论文部分内容阅读
After July 4th it may no longer be possible to slip between the two enormous 2)flippers that frame a doorway in a shopping mall in Georgetown and bounce around in a strange world of 3)sleekly 4)raked playing boards, gleaming silver balls, rubber-wrapped pins,
5)jittery 6)bumpers and 7)raucous bells. It looks as if the National 8)Pinball Museum, which opened here only in December, is about to close, almost before an out-of-town critic could offer it the 9)ringing approval it deserves.
There may be a last-minute 10)reprieve extending its
11)lease until September. But that would only be like getting a bonus ball in a too-brief game. David Silverman, a 12)landscape gardener and artist, spent $300,000 to get this 14,000-square-foot space ready to display part of his collection of nearly 900 pinball machines.
He created a vivid opening gallery painted to resemble the playing field of a dinosaur-theme pinball game. He built a small theater for lectures and films. And he mounted a miniature history of the game in 13)diorama-like galleries, one of which has a floor resting on water beds that sway underfoot to 14)mimic the rocking of an 18th-century French vessel on which pinball’s ancestor, 15)bagatelle, a 16)mutated version of
17)billiards, is being played.
All of this will have to be 18)dismantled. But fortunately, as Mr. Silverman demonstrates, the history of pinball has as many sudden rescues, 19)exuberant bounces and sweeping surprises as one of his favorite games. Why not the museum too?
For now, though, maybe we can just pretend that the ball is still leaping around the upper part of the playing board without rolling near the alleys and channels that guide it downward to 20)oblivion. Visit before the museum is gone (even temporarily). Not just because one of the galleries allows you to play a range of games that span a half-century, but also because Mr. Silverman has created a museum in which he has illustrated pinball’s history with more than 130 restored and rare machines and drawn attention to the companies and designers that for much of the 20th century defined the 21)hypnotic lure of the 22)arcade.
It is a tradition that, at first glance, bears little resemblance to virtual worlds conjured by 23)PlayStations and 24)Wiis. And it doesn’t take long before the machines packing these rooms begin to seem like wooden coffins, charmingly 25)interring an earlier era’s tastes and technologies. Here is a primitive, flipperless 1936
26)evocation of a Yale-Harvard football game, using curved wire as bumpers; the 1952 game 27)Coronation, which displays the newly crowned Elizabeth II as a bikini-wearing 28)beauty-pageant winner; or the 1961 Space Ship game, whose artwork portrays 29)babes in 30)globular 31)headgear soaring over the Moon’s surface. Surely an element of nostalgia is being put into play here.
Maybe more than an element. The golden age of pinball was, the museum tells us, from the 1940s through the ’60s—roughly when these electrical and mechanical 32)contraptions reflected the 33)cutting edge of gaming. In 1947, for example, the notion of connecting a button to a mechanical 34)relay was still a novelty, but it led to the flipper’s invention, shown here with the first pinball game to have some, 35)Gottlieb’s Humpty Dumpty. Even if we extend that golden age into the era when first 36)Pong and then 37)Pac-Man invaded the arcade, the pinball machine still seems like an 38)artifact of gaming 39)antiquity.
A 40)timeline here titled “The Building of an Industry” could as well have been called “The 41)Demise of an Industry.” Beginning in the ’30s pinball companies 42)proliferate; in more recent decades the proliferation is of their disappearance, purchase or conversion to “gaming” (gambling). Only one company still makes pinball games, Stern Pinball.
So pinball isn’t just associated with an earlier time; it is only associated with that era. Players of a certain age will look around and recall the atmospheric 43)minutia of that lost world: cigarette burns on the games’ wooden rails, rings left on the glass by beer bottles, and lines of nickels or quarters arranged on their edges by waiting players. Now such players are collectors of these games and
44)proselytize for their revival. Pinball museums have opened in Alameda, Calif.; Asbury Park, N.J.; Las Vegas; and Paris. The game has its own journal, resources, repair sites and an online database of 5,348 games.
Original pinball players are the main audience for his museum, Mr. Silverman said. But they also have their families 45)in tow, and one point of the dinosaur gallery is to corrupt the young with the lure of the silver ball.
