Super hidden easter egg in Jack*Bot: This was a tribute to Game & Watch "Fire!", the first Nintendo title I ever owned. I used it as a coding exercise while learning WPC system calls and dot-matrix programming, then made it a full easter egg in attract mode. Which got me in trouble. (more)

Williams/Bally/Midway is gone. WMS is no more. But one artifact remains: WMS donated $2 million to the Park District to name the new boathouse on the Chicago River, opposite from the factory. Designed by famous Chicago architect Jeanne Gang. studiogang.com/projects/wms...

Neil Nicastro also didn't know or understand pinball history. Everyone else around him was VERY aware that Tom Nieman rescued Bally Pinball, and really the whole pinball industry, from a lackluster future by introducing licensed properties to their line.

In light of this great Addams Family #pinball oral history, I'll repost my github link here. This is a scanned example of the work Roger did to research upcoming movies and shows and inform the design teams about what was available and what had potential. raw.githubusercontent.com/lkoziarz/pin...

I never heard this quote from Nicastro but it's incredibly ironic. Once the movie licensing money was rolling in Neil got on a tear and started shoving licenses down the throats of the design teams. "Hey, Crichton wrote Jurassic Park and that was a smash. We're buying Congo and you're gonna do it."

Just finished a long road trip and had the time to take in a lot of coin-op history podcasts. 90% of them go like this: "Today we're going to talk about game XXX, a true groundbreaking classic in arcade game history. Co-host, what are your memories of game XXX? "Never even heard of it". 🙄

"Do you mind taking this with you to the factory?" "No problem. Anything important?" "Just a quarter million dollars worth of flash memory" 😳

Damn... RIP Dave Kendall, host of MTV's 120 Minutes. Kinda hard to fathom now, but back in the day you basically had 3 ways to get exposed to good, new, cool music: living somewhere w college radio station, hip older sibling, 120 Minutes. consequence.net/2026/07/dave...

Dave Kendall, Creator and Host of MTV's 120 Minutes, Has Died

Dave Kendall, creator and former host of MTV’s 120 Minutes, has died.

consequence.net

Now I'm kind of pissed that MS didn't refactor Comic Chat into a casual interface to Copilot AI. Putting that out into the ether in the hopes that someone does it.

Greg Dunlap@heyrocker.com · 3w ago

@koziarz.com www.phoronix.com/news/Microso...

This is pretty awesome. #moo lives on! For #arcade history buffs, Comic Chat was co-developed by Tim Skelly, the famous designer/programmer from Cinematronics and Gottlieb/Mylstar/Ratslym. opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2026/07...

Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source | Microsoft Open Source Blog

Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source. Explore the IRC client that turned conversations into comics and helped introduce Comic Sans to the world.

opensource.microsoft.com

Btw y'all cheeseburger.world might be the coolest new Atproto app 😎

Brittany Ellich@brittanyellich.com · 3w ago

Burgerville Vancouver, WA ⭐ $ The Northwest Cheeseburger from Burgerville, with Tillamook cheddar cheese, as well as mayo, ketchup, pickles, tomato, and lettuce. The only fast food burgers I'll eat. Decent value. The sides are often better than the burgers but it tastes like nostalgia. #CBDB

For those that don't know the whole history, Tattoo Assassins was a Mortal Kombat type fighting game developed by Data East Pinball (before they became Sega Pinball, then Stern Pinball). The story of this game is pretty amazing. A few insiders tell the tale here: www.bunnyears.net/tattoo/

Stephanie Brownback@osu16bit.bsky.social · 4w ago

Happy 40th anniversary, Stern Pinball!

Stephanie Brownback@osu16bit.bsky.social · 4w ago

I was at the U of Illinois in 1990 and I recall a petition from the users of the computer lab (which sat next to the Union arcade). The AAAHHH-FIGHT! every 2 min in attract was driving them nuts. Lawlor told me bartenders would switch the game OFF if attract was too obnoxious. You don't want that.

