Homebrew pinball
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Homebrew pinball is the hobby of creating or modifying pinball machines in a non-professional environment. The terms custom machines and custom games are often used to refer to homebrew pinball machines, though these terms also include pinball machines made by professional manufacturers on commission.
The hobby of homebrew pinball is often fannish in nature; many builders create original machines based on existing works of media, or modify existing pinball machines to change the machine's theme to an existing work of media (referred to as retheming). Due to the small scale of the homebrew pinball community, the history of the hobby as a whole and fannish engagement are closely intertwined.
History
Fannish homebrew pinball stems back to at least the late 1990s, with a custom South Park machine being shown at Pinball Fantasy 98, built a year prior to the release of Sega's official South Park machine.[1] The history of homebrew pinball prior to the early 2000s is not well documented due to the niche nature of the community and limited early web archives.
Prior to 2009, homebrew pinball primarily consisted of changing the artwork on an existing machine. In 2009, hardware engineer Gerry Stellenberg released the system board P-ROC, designed to allow creators to control and modify a game's ruleset, animation and sound.[2][3] The release of P-ROC enabled the creation of original homebrew pinball machines and more complex modifications, allowing fannish original machines and rethemes to accurately reflect the source material in both theming and rulesets.
No, for many people, the major stumbling block on the path to pinball nirvana is creating an operating system so you can have rules, display effects and sounds. It's no good creating your futuristic, all-action Tron-themed pinball if it's got the same rules, sounds and animations as Gilligan's Island.Pinball News[2]
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the homebrew pinball community experienced a significant uptick in engagement.
Community
The scale of the homebrew pinball community is small, with individual lists of custom games often containing less than fifty games, and the homebrew subfourm on the pinball forum Pinside containing around five hundred threads in 2023. This is due to the high level of entry required for homebrew pinball, with custom machines requiring a diverse skillset and large monetary and time investments.
Kaiser made his game all by himself, as did the 11 other homebrewers at the expo, more or less. One of them is Ryan McQuaid, who co-hosts an expo panel called “How to Build a Pinball Machine in 4,761 Simple Steps.” McQuaid, 34 and bald and built like a linebacker, had to teach himself how to weld, how to code, how to 3D print. This took him over two years and, he estimates, “between 1,000 and 1,500 hours.”Jeff Wilser[3]
Builders often create fannish pinball machines due to a desire to see a machine with a theme that has not been or cannot be implemented in a commercial machine.
McQuaid has been a Sonic superfan since childhood. He also plays competitive pinball. He felt it was absurd that Sega, which once made 19 pinball games, never made one for Sonic, its flagship character. “It drove me crazy,” he says. “Mario got two pinball machines. Sonic doesn’t have one.” He speaks with real passion in his voice, as if this injustice is our nation’s defining problem.Jeff Wilser[3]
Multiple homebrew pinball developers who have created fannish machines have transitioned into building machines professionally. Notable examples include Keith Elwin, who was hired by Stern Pinball in 2012 after Stern's head creative discovered his Archer machine,[3] and Mark Seiden, who was hired in 2021 by Jersey Jack Pinball after gaining notability in the community for his Metroid machine.[4][5][6]
Examples
Rethemes
Original machines
External links
- Homebrew pinball subforum on Pinside
- Custom games article on Pinball Makers
- Custom Made Pinball Machines article on Pin Wiki
- Custom machines section of the Pinball article on Wikipedia
- More Custom Pinball Projects article on XTCPinball
- Custom Pinball Projects page on Pacific NW Pinball
References
Citations
Works cited
"south park custom pinball - Fannish". Pinball Reviews. Unknown date. Archived from the original on 13 July 2004. Retrieved 5 August 2023. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
"P-ROC PINBALL CONTROLLER". Pinball News. Feburary 2010. Archived from the original on 8 June 2023. Retrieved 5 August 2023. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Wilser, Jeff (20 December 2021). "How to build your own pinball machine in 4,761 easy steps". Inverse. Archived from the original on 7 March 2023. Retrieved 5 August 2023.