Overview

• Dave Plummer explains he wrote a wrapper engine during the Windows NT port that rendered frames as fast as possible.
• On a 200 MHz MIPS R4000 development machine, the game ran at roughly 60–90 FPS, so the flaw was not obvious.
• As faster, multi-core PCs arrived, Pinball could use an entire core and render at extreme rates reportedly around 5,000 FPS.
• Raymond Chen identified the missing limiter and set a 100 FPS cap using debug tooling, cutting CPU usage to about one percent.
• Plummer and Chen shared the retrospective on Plummer’s YouTube channels this week, with outlets framing it as a lesson in legacy code and Windows engineering culture.