Pinball Machines are Fun to Play—But it’s Not so Fun to Watch Pinball fanatics need no convincing that the game they know and love is just as exciting as modern video games with elaborate graphics and complex game play. To the spectator, however, there are far more things more exciting than watching a couple of silver balls bounce around inside a glass enclosure. Pinball is not that fun to watch for most people, despite flashing pinball machine lights and stimulating sound effects. This is what the guys at Perficient Digital Labs wanted to change with their Project Supernova. They wanted to make an 80s Williams Firepower pinball machine more relevant in today’s video game saturated, Xbox world—and they successfully achieved this after intensive modifications and additions to the classic game. Exactly how do you make a mechanical game like Williams Firepower pinball more engaging for spectators? The idea behind Perficient Digital Labs’ Project Supernova is basically to physically expand the game’s interaction experience beyond the playfield by projecting a graphical representation of what’s happening inside the pinball glass enclosure onto the game room’s walls. The goal of the project was to make pinball fun for everyone—not just for the player. Pinball machines are mainly about two things: Design and engineering. Machines that attract and keep the most users and customers engaged with the help of exciting game play and good art are the ones that stay on the arcade floor the longest and end up in collectors’ game rooms the most. Project Supernova found a way to create a game that stayed true to these principles while enhancing the entire gaming experience so that spectators will have a way to visualize what players are likely experiencing as they immerse themselves in the game. What Perficient Digital Labs did was to re-imagine the story of the classic Firepower game and tell it with the help of modern tools. They took inspiration from the machines backglass artwork, arriving at a storyline, which consisted of three scenes, namely a cityscape, a flight scene, and a wormhole. They successfully created a stimulating visual journey that complimented the game balls in the most exciting way. While not everyone has the skills (or the budget and tools) that Perficient Digital Labs have, LED bulbs for pinball machines along with other modification kits are always available online and through specialized stores and suppliers. These mod kits can help you create just as exciting a game play experience, albeit without the elaborate visual effects, with the right amount of creativity and imagination.