Gallery: California Extreme Puts Wild Pinball Wizardry at Your Fingertips
01varkon
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There are some crazy rare pinball machines out there, but your chance of ever getting to knock a few balls around inside them is pretty slim. What's a hunter of rare gaming to do? You could go to the [Pinball Hall of Fame](http://www.pinballmuseum.org/) in Las Vegas, or you could wait around for the annual [California Extreme](http://www.caextreme.org) show. Once every July, pinball and arcade game collectors from around the country haul their treasures — from common favorites like Pin-Bot all the way to one-of-a-kind rarities that never made it intro production — into a Bay Area hotel ballroom. Wired.com headed down to this year's show on July 9 and 10. Here are the wild pinball amusements you missed out on if you didn't go — and what you should make a beeline for at next year's show. __Above:__ Varkon ------ If you've ever played a [Varkon](http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=2721"") machine, count yourself lucky; only 90 of them were ever made. Produced by Williams in 1982, it's a pinball machine the size and shape of a videogame cabinet. But that's not what's so crazy about Varkon. The two playfields are located in the bottom of the cabinet, tilted down and away from the player. They're reflected in a mirror facing you. What this means is that it looks like the ball is floating eerily upwards every time you hit it. Similarly, LED digits showing your score are reflected from elsewhere to hover in a translucent, ghostly manner over the playfield.
02baby-pac-man
Baby Pac-Man ------------ This is truly a one-of-a-kind experience, mostly because no one was ever crazy enough to try it again: [Baby Pac-Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Pac-Man) is a hybrid of videogame and pinball. Playing as Pac-Man's infant scion, you chomp on dots and run away from ghosts on the top screen, like normal. But when you go through the gates on the bottom of the screen, you start playing pinball below to rack up more points. As soon as you lose your ball, you go back into the maze. Baby Pac-Man's unique gameplay and look make it a game that collectors of arcade units all want to track down. Then again, I heard from two *former* owners of these machines at CAX that they consider them a "curse." They break down frequently, and since they used custom parts for the little half-sized pinball table, they're difficult and costly to repair.
03video-pinball
Video Pinball ------------- In the early days of black-and-white arcade games, coming up with novel ways to use the limited sprite-moving capabilities of the primitive hardware was paramount. [Video Pinball](http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10313) was perhaps inevitable, a videogame based on the rules of the other popular arcade pastime. The colorful board was not rendered by the hardware but built out of plastic, with the flippers and ball projected on top of it.  In 2010, a group of hacker-fans released Video Pinball 2.0 (above), a rebuilt version of the game running on original hardware but with significant enhancements to give it a Tron-themed graphical update and sound effects. It was on display at California Extreme next to the original.
04beat-time
Beat Time --------- Of course a pinball machine was produced to capitalize on the success of the Beatles, even if the Fab Four did not technically say it was all right or anything. [Beat Time](http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=213&picno=4325&zoom=1) was dressed up in the accoutrements of rock 'n roll, with hip caricatures of an unnamed boy band, a plastic guitar target and fake band names scrawled around the playfield, e.g., "The Bootles."
05the-whos-tommy
The Who's Tommy --------------- The Pinball Wizard himself did eventually have a pinball game created after him, although it took a while — Data East released the [Tommy game in 1994](http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=213&picno=4325&zoom=1) as a tie-in to the show's Broadway revival. A few very cool features make the machine stand out — a giant silver ball adorns the top of the machine, reflecting the player in its shine. There's also an option to play "blind" — the machine will cover up the flipper area so it's harder to time your hits. Not quite playing by sense of smell, but a challenge nonetheless. The version on display at California Extreme said it was one of 12 prototype units made and used in various promotional events before the machine went into full production.
06captain-fantastic
Captain Fantastic ----------------- Irony: Although Tommy didn't get a contemporaneous pinball game, Bally recognized the value of bringing out a pinball connected to the song and movie, and licensed the likeness of Elton John for [Captain Fantastic](http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=438&picno=3985). Yes, that's right: a pinball game based on an autobiographical concept album.
07tron
Tron ---- Pinball is dead. Well, it's only *mostly* dead. The economics of it all no longer make sense; kids no longer dream of pinball wizardry as a path to life success, instead saving their quarters for whatever it is kids these days spend quarters on. As such, there is only one (1) remaining company producing pinball games: Stern, a company with a history in the game stretching back to the 1930's. Its latest game, [Tron: Legacy](http://www.sternpinball.com/Games/tron.aspx), was one of the big draws of California Extreme; it was the only machine that constantly had a huge crowd around it. A monitor suspended above the machine let the crowd see how the new machine played before they got their turns.
08ultrapin
Ultrapin -------- It's easy to swap out an arcade videogame for another game, but what about pinball machines? The makers of Ultracade, the multigame arcade repro machines, have a solution: [Ultrapin](http://globalvr.com/products_up.html), a full-sized pinball table in which a massive LCD screen replaces the playfield. You can use it to play digital versions of classic machines like Fun House and Pin-Bot. Nudging and bumping the machine will cause the ball to shift realistically, or so they say. It's quite a novelty item, although if pinball lovers were satisfied with video reproductions I doubt they'd trek out to California Extreme in the first place.
09foxy-lady
Foxy Lady --------- Like Varkon, here's another pinball machine that's been crammed into an unorthodox housing. [Foxy Lady](http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=946) is pinball inside a "cocktail table," the horizontal tables used in bars and restaurants so that customers could sit at them and have a place to sit their drinks and pizza while they played. Many videogames were originally produced in cocktail tables, but few pinball machines were. Sucks if you're sitting on the wrong side, I bet.
10alice-in-wonderland
D. Gottleib's Alice in Wonderland --------------------------------- One of the most fascinating things about California Extreme is getting a close-up, hands-on look at the history of pinball. Hard as it may be to believe, there was a time before the flipper placement was standardized. In games like [this early Alice in Wonderland-themed machine](http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=47&picno=44), the flippers were placed in pairs down the middle, oriented away from the playfield. If the ball ended up in the center, well, you were pretty much going down the rabbit hole whether you liked it or not.