That lure is considerable, but one aspect requires some explanation: There has always been a hint of the forbidden associated with pinball. Despite 46)sordid historical associations with gambling, though, most of these games could hardly appear more innocent. What could be more commonplace than a silver ball rolling down an incline, knocking into obstacles? In its path there is no hint of moral degradation, no sign of 47)debauchery. It is amazing that so many themes could have been 48)draped ornamentally over such 49)rudimentary elements. But here we can see it happen.
In the early years pinball games 50)tapped into familiar games for ideas, particularly those that, like pinball, mixed chance with skillful manipulation: card games and competitive sports. Then pinball grew more elaborate,
51)alluding to the circus or the city, where events are sharp and quick, and later, more 52)ornately, to the worlds of films and television.
But in playing any of these games the lure is the same. They invoke the anxious thrills of an adolescent in a darkened room, illuminated with the blinking of multicolored lights, each machine the center of a group’s attention, each group focusing on the fate of a gleaming ball going almost too fast to track, as it teases and 53)taunts or promptly sweeps downward to its death, daring you to try again with another coin.
七月四日过后，恐怕再无机会到乔治城商场，走进有两支大型弹动器矗立的大门，在那个奇异的世界里蹦蹦跳跳，看那些滑溜而倾斜的球桌、亮锃锃的银球、裹着橡胶的插针、敏感的碰撞器和听聒噪的铃声了。去年12月才开放的美国国家弹球博物馆，即将面临关闭，甚至等不及市外的评论家给予其应得的肯定。
也许这个博物馆能获得最后的“缓期执行”，即将博物馆的租约延至9月。但那不过是在一局太短暂的游戏里得到一个附加球而已。园艺师兼艺术家大卫·西弗曼耗资30万美元建成了这个占地14000平方英尺的博物馆，用于展出他收藏的将近900台弹球机藏品。
他把入口长廊设计成一个惟妙惟肖的恐龙主题弹球游戏的界面，辟了一个小影院用以演讲和播放电影，还建了多个微缩立体模型展廊，重现游戏的历史。其中一个展廊的一处底板还被安置在水床上，让站上去的人体验巴格泰尔游戏里18世纪法国船舰在摇晃的感觉。巴格泰尔游戏是弹球游戏的起源，由台球游戏演变而来。
这里所有一切都将被拆除。不过，幸运的是，西弗曼先生所展示的弹球史如他所钟爱的任何一种弹球游戏一样，有许多突如其来的援救、层出不穷的回转、势不可挡的惊喜。谁又能说这一次博物馆的前途不会峰回路转？
事到如今，也许我们只能假装球还跳动在球桌上方，尚未顺着那些道道掉到漏口，从此无影无踪。在博物馆消失之前来参观一番吧（就算只是暂时性的关闭）。这不仅因为在各个展馆里你可以玩遍跨越半世纪的各种游戏，还因为西弗曼先生用130多台保存完好的珍稀游戏机再现了弹球机的历史，并吸引人们的将视线投向在大半个20世纪里缔造游戏痴迷神话的公司和设计师。
弹球机是一种传统事物，乍看来，和PlayStation、Wii的虚拟世界无相似之处可言。不久之后，你也许就会觉得堆满这里的弹球机似乎就像一座座木棺，华丽地埋葬着上一代的喜好和技术。这里还有一款1936年的早期无弹球杆游戏——耶鲁对阵哈佛足球赛，用曲形铁丝代替了碰撞器；1952年的加冕礼游戏，将刚加冕的伊丽莎白二世装扮成穿比基尼的选美小姐冠军；1962年的宇宙飞船游戏，则呈现了美女戴着宇航帽飞跃月球的形象。毫无疑问，这些游戏都运用了怀旧元素。
也许远不止一种元素那么简单。据博物馆展示，弹球游戏的黄金时期是20世纪40年代到60年代，那时电子游戏和机械游戏笼统地反应出游戏业正处于顶尖时期。例如，1947年，将按钮连接到机械继电器的概念还很新，因而带动了弹动器的发明，并体现在第一款弹球游戏机——戈特列布公司生产的“小胖墩”游戏机上。即使我们将这个黄金时期延伸到第一款乒乓球游戏和吃豆人游戏冲击街机的时代，弹球机看来仍旧像一个游戏界的古董艺术品。
博物馆里展示了“一个行业发展”的历程表，也可以说是“一个行业息微”的历程。20世纪30年代初，弹球机公司激增，近几十年来，激增的是它们消失的数量，它们或被收购或转换成“博彩”。只剩下惟一的一家公司，斯特恩公司，还在生产弹球机。
因此，弹球游戏维系的不仅仅是过去的一段时间，它维系的是一个时代。一定年龄段的玩家会四处寻找那个消失了的世界的一些印记：游戏机横木上的烟头烧痕，遗留在玻璃板上的啤酒瓶底印，轮候的玩家用5分币或25分币在角边上划下的线。如今，这些玩家收藏弹球机并致力于弹球机的复兴事业。加利福尼亚州的阿拉米达市、新泽西州的阿斯伯里帕克市、拉斯维加斯和巴黎都开设了弹球博物馆。弹球游戏有自己的杂志、资源、修理点和一个多达5348款游戏的网络数据库。
西弗曼先生反映，最初的弹球玩家是其博物馆的主要游客。不过他们会拖家带口前来，这也是为什么创建恐龙主题长廊的原因之一——吸引年轻一代对银球的兴趣。
