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Umberto Eco had some pretty interesting insights into pinball. Tips, even. Spoiler alert: "You don't play pinball with just your hands." With you so far, Professor. "You play it with the groin too." Um...?"The pinball problem is not to stop the ball before it's swallowed by the mouth at the bottom, or to kick it back to midfield like a halfback," he continues. "The problem is to make it stay up where the lighted targets are more numerous and have it bounce from one to another, wandering, confused, delirious, but still a free agent." So what's the trick? "You achieve this not by jolting the ball but by transmitting vibrations to the case, the frame, but gently, so the machine won't catch on and say Tilt. You can only do it with the groin." And, by logical extension, the conclusion: "A female groin is required, one that interposes no spongy body between the ileum and the machine." Thanks, Umberto. I have lived with that phrase "spongy body" ever since I first read Foucault's Pendulum. I guess that's the price we pay for literature.
Anyway, I dearly wish that Umberto Eco had lived to see PinOut - although, granted, he would have struggled to play it with his groin, as the whole thing runs on a phone. PinOut is ingenious and stylish. It's pinball, but it never ends. Get the ball to the top of the table, and you'll find there's a gap that allows it to move onto another table, and another beyond, and another beyond that. Neon witchcraft, of course, drawn in taut, slick bars and curves of neon. You have sixty seconds to get as far as you can, but regular time extensions mean that you will never play for only sixty seconds.
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