Was nudging always considered part of the game?

Just curious as to whether nudging was considered 'foul play' once upon a time, or was always considered a legitimate technique?

How early were tilt sensors added to machines?

Thanks.

from The history of pinball:

The tilt mechanism was invented in 1934 as a direct answer to the problem of players physically lifting and shaking the games. The tilt debuted in a game called Advance made by Harry Williams

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I would assume that some players would object to nudging, and others would encourage it. I guess it's sort of a house rules type of thing. Even today, casual players think that nudging is cheating.

Thanks - I had a Google, but missed that page.

It still leaves the question of whether the tilt sensor when introduced was intended by the designers to stop nudging or limit it?

But you may well be right - it might just have been a "it's your machine, treat it how you want" type situation as far as the manufacturers were concerned.

The very fact that games like TPA and Zen implement a nudging feature shows that it isn't cheating. They had to go out of their way to make it possible, as opposed to real tables.

mikehg said:

It still leaves the question of whether the tilt sensor when introduced was intended by the designers to stop nudging or limit it?

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Yea that's a good question. I would say to limit it, but the tilt mechanism is adjustable, so the owner could make it more sensitive, which could all but eliminate any nudging.

Espy said:

The very fact that games like TPA and Zen implement a nudging feature shows that it isn't cheating. They had to go out of their way to make it possible, as opposed to real tables.

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It's not cheating for me and you on the modern tables, but for someone else it may be. Like I said, it's house rules. Plus we're talking about the old time machines, which were meant mostly for gambling. The owners who had to pay out may have strictly enforced a no-nudge policy.

Here, for example

http://www.pinballhistory.com/pinfirsts.html

Bally Bumper (1936) is described as a game in which "A ball is shot and as it works it's way down the playfield, the player nudges the machine and trys to hit as many bumpers as possible."

If that's correct, *some* early machines were supposed to be nudged.

i like it when machines reward you for doing a death save

Players were nudging before they were flipping.

Wasn't there a FS Employee who managed to save the pinball industry by displaying that because of nudging, pinball was a game of skill, not luck?

Punisher said:

Wasn't there a FS Employee who managed to save the pinball industry by displaying that because of nudging, pinball was a game of skill, not luck?

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Not exactly.

1. When Roger Sharpe demonstrated to the NYC City Council that pinball is a game of skill in 1976, he apparently didn't nudge the game.
http://pinball.wikia.com/wiki/Roger_Sharpe

2. Roger Sharpe doesn't work for FS. (I'm pretty sure his son Josh does playtesting for FS, but I'm not sure if Josh is an employee. Maybe a consultant, or something even less formal than that.)

I am not sure about the culture on it in the very early years of pinball, but I do know that from very early on in the 1970's and right through the 1980's and early 90's-- all of us that were kids back then pretty much nudged tables. Basically it had the same persona of how professional online gaming works today. If you didn't nudge most of the really skilled players would consider you an amateur. The word noob wasn't invented or used yet back then, but that is how pretty much all the pinheads thought of players that had no skill at nudging.

Nudging became a high level play skill and those that learned it and did it well seemed to get along with all the other pinheads and electronic gamers too. It was a skill that took practice to get really good at and once you were good at it you could expect to see a line up of people behind you that would watch. Back in the day there was a lot of watching other players to see how they managed a particular part of the table, and to learn tricks etc. I never had a single arcade owner or attendant ever say cut it out with nudging. I never heard of a single case from any of my friends either in my city. So it was pretty much widely accepted by the 70's.

Some of us old timers will say nudging was the highest skill one could learn in pinball. It takes time to learn how to make a ball move in the desired direction and also how fast or slow you guide the ball, just by using brute force. So people that were awesome at it developed an entourage of people that would follow them from table to table and watch them play. There were several wizards in our local arcades that could play all day and night on a single quarter. You would never get to play on the table they were on until they decided to take off to get a bite to eat or got tired. I remember one guy I used to know that I would go in to the arcade early in the morning. I had a spare class for 1st period. So I would go in and play a few games. At about 3:40 Pm I would hit the arcade again for a few hours. Many times I came back only to find Ted was still playing the same machine on the same quarter like 7 or 8 hours later. I got bored to death playing that long, but that guy Ted could play a single machine all day. It was all about the free ride he was getting. Pretty good when you think about it. A quarter to entertain you all day. Can't do that nowadays.

I think the tilt mechanism predates flippers.

Basically back when pinball was literally pinball, you shot a bunch of balls into a playfield and see where the balls went. Nudging was generally required to move the balls where you needed them to go (since you had no external means to control them once you shoot). They added the tilt to make it much more challenging because it could get pretty animated.

When pinball evolved to have flippers, well, the tradition continued.

Edit: Pinball evolved from the French bagatelle game.

Yes, nudging was always part of the game. I don't understand the suggestion of "house rules". Much of the skill of pinball comes from nudging. It's simply not pinball without nudging.

I was talking to my father one day about pinball, and he confided that he and his friends "used to shake the s*** out of it" to rack up points.This would have been the late 60s, maybe early 70s.

When I was a regular on the VPforums site, they had a banner on top of the site with "fun facts". If I remember correctly, one stated that "at some venues to discourage players from nudging the machine, nails were driven into the cabinet, potentially severely hurting some of the offending players". So even if some of the earliest pinball machines were meant to be nudged, not every propietor was condoning the practice evidently....

That's awesome. They could simulate that in TPA too - give you hit points, or maybe a 'blood remaining' meter.

Slam23 said:

When I was a regular on the VPforums site, they had a banner on top of the site with "fun facts". If I remember correctly, one stated that "at some venues to discourage players from nudging the machine, nails were driven into the cabinet, potentially severely hurting some of the offending players". So even if some of the earliest pinball machines were meant to be nudged, not every propietor was condoning the practice evidently....

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Yes this is exactly what I'm talking about. If a machine is used for gambling, you can bet the owners will try everything to discourage cheating, and nudging may have been cheating in the early days. In some other places, not so much. That is what I was calling "house rules".

I believe that the early bagatelle type games were not intended to be nudged. The plunge was the only skill involved (skill shot anyone?), then it was all about the luck as the ball made it's way through the pins.

I too believe the bagatelle games were much like the more modern Pachinko games, and not intended to be shaken. I played (shhhhh...) the early pinball games where you lined up balls in either a vertical or horizontal row, diagonal too. The owner would pay off a certain amount, depending on what you, for lack of a better word, wagered. They sorta frowned on nudging. Now, what I call true pinball machines (flippers, bumpers, scoring, bound and bonus multipliers and all that) I have never been in an arcade or bowling alley or anywhere that prohibited nudging them. Never, but that's just me. Nudging is an art, a science. To be able to control an object you can't touch, to change its path simply by knowing when and how much to push...one can prevent a SDTM drain by slightly swaying the player end to the left and then right...I've seen it done. The first time I saw it done was by a USAF airman, and my jaw dropped. "Pinball Dave", you know who you are...

Anyone ever accidentally nudged way too hard? I was playing Metallica a few weeks ago and to prevent an otherwise unavoidable screaming SDTM I impulsively nudged, nay, dragged the table a good inch or two. It ended up at an angle - I had to slowly move it back in place. Felt pretty bad.

Saved the ball though.

I think all newer machines are designed to take some serious nudging, seeing as it is now an integral part of playing pinball. When you do go overboard with it, most machines will go on "slam tilt", especially when you move it in forward/backward motion.