这种吸引力是相当大的，但有一点需要解释一下：弹球总是离不开禁令。除了一段被认为是赌博的不光彩历史外，大多数弹球游戏自身再单纯不过了。有什么比一个银球从斜坡上滚落撞到障碍物上更单纯的事吗？它这一路并未显示任何道德的堕落或败坏。如此基本的元素被装饰然后以不同的主题呈现出来，真是令人吃惊。然而在博物馆我们可以看到这件神奇事件成为现实。
早些年，弹球游戏也利用了一些大家熟悉的游戏元素，特别是像弹球那样结合了运气和技巧的游戏：纸牌游戏和竞技体育。弹球游戏变得越来越复杂，出现了马戏团或者城市的场景，这些场景里发生的情节既突然又紧凑。到后来，更是装饰成了华丽的电影或电视场景。
无论玩哪种场景的游戏，它对玩家的吸引力都是相同的。它唤醒了处于暗室中的青少年那躁动的兴奋感，暗室闪烁着多彩的灯光，每台弹球机都是一群人的目光所在，每群人都在关注着这个亮锃锃的小球的命运——它以眼睛几乎跟不上的速度掉落，把你逗得一时欢喜一时忧，又或出其不意地直奔漏口里，有胆你就投币再来一局。
5)jittery 6)bumpers and 7)raucous bells. It looks as if the National 8)Pinball Museum, which opened here only in December, is about to close, almost before an out-of-town critic could offer it the 9)ringing approval it deserves.
There may be a last-minute 10)reprieve extending its
11)lease until September. But that would only be like getting a bonus ball in a too-brief game. David Silverman, a 12)landscape gardener and artist, spent $300,000 to get this 14,000-square-foot space ready to display part of his collection of nearly 900 pinball machines.
He created a vivid opening gallery painted to resemble the playing field of a dinosaur-theme pinball game. He built a small theater for lectures and films. And he mounted a miniature history of the game in 13)diorama-like galleries, one of which has a floor resting on water beds that sway underfoot to 14)mimic the rocking of an 18th-century French vessel on which pinball’s ancestor, 15)bagatelle, a 16)mutated version of
17)billiards, is being played.
All of this will have to be 18)dismantled. But fortunately, as Mr. Silverman demonstrates, the history of pinball has as many sudden rescues, 19)exuberant bounces and sweeping surprises as one of his favorite games. Why not the museum too?
For now, though, maybe we can just pretend that the ball is still leaping around the upper part of the playing board without rolling near the alleys and channels that guide it downward to 20)oblivion. Visit before the museum is gone (even temporarily). Not just because one of the galleries allows you to play a range of games that span a half-century, but also because Mr. Silverman has created a museum in which he has illustrated pinball’s history with more than 130 restored and rare machines and drawn attention to the companies and designers that for much of the 20th century defined the 21)hypnotic lure of the 22)arcade.
It is a tradition that, at first glance, bears little resemblance to virtual worlds conjured by 23)PlayStations and 24)Wiis. And it doesn’t take long before the machines packing these rooms begin to seem like wooden coffins, charmingly 25)interring an earlier era’s tastes and technologies. Here is a primitive, flipperless 1936
26)evocation of a Yale-Harvard football game, using curved wire as bumpers; the 1952 game 27)Coronation, which displays the newly crowned Elizabeth II as a bikini-wearing 28)beauty-pageant winner; or the 1961 Space Ship game, whose artwork portrays 29)babes in 30)globular 31)headgear soaring over the Moon’s surface. Surely an element of nostalgia is being put into play here.
