PINBALL vs AIR HOCKEY vs SKEE-BALL

where are ya max, i know you feel me on this.

One time, an attendant at a skee-ball arcade showed me a bank-shot trick -- roll it at an angle as hard as you can, it goes off the side and then the top net, straight down into the 50 almost every time. So I try the bank shot a few years later at a different arcade and the attendant freaks out, "quit tearin' up the skeeball you goddamn kids," etc, said he'd throw me out if I didn't roll it straight. Fuckin' asshole, I was about to take all his tickets.

Voted pinball, BTW. I'm of a certain pre-videogame age.

I will play air-hockey to the point of shoulder dislocation.

I will play air-hockey pinball to the point of shoulder wrist dislocation

Can't stand air hockey. Big waste of time anti-climax stupid skill-free game.

i love all of these. i'm probably best at air hockey, but i voted skee ball because if i had to devote a solid afternoon to any of them it would be that. very few things are as satisfying as a well-rolled skee shot.

i do love the clack and clatter of air hockey, though.

since foosball is clearly in another league from these mere games, I'm not even going to include it in "others". AIR HOCKEY.

it's pretty hard to make an 8yr old cry by whupping them in pinball or skee-ball

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skee ball is the only answer

but im really good at all three of these

it's pretty hard to make an 8yr old cry by whupping them in pinball or skee-ball

-- Granny Dainger, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 9:29 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

you'd be surprised.

anybody who votes against pinball is wrong

I can't look beyond pinball.

I know two girls who've dislocated fingers playing air hockey - ain't nobody getting injured playing pinball or skee-ball.

you will get injured playing skee-ball when we are playing it together and I find out you voted for pinball

you will get injured playing skee-ball when we are playing it together and I find out you voted foragainst pinball

LOL beer

yeah exactly milo - i think GD was talking about inflicting physical harm on yr opponent, air hockey at least motivates you in this way

ack. i can't remember what skee-ball is. :(

i feel like this is unfair. It is like AWESOMENESS OF PINBALL v game for children v boring game for children.

voted "boring game for children" obv

i like pinball but it confuses me. every game has all these weird extra-special secret rules and nooks and crannies where suddenly your score doubles or something and you don't even know why. sometimes there's suddenly an extra ball flying around the board from ... who knows where? wherever they hide the extra balls. and all the flashing lights and sirens and bells.

skee ball is sorta zen in its simplicity by comparison.

awesome old-timey seaside game vs decent kiddie suburban rec-room game vs boring bar-room burnout game

air hockey 4 sho

Logged in for the first time in six weeks in order to vote for pinball.

I mean, come on, the sheer thrill of physics in it, with the ball just whipping around at these increasingly insane speeds and you discover the capacity of your brain - when you're really in the zone - to keep up with, indeed anticipate, this thing, and at the same time be juggling all the options, where you're trying to get it to go, the checklist of stupid tasks they're trying to get you to do, the knowledge that this is your last ball but you're this close to activating the multiball and winning a free game for sure... air hockey at its best can maybe approximate one-ninth of a great game of pinball.

Is there a specifically pinball-themed thread? I'll check this weekend and then spam it to death...

air hockey

awesome old-timey seaside game vs decent kiddie suburban rec-room game vs boring bar-room burnout game

this is like an orgasm of wrong

I used to play skee-ball @ Myrtle Beach, SC on vacation so it'll always have that air of humid, salty, far-away luxury to me.

Cf. also airbrushed t-shirts of muscle cars.

I am suddenly seized by the urge for a game of ping-pong.

they other two are great and all but seriously PINBALL always and forever.

i am partial to skee ball prizes but still

boring bar-room burnout game

do you mean pinball? i have seen pinball games in pizzerias, laundromats, gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, & pool halls. bars, too, yes. but i have never seen air hockey or skee ball at these places.

he means that suburban rec rooms are OK & so are seaside boardwalks but the kind of places you see pinball machines aren't fit for the gentry

i mean they're the most depressing

your game needs to make reference to some other more interesting phenomenon = your game sucks

i mean they're the most depressing

as opposed to the unimaginable bliss of the suburban rec room

i would rather be in a bar than a suburban rec-room, duh, but air hockey is more fun

dunno if you know this btw but all pinball are/were initially designed w/o any paint, theme, etc. the point of the game is the playfield & the ball. the paint & so on is added to attract single-quarter customers (and later to help pay for the game with co-branding), but players don't really care what the theme is - the point is the play, which is many degrees more complex, skill-demanding, and fun than brain-dead skee-ball. w/air hockey it's almost a wash, that's a fun game, but still isn't as engaging as a good pinball machine.

