*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.
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
... 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...
I LOVE the concept!!
@zebratron2084 @JulieSqveakaroo Oh I love the idea, though. Counterfeit historical pieces like that are *so* dear to me.
@zebratron2084 @JulieSqveakaroo I do not remember this one, no ...