Maybe more than an element. The golden age of pinball was, the museum tells us, from the 1940s through the ’60s—roughly when these electrical and mechanical 32)contraptions reflected the 33)cutting edge of gaming. In 1947, for example, the notion of connecting a button to a mechanical 34)relay was still a novelty, but it led to the flipper’s invention, shown here with the first pinball game to have some, 35)Gottlieb’s Humpty Dumpty. Even if we extend that golden age into the era when first 36)Pong and then 37)Pac-Man invaded the arcade, the pinball machine still seems like an 38)artifact of gaming 39)antiquity.
A 40)timeline here titled “The Building of an Industry” could as well have been called “The 41)Demise of an Industry.” Beginning in the ’30s pinball companies 42)proliferate; in more recent decades the proliferation is of their disappearance, purchase or conversion to “gaming” (gambling). Only one company still makes pinball games, Stern Pinball.
So pinball isn’t just associated with an earlier time; it is only associated with that era. Players of a certain age will look around and recall the atmospheric 43)minutia of that lost world: cigarette burns on the games’ wooden rails, rings left on the glass by beer bottles, and lines of nickels or quarters arranged on their edges by waiting players. Now such players are collectors of these games and
44)proselytize for their revival. Pinball museums have opened in Alameda, Calif.; Asbury Park, N.J.; Las Vegas; and Paris. The game has its own journal, resources, repair sites and an online database of 5,348 games.
Original pinball players are the main audience for his museum, Mr. Silverman said. But they also have their families 45)in tow, and one point of the dinosaur gallery is to corrupt the young with the lure of the silver ball.
That lure is considerable, but one aspect requires some explanation: There has always been a hint of the forbidden associated with pinball. Despite 46)sordid historical associations with gambling, though, most of these games could hardly appear more innocent. What could be more commonplace than a silver ball rolling down an incline, knocking into obstacles? In its path there is no hint of moral degradation, no sign of 47)debauchery. It is amazing that so many themes could have been 48)draped ornamentally over such 49)rudimentary elements. But here we can see it happen.
In the early years pinball games 50)tapped into familiar games for ideas, particularly those that, like pinball, mixed chance with skillful manipulation: card games and competitive sports. Then pinball grew more elaborate,
