Xer that was holding their breath the entire time for the first five mintues of the launch For r e a s o n s

Some Monopoly Pinball design nerd stuff, before we get back to the pretty pictures. The area around the ramp changed a few times and Pat landed on a scoop that would then feed the ball the jets. This was an expensive piece of metal to do only one thing and we needed some cost savings. (more)

Y'all have lost your goddamned minds.

I let Claude heckle my LinkedIn profile and it was spot on.

Hey @neorsd.org my local poop district found out about us. They went out and got a spiffy new look to win me back. Think they're jealous?

Here's that WMS Pinball 2000 Staff photo in better resolution than 320x240x16. Flipper code, with Right button as the count and Left button as Enter: 1230 (1L-1R-1L-2R-1L-3R-1L-1L)

In Columbia SC for the day and of course there's a cool pinball bar. Bang Back Lounge! Play better!

Monotony.

Fire! was the game that got me into pinball in my college years. Played it every day at the Illini Union... ...mostly because the other Williams games were always in use. 🤣

I feel bad for players like this. Stern has kind of left them behind. What new games are around that are slower and less kinetic? Pulp Fiction was my first thought.

Monopoly #pinball backglass art. Compare Youssi's final concept sketch with the finished work. It's so good and you just look it over and go "yeah, that's it."

West Loop, represent.

Monopoly #pinball: brainstorming, rules, and chicken scratch.

@heyrocker.com are these your work notes?

Monopoly #pinball

Monopoly pinball, early art sketch.

Monopoly #pinball. Found a bunch of early art. 😍

Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now

Monopoly #pinball. Working with John Youssi was a highlight of my career. He listens, he lets you brainstorm and ramble, and he quietly takes notes. Then he disappears for a few weeks and comes back with something like this. Simply incredible.

Stern's marketing material was pretty dry. WMS was a bit goofier at times and I don't think it was all by design. To wit: this is set that the internal team built for the Jackbot promo video. Woof.

Continuing the Brian Schmidt rock fest, there was this band your parents liked and they covered Brian's theme from a Williams video game. youtu.be/KTcw1rMdldM