Pinball Magic

(plus a discussion of Capcom's foray into the pinball market)

When you think about it, with many things in life it's all about timing.   When to ask out the 
girl, when to make the run behind the defender, when to demand a pay rise.....to a greater or 
lesser extent it's the timing, rather than the quality of execution, of the act  that 
determines if it succeeds or fails.

So it is in business too.   If a company wishes to enter a market they can potentially spend 
millions on design, tooling up for production, marketing and so on and produce an excellent 
product but if, by the time they have the finished product ready to sell, that market has 
fallen flat then they're not going to sell many.

And so to Capcom....

In the early 1990's as we all remember, the popularity of pinball was very high.   In the 
years of 1992 & 1993 Bally/Williams produced some fantastic games such as The Addams Family,  
Star Trek TNG, Twilight Zone, Indiana Jones, the list goes on!  Data East produced some good 
game like Star Wars and Jurassic Park and production figures soared so high (Addams having 
the highest production run ever at 21000 games) that even Gottlieb managed to sell a fair few 
machines.....

Now I don't know the background so I could be wrong about this, but I assume that it was 
around that time that Capcom, traditionally a video game manufacturer, viewed the pinball 
market and decided that there was room for a fourth player, and that they could make money 
from pinball.   This may also have been influenced by the success of the not-very-good Street 
Fighter 2 pinball licensed to Gottlieb by....Capcom! 

However..... you can't decide to make a pinball machine, and then have one ready for next week.
Even for an established company like Williams, there is a pretty hefty lead-in time - the 
designer has an idea, then has to produce an initial draft of the design.   A physical design 
draft (whiteboard) has to be produced, then reworked until it's satisfactory.   Along with the 
general design, game-specific parts have to be designed, prototypes manufactured, then tooling 
made up or a subcontractor found to produce them.   Someone has to finalise the games rules and 
program the ROMs, someone else has to sort out the sound and dot matrix effects, an artist is 
needed for the backglass, playfield and cabinet.....all this before you consider gearing up the 
production line for assembly of your new machine.

Consider how long it's likely to take Williams from the initial idea to the first finished game 
leaving the factory and then consider how much longer it's likely to take a new company, with 
no existing pinball production line, no parts inventory and no skilled pinball staff to produce 
a game.    Anyway, whatever the timescales involved, it was 1995 when Capcom's new pinball was 
ready to hit the arcades....and by 1995 demand for pinball had already begun to seriously tail 
off.

Which was a shame really, because when Pinball Magic arrived it was not a bad game at all.....

Capcom had obviously worked hard on the look of the game - it really is very attractive, the 
cabinet artwork is superb as is the backglass, which isn't screen printed but does make use of 
masking to highlight certain areas.    Capcom's new electronics package included the ability for 
every single lightbulb to be individually controlled, and not only did that mean the end of 
burnt GI plugs, but as the bulbs were not just 'on' or 'off' but could also be dimmed the 
display of lights in attract mode looks superb.

There's some great toys on the playfield too, a hand holds a wand pointing down the playfield 
(either to the trunk lock on the left or two drop holes on the right) which the ball 'magically'
rides underneath when the ramp is made - there's a stage which either pops the ball back into 
play or, when lit, appears to levitate it up and on to the ramp return.    There's also a clear
ball which changes colour, an upturned top hat which you have to try to get for the skill shot,
and a giant clear captive ball.   All these result in a packed-looking playfield which seems to 
promise a great game - but the acid test, how did it play?   Well, not badly really....

The main objective is to complete 3 rounds of tricks for all seven magicians, Nostradamus, 
Shaman, Great Hansen, Mr. Mystique, Kenzo, Jadugar and Magna Matra, using varios loop, ramp 
and other shots.   When you get to Magna Matra the third time all shots are lit, hitting them 
enough times kills her and gets you 500M points!    Maybe a slight criticism that there isn't 
a Grand Finale as such (you just go back to round 1 again), and also it's not always obvious 
what shot you should be going for next, but still quite a lot to do!

With all the toys to go for, plus good DM effects and great sound (not quite up to DCS standard, 
but then what is?) and multiball of some sort not being difficult to achieve via the Hat awards, 
the casual player should be happy.   The rules are a bit linear (do all the tricks, usually by 
shooting the loop shots, and you're away....) but there's enough there to keep people coming 
back to try again.   

No, I don't think there's much wrong with the game - it might not be a world beater but as a 
first attempt it's excellent, and holds it's own against many games from (dare I say it?) 
Bally / Williams, but a look at the production figures show it to be far from the success it 
should have been.   

The table below shows the figures for all 4 games that Capcom released (plus
two that didn't make it through the prototype stage) and shows quite starkly why they couldn't
make money by producing pinballs.   One way to look at it is that there were about five times
the amount of Addams Family machines made as Capcom made in total, or in another way, the total
number of games they made was about four fifths as many as Gottlieb made of the game Capcom 
licensed to them, Street Fighter 2.

Which is a shame really.   Still, if you can find a Capcom game they seem fairly cheap to buy 
even in today's market - compare Pinball Magic to it's contemporaries (say Theatre of Magic) 
and it will probably be about half the price!   I think it's debateable which is the better 
game, or at the very least ToM isn't twice the game that Capcom made.....


Footnote - if any of the assumptions I have made are incorrect, or anyone knows the full
Capcom story, please let me know!