Tilt: The Battle To Save Pinball (2006)
Solid Entertainment

Description

In 1998 pinball was dying, thanks to a saturated market and shrinking player base. Williams, the world's largest pinball manufacturer, prepared to abandon the game that had made it a legend in favor of the more lucrative video slot machine business. "TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball" is an hour-long documentary that tells the story of Pinball 2000, a mind-blowing attempt at resuscitating pinball that failed just at the moment many people thought it might succeed. A "Soul of a New Machine" for the pinball world, "TILT" is a compendium of interviews with legends of the pinball industry, photos, and film of the best games the industry has produced.

Tags

Pinball

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Amazon user reviews

Absolutlely fascinating documentary about the Pinball 2000 Williams pinball machine. By no means essential that you are 'into' pinball to enjoy it either.
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9.6 DVD Verdict | Ian Visser

Fans of pinball will find Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball to be more than just a documentary: it stands as a love letter to both the game and its creators.
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8.8 Fulvue Drive-in | Nicholas Sheffo

More than just another documentary work, it shows a great world of creativity, innovation, fun, heart and soul that deserves and needs to rise again.
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8.0 PopMatters.com | Greg Maletic

Whereas other video game documentaries like The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters explore the subcultures surrounding a game’s popular use, Tilt dives into the industrial and economic tensions governing the machine’s production. That’s not to say that the film lacks personality, quite the opposite.
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8.0 DVD Talk | Brian Orndorf

Tilt is a wonderful, all-too-brief journey of the unsung jewel of arcade culture, and yet another delightful homegrown documentary feature this year that puts its more sophisticated brothers to shame.
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7.0 IGN.com | James Musgrove

TILT manages to avoid the pratfalls of other niche-themed documentaries and doesn't resort to putting the blame off on anyone, be they George Lucas, Pinball-competitor Sega Pinball or anyone else, leaving us with a sense that this was maybe just the way things were meant to go.
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