General "Did you Know?"s

[SERIOUSLY THOUGH*]

I'm not sure if this counts as a "Video Game Did You Know" but it's still really cool to know.

Back in the early 1940's to the mid 1970's, pinball was banned in most of the big citys. This was due to 2 resons. The first was due to them thinking it "a game of chance, not skill, and so it was a form of gambling." This was becuse of the early designs of the pinball games.

As you can see, the flippers are missing. Early pinball games had the player hit the sides of the machine to make the ball go the way they wanted. The first game to have flippers was Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty, introduced in 1947 (5-7 years (depending on who you ask) after the ban). The second reason was that many lawmakers believed the games to be a time- and dime-waster for impressionable youth as the machines robbed the "pockets of schoolchildren in the form of nickels and dimes given them as lunch money."

I love pinball machines. My dad often mentions how he used to go down to the local bistro with his school-friends. They would take turns to play while the others would watch. Kind of like a precursor to our video-games.