So as an operator (albeit a very small one) reading the wrap-up, I’m both surprised and un-surprised. I do get pretty annoyed with some machine comments that are wholly unhelpful, or are complaining about game problems that aren’t problems. For example, I had a guy try and tell me (multiple times I might add) that a ramp flap was slightly above the playfield surface. This of course did not affect ball roll in any way and basically, attempting to bend it back will literally do nothing since it’s spring steel. These sorts of items that I can’t fix, that clutter the feed, bug the shit out of me. But still, I’d say 9/10 times, I find out something is broken that I can fix and so I go fix it. Also, I think it will reflect way better on a location if there are more comments for problems (it’s busy) and there are more replies (things are being fixed) than simply no comments on games. Someone using pinball map to look stuff up is probably already more pinball saavy than your average arcade goer.
Thank you to you and the pinballmap team for the work you put in!
We took a 4 year sabbatical, and now the Pinball Map podcast is back! We plan to put them out regularly.
Here’s episode 8 #08: Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme | Mappin’ Around with Scott & Ryan
It was kind of hard to recap 4 years of map news, so we didn’t try too hard.
Anything you’d like to hear us talk about?
Also, a new app update:
- Show backglass image (if available) when adding a machine to location, to try and help users know they have the right version.
- Include a “scroll to top” button on the location details screen.
- Show “Added on” date for machines on the location details screen.
- Fixed some issues with text input design.
- Bug fix for when a City that no longer has locations is in your Recent Search History.
Good to hear you back on the mic.
Added RSS feeds for over 1,400 games. Each one shows where those machines have been added to locations (most recent 50 items). You just have to nab the machine ID (described in the blog post) and then insert it into a feed url (described in the blog post). You can have the feed be limited to a map “region” or the entire globe.
Example feed for Rollergames Pinball Map - New Machine List - Rollergames
New Pinball Map app update. 5.3.14.
Fixed a bug, had some laughs, made some friends.
One notable change in this app update, as well as on the website, is that for… uh… 15 years we’ve been linking each machine to IPDB and now we have removed those links and replaced them with Kineticist machine page links.
As everyone knows, IPDB hasn’t added a new machine to their database in well over a year. Its value as a resource is thus diminishing. IPDB was always super slow at adding new machines, and so as a workaround we would use an “advanced search” link when we didn’t have an IPDB ID associated with a machine in our database, just so we didn’t have to monitor IPDB for months waiting for them to add a newly-released machine. But now even those are just dead links (78 machines currently in our db that don’t have an ipdb id).
So! The Kineticist machine pages are a great resource. Here’s the landing page for them Pinball Machines Database & Games Directory
They include machine info, links to pinside & ipdb & tiltforums & more, tutorial or gameplay videos, pictures, rules, mods, and so on. Basically, they’re great landing pages for machine info. And Colin is constantly working on them! If you have feedback on them, I think he’d be open to it.
Also, we passed 10,000 locations. Take THAT, Pinball Rebel.
Machines are listed on the map in 61 countries. That’s almost a third of the countries on Earth.
New episode of Mappin’ Around dropped: #09: What Is That All About | Mappin’ Around with Scott & Ryan
Thanks!
Also, we have beanies for sale. Store - Pinball Map
Really enjoyed the podcast! Keep them coming!
Some pinball map newsies:
We’re now in year 16 of operating Pinball Map. Is it the longest running pinball map at this point? Not sure.
As noted above, we started doing podcast episodes again. Those come out every month or two. New one probably next week.
Last year we had a monthly Locations of the Month column on Kineticist. This year we have a weekly Location of the Week segment in TWIP. Remember when TWIP was first announced here on Tiltforums?
We made a Pinball Map Discord. Pinball Map
It’s a slow moving discord most of the time. You can join and talk about location play, or website/app stuff, or which bathrooms you like the best.
On the website recently, we updated some UI, resulting in big improvements in location loading times. Also added a dark theme, which works by detecting your system settings.
And today someone left us a 5 star review on the Play Store.
Pinball Map news:
- We wrote a recrap post of 2024: Year in Review 2024
- Founders Scott & Ryan were guests on the most recent Wedgehead podcast episode: Episode 63 - The Pinball Map
Website update:
- Removed map “zoom limits” so now you can quickly refresh the map anywhere.
- New symbology. It changes as you zoom (the # of machines text is not great at managing conflict - sorry)
- The map autoloads nearby results on initial page load.
Blog post about it Zoomy Map
Here’s Europe:
And last month we added some “recent activity” features. For example: here’s a firehose feed of map edits Recent Activity - Pinball Map
On the App:
We added a Setting so that you can more easily see whether a machine has Insider Connected enabled.