Urban in Stern Trek Pinball Ad

13 thoughts on “Urban in Stern Trek Pinball Ad”

1. My friend picked up this pin…I have to get over to his place to give it a try one of these days 🙂 . For those who don’t know, it was designed by the same guy who designed one of the best pinballs of all time which was the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball put out by Williams in 1993. Even folks that aren’t Trek fans still agree that the TNG pin is simply fantastic. I picked up one of these for my man cave a few years back…it NEVER gets boring 🙂 ! Hopefully, this new one is as good…even if I’m not a fan of the new movie. And now I’ll duck my head for the inevitable cries of “hater,” “whiner,” and “stupid.” 🙂

2. I’m not a pinball player but I remember watching people play the more advanced ones like the TNG. Impressive. This looks nifty also. Perhaps they simply should have skipped the movie and gone straight to this.

3. Using all of the original cast members’ voices (even Q!) and the original music/soundtrack really makes the TNG pin special. There are also some hidden modes one of which includes playing a hand of poker with Riker 🙂 .

   The good news for the new Trek pin (with regards to the actual theme) is that it’s based on both of the new movies I’m told so at least some of the theme will be handled by the 2009 movie which was so much better than STID as we both know 😉 .

   Raw meat now placed…let’s see if they take the bait this time…

   Seriously, there have been many, many pins that have been made through the years that were based on very forgettable movies…

   Jon

4. You don’t have to like the movie to respect a solid tie-in product.

5. I prefer the original sit-down video game.

6. I think you mean the so-called “Captain’s chair” version of the Star Trek coin-operated vector game that was made by Sega back around 1982 or so? It was/is indeed a fun game…being a collector of the old video games of my youth, I have one of those, too, currently in my garage/mancave, but it’s the upright version. It’s a BEAST to keep going, too, as the old style, “vector” monitors that came with it were very poorly designed and fail quite frequently. Mine is currently working again after a lot of upgrade work on my part…hopefully, it will stay that way for awhile 🙂 …

   “Welcome aboard, Captain.” 🙂

7. Any emulator version? And where do you get a simple spinning knob for the USB port?

8. It does play on the MAME arcade emulator if you have the necessary ROMs. They are findable on the ‘net these days, but you didn’t hear that from me 🙂 . Do a search for “MAME” if you don’t know what this emulator is or how to use it.

   As for getting a spinner to work with USB…I haven’t looked much into that myself…my game is an original so I’ve never had to pursue that route 😉 . I do remember many years ago there was a “Wingman Warrior” joystick that I picked up (I still have the stick tucked away in the garage) that had a spinner, but it worked with the old computer “game ports” that no longer come on newer computers nor are they supported by the newer operating systems for PCs or MACs (at least, that’s my understanding)…And it was never accurate enough for some of the old school games like Tempest that used the spinner. It did work well with Tron and a couple of other games from what I remember…

   I think the Opti-Pac interface device (http://www.ultimarc.com/optipac1.html) might be useable for this purpose…I have one of these for an old dual joystick control I have that originally used the game port…I hacked this into the stick (took some wiring and soldering skills which fortunately I have through my experiences fixing my aforementioned arcade upright collection:)) and it now works great in MAME running on Windows 7 on my current computer setup.

   It’s supposed to allow for spinner control via USB…just need to get a spinner of course, but they should be easy enough to find on the web these days…

   Jon

9. Here is the complete link to the Opti-Pac (it didn’t come through in the previous post for some reason):

   http://www.ultimarc.com/optipac1.html

10. OK…the system doesn’t let me post the link.

    Just add “c1.html” after the link portion that did come through and that should get ‘ya there…

11. Interesting. I was able to copy the URL and it all appeared when I pasted it into Notepad. I have a CD with old games like Defender, Stargate and Joust on it.

12. Glad you got the link to work…maybe give the Opti-Pac a try…it worked great for my dual joystick setup after I thought I would have to abandon it when they did away with the game ports.

    Does the CD still work with the new operating systems? I also picked up a Williams classic game collection that was available around 1995 or so (put out by Digital Eclipse if memory serves), but it no longer works with the newer versions of Windows. Plus I now have all of the old Williams titles (such as the ones you mentioned) in my actual full-sized, arcade upright collection…I was just playing my Joust the other night…still so much fun after all these years 🙂 …my favorite of the Williams classics is still my Robotron!

13. I haven’t tried it on Win7 yet. Still have an old machine with XP that does OK. I think I have the same collection you have. Haven’t seen it since I packed up for the move.

Comments are closed.