Retro Thing

The Economics of Pinball

2009-11-20T11:52:17-07:00

Jeff Ely, an economics professor at Northwestern, reveals a few of pinball's profitable secrets:

"In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players. They had two instruments at their disposal: the score required for a free game, and the match probability. All pinball machines offer a replay to a player who beats some specified score. Pre-1986, the replay score was hard wired into the game unless the operator manually re-programmed the software. High Speed changed all that. It was pre-loaded with an algorithm that adjusted the replay score according to the distribution of scores on the specified machine over a specific time interval. ...

The other tool is the match probability: you win a free game if the last two digits of your score match an apparently random draw. While adjustments to the high-score threshold is textbook price theory, the adjustments to the match probability is pure behavioral economics. Let’s clear this up right away. No, the match probability is not uniform and yes, it is strategically manipulated depending on who is playing and when. For example, if the machine has been idle for more than three minutes, the match probability is boosted upward. You will never match if you won a free game by high score. And it gets more complicated than that. Any time there are two or more players and they finish a game with no credits left, one player (but only one) is very likely to match. Empirically, the other players will more often than not put in another quarter to play again."

Link: Cheap Talk - The Economics of Pinball

Blackbird, Fly: A Slightly Weird TLR Camera

2009-11-19T16:25:53-07:00

Don't let the awkward name scare you off. The Blackbird, Fly is a rather nifty little plastic Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) from Japan.

A TLR has two objective lenses. One captures the photo, while the other projects almost the same image onto a matte focusing screen surrounded by a hood on top of the camera. If you don't wish to hold the camera self-consciously at waist height, you can also use the gunsight-like finder on top to line up your shot.

Unlike most TLRs which require hard to find medium-format film, the Blackbird, Fly uses standard 35mm rolls. There are three image masks which let you choose between standard 35mm (24 x 36mm), square (24 x24mm) and large format (36 x 36mm, extending past the sprocket holes) frames.

As you might expect, the controls are basic. There are only two aperture settings - f/7 (cloud) and f/11 (sun) and the shutter is fixed at 1/125 second. There's also a B-mode which lets you lock the shutter open to capture experimental images at night. The 33mm wide angle lens adjusts between 0.8 m and infinity.

The Fly is available in red, black, blue, orange and white for $119.99.

There. I never have to type that gormless name ever again.

Club Nintendo Resurrects The Game & Watch LCD Handheld

2009-11-19T09:09:03-07:00

Japanese Club Nintendo members who have reached Platinum status will receive a brand new Game & Watch LCD game. Well, it's not actually a new game. It's a reissue of Ball, the very first G&W title to hit shelves way back in April, 1980. It's powered by a CR2032 watch battery which should be good for months of simulated juggling.

Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of the early single screen Game & Watch series. I think they hit their stride when Nintendo unveiled dual screen games like Donkey Kong (1982) and Mario Bros (1983). Still, this is a nice perk for Japanese Nintendo aficionados who've accrued more than 400 points during the year.

As for the rest of us, we're apparently out of luck.

Club Nintendo 2009 Platinum Reward [via Kotaku]

Beretta Minx - The Gun That Tucks Into Your Purse

2009-11-18T02:51:17-07:00

My father wasn't a violent man. Taciturn, unsympathetic, relentlessly Eastern European, but not violent. So it was strange to learn that he carried a gun. Not all the time, and not a big gun, but there were definitely times when my old man was packin' heat. The gun he carried was a tiny thing. I remember finding it among his things after he died, and was astonished at how miniature it was. The 4 inch gun was the beguilingly named Beretta Minx, and given the galling cutesiness of the ad copy above (you've got to take the time to read it!) it seems like everyone knew what an odd little gun this was.

The mini gun featured sleek macho styling, yet it was about the size of the pearl-handled Derringer tucked into a lady's garter in a cowboy movie. While not especially interested in guns, my father felt it was important to know how to shoot and aim at a target. His rural Czech upbringing in the 20's would have made guns an everyday part of his life. Yet having such a tiny gun still seemed really odd to me.

