Author Archives: cbooberg

Modern Pinball NYC

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A couple of weeks ago, I was in New York City and had a chance to check out Modern Pinball NYC.  You can find them online at modernpinballnyc.com.  It is an incredible place for pinball.  I have never been to a pinball location that has as many excellent titles that are maintained the way Modern Pinball NYC maintains them.  Every game I played was error free, played very fast and was in excellent condition.  Modern Pinball charges on an hourly basis with all the machines set on free play.  I think the hour I played was around $10 which probably less than I would have spent on coin drops.  

When I go to a place like modern pinball, I usually have a few titles that I want to play to get an opinion about and I also end up playing machines I already own. I end up playing the machines that I already own because I want to see whether or not my machines compare to machines that are in tip top shape.  I quickly realized that my Whirlwind flippers were not up to par.  The upper flipper shot on my machine has always required a perfect shot because there is not much flipper power.  When I made the upper flipper shot much more easily on the Whirlwind at Modern Pinball NYC, I knew I had some work to do.  I ordered flipper rebuild kits that night and rebuilt the flippers.  The machine is much more fun to play with the more powerful and more responsive flippers.

I played Iron Man and was convinced that my Iron Man holds up pretty well against a well tuned machine.   I played Fish Tales and I think my Fish Tales compares pretty well in terms of flipper power and speed of play.  However, the playfield seemed faster due to a good waxing.  

When I went in, I recognized the guy who was working behind the desk as Alberto Santana.  I knew him from a youtube video where he plays a Johnny Mnemonic in an arcade.  I had heard that Modern Pinball was staffed by high level players and had seen posts on Facebook of them with customers and providing tips and strategies.  When I went in, he was busy and I didn’t want to bother him.  As I left, he stopped me and my wife and wanted to know where we were from and how we had heard about Modern Pinball NYC.  We had a interesting discussion about the machines and PAPA and tournament play.  He reminded me to sign up for PAPA on the day it opens up because it can fill  up fast.  He also told me that Modern Pinball NYC works hard to wax the machines and make sure that everything is working smoothly to make them as fast as possible.  Alberto told me that their goal is to have all the best arcade in america with public play machines that play like tournament machines.  

Flip This a Big Success

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Taylor did a fantastic job with the first IFPA sanctioned tournament in the bunker.  Thanks for the hard work and planning that made the tournament go so smoothly.

Please send photos or video that you have from the tournament so we can add it to a longer post later.

For now, I am going to repeat the Facebook posting of the man who took home both trophies.  From Chris Newsom:

Not only does Taylor have pin skills and obvious restoration skills, but he throws one heckuva tournament!  Flip This ran silky smooth like a Scared Stiff ramp.  The games were not only all lovely to look at, but they also played fantastic. The custom plaques are way cool and will be given a prominent place on the wall next to last year’s Pinsanity plaque. I got there so late, I was not sure that I would even be able to play the main tournament, but Taylor Reese was gracious and let me play starting in the second round. I really enjoyed hanging with Taylor, Chris Booberg and other Richmond area pinball players.  It is great to know that there is a thriving pin community just one city to the right of my home.  I certainly look forward to getting together with you all in the near future.  …I think that we can really get competitive pinball (and hopefully location pinball) going in central VA.
Again, thanks Taylor for a fun filled evening and for being such a perfect host.  It was really a treat to meet other VA pinball people and to play your beautiful games!
WOZ 1.24 looks quite promising – Taylor, I attribute it’s release to your many reminders to JJP that WOZ code needed to be updated.

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National Pinball League

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In looking around the app store, I found a tournament app by the National Pinball League.  I checked the site at nationalpinball.com.  National Pinball League is a group dedicated to supporting competitive pinball.  They certify locations and hold sanctioned tournaments.  Their calendar currently does not list any upcoming tournaments.  I have registered as a member and will post about any upcoming events.

One of the certified locations is The Pinball Gallery in Downington, PA.  I visited The Pinball Gallery in 2012 when I was working in Philadelphia.  It is about a half hour drive from Philadelphia and can also be reached by train from Philadelphia.  When I was there, all of the machines were in great shape and played without any problems.  When I was there, they had 14 or 16 machines.  I spent an afternoon there and had a great time.  They had a mix of newer Sterns and 90s, 80s and 70s Bally and Williams titles.

Magfest – Blog Post Bump – Less Than One Month Away

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Magfest stands for music and gaming fest.  It is held at a huge hotel in the National Harbor which is just across the bridge as you cross the bridge from Virginia into Maryland just past DC.  The music part of the feet is chiptunes, music from games and bands that play music from games.  There are usually performances by musicians who compose videogame music.  There are also screenings of videogame related movies as well as panels by players and designers.  Many people attend in cosplay costumes and there are cosplay contests.  

The main attraction for me is the main hall which has 80 or 90 arcade machines (maybe more) and 10 or 15 pinball machines which are all set to free play.  There are also dozens of console games and tvs set up for console gaming.  There is a LAN section where people bring computers to set up LAN games.  There are also table games and spaces to play games with figures like Warhammer.

The other side of the main hall has a vendor area where people sell games, comic books, t-shirts and lots of other cool things.

i already have reservations to attend for the third year in a row.  It is a fun chance to play lots of pinball and video games and spend time witb a bunch of people who love videogames and pinball.