Pinball Music & Trivia@pinballmusic.bsky.social · last mo.

Steve Ritchie proposes that operators set Black Knight 2000's volume high to increase earnings, taken from a letter sent out after the game's release. Excerpted from a PDF on the IPDB: www.ipdb.org/files/311/Wi...

Phillips' Law: If your design has an I2C bus it will take 20% of your design time but cause 80% of your bring-up headaches. 😖

PLD, post-Monopoly. We finally set up our new office and had some space to think and work. And now we needed to start designing the next game ASAP.

PLD, Post-Monopoly. With the game in production and some pinball money coming in, Pat decided it was time to get out of the garage. Or his family decided we had to go. Probably both. We moved to an office building in downtown Harvard, IL, sharing the building with a hair salon and a psychologist.

@pinballmap.com do you offer a reverse search? As in "where is the nearest <x> machine?". 🤔

ecco@daiwascarlet.horse · last mo.

never seen an official digital conversion of bally's 4 million bc so I think it's finally time for me to learn about vpx. finally. my uncle had one of these when I was a kid and it always drove me nuts how I couldn't go back and play it when I came to really love pinball. haven't seen one in decades

Monopoly Pinball easter egg: Backdoor to Land Grab final mode. Game must be in FREE PLAY, enter this during attract mode: 1R-1L-1R-2L-1R-3L-1R (ABC) Pennybags will tell you he loves to build houses. Shoot mode start to begin. Don't be a jerk and do this in tournaments. 😝

Monopoly Pinball design team easter egg: 2R-7L-1R-4L-1R-4L-1R (GDD)

PLD Post-Monopoly stuff. The game was launched and things were moving. Stern was happy with the relationship so we were discussing another title and batting about ideas. We also went to Pinball Expo and did a "Making Of" presentation. Steve Kordek was kind enough to be our hype man.

Yup! There was a Titanic redemption from Sega, and it was... something. 1/n www.youtube.com/shorts/jxTO-...

9038 TITANIC MEGA JACKPOT

YouTube video by Artisan Fine Living

youtube.com

Coral Rose@mscoralrose.bsky.social · last mo.

I just remembered the Titanic one! Didn't the ship turn like it was in a whirlpool? And then, y'know, being rigged

This existed, I have a photo of it somewhere at a trade show. Peak Kaminkow.

sleepr@sleeprhit.bsky.social · last mo.

For those that say pinball history is poorly documented, find the people like Caitlyn that are doing the hard work. They are furiously scanning and preserving as much as they can and doing an incredible job quietly and without fanfare. Brava!

the original Aloof Wife@cpi.pinball.horse · last mo.

Videos part 19 3.2 GB zip of some amazing pinball and arcade footage across film and television history, from across the globe pinballnovice.blogspot.com/2026/06/vide... #retroarcade #videogames #pinball #slotmachine #coinop #shootinggallery

I was there At all the cool kid birthday parties At Dave & Busters I DJ’d at the first ever indoor trampoline party I woke up naked In a Chuck E.Cheese Ticket Blaster Booth In 2013

A Father’s Day Greeting From LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy

I was there At all the cool kid birthday parties At Dave &amp; Busters I DJ’d at the first ever indoor trampoline party I woke up naked In a Chuck-E-C...

buff.ly

I post all kinds of insider baseball pinball stuff and it gets a fair amount of attention. Cool. Post ONE picture of the poke-the-butt game and hooooooly shit.

AMOA 2001 was also the North American debut (and probably ONLY sighting) of Boong-Ga Boong-Ga and thankfully I got proof. I did not try it. Details in ALT caption.

Monopoly Pinball: We started production at the end of August 2001 and then 9/11 happened. Airspaces closed, people stayed home. Thankfully life resumed in time for the AMOA show in Las Vegas the next month. But it was a slightly somber affair.

If anyone is thinking of ragging all over the new Arabian Nights remake just remember: I was there first.