My father worked in some tough neighborhoods, so he'd keep the little gun in his briefcase or pocket. I suppose that part is easy to imagine, though today a person might carry pepper spray or a taser. But get this...when he'd travel by plane (mostly in the 60's and 70's), he'd have the little gun in his shirt pocket. Wow. The really crazy advertising copy above for the Beretta is being alarmingly playful about gun ownership, the need that these mini-guns fill is in actuality pretty grim. The small size is for what I've heard termed "concealed carry" for those times when you're desperate to use it for (I hope) self-defense.

A gun aficionado friend of mine pointed out that such a small firearm isn't very effective as the bullets are rather small, and the short barrel reduces accuracy in aiming. That said, you'd still get some bang for your buck at short range, and further afield the loud crack of the shot could be nearly as much of a deterrent as a strike by the bullet itself.

While guns remain a problematic issue, at least we're not tending to pack little ones on vacation with us. For most of us, a gun isn't part of our daily checklist of what to crowd into our pockets. I'd like to think that people have evolved a bit in their attitude toward guns, but whenever I've gone to a target firing range there is always some butthead firing guns sideways gangsta style. It would be difficult to look equally badass packing a pair of these little guns that look like novelty cigarette lighters.

I'll close with the thought that pistols are a reminder of my Czech heritage in a different way. The word "pistol" comes from the Czech word "píšťala" (a flute or pipe). This is yet another significant contribution to the world's lexicon by the Czechs. My forbears also brought the world the word "robot", as well as an endless stream of cakes and pastries. Let's hope that one day we will live in a world where the first of these contributions is only a historic curiosity, and instead we are all happily being fattened up by bakery droids.

addendum:
I can't believe that I've gone this long writing on Retro Thing without even once sharing a joke. Here's a favorite....

A priest is in a rough part of town with arms outstretched telling passersby that they should put their trust in God. A sudden gust of wind blows open the priest's robe, and his audience can see that he has a pistol tucked into his belt.

They ask, "If we're supposed to put our trust in God, what is that gun for?"

The priest answers, "That's to hold 'em off until God gets here..."

Original Apple 1 Computer For Sale

2009-11-17T17:57:59-07:00

Here's your chance to own an Apple 1. All you need is $50,000 to score the opening bid.

The Apple 1 was Wozniak and Jobs' first crack at creating a true mainstream personal computer. Woz's revolutionary approach involved placing everything onto a single circuit board, rather than in a huge box full of backplanes, connectors, and tangles of wire. Only a few were made, but everything they learned from their first machine went into making the Apple II an earth-shattering success.

Woz & Jobs chose not to use an Intel 8080 processor because, at $175 a piece, they couldn't afford it. Instead they went with the lowly 6502, available for a mere $25. Wozniak was also hung up on the daft idea of including a keyboard instead of a good, solid panel of switches and blinky lights. Computers have never been the same since. Loaded with 4K of memory, it hit the market on April 1, 1976 priced at $666.66 (I swear I'm not making this stuff up). Amusingly, most of them didn't work properly.

The package also includes an undated letter from Steve Jobs, who answers a few questions and promises to send a dealer application in early 1977.

Original Apple 1 computer for sale [eBay via @menadeau1]

Coca-Cola History

2009-11-17T14:18:12-07:00

James Grahame

Build Your Own Retropunk Keyboard

2009-11-17T10:10:58-07:00

Custom Victorian-style keyboards are so popular that Datamancer now offers a do-it-yourself alternative. Finished frames cost $300 in aluminum or $400 in brass. You can save an additional $150 if you're willing to do the polishing yourself.

He says, "Each frame comes with 2 drilled sides, two feet in your choice of the "swoop" foot or the triangle (pictured above, left and right), top and bottom rods (aluminum has square rods and brass has round rods), connecting hardware, and a backing plate (brass frame has wood plate, not pictured but included. Aluminum frame has metal plate with black-painted bottom). The working area inside the metal measures about 7" x 17" so these frames are made to fit a small, modern keyboard (either mechanical-switch or membrane), and NOT the larger IBM Model M-style keyboards. I am, however, working on a keyboard kit for the IBMs."

