For those interested, I have posted some photos from Funspot and Clark's Trading Post in New Hampshire from an August 2009 vacation, focusing on cool vintage technology, including classic typewriters and of course, arcade machines. For my own organizational convenience, I have also included the photos and videos from The Musee Mecanique in San Francisco from March 2009 in the same set.

The Pinball Blog has a short write-up on an apparently new home pinball machine from Zizzle, this time with a classic Atari theme. It looks great, and by my calculations, will be their third generation product. If you remember, I have the first generation model, shown in the photo at the bottom of this blog post. The second generation added a few minor improvements, including more environmental lighting. Both models sold for between $100 - $500 depending upon when and where you were able to score one.

Luckily, on the last day of our San Francisco trip devoted to filming amazing interviews for the feature film, "W00t!: The Videogame Revolution", Matt and I had a chance to visit the The Museum of the City of San Francisco, The Musee Mecanique. Among the great stuff there were two vintage pinball machines in really great shape. It's amazing how different they are from modern pinball machines that began to appear in the 1970s! Check out the casual videos below:

I just wanted to post two things quick that I received via email. The first is The Pinball Blog, which looks pretty interesting (I know you pinball fans will want to check it out). The next is a web show called Gold: The Series, which is about a bunch of tabletop RPG fans preparing for a world championship. It reminded me a bit of MST3000 (the intermission bits) and perhaps a bit of a Kevin Smith film. I liked the dialog at the beginning of the 2nd episode, which is about how D&D fans are suffering from the massive appeal and "convenience" of MMOs. Worth a look, for sure.

The discussion on Pinball in some of the other threads have inspired me to go look for some nice Pinball games that I personally think are worth checking out. When I was a kid we had our own true full-size pinball machine back home it was a gift to my dad somewhere in the 70's. It was a simple machine and I can't remember the name of it.

Ground Kontrol Bar: The bar Ground Kontrol also features a smattering of retro consoles for sale.

Somewhat goofy gaming blog Destructoid recently featured an article on a great retro-arcade in Portland, Oregon called Ground Kontrol. The interview with Anthony Ramos, the co-owner, is brief, but makes a good point-- is having a retro-arcade/bar combination the best way for the next generation of arcades to live on?

Since I live in Portland, Ground Kontrol is not too far from me. It's a lot of fun and pretty cheap-- I think all the games are either 25 or 50 cents to play. They feature titles as old as Asteroids or Tron and have a 2nd floor full of pinball games ranging from a simplistic Star Trek board from the 70's to a ultra-complicated Lords of the Rings pinball table. Well worth the visit if anyone stops by in Portland.

Coin-Op TV: Pinball Hall of Fame!Rob Pennyman from Coin-Op TV wrote in to tell us about reaching an incredible milestone--the 50th Episode of Coin-Op TV! If you aren't familiar with Coin-Op TV, I'd suggest you high-tail it to his site to check out what all the hubbub's about. Unlike the typical G4 show, Rob's program focuses on interviews with the hardcore nerds who really know what they're talking about. It's free, so give it a chance--who knows, you might become one of Rob's many retrogaming fans!

The Philips Entertaible Digital Board Gaming Surface: Photo from PC Magazine onlinePC Magazine, reporting on news from the Internationale Funkausstellung, a consumer electronics show in Berlin, revealed that Philips will show off the Entertaible, a digital board-gaming surface, on Friday.

We've of course recently seen over the past several years the rise of virtual physical games, if you want to call them that, mostly in "arcades" (if even those can be called that anymore). Essentially these games take real world concepts like shuffleboard or bowling, and use partial physical items, like paddles or pucks, that are utilized on a flat, virtual surface, and interact with an impact sensor at the end of the table to make something happen on the video screen, preferably accurately reflecting what would happen if it were an all physical setup. There's also been quite a bit of controversy in the pinball world, where these virtual machines take the form factor of traditional pinball machines, but do the majority of their work via a video screen. This allows for infinitely configurable tables, but is it still really pinball, or more akin to what we play on our computers and videogame systems? In any case, the revolution, if you want to call it that, has been well under way.