World Video Game Hall of Fame - A History of Video Games in 64 Objects

Courtesy of The Strong National Museum of Play.

C onsider the ubiquitous pinball machine, a staple of arcades and bowling alleys nationwide. Slip in a few quarters, pull back a spring-loaded plunger, and launch a metal ball into a minefield of bumpers, kickers, slingshots, targets, and saucers. Its hard to fathom how this charmingly old-fashioned machine could lay the foundation for video games, or how it could once have been seen as a threat to the moral fabric of America. To tell the history of pinball is to tell the history of twentieth-century American culture itself.

Pinball traces its roots to an eighteenth-century French parlor game called bagatelle, in which players flicked balls onto a flat board where they bounced off pins and into one of several scoring pocketsan ancestor of sorts to Plinko from The Price is Right. Modern pinball originated in 1931 with the pin games Whiffle and Whoopee Game, which were similar to bagatelle but used wooden cases and coin mechanisms that earned money for the arcade operator. Other early examples of pinball include Baffle Ball (1931), Ballyhoo (1932), and Worlds Fair Jigsaw (1933), a clever game featuring a jigsaw puzzle rendition of the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair that flipped over its pieces as players scored. In 1936, Ballys Bumper revolutionized pinball by introducing the electrified coil scoring bumper, automatic ball removal from the playfield, and a score trackertransforming pinball from a static game with a goal of avoiding pins to a game focused on bumping the ball across a playfield to accumulate points.

Yet a crucial difference separates these early games from modern pinball, one that would form the beating heart of video games: interactivity. Pinball games from the 1930s were essentially games of chance, with no player-operated flippers that could affect the trajectory of the ball. Early pinball games did not require much skill, which did not sit well with regulators during the Prohibition era who were crusading against gambling. So-called games of chance had been largely outlawed nationwide, but the coin-operated amusements industry found loopholes with jukeboxes, slot machines, gumball machines, and eventually pinball. Such machines, which lacked player interaction, were not unlike roulette and other banned forms of gambling. In 1942, New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia outlawed pinball machines and denigrated pinball pushers as slimy crews of tinhorns, well dressed and living in luxury on penny thievery. Pinball was seen as the gateway to gambling, one that corrupted children and set them along the path to drinking and prostitution. La Guardia made pinball raids a priority and was even photographed toppling seized pinball machines. As history has shown, La Guardias crusade was part of a recurring pattern of moral panics in reaction to new forms of entertainment and media.

By the end of World War II, pinball machines were often consigned to seedy establishments like porn shops and dive-bar basements. But this began to change in 1947, when D. Gottlieb & Co. debuted Humpty Dumpty, designed by Harry Mabs, which for the first time featured electromechanical flipper bumpers that enabled players to launch and maneuver the ball. Compared to modern layouts, Humpty Dumpty was crude: the six flippers faced outward and were located on the sides of the playfield far above the bottom outhole, making gameplay tedious and difficult by todays standards. Nevertheless, now that players could aim, fire, and control the ball as it moved across the board, pinball manufacturers began arguing that their products were games of skill, not gambling machines. Slowly but surely, pinball entered the mainstream.

WHAT IS A MORAL PANIC?

The anti-pinball crusade championed by New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia and other officials across the United States is an example of a moral panic. A moral panic is when widespread fears of a new cultural form or activity greatly exceed the actual threat posed to society. Such panics can be about anything, but moral guardians have often set their sights on combating objects, activities, and the folk devils who create them. Pinball didnt cause the downfall of civilization, but games and new forms of media remain some of the easiest targets of moral reformers.

The following year, pinball manufacturer Genco continued pinballs evolution with Triple Action, designed by Steve Kordek, which featured the now-customary two flippers at the bottom of the playfield (though these flippers also faced outward). Other manufacturers followed and the classic pinball configuration was quickly standardized. Later versions of pinball would vary in complexityBallys Balls-A-Poppin (1956), for instance, featured multi-ball playbut the hand-eye coordination and ability to aim were skills that players developed on one machine and could then transfer to other pinball games.

Pinball manufacturers sought to distance themselves from their gambling roots. Most machines bore a large for amusement only disclaimer. Municipalities increasingly began licensing pinball arcades, and in 1974, Californias Supreme Court overturned the states pinball ban. Two years later, the city council of New York voted to overturn La Guardias infamous ban. Yet many moral guardians were still suspicious, worried that if pinball would not turn children into degenerate gamblers, it would still make them mindless illiterates who didnt do their homework.

Humpty Dumpty and Triple Action established a new layer of interactivity and complexity thatalong with other pinball and penny arcade game conventions, such as starting a game with three lives, accumulating extra lives, and chasing high scores (often recorded by hand on notecards or on chalkboards)would lay the foundation for video games. Players were not just watching a game unfold; they were actively taking part in it. And while