If you're not the DIY type, complete custom keyboards are available from $1200.

Datamancer's Retropunk Keyboard Kits

Stereo Realist Projector Channels The Dark Side

2009-11-17T09:31:44-07:00

The David White Stereo Realist 3D projector looks like it was designed with Lord Vader in mind. It's the companion to the Stereo Realist camera we featured earlier this year. Just remember, "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will." -- Yoda

STEREO REALIST - 3-D Slide Projector - Model 81 [eBay via Gizmodo]

BT's Vision of the Future

2009-11-16T09:58:12-07:00

Back in 1969, some boffins from the Post Office research station at Dollis Hill put together their vision of telecommunication in the 1990s. It is darkly disturbing, especially the notion that telecommuting workers would strut around the house in a suit and tie while coldly brushing off an army of annoying children. These days, we just toss the little sprogs outside and let them fend for themselves.

Incidentally, Colossus -- the top secret code-breaking computer that cracked the German Lorenz ciphers during World War II -- was also created at Dollis Hill.

GPO (BT) Vision of the Future [YouTube]

Koko The Clown Destroyed The World 85 Years Before "2012"

2009-11-16T01:37:03-07:00

It's funny to see critics recoil in disappointment at "2012", the latest installment in the disaster film genre. While these flicks are often fun, they are less often any good. I like to have fun at the movies with explosions and karate and all of that, but overindulgent effects-driven movies leave me with a hunger that not even a $20 bag of cinema popcorn can sate. Besides, I find today's hyper-realistic images of destruction far more disturbing than entertaining. I'd prefer that someone bring back the cardboard carnage of Gamera movies...

The story that took the producers of "2012" kerjillions of dollars and more than two hours to realize was done better by the Fleischer brothers in a five minute cartoon in 1928. One of my favorite eras in animation is the late silent/early sound period, and back then the Fleischers were among the best. Few could match the draftsmanship and the daftness of their cartoons. After nearly a century, these cartoons still have boundless snap, pace, and energy. The thickly nibbed line of the characters preserved the look of the animation through countless reproductions of these film elements. Even an image quality robbing trip through the patented YouTube Image Grinder can't keep this pair down.

Koko the Clown and his dog Fitz circumnavigate the globe to find the control center for all the earth. A mischevious Fitz can't leave well enough alone, even betraying animated "reality" to bring about a Fleischer fuelled cataclysm. The last minute has some great real-world animation that folks would refer to as "Gilliam-esque" just a few decades too early. If you've never seen Koko, this animated end of days is one of his best silents. Who said that psychedelic insanity needs to be in color?

eBay: Vintage Russian Monosynth

2009-11-14T12:56:52-07:00

Although the auction calls the RITM-2 the "Russian Minimoog," this simple little analog monosynth has little in common with Robert Moog's classic instrument. Still, it looks cool. Despite having only a single oscillator, it offers a reasonable variety of waveforms (saw, sine, PWM, noise). To dirty things up a bit, the VCA can be internally overdriven with the gain knob, resulting in heavy distortion. Needless to say, there's no decadent MIDI interface or glittering capitalist LCD display.

The synth ships from Vienna and is apparently in good technical and physical condition, with no crackly potentiometers. The power supply and audio circuits have been professionally converted to Western European standards (220 sizzling volts of fun).

Ritm-2 Analog Synthesizer Beige Face [via Matrixsynth]

Your Very Own Vintage Rocket Launcher

2009-11-13T14:41:21-07:00

I'm not really sure what I'd do with a personal rocket launcher (apart from getting arrested), but owning one was definitely a boyhood dream. That dream can now become reality for a mere $199.99.

In return for your hard-earned cash, Centerfire Systems will send you a battered and dented Spanish rocket launcher manufactured in the 1960s or 1970s. It measures 70" and includes the original optical sight, eyecup, shield and bipod stand.

Sadly, it's been deactivated to BATF specs so you won't be able to enjoy the delights of drunken cow hunting.

Spanish Bazooka with Shield [via @mrbill]