Pinball The Ultimate Pinball peripheral for PC/VPB?

[Goodie]

So, I am a big fan of IRL Pinball, where I live about an hour into the city, there's a Pinball Museum where you pay an entry free and can play all their tables, all day. That's cool and all, but I don't get out much. So, I've been trying to find the best home experience for Pinball.

So far, there's two contenders:

First we have the old Philips Virtual Pinball controller:

The old PS/2 connection isn't ideal but the size and look of it is great. It also offers a 'nudge' feature but I really don't know how well it'd work in 2024.

The only other controller/peripheral I've discovered is more of a homebrew option in this,

The Pin-One Mini:

Looks wise I'd say it's a solid build. I could do without the LED light-up buttons, but you know what they say; Charlese Theron. Aside from that, it offers a real plunger and solenoids for super accurate nudging. The only other thing is that it's mini USB. Some don;t mind it, some do.

So yeah! What do you all think? Do you have any other PC Pinball peripherals you know of?

 

[Spike's iconSpike]

I'm sorry I'm totally ignorant about pinball.
You connect these to a PC to play PC/Console pinball games?
Or is there also an actual pinball machine too.

 

[Settyness]

The old PS/2 connection isn't ideal but the size and look of it is great. It also offers a 'nudge' feature but I really don't know how well it'd work in 2024.

The great thing about PS/2 is that it's primitive and fairly simple on the driver side. If I had to guess, the nudge is probably just passed through as a keystroke to the application. I'm fairly confident it would be plug and play on modern Windows. PS/2 is technically faster and interrupt-based, but I'm not sure how much of a real world difference that will make for pinball.

You connect these to a PC to play PC/Console pinball games?

Yeah, these are PC peripherals for playing virtual pinball.

 

[Goodie]

The great thing about PS/2 is that it's primitive and fairly simple on the driver side. If I had to guess, the nudge is probably just passed through as a keystroke to the application. I'm fairly confident it would be plug and play on modern Windows. PS/2 is technically faster and interrupt-based, but I'm not sure how much of a real world difference that will make for pinball.

Hm, that's actually really sick. I'm guessing it being a pretty simple and primitive connection type the input lag is near 0. The only thing is that most modern mobos don't have a PS/2 port anymore. I'm pretty sure the one I'm upgrading to doesn't. So, I'd have to get a PS/2 to USB adapter, which isn't great but it's w/e. Also, a keystroke nudge isn't really ideal, like you kinda want to be able to nudge with out going full tilt. That's why the solenoid option is really appealing, you can get more accurate to real life nudging. Like, I'm a small 135lb dude, I really have to abuse the table IRL for it to go full tilt. I just wish the Pin-One looked more like the Philips, lmao.

I like how you smell.

Hey thanks man!

 

[Goodie]

I'm sorry I'm totally ignorant about pinball.
You connect these to a PC to play PC/Console pinball games?
Or is there also an actual pinball machine too.

So, these are for virtual pinball, games like Pinball FX on STEAM. There's also some Japanese PS2 pinball games and like, KISS Pinball for the PSX. People do make full tables for virtual pinball as well. These are just controllers that I have found online that I think can achieve the most optimal in performing a 1:1 or close to an IRL experience.

 

[Spike's iconSpike]

Have you seen this video @Goodie
Bit off topic but I just found it today

 

[It's Thinking 2]

Shoulder buttons on a controller or "<" and ">" or Left and Right arrow keys on a keyboard. Down arrow for launch. Space for tilt.

 

[Goodie]

Shoulder buttons on a controller or "<" and ">" or Left and Right arrow keys on a keyboard. Down arrow for launch. Space for tilt.

Are you like one of those people who just read the head lines of news articles?

 

[It's Thinking 2]

Are you like one of those people who just read the head lines of news articles?

I'm one of those people who don't have the ultimate setup because i'm cheap.