BrainBank: Alas, Poor Pinball! I Knew Him Edition

An article on Gizmodo just caught my eye. It's not really a commentary on anything in particular; basically, the author just enthuses about his passion for a pinball iPhone app. Well, he does get into the interesting Japanese concept of "michi," which is the belief that everyone should have at least one thing that they're constantly striving at.

It caught my eye just because I love regular old pinball machines, and it makes me sad that they've almost completely disappeared from the American landscape. Granted, we have a pinball machine at my home and I haven't played it in some time; but I do like the concept of an all-mechanical form of entertainment.

Video pinball, really, is as far removed from real pinball as it's possible to be. All-digital, completely portable, and with absolutely no tactile feedback (you can't even control how hard the flippers strike the ball on most digital conversions), I could never really get into videogame pinbal. Still, it was an interesting article, and at least I know that pinball machines and the rest of the arcade genre are still quite alive in Japan.