There's so much that could be packed into a history of pinball, it's a dizzying attempt to cover the background story of it at all. Director Greg Maletic, however, does sum up some interesting points in pinball's history. Pinball's evolution over 70 years is covered, explaining how the game really took off when the two classic flippers were added at the bottom. Computerization was another major landmark, which gave the game new life in the 1970's. You really get a picture of how the game evolved and stayed alive through the years. I realized that features which I thought had been old standards (like the dot matrix score display or multiball mode) were really big innovations in their time. When you saw the arcades in the 80's as I did, you always saw pinball machines right next to the video game cabinets, and at the time I probably had the feeling that's the way it always was. Tilt does a great job of reminding the younger audience that pinball is something with a much bigger history.
The documentary focuses on Midway's Pinball division as it existed in the late 90's. Producing pinball machines was becoming less and less desirable for a number of reasons. For one, the machines were expensive and harder to maintain than your average arcade machine. Fingers also pointed to the fact that pinball was always a one-player game unless you had people taking turns to compete. Another major reason was the fact that the machines themselves took up more room than a standard arcade cabinet. Pinball designers were pushed to come up with something new and innovative to boost their industry, or face the end of it. That innovation was something called Pinball 2000, a pinball system that used glass to reflect an image from a monitor. It created a kind of holographic effect that the pinball would seem to interact with during play.
If you ask me, the innovation of Pinball 2000 wasn't all it was built up to be by the film. I actually had the opportunity to play Revenge from Mars around the time it first came out. Standing in a row among several other more traditional pinball units, its hooded design and projected graphics did catch your eye. But I just don't remember it being more fun than the other machines. The draw is supposed to be in the fact that the ball is interacting with moving graphics and targets, but it all seemed a bit gimmicky to me.
Either way, the storytelling in Tilt is entertaining for gaming and pinball fans alike. You're brought into the developer's personal lives and into an era where business was run a bit differently. Particularly interesting are the interviews with Steve Kordek, both during the documentary and the extra content. He was essentially responsible for turning pinball into the game it is today, simply by adding flippers at the bottom of the machine.
Tilt is given a distinct style by the graphical elements Greg Maletic uses throughout it. Often the script of the documentary is put into a book format, and the camera pans across it while the narration continues. However, as Maletic explains during commentary, the book doesn't actually exist, it's just an interesting visual element. One thing I did disagree with was his altering of some photos in order to fit in with some scenes. He alters the dates in some photographs by combining different photos from different times, which is not something I'm too comfortable with in a documentary. At times I also felt there was a little too much emphasis on presentation and not enough actual photos of pinball history, but overall there was a good balance.
When you're done with the documentary, Tilt is loaded with over 6 hours of extras and commentary. Extra interviews and footage of rare and unreleased pinball machines are just a couple of these extras. What's more is that the menu is designed a bit more intuitively than the average DVD menu, so navigating through it all is a breeze.
Tilt tells a great story for gaming fans, and spans a wide breadth of history. It's something that should find its way to any pinball fan's shelf. During the time I had to write this review, I actually attempted to find some of these old pinball machines only to find that they had all vanished. Practically every pinball haunt I had remembered had disappeared or been replaced with the current generation of shooting, golfing or dance games. So not only do I want to give out the address to the documentary's website, but I would also like to bring your attention to a few pinball conventions. They may be the last places you get to play some of these games and see a bit of pinball's history in person.
