DON'T LET IT DRAIN

Story dated June 18, 2004

Not content with designing and building their first real pinball game, Pinball Design Team based in Melbourne, Australia have been making a splash with their project for the Government.

Splashball is a special project for the State Water Board to promote the sensible use of water and educate players about water saving methods.

It is made from a converted Bally Judge Dredd game so it is a wide-bodied cabinet and retains a few features of the original game such as the left shooter lane and the up-kicker, but unlike Judge Dredd it features several pop bumpers and a water tank

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The original playfield is still underneath but it is covered by a polycarbonate sheet with the new artwork and features.

Perhaps the biggest change is the use of a 19 inch flat panel monitor in the backbox in place of the usual dot-matrix display.

The display is connected to a PC running Internet Explorer showing an interactive Flash movie

The PC connects to the game through a ipac controller which reads the switch matrix and sends the information back to the PC so that the Flash movie can show appropriate animations or ask the player multiple-choice questions related to water use when the ball is captured.

Pinball Design Team head Wayne Gillard told Pinball News: "This is one of many projects we are doing for Government projects, they wanted new ways to try and educate people to save water. It has sounds and the lower half plays like a normal pinball, it can also be coin operated as you can see."

The game will be at the Melbourne Museum next week and then at the Melbourne Home Show.

When asked if the Splashball game has any impact on the Pinball Design Team's plans for their first real pinball game, Wayne told Pinball News: "It has taken up some of my staff, but it is still on track for the end of the year completion. Remember this is not anything like we are building but believe me it has given us a lot of experience."

 

 

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