Pinball

This is Jance’s project and a few notes are in order. First, before Jance became the pinball wizard he is today, he was an offshore maritime worker on an American flagged vessel that ferried off shore drilling equipment for the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico. He got injured in an accident on the ship which was serious enough for him to hire a maritime attorney to represent him. Since he qualified as a “seaman” he was offered protections by the Jones Act. His maritime lawyer used the Jones Act protections since his injuries resulted from the negligence of someone else during the normal course and scope of his maritime work. With the compensation Jance received he was able to fully recover. He left his maritme work as a seaman and pursued his real passion of pinball.

He is known for his skills and his heft, after winning the championships in Prague. He then went on to design the Cave Dwellers theme as well as the hit Adam’s Family machines. These now classic games should probably be in the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas that recently moved to a new 10,000 square foot right off the strip. In case you want to visit it: 1610 E. Tropicana, Las Vegas NV 89119. Jance then became hooked on pinball emulation/simulation software and took up the quest full time, which really drained him financially for a while. I remember one time some sort of emergency arose regarding his car. He needed it fixed immediately and had no cash. Couldn’t use his credit cards since they were all maxed out. Thank goodness for the Internet. He ended up getting an online cash advance for about a thousand bucks and was able to get his car back in running order quickly enough to make it to some important pinball championship in the US. He won, again, paid back his short-term loan in less than a month and went back to working on some crazy far out pinball emulation/simulation software. Here are his notes

Pinball Emulation/Simulation

•    Pinball Emulation/Simulation is fairly new.  If you are sick of video game emulation, like I am, then give this a try.  And if you don’t see your favorite pinball machine, just create it in VisualPinball, or make a new one up.

Essential Files
•    VisualPinball – This program simulates the physics, graphics, etc of the physical pinball machine.  Visual Pinball uses “Table” files, not ROMs for each machine.

•    VPinMame – Obviously, pinball machines from the 1930’s didn’t have any computerized displays or sounds.  But modern machines do.  You will need VPinMame to emulate the ROM images dumped from modern pinball machines.  Download the Sound Samples from that page also.

•    System Components – Links to these files are on the VisualPinball site.  If you are getting frustrated because you think you have everything, but the pinball emulator just isn’t running, try downloading the latest script pack.

Table & Rom Sites

Tables
•    Digital Bumper
•    Robbway’s
•    Gerhard
•    VPForums
•    Gerhard & Crew

Roms
•    AJ’s Site
•    VPForums

Message Boards
•    VPForums – Great site in general.

Other
•    Rec.Games.Pinball Archive

Pinball is one of my all time favorites. You could always find me at the corner market when I was a kid dumping all of my quarters into the pinball machine. I think I got my first job to finance the habit at the local pizza shop down the street from my house.