51)alluding to the circus or the city, where events are sharp and quick, and later, more 52)ornately, to the worlds of films and television.
But in playing any of these games the lure is the same. They invoke the anxious thrills of an adolescent in a darkened room, illuminated with the blinking of multicolored lights, each machine the center of a group’s attention, each group focusing on the fate of a gleaming ball going almost too fast to track, as it teases and 53)taunts or promptly sweeps downward to its death, daring you to try again with another coin.
七月四日过后，恐怕再无机会到乔治城商场，走进有两支大型弹动器矗立的大门，在那个奇异的世界里蹦蹦跳跳，看那些滑溜而倾斜的球桌、亮锃锃的银球、裹着橡胶的插针、敏感的碰撞器和听聒噪的铃声了。去年12月才开放的美国国家弹球博物馆，即将面临关闭，甚至等不及市外的评论家给予其应得的肯定。
也许这个博物馆能获得最后的“缓期执行”，即将博物馆的租约延至9月。但那不过是在一局太短暂的游戏里得到一个附加球而已。园艺师兼艺术家大卫·西弗曼耗资30万美元建成了这个占地14000平方英尺的博物馆，用于展出他收藏的将近900台弹球机藏品。
他把入口长廊设计成一个惟妙惟肖的恐龙主题弹球游戏的界面，辟了一个小影院用以演讲和播放电影，还建了多个微缩立体模型展廊，重现游戏的历史。其中一个展廊的一处底板还被安置在水床上，让站上去的人体验巴格泰尔游戏里18世纪法国船舰在摇晃的感觉。巴格泰尔游戏是弹球游戏的起源，由台球游戏演变而来。
这里所有一切都将被拆除。不过，幸运的是，西弗曼先生所展示的弹球史如他所钟爱的任何一种弹球游戏一样，有许多突如其来的援救、层出不穷的回转、势不可挡的惊喜。谁又能说这一次博物馆的前途不会峰回路转？
事到如今，也许我们只能假装球还跳动在球桌上方，尚未顺着那些道道掉到漏口，从此无影无踪。在博物馆消失之前来参观一番吧（就算只是暂时性的关闭）。这不仅因为在各个展馆里你可以玩遍跨越半世纪的各种游戏，还因为西弗曼先生用130多台保存完好的珍稀游戏机再现了弹球机的历史，并吸引人们的将视线投向在大半个20世纪里缔造游戏痴迷神话的公司和设计师。
弹球机是一种传统事物，乍看来，和PlayStation、Wii的虚拟世界无相似之处可言。不久之后，你也许就会觉得堆满这里的弹球机似乎就像一座座木棺，华丽地埋葬着上一代的喜好和技术。这里还有一款1936年的早期无弹球杆游戏——耶鲁对阵哈佛足球赛，用曲形铁丝代替了碰撞器；1952年的加冕礼游戏，将刚加冕的伊丽莎白二世装扮成穿比基尼的选美小姐冠军；1962年的宇宙飞船游戏，则呈现了美女戴着宇航帽飞跃月球的形象。毫无疑问，这些游戏都运用了怀旧元素。
也许远不止一种元素那么简单。据博物馆展示，弹球游戏的黄金时期是20世纪40年代到60年代，那时电子游戏和机械游戏笼统地反应出游戏业正处于顶尖时期。例如，1947年，将按钮连接到机械继电器的概念还很新，因而带动了弹动器的发明，并体现在第一款弹球游戏机——戈特列布公司生产的“小胖墩”游戏机上。即使我们将这个黄金时期延伸到第一款乒乓球游戏和吃豆人游戏冲击街机的时代，弹球机看来仍旧像一个游戏界的古董艺术品。
博物馆里展示了“一个行业发展”的历程表，也可以说是“一个行业息微”的历程。20世纪30年代初，弹球机公司激增，近几十年来，激增的是它们消失的数量，它们或被收购或转换成“博彩”。只剩下惟一的一家公司，斯特恩公司，还在生产弹球机。
因此，弹球游戏维系的不仅仅是过去的一段时间，它维系的是一个时代。一定年龄段的玩家会四处寻找那个消失了的世界的一些印记：游戏机横木上的烟头烧痕，遗留在玻璃板上的啤酒瓶底印，轮候的玩家用5分币或25分币在角边上划下的线。如今，这些玩家收藏弹球机并致力于弹球机的复兴事业。加利福尼亚州的阿拉米达市、新泽西州的阿斯伯里帕克市、拉斯维加斯和巴黎都开设了弹球博物馆。弹球游戏有自己的杂志、资源、修理点和一个多达5348款游戏的网络数据库。
西弗曼先生反映，最初的弹球玩家是其博物馆的主要游客。不过他们会拖家带口前来，这也是为什么创建恐龙主题长廊的原因之一——吸引年轻一代对银球的兴趣。
这种吸引力是相当大的，但有一点需要解释一下：弹球总是离不开禁令。除了一段被认为是赌博的不光彩历史外，大多数弹球游戏自身再单纯不过了。有什么比一个银球从斜坡上滚落撞到障碍物上更单纯的事吗？它这一路并未显示任何道德的堕落或败坏。如此基本的元素被装饰然后以不同的主题呈现出来，真是令人吃惊。然而在博物馆我们可以看到这件神奇事件成为现实。
早些年，弹球游戏也利用了一些大家熟悉的游戏元素，特别是像弹球那样结合了运气和技巧的游戏：纸牌游戏和竞技体育。弹球游戏变得越来越复杂，出现了马戏团或者城市的场景，这些场景里发生的情节既突然又紧凑。到后来，更是装饰成了华丽的电影或电视场景。
无论玩哪种场景的游戏，它对玩家的吸引力都是相同的。它唤醒了处于暗室中的青少年那躁动的兴奋感，暗室闪烁着多彩的灯光，每台弹球机都是一群人的目光所在，每群人都在关注着这个亮锃锃的小球的命运——它以眼睛几乎跟不上的速度掉落，把你逗得一时欢喜一时忧，又或出其不意地直奔漏口里，有胆你就投币再来一局。