This is am AMAZING post.
First of all, that whole moving forward pinball thing in PinOut was something that had passed me by in history so now I'm off to hunt it down and I'm fighting the urge to call my old gamedev buddy to do graphics and music while I code my own version. Ouch that looks good.
The Attack from Mars pinball looks awesome, but not as awesome as your breakdown of it all. Holy wow. I'm going to be reading and rereading that for some time, along with getting hold of it ad playing it on PC (I think, rather than phone).
My only potential caveat might just be that if you get the top score and you are limited to three letters only, 'HIV' is open to being misinterpreted. But you knew that right? That was part of the knowing comment? And I just fell into the trap?
But this is stunning content. I could watch the PinOut video on repeat for hours...
RE: Attack from Mars