Good news for those in the UK: if you happen to be attending the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, there will be a screening of TILT taking place on August 9 at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse Cinema.

Very excited about this opportunity! Brian Baglow, the show’s film programmer, got in touch with me out of the blue, and I was more than happy to send him screener DVDs, posters, etc. If you know of a show, event, or gathering where it would be fun to show TILT, please let me know and I’ll be happy to help out!

TILT will be showing at the wonderful California Extreme video game and pinball expo this Saturday, July 19. Showtime is tentatively set for 7pm at 9pm. Please come by, check out what will certainly be an amazing show, watch the film, and come say hello! (I’ll hang around for Q&A both before and after the show). You’ll also want to check out the amazing line-up of speakers (scroll to the bottom for times)…I know I’m looking forward to seeing Aaron Giles talk about MAME!

If you’re at all inclined to attend the show, staying until midnight on Saturday at lodging at the beautiful and very reasonably priced Hotel Sainte Claire is an amazing way to go.

It’s been a long time coming, but finally TILT got a mention on Boing Boing. Very appreciative of Scott Underwood over at IDEO, who sent in the posting after I presented there last week. Also very appreciative of the nice comments people posted concerning the DVD: it seems there is no shortage of folks who are willing to go out of their way to say how much they liked it, which is incredibly gratifying. (For those into the film, commenter #4 is Louis Koziarz, one of the Williams software designers featured in TILT.)

“…about as good as documentary filmmaking gets,” is what GeeksOfDoom has to say about TILT, and hey, if they’re willing to say it, I’m willing to repeat it.

If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to catch a free public showing of TILT, please stop by the Palo Alto office of design firm IDEO at 5pm this Thursday, June 12. Given IDEO’s illustrious history, I’m hoping for lots of great product design-related discussion during the Q&A with me before and after the screening. Please stop by to catch the film, talk about pinball, or whatever else you’re interested in. (Also, if you have any friends that haven’t yet seen the film, please spread the word!)

For more info, visit http://tinyurl.com/5cc4e5

Hope to see you there!

Nice overview of the NuCore engineering effort from Pinball News.

Nice review (and interview) over at PopMatters.com. Check it out!

Just discovered Big Guys Pinball this morning, and their exciting product, NuCore. NuCore is evidently a clean-room implementation of the Pinball 2000 operating system that runs on modern PC hardware, and gives hope to us Pinball 2000 owners that we might actually be able to keep our games up-and-running indefinitely. Really looking forward to whatever these guys produce…

Nice interview on the iF Magazine site today with the site’s news editor, Jay Frasco. I made one comment in the interview that I thought should be clarified, regarding the (under)performance of the Star Wars: Episode I machine:

The result was a perception of underperformance that ended up killing both Pinball 2000 and Williams’ legendary pinball division.

It sounds like I’m suggesting that the Star Wars: Episode I “killed” Pinball 2000 and Williams Pinball, and in fact I don’t believe that to be the case. By conventional metrics, the Star Wars game sold well, earned well, and, as the film makes clear, there were numerous reasons why the Pinball 2000 line could have (and perhaps should have) survived even after Star Wars underperformed against what were outsized expectations. (A mediocre film, late delivery, and substantial price increase can’t be discounted.) The fact is that any machine in the Pinball 2000 line that underperformed was probably doomed to be Williams’ last; that Star Wars happened to be that machine is a quirk of fate more than evidence of a defect so substantial as to kill a sixty year old pinball legend.

The price for the DVD is now $20 (down from $29.95); same for the poster. I didn’t want price to be a reason for anyone not to purchase the DVD; this lower price should make it more accessible to a broader audience.

If you purchased your DVD in April 2008 at the higher price, I’d be happy to offer a partial refund; just contact me using the e-mail address on the FAQ page.

Thanks!