(/dude who has taken the Twilight Zone machine to the "Lost in the Zone" feature twice in a single game i.e. has horse in race)

ok mr pinball wizard

recognize

anyone who thinks skee ball is easy hasnt played enough of it

also pin ball machines dont give you tickets to get plastic trinkets with

also shitty date game

coming from you though it's kinda weird - skee-ball exercises a single skill, it's a good time; air hockey's a little more complex, there's such a thing as defense, but there's still only one target; pinball is essentially a math-and-geometry game with each board offering different problems, only they're not dull problems to be worked out on paper, they're in-vivo arcs and angles and calculations that you can work out whether you'd actually be able to do the math or no. basically, the only game that engages much brain here is the one you're deriding as dull.

xpost max I pity you if you've never had a good pinball date & I'd guess, just being ancient, that I've played quite enough skee-ball

max I thought I was corny but yr takin the prize here - do you then go get sarsparilla and a hot fudge sundae? pinball's a better game when there's gonna be, like, y'know, sex later

skeeball is a great date game
pinball is for hanging with bros and talking shit and stuff
air hockey is okay?

in pinball:

i) the gurl gets to see you LOSE, stymied by clever engineering (this is hott)

ii) she shares control of the KNOB ooh er

pinball i could also see is good for hanging with the ladies, though, too

"is the fair in town?" wtf does that mean

if the only time you played skee ball was at a 'fair' than you probably grew up somewhere not worth talking about

dunno if you know this btw but all pinball are/were initially designed w/o any paint, theme, etc. the point of the game is the playfield & the ball. the paint & so on is added to attract single-quarter customers (and later to help pay for the game with co-branding), but players don't really care what the theme is - the point is the play, which is many degrees more complex, skill-demanding, and fun than brain-dead skee-ball. w/air hockey it's almost a wash, that's a fun game, but still isn't as engaging as a good pinball machine.

-- J0hn D., Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:30 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

so true, especially the complexity part. i do care about the theme though--i will take a carnival theme like Pinball Circus or Cyclone any day of the week over something lame like Fish Tales, where the object is to "lie" about "fish" that you "caught."

max you've got me dead to rights. but then I moved out and now I live in France. in a loft.

what you just said: "pinball is an exact mirror of human existence"

i thought you were arguing FOR pinball

I've never enjoyed pinball. So many variables you can't control that take the sport out of it, and when it comes down to it you either hit the paddles when the ball comes to them, or the ball flies right past them and it doesn't matter. I had some great air hockey matches with family members when I was a kid, but every time I try to play it now, the thrill is gone. But every time I'm at the boardwalk the wife and I go down and play a round of skee-ball and it's always fun.

when it comes down to it you either hit the paddles when the ball comes to them, or the ball flies right past them and it doesn't matter

there's more to it than that. you can save probably 90% of balls that would be lost if you did nothing or just flipped one flipper.

i'd go so far as to say that good players never lose balls down the middle, ever.

gunching, death saves, slam tilts, body english, nudging, shaking, rattling

http://www.ipdb.org/playing/skills.html

pinball is maybe the greatest skill game out of the three, although skee ball is a lot harder than it looks. pinball's kinda like baseball batting, skee ball's kinda like golf.

i'm not into professional wrestling, xp

I'm not saying that I don't like pinball because I'm bad at it and lose balls all the time. I'm saying that even the strategy that there is to it holds no interest for me.

air hockey is the only one that is significantly enhanced by black light
air hockey renders that old bitch friction, bane of man's existence outside the bedroom, meaningless

also worth noting that I fucking love bowling, so skee-ball is really just a surrogate for that.

i think what we have learned here is that many ilxors are simply not up to the challenge of pinball

^^^^^^^

have to go with pinball but must give props to air hockey's elegant feel and simplicity. the way the puck glides.

i'm not into professional wrestling

joke's on you, those were all political terms

Air hockey isn't a good date game, but it's perfect for flirting.

Missing here is that game with rows of soccer players on rods.

skee-ball is a play-at-your-own-pace rolling of a ball up a hill ending in the accumulation of capital and potential fabulous prizes

not to gang up on you too much but i feel like i should add here that an important charm of pinball for me is winning a free game/extra balls and stuff. the more free games you win, the more divided your initial investment grows, i.e. if you play a game that costs 50 cents per game, and then you win three free games, that's 16 cents per game.

Plus no twee plastic trinkets that you regret not feeling more sentimental about when you throw them away

all i've got is a checking account, xp

i think what we have learned here is that many ilxors are simply not up to the challenge of pinball

i think what we have learned here is that many ilxors could give a fuck about pinball

QED

milo that's because that game with soccer players on rods is a real sport, not same gussied up parlor game.

the point is the play, which is many degrees more complex, skill-demanding, and fun than brain-dead skee-ball.

But this is just why I voted for skee-ball; it is an elemental physical trial in a way that the other two are not. Put in whack-a-mole, we've got a horse race (though skee-ball still wins.)

an elemental physical trial

awesome

except that it's not; it's basically one manually-executed pinball shot with zero variables. like the simplest pinball machine ever.

and pinball is pretty physical too. perhaps not as much as skee-ball but you get more complexity

it's less tactile - i like to feel the skee-ball in my hand

;-)

voting air hockey even though i'm terrible at it

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"He's an air hockey wizard, there has to be a twist..."

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jimmy brings up a good point but foosball was ruined for me when we found out there was this dude Barry in our dorm who could seriously beat two people with his back turned and/or a shirt pulled over his head

air hockey is a violent loud mess of a game where players are frequently done in by their own hand, therefore it is my favorite of the options

air hockey seriously is like the physical world equivalent of arcade fighters where the button-mashing ADHD seven-year-old can achieve the same success rate as the pizza face champion

those domed hockey things are awesome. i used to have a cheapo one that you put on any table.
hitting stuff at people's guarded holes with PADDLES vs making a ball roll and bounce around to get points yay points

That hockey game looks amazing.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/potw/20010907/foosball.jpg

you don't play 3 people per side! i bet vicente has mad goalie skills though

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