Hacker Cinema
Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball
2006 · Film · documentary · 58 min
Directed by Greg Maletic
THE SITUATION facing the pinball designers at Williams Electronic Games in 1998: come up with something new, or see the world's largest pinball manufacturer be shut down forever. And Williams' designers did come up with something amazing: a brand new kind of pinball machine—"Pinball 2000"—that fused video with classic pinball gameplay, preserving what was great about pinball yet opening up all-ne
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5 comments on Hacker News
I contributed to Josh Tsui's Kickstarter. He did an excellent job on that, all the people in that video are exactly like I remember them.
There's another documentary called Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball by Greg Maletec that describes what we were going through on the pinball side near the end. It's streamable on a few services.
The stories themselves? Way too many to relate. But it was certainly like the doc. A cutthroat company where anything could happen. But probably the most talented and creative group of engineers I've ever worked with.
I won't lie, it was a blast. It was also an insane amount of work. Years went by like a blur.
Some of what went on over there is documented in Greg Maletic's film Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball. Josh Tsui (from the Mortal Kombat team) just completed a Kickstarter to make a similar documentary about what the guys downstairs in video were doing back then as well.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshuatsui/insert-coin-inside-midways-90s-revolution
There's a great documentary by Greg Maletic called "Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball" - http://www.tilt-movie.com/ - highly recommended, and it blows my mind that he made the whole thing himself.
There are a couple of pinball documentaries I watched recently which are probably interesting to some here: "Special When Lit" and "Tilt: The Battle To Save Pinball"
RIP Steve Kordek. Great contributions to an amazing game.
Here are some nerdy ones:
"BBS: The Documentary" and "Get Lamp" by Jason Scott are a couple great hacker docs, about BBSs and Interactive Fiction Games (though I would have to say they have a more Apple/wintel PC bent over other computers, but still historically interesting). Both have many great interviews with BBS and interactive fiction luminaries.
Tilt - The Battle to Save Pinball, this one covers the trials and tribualtions of Pinball 2000 the development of a digital/analog pinball hybrid. There's also The History of Pinball, its not as fancy but it's interesting.
The King of Kong is slightly entertaining about the world of Donkey Kong high scores and a peek into competitive arcade game competitions.
Revolution OS - About Linux/GNU kinda dry but interesting interviews.
Deathbed Vigil...and other tales of digital angst. Documents the last days of Commodore when it went bankrupt in 1994. I think mainly interesting to Commodore fans or folks who enjoyed seeing commodore fail...