Tales from the Creature!

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Creature is back home at my place, so it won’t be at Taylor’s next time. The gaping hole should further expedite Dr Who getting finished and put in place, for all of our playing pleasure.
 
I actually had the best game I’ve ever had on CFTBL two days ago. The funny thing was I was holding my 16 month old girl in my right arm, while she had one foot on the pin and her back pressed against the wall. Unfortunately, she was over it by the time I was on my second extra ball. So before I launched it, I took her upstairs to be with mom. She wasn’t having that either, as she must of wanted to see how the rest of the game would play out. I brought her back down, picked her up and launched the last ball. It drained right down the middle in about 5 seconds. Oh well. She likes dancing to the music at the end. That’s worth leaving TSR (taylor) and HBM (hugh) up there for a little bit longer
 
But I did find my good luck charm and from now on at league play, if ya’ll don’t mind, I’ll have my daughter strategically placed under my right arm during all game play.
 
Eh, probably not.
 
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. See ya in December!

Thoughts from Jar-Jar (Raven) on His New Purchase

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Raven is a moped game.  Fun to play, but a little embarrassing.  I failed to mention buying it for a few days, just because it isn’t that exciting.  I am enjoying practicing my ball control.  Hopefully, my league play improves.

Since, I held out on announcing my acquisition, Taylor has threatened me with a new nickname, “Raven”.  While I appreciate the indignation at my reticence on this issue, it’s hard to threaten a guy whose nickname is already “Jar-Jar”. 😉
 

Once I finish this section of the basement, I hope to put in a few more machines.  I want one nice 70s machine and a few newer more exiting titles.  

Little historical note: It was the first machine to have a photo for a back glass.  There are not a lot of machines with photos, because it is a terrible idea 😉

 

League Night 12/10/13 and Flip This Tourney 12/14

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The next league night will be in the Boocade on 12/10/13.  This is a change from the usual back and forth rotation to give Taylor time to get his machines ready for the Flip This Tournament that he is holding on 12/14/13.  We will start warmups at 7:30 and start league play at 9:00 sharp.  Joe has promised baked goods that will bring you to tears. Don’t miss it!

Damnit Jim I’m a Doctor not a pinball wizard!

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I haven’t had a chance to play one yet, but the new Star Trek pinball looks like a deep game with lots of different shots and a great light show. Bowen Kerins did a live tutorial on it which can be accessed through the papa.org site.  As usual, he does a very good job of explaining the rules, the shots and his thoughts regarding strategy.

As the youtube video above shows, Karl Urban, who played Bones McCoy in the two JJ Abrams Star Trek films, has agreed to do custom speech for the new Star Trek pinball.  If you have played STTNG, you know that there is lots of custom speech in the game that sounds like it was done by the original actors and is well integrated into the game.  It is a significant improvement when Stern can integrate the real actors voices into the game. The voice actors in the Avengers sound like someone in a SNL skit making fun of the Avengers.  It is distracting and detracts from the feeling that you are experiencing the Avengers while playing the game.  I have read that voice actors were used in The Hobbit because one of the movie actors wanted $100,000 to record custom lines for the machine.

The great thing about Urban is that he is a pinball collector and, according to Steve Ritchie, is a good player.  It sounds like this had lead him to be personally interested in recording custom speech for the Star Trek machine.  Ritchie has said that they have lots of lines ready for him and expect that he will ad lib a few too.  Did you notice he looks like he is wearing a loaded holster in the video?

Yesterday, I listened to the Spooky Pinball podcast for December which features interviews of Stern employees at the Stern factory.  Steve Ritchie, the designer of STTNG and Star Trek, had some interesting insights into licenses and designing pinball machines. He admitted that he has been forced to do some licenses that we was not excited about doing.  He didn’t mention it in the interview, but I have read that he did not want to do the Elvis pinball.  I think most people agree that it is not a great machine and this is probably due in part to the designer not being excited about the license.  Ritchie stated that he now has an understanding with Stern that he has to agree to work on the licenses that are presented to him.

Ritchie revealed that he is a life long trekie and said that he watched the original episodes with his friends instead of watching the westerns that were shown on Saturday night.  He also said that Star Trek was a hard license to work on because they were not given much information.  There was a fight over the colors to be used on the machine (which Stern won) and Stern was initially given very little information to work with in designing the machine.  Ritchie said that Stern has now changed its approach and will have face to face meetings early on with a representative of the license to make sure that they get the cooperation they need in order to make the best pinball machine for the license.

This is a good policy change by Stern as they have missed some license requirements in the past due.  The targets on Iron Man were designed to read Iron on one set and Man on the other.  When Stern showed the machine to the license holder (Marvel?), they pointed out that the license requires that the words Iron and Man not be displayed separately.  As a result, the factory targets have small outlines of Iron Man instead of the letters.  My machine and many others have the aftermarket Iron Man letter stickers installed to reflect the intended design for the machine.

After some bad results with failure to follow up on code and quality control issues, Stern seems to be doing well with Star Trek, Metallica and AC/DC.  We will have to wait and see whether the code will be fully implemented in the three machines (Metallica has the most shallow code of the three), but from a design and quality control stand point, it looks like Stern has made real improvement.