5 ms·

I am one of the original authors of Space Cadet Pinball and I just want to say it is absolutely wonderful there are people who love our old pinball game enough

by davidst 4mo ago

I am one of the original authors of Space Cadet Pinball and I just want to say it is absolutely wonderful there are people who love our old pinball game enough to keep it alive. You made my day. I am forwarding this post to my Cinematronics co-founders and friends, Mike Sandige (lead engineer) and Kevin Gliner (designer and product manager). They will enjoy seeing this as much as I did.

bsimpson 4mo ago
kgliner's Hacker News comment from last time is cited on Wikipedia!
wilj 4mo ago
My first time using NT 4, I was setting up a bunch of machines that needed babysitting, and Space Cadet Pinball got me through a lot of long, boring nights. I've thought back throughout my career to how lucky I was, it kept me from going crazy. Thank you!
ndiddy 4mo ago
Having a fun game bundled with every Windows install was really something special, so thanks for working on the game and selling it to Microsoft. Without it, we wouldn't have been able to have a Pinball league in my middle school typing class :) What parts of the game did you work on? Do you have any fun anecdotes about your time working on it, or stories about hard to find bugs?
- davidst 4mo ago
  I was CEO of Cinematronics (to be clear, we were a tiny startup so a CEO title didn't mean much - everyone pitched in wherever they could help.) I negotiated the contract with Microsoft. My engineering contribution was not in the gameplay itself but in the game's memory manager and low-level rendering code. That was all performance-critical X86 assembly. I doubt any of that code lives on today. Yes, there were a lot of anecdotes and the story on Wikipedia is both incomplete and incorrect in some ways. One day, I'll get around to editing it. My memory is of promising it would be ready in time for Windows 95's launch, working excessively long hours, and focussing hard to make it fast enough so it would be fun to play on the minimum hardware requirement for Microsoft Plus.
  - Randomno 4mo ago
    Have you read the Wikipedia page recently? It was less complete a couple of years ago
    - davidst 4mo ago
      I looked at it today and it is more fleshed out but still incorrect. For example: > In 1994, the company began development of a port of Doom. No, we were never porting Doom and we used none of Doom's code or resources. And I didn't propose to tone down the violence. The game was intended to be a fun first-person shooter in the same spirit as Doom but that was the only connection. Microsoft was involved in a high-profile antitrust suit with the Department of Justice at the time. They were understandably sensitive about the potential PR impact of this type of game shipping with Windows and proposed gameplay design changes to reduce the violence.
      - amiga386 4mo ago
        Are you reading the right page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC Hasn't been edited since December 2024. Has never mentioned DOOM.
        Randomno 4mo ago
        This page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Tilt!_Pinball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Tilt!_Pinball Indeed the sources say Doom clone, not port.
        davidst 4mo ago
        Someone with the user name "Hemiauchenia" edited the Wikipedia page shortly after I left my comment here. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Full_Tilt!_Pinball&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Full_Tilt!_Pinbal...
  - mghackerlady 4mo ago
pabs3 4mo ago
What do you think of the source code escrow suggestion at the end? I'm an external contractor for Software Heritage, not sure if they are currently working on it, but I think they would be an ideal organisation to play that role. https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/
unixhero 4mo ago
As you of course know, since it was bundled with the default install of Windows 2000, we all had in our computer labs. It was a nice break from reality, an evergreen gamer and user experience. Eventually people brought Deluxe Skijump, Doom and Starcraft, but Space Cadet was still a viable option.
x______________ 4mo ago
It is (an understatement to say) with great honor to have the opportunity to tell you (and indirectly the team if they read this): Thank You for making possibly one of the greatest Windows selling points ever, the inclusion of Space Cadet Pinball into its base offering. SCP has had such a massive influence in my life up to the point of getting into the real world of pinball and becoming semi-professional (or the step prior as pro pinball doesn't exist in this part of the world, yet..). I've been wanting to ask this forever and until this morning, would have thought I'd have brought this question to my grave: Would you ever consider going back to the drawing board in an attempt to produce an official follow-up to Space Cadet Pinball? There are a few generations of people who may be yearning for nostalgia in a world of enshittification, micro-transactions and even worse in the virtual pinball scenes, licensing bullshit that never favors the player. Disclaimer: I've possibly put too much thought into this already, am willing to put everything I have into this if ever needed... but will need to let you comment first :)
- aa-jv 4mo ago
  Fellow pinball enthusiast here - I didn't get into it because of SCP, though, but rather grew up with the machines being regularly rotated and maintained in my Dads hamburger shop in the 70's .. halcyon days indeed! What part of the world are you in that doesn't have a professional pinball tournament roster? Just curious ..
  - x______________ 4mo ago
    Hello fellow enthusiast pinball wizard! Good ol' days indeed! That picturesque glimpse of the past brings a smile to my face! I didn't get more than 1 chance to play physical machines back in the day and only started in the last decade with a machine popping up at my office, to which I became the defacto repairman after it needing maintenance regularly. I'm located in Prague, Czechia. The pinball scene in the country is basically held by two groups of people: those previously working in the gambling scene changing up their ways and going into the arcade scene, overcharging for tables (3$ dollars and up for 1 game, bought by in-house credits) or the older pinball scene and owners who have been milking out old tables for years on very reduced maintenance cycles, which results in rarely fully working tables. Despite there being 1 local tournament, one of these options offers anything near IFPA standards. Geographically speaking and as seen on the pinside map[0], France and Spain have very little areas where there are no machines whileas Germany has barely none. The reason being is that Germany has introduced entertainment laws at require businesses to pay for any machines they may offer to their patrons, resulting in table operators operating at a loss most of the time. That also stops the scene from crossing the border as it virtually doesn't exist, Spanish and French tourists do not come here for pinball whatsoever. Move further east to Czechia and you have a very small population where most people do not know of the game or even less its local name of "Flipper". Businesses that have went into the pinball scene recently have failed miserably for various reasons but mainly due to pricing/bad business models and lack of international advertising. Despite the grim situation over here, I'm aware that some efforts are persisting into getting another place set up so the dream of getting an IFPA chapter here is not dead! Happy to hear your thoughts on it all! [0] https://pinside.com/pinball/map/mapbox#5.89/49.472/14.274/0/26 https://pinside.com/pinball/map/mapbox#5.89/49.472/14.274/0/...
mike_san 4mo ago
Thanks, David! It's great to see the ongoing interest in this game!

