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Livewire: Pinball Wizards Find Refuge on the WebBy Adam Pasick NEW YORK (Reuters) - With their hobby in danger of extinction, legions of loyal pinball wizards have found a safe haven on the Web. Pinball fans have swarmed to the Internet to swap information, spare parts and the pinball machines themselves, and to organize outings around the world. They are keeping alive the arcade game, which features a small metal ball manipulated by two flippers, at a time when major manufacturers have exited the business. High-tech video games spelled doom for the old machines. But it's the technology of the Web, now, that's breathing new life into pinball. Pinball manufacturer Bally, along with parent company WMS Industries (NYSE:WMS - news) and sister brands Williams and Midway, left the scene in 1999. Industry-wide sales had dropped from around 100,000 in 1992 to less than 10,000 -- the end of a long slide that began with the introduction of video games like Ms. Pac Man in the early 1980s. ``Bally went out of business and left a lot of people in the lurch,'' said Mike Romco, 38, of New Brunswick, N.J., who hosts a site (http://webspace.webring.com/people/hs/shoehorny/) devoted to the popular ``Addams Family'' pinball game -- licensed from the 1991 movie and generally recognized as the most popular pinball game of all time. ``People don't have the resources to repair their machines, so they're scrambling to find information online,'' Romco said. FIX 'EM UP Spare parts are of the utmost importance for pinball fans who are trying to maintain ailing, aging machines. ``Over the years, pinball machines have a lot of moving parts, so you have to service them,'' said Daina Pettit, 44, of Salt Lake City, who runs the Mr. Pinball site. The classifieds at the Web site Mr. Pinball (http://www.xmission.com/daina/pinball.html) list 334 parts for sale ads, but more than 1200 parts wanted ads, reflecting the difficulty of finding replacement parts when the original manufacturers have left the business. Pettit, who started his site after being laid off from his job at a technology company, said the Internet pinball community has grown larger every year. The usenet group rec.games.pinball ``started as a bunch of computer programmers talking about their passion for pinball,'' he said. ``That has mushroomed from about 100 messages a week in 1990 to probably 400 messages a day now.'' GENERAL PINBALL INFO Apart from specialized sites like Romco's homage to the ''Addams Family'' pinball game, pinball.org (http://www.pinball.org) and the Pinball Pasture (http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/) offer a broader range of information on pinball itself, including the Pasture's Internet Pinball Database, featuring more than 4000 different machines For background into the evolution of the game itself, visit Pinballhistory.com (http://www.pinballhistory.com/). Pinball started as a primitive gambling device in which a metal ball fell through nails, or pins, giving the game its name. The next quantum leap came when an engineer created the flipper, allowing players to manipulate the ball for the first time. Further innovations led to the game most people know, ending with manufacturers' last-ditch efforts to remake pinball machines as a high-tech toys on par with video games. Two late-model games licensed from popular movies -- ``Revenge from Mars'' and ``Star Wars: Episode I -- featured holograms and video clips, but they never hit it big, and the industry giant called it quits. Only one firm, privately-held Stern Pinball (http://www.sternpinball.com/), is still making pinball machines. The Melrose Park, Ill.-based company was spun off from gaming giant Sega Enterprises Ltd (7964.T) when the company left the pinball industry in the late 1990s. THE CHILL MANEUVER For the casual pinball fan, unlikely to spring the thousands of dollars necessary to buy a quality pinball game, the best way to enjoy may be to make a visit to the corner saloon to learn some basic pinball techniques: The slap save, tipping the ball from one flipper to the other; the hold trap, cradling the ball in one flipper; and the quasi-legal up push, pushing on the machine when the ball lands on the flipper Once you have the basics down, you may be ready for advanced skills like the Chill Maneuver and the Upper Flipper Set-Up. More techniques can be found on Pinball Pasture (http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/playing/VFBTF/intermediate.html#SlapSave). But beware: As you search for the Zen-like calm and perfect hand-eye coordination of the pinball wizard, the game may become habit-forming -- bring plenty of quarters. Email this story - View most popular | Printer-friendly format Earlier Stories
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