Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Kickstarter: pinball as an artistic medium

I recently heard about an interesting pinball-related Kickstarter, and wanted to share:



These guys have acquired five pairs of matching pinball machines from the 70's era.  Their intent is to restore one of each set to its original glory, and then take its twin and give it the deviantART treatment, applying a unique design to each.  I really like the concept of being able to physically see the full before/after versions of each machine in the flesh, side by side.

I love so many things about this project.  First, that Wade Krause is involved.  I'd heard of him before via Anna Newman's short film, "Wade Krause: Pinball Artist".  Here's the teaser for that film:



I also feel that when a subject matter reaches the threshold where people start creatively adapting it, there is a certain level of "you know you've arrived" that comes with that.  Shakespeare, for example, like when the BBC gave that David Tennant version of Hamlet a post-modern wartime setting.  A topic has to have captured a certain degree of fascination and ubiquity to start to garner that kind of dedication and creative rumination.  It makes me really happy to think that pinball has.

Another thing I like about this project is simply the backer rewards.  I've been struggling to find interesting art to deck out our gameroom with, and this would solve that problem, too.  So please, do me a favor and back Bring Back the Arcade! Custom Pinball Art Show.

In other news, my Google Alerts have been going nutty over that new Star Wars video pinball game by Zen Studios.  We even came across it in the latest issue of Game Informer (issue #239, page 66).  I wonder if people know about all the different Star Wars pinball machines that came before this?  I'm not a big Star Wars fan, but I have to say I really like the Data East Star Wars from 1992:

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