by davidst 4mo ago

bsimpson 4mo ago

kgliner's Hacker News comment from last time is cited on Wikipedia!

wilj 4mo ago

My first time using NT 4, I was setting up a bunch of machines that needed babysitting, and Space Cadet Pinball got me through a lot of long, boring nights. I've thought back throughout my career to how lucky I was, it kept me from going crazy. Thank you!

ndiddy 4mo ago

Having a fun game bundled with every Windows install was really something special, so thanks for working on the game and selling it to Microsoft. Without it, we wouldn't have been able to have a Pinball league in my middle school typing class :) What parts of the game did you work on? Do you have any fun anecdotes about your time working on it, or stories about hard to find bugs?

davidst 4mo ago
I was CEO of Cinematronics (to be clear, we were a tiny startup so a CEO title didn't mean much - everyone pitched in wherever they could help.) I negotiated the contract with Microsoft. My engineering contribution was not in the gameplay itself but in the game's memory manager and low-level rendering code. That was all performance-critical X86 assembly. I doubt any of that code lives on today. Yes, there were a lot of anecdotes and the story on Wikipedia is both incomplete and incorrect in some ways. One day, I'll get around to editing it. My memory is of promising it would be ready in time for Windows 95's launch, working excessively long hours, and focussing hard to make it fast enough so it would be fun to play on the minimum hardware requirement for Microsoft Plus.
- Randomno 4mo ago
  Have you read the Wikipedia page recently? It was less complete a couple of years ago
  - davidst 4mo ago
    I looked at it today and it is more fleshed out but still incorrect. For example: > In 1994, the company began development of a port of Doom. No, we were never porting Doom and we used none of Doom's code or resources. And I didn't propose to tone down the violence. The game was intended to be a fun first-person shooter in the same spirit as Doom but that was the only connection. Microsoft was involved in a high-profile antitrust suit with the Department of Justice at the time. They were understandably sensitive about the potential PR impact of this type of game shipping with Windows and proposed gameplay design changes to reduce the violence.
    - amiga386 4mo ago
      Are you reading the right page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC Hasn't been edited since December 2024. Has never mentioned DOOM.
      - Randomno 4mo ago
        This page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Tilt!_Pinball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Tilt!_Pinball Indeed the sources say Doom clone, not port.
        davidst 4mo ago
        Someone with the user name "Hemiauchenia" edited the Wikipedia page shortly after I left my comment here. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Full_Tilt!_Pinball&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Full_Tilt!_Pinbal...
- mghackerlady 4mo ago

