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Episode 106 - Ballsaves: Pinball's Biggest Mistake!
PodcastAnalysis updated yesterday46 min listen
Highlights
- Playfield validation originated in the EM era as a safety mechanism to ensure proper ball serving, not as a modern ball save feature
- Firepower (1980) was the first game with a physical ball-save kicker in the left outlane
- F-14 Tomcat (1987) by Steve Ritchie introduced the first modern ball save design as 'F-14 Tomcat,' available on ball three if the first two balls were bad
- Terminator 2 (1991) was the first game to guarantee a ball save at the start of every ball
- The The The Addams Family (1992), the best-selling flipper game ever, shipped without a factory ball save
- Whitewater (1993) may be the last factory-released game without a ball save, though it has playfield activation validation
- Ball saves have evolved from functional safety features into exploitable strategic elements that skilled players use to gain unfair advantages
- Modern games like Ghostbusters have excessive ball saves with multiple outlane saves and scoop ejection saves that extend the safety window far beyond reasonable limits
- Gottlieb in the 1990s as the third-place competitor regularly sold 2-3x the units that modern manufacturers like Spooky and Barrels of Fun sell today (400-900 units)
- Williams sold 5,000-20,000+ units of games 30 years ago, demonstrating a much larger market when games had fewer ball saves
Notable quotes
“Filthy with them, you might say. They're mange-y. These things are fucking filthy with ball saves.”
“I'm going to tell all the listeners about why ball saves are actually pinball's biggest mistake.”
“It's not dangerous anymore... I'm only playing that dangerously because I know I have a ball save.”
“A new player walks up and they go... 'I thought the rules were just keep the ball alive and don't lose it.' They immediately know when the ball goes down the center. That's bad. So when the ball kicks over... you have to tap them on the shoulder and go, 'No, no, no. There's a ball save.'”
“It's like soccer taking a dive to try to get a card... just because it's strategic doesn't make it cool. It's lame. It's lame as fuck.”
“I would love five second ball saves... the problem is it's like 15 to 20 seconds and it's not inexperienced players using this. It's often become part of the strat.”
“If you duff a shot in golf, it's still a stroke. If you shank a bowling ball into the gutter, there's no playfield activation ball save. Why do we gleefully cheer for this in pinball?”
“No ball save, people like playing it, boom, we sold fucking 20,000 units.”
“I don't think we need to be given balls back more than 45 seconds in a pinball game.”
“The biggest one for me is the fucking multi-ball ball saves... it's just stupid.”
Entities
- Barrels of Fun· company
- Gottlieb· company
- Spooky Pinball· company
- Williams· company
- Black Knight Sword of Rage· game
- F-14 Tomcat· game
- Firepower· game
- Ghostbusters· game
- Iron Maiden· game
- Metallica Remastered (Premium/LE)· game
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day· game
- The Addams Family· game
- The Getaway: High Speed II· game
- The Sopranos®· game
- White Water· game
- Wedgehead Pinball Podcast· organization
- Alan· person
- Alex· person
- Colin MacAlpine· person
- Harry Williams· person
- Steve Ritchie· person
