I haven’t held my thoughts back on the direction that I would like to see pinball take – it needs to get with the times if it’s going to make money for operators and excite the players, and not in terms of just using modern licenses. The game itself needs to be modernized and part of that has to do with the visual presentation of the game as that is part of what attracts people to a title. With Jersey Jack Pinball jumping into the game, we have been wondering if they would continue to use the severely outdated monochromatic Dot Matrix Displays(DMDs) that Stern uses and now we have an answer on that – no!
As the headline says, the upcoming Wizard of Oz Pinball will use an 26″ LCD monitor as a display. This is integrated into the backbox, which image you see above (don’t worry, the final artwork will be in full color) – that rectangular box in the lower 3/4ths of the image is actually where the monitor will be placed. It should be interesting to see what they do with it beyond that.
I’m sure that some will prefer the old dot matrix displays because they have been a part of pinball for such a long time now but I think it is well past time for them to be retired. I say that from both an operator and player standpoint. This will make Wizard of Oz Pinball stand out in any venue – place it next to any DMD pin and it will be obvious as to which game will attract more attention to draw in players.
Awesome Jack. Can’t wait to see all your team comes up with.
Bally Williams parts to boot.
Al
The cost of LCD/PLASMA screens has come down to the point where I don’t see how a full color LCD/PLASMA can cost much more than the plasma DMDs.
Computing power and memory are so incredibly cheap now, and even a large amount SSD memory is super cheap. A $30 dollar, 16GB SSD could hold the entire “Wizard of Oz” movie (in HD) almost four times over, plus the game ROMs.
It makes sense for pinball companies to fully use the pinball license, including sound and video clips.
Not to mention that with a full color, high resolution display there is more you can do in the game itself. With an idea I came up with for a non-licensed pinball game a little while ago I thought about several unique things you could do by using an LCD as opposed to a DMD. The things you could do with scoop targets and pre-recorded video are numerous.
I think the main issue with the LCD is you’re going to need good graphics to go on it. The quality of the dot matrix graphics varies wildly from game to game depending on how much effort is made. Making nice HD graphics is going to be artwork intensive.. don’t see it being done well.. we’re just going to get loads of movie clips playing. I’d rather original artwork than movie clips, even if it’s low res. Original artwork is already disappearing from the playfield to a large extent in favor of bland photoshopped type stuff that looks like a movie poster.
Yes! It’s about time something truly new happened to pinball.