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A comment on Show HN: Space Invaders in C. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: Space Invaders in C by PhasmaFelis on Friday December 06, 2019 @09:44AM (#21722145)
Interesting! With pinball machines, that was to prevent cheating, since you could change the course of the ball by smacking the cabinet. (Some players consider doing this without triggering the tilt sensor a legitimate part of the game.) Hilariously, Video Pinball on the Atari 2600 supported it specifically: holding the button while you move the joystick nudges the ball around, but if you do it too much you get a TILT message and can't score any more points until you lose the ball.

It seems like a weird sort of reflex action to put a tilt sensor in a video game, though. Maybe they were just worried about frustrated players damaging the equipment?

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Re:Show HN: Space Invaders in C by zzo38computer on Friday December 06, 2019 @04:13PM (#21726043)
Bumping the table is a legitimate part of a pinball game (if you do not hit so hard to damage it).

Those tilt sensitivity is common in computer games, although in some computer pinball games there is no penalty for bumping the table too much.

(Of course, Space Invaders is not a pinball game and so physically attacking it is not legitimate.)

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Re:Show HN: Space Invaders in C by dullroar on Friday December 06, 2019 @04:33PM (#21726195)
Space Cadet on the old versions of Windows supported bumping, too. You could avoid tilt by alternating which side you bumped. Two in a row from the same side would tilt, but alternating sides never did (for me).
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Re:Show HN: Space Invaders in C by ouid on Friday December 06, 2019 @11:23AM (#21723207)
It is a legitimate part of the game!
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Re:Show HN: Space Invaders in C by vidarh on Friday December 06, 2019 @10:46AM (#21722780)
Supporting "tilt" was fairly common on home computer pinball games.
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Re:Show HN: Space Invaders in C by reificator on Friday December 06, 2019 @03:15PM (#21725546)
I'm firmly in the no-tilt camp, and it's very frustrating that all the pinball games out on Switch right now have no option to disable the tilt controls.

Brush up against the analog stick? Sorry, TILT.

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Re:Show HN: Space Invaders in C by crtlaltdel on Friday December 06, 2019 @10:36AM (#21722664)
I can’t believe I played so much video pinball without knowing that trick!
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