*Giggles*
Today's kids will never know the tapping under the table to make the nail-gates hop up and let the ball in the pocket to score...
@JulieSqveakaroo I barely know it myself! Have gotten a couple chances to play flipperless pinball and it's so ... really, wonderful, in such a different way.
I have two antiqve kids toy pinball tables that are entirely springs, tap nails, metal semi-circle scoring pockets and bells to be rung with the ball bearing marbles... they are in poor states of repair, but they WILL be made useable once I have room to work!
@JulieSqveakaroo Oh that's fabulous.
My pipe-dream someday-I'll-make-a-video-game idea is doing a pure-mechanical pinball simulator. It feels like it ought to be in range of my abilities, if I could ever finish a thing.
@Austin_Dern @JulieSqveakaroo That reminds me... have I ever told either of you fine creatures the story of the Very First Tetris Machine hoax? It never actually got pulled off, but the story is still fun.
@zebratron2084 @JulieSqveakaroo I do not remember this one, no ...
Neither do I... spill!
@JulieSqveakaroo @Austin_Dern So back in the day, I was on a Discordian mailing list run by a grad student at the University of Monash in Australia. His name was Andrew Bulhak, and his main claim to fame was a Markov-chain based algorithm for generating postmodernist academic papers, which he would then print out and distribute at random classes.
So. One day he proposed a prank.
@JulieSqveakaroo @Austin_Dern The plan was to build an analog version of Tetris, with little electromechanical split-flap displays for the blocks, bolt a brass plaque on it with the instructions in Cyrillic, put it in a wooden cabinet, hand-age the whole thing, and then try to pass it off as a genuine antique Tetris machine from 1933.
@JulieSqveakaroo @Austin_Dern That's it. That's the story. I feel like I could have ginned it up a little more, but... I dunno, I've just always loved the idea of an "antique" Tetris machine and am really sad nobody ever followed through. :D
I LOVE the concept!!
@zebratron2084 @JulieSqveakaroo Oh I love the idea, though. Counterfeit historical pieces like that are *so* dear to me.
@zebratron2084 @Austin_Dern
... huh...
Ya know... I would be willing to bet someone has made the logic pathways for something like this in Minecraft... I've seen Pong reproduced via a massive playing field of blocks and sticky piston blocks swapping out colors the same way a split-flap pip would rotate for where the pixels would be...
... but it would honestly frighten me...