pabs3 4mo ago

What do you think of the source code escrow suggestion at the end? I'm an external contractor for Software Heritage, not sure if they are currently working on it, but I think they would be an ideal organisation to play that role. https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/

unixhero 4mo ago

As you of course know, since it was bundled with the default install of Windows 2000, we all had in our computer labs. It was a nice break from reality, an evergreen gamer and user experience. Eventually people brought Deluxe Skijump, Doom and Starcraft, but Space Cadet was still a viable option.

x______________ 4mo ago

It is (an understatement to say) with great honor to have the opportunity to tell you (and indirectly the team if they read this): Thank You for making possibly one of the greatest Windows selling points ever, the inclusion of Space Cadet Pinball into its base offering. SCP has had such a massive influence in my life up to the point of getting into the real world of pinball and becoming semi-professional (or the step prior as pro pinball doesn't exist in this part of the world, yet..). I've been wanting to ask this forever and until this morning, would have thought I'd have brought this question to my grave: Would you ever consider going back to the drawing board in an attempt to produce an official follow-up to Space Cadet Pinball? There are a few generations of people who may be yearning for nostalgia in a world of enshittification, micro-transactions and even worse in the virtual pinball scenes, licensing bullshit that never favors the player. Disclaimer: I've possibly put too much thought into this already, am willing to put everything I have into this if ever needed... but will need to let you comment first :)

aa-jv 4mo ago
Fellow pinball enthusiast here - I didn't get into it because of SCP, though, but rather grew up with the machines being regularly rotated and maintained in my Dads hamburger shop in the 70's .. halcyon days indeed! What part of the world are you in that doesn't have a professional pinball tournament roster? Just curious ..
- x______________ 4mo ago
  Hello fellow enthusiast pinball wizard! Good ol' days indeed! That picturesque glimpse of the past brings a smile to my face! I didn't get more than 1 chance to play physical machines back in the day and only started in the last decade with a machine popping up at my office, to which I became the defacto repairman after it needing maintenance regularly. I'm located in Prague, Czechia. The pinball scene in the country is basically held by two groups of people: those previously working in the gambling scene changing up their ways and going into the arcade scene, overcharging for tables (3$ dollars and up for 1 game, bought by in-house credits) or the older pinball scene and owners who have been milking out old tables for years on very reduced maintenance cycles, which results in rarely fully working tables. Despite there being 1 local tournament, one of these options offers anything near IFPA standards. Geographically speaking and as seen on the pinside map[0], France and Spain have very little areas where there are no machines whileas Germany has barely none. The reason being is that Germany has introduced entertainment laws at require businesses to pay for any machines they may offer to their patrons, resulting in table operators operating at a loss most of the time. That also stops the scene from crossing the border as it virtually doesn't exist, Spanish and French tourists do not come here for pinball whatsoever. Move further east to Czechia and you have a very small population where most people do not know of the game or even less its local name of "Flipper". Businesses that have went into the pinball scene recently have failed miserably for various reasons but mainly due to pricing/bad business models and lack of international advertising. Despite the grim situation over here, I'm aware that some efforts are persisting into getting another place set up so the dream of getting an IFPA chapter here is not dead! Happy to hear your thoughts on it all! [0] https://pinside.com/pinball/map/mapbox#5.89/49.472/14.274/0/26 https://pinside.com/pinball/map/mapbox#5.89/49.472/14.274/0/...

mike_san 4mo ago

Thanks, David! It's great to see the ongoing interest in this game!