Heighway Pinball had a busy expo showing off what looks like a very fast playing Full Throttle machine. They also announced that their next title, which can be swapped into their cabinet like Pinball 2000, is Aliens.
With the Flippers tournament coming up and no Walking Dead machine nearby to pump quarters into, this tutorial may be the best thing we have to figure out what the heck is going on.
Taylor and I had a chance to play it at the York show. The shots are pretty familiar and I remember a couple of tight shots on the right on the sides of the ramps. It seems like it takes a long time for the ball to get all the way around the ramps and back to the Flippers. It will feel pretty familiar to anyone who is familiar with modern Stern machines.
League night no. 2 is in the books. Some good scoring and good competitive games.
We had a couple of technical issues last night. On WOZ, the slingshot was registering which prevented people from scoring the skill shot. The problem was discovered after a few people had played their first ball. We decided to fix the issue and re-start the games for that group.
There was a second issue with Monopoly that was not discovered until everyone in the group had finished playing their games. The upper saucer was not registering or possibly registering intermittently. Since that problem was discovered after the games were complete, we decided to give the players in that group the choice of keeping their current score or replaying the game.
We try to make the rulings fair to everyone and I think we got it right this time.
Any suggestions on how to handle these issues in the future are welcome.
This is an interview with JPOP who runs the Zidware studio. He is currently working on two small run pinball machines Magic Girl and Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. Both machines are well overdue and this interview helps to explain the reasons. The main reason is Jpop’s well known obsession with perfection. This has lead many to speculate that the artist in him will never be satisfied and he will never end up releasing a game.
It sounds like he is planning to answer the critics at pinball expo which is coming up in October. He is no longer allowing owners to visit his studio as he wants them to wait to see what he is going to offer at expo along with everyone else.
Dutch Pinball has released another slick video for Big Lebowski. This one contains a cabinet mock up showing some good looking cabinet art and what looks like an LCD in the backbox displaying a clip from the movie.
Tiltwarning is a group that works with artists to create custom re-themed pinball machines. In looking at their website this morning, I noticed that they were responsible for the machine Freak Out. This machine has striking art that made it stand out among the many, many machines in the PAPA facility. Taylor played it during his round at Pinburgh this year and I don’t think he walked away happy with his outing. Take a look through the site at the incredible art on their machines.
Big Juicy Melons was an EM re-theme which was done by Dennis Nordman and Greg Freres. In response to a recent a pinside.com post asking about buying a completed machine, Dennis Nordman post the following including a hint about a long-rumored production run of Big Juicy Melons.
Behind the melons are a couple of boobs named Greg and Dennis!
I’ve been reading through the recent WNBJM thread and realized that there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings concerning the game. I’d like to address these issues and answer any other questions people may have. Greg Freres and I set out to build one custom game. We had no programmers, no sound designers, no mechanical engineers, and no hardware designers. We’re just a game designer and an artist with a passion for pinball who wanted to do something unique. We decided to retheme a Continental Café because I had one that needed work and had a broken backglass. We combined our interests in old fruit crate art with ‘50s pinup art (and farming!) and created a unique cabinet and art concept for the game. It was going to be a one-off work of pinball art. Using the parts and rules from CC, I designed a completely new playfield. This is not just a “reskinning” of CC. We changed it from a 2 player to a one player, eliminated two “Gobble Holes” and moved everything around. The game now has a shot back to the top which most EMs of that era don’t have. It also has two shots back to the pop bumpers. It also now has return lanes to the flippers which EMs of the era didn’t have. Kerry Imming saw our functioning whitewood and said he could build a solid state system to run the game. At that point we realized it would be feasible to build more games. We found 3 more Continental Café games to use as donors for 3 solid state games. We built ONE EM version of the game. There are a few more EM versions built by fans that now exist. We built THREE solid state versions using Kerry’s hardware. The playfield is screened playfield wood with a hardcoat. We think the SS versions are much more fun to play. The rules are slightly deeper and there is great music by Speedy West in the game and also some unique sounds. The game plays much faster and snappier than the EM version. There is great pop bumper action and the flippers are powerful. This game is a perfect example of two classic pinball design guidelines; One, “The ball is wild” meaning lots of randomness in ball action. Two, “Easy to understand but difficult to master.” If you can score over 2000 on a three ball game, you’re doing good. The highest score we’ve seen is around 7500. Here’s my analogy comparing WNBJM to modern games: Today’s pinball games are like formula one race cars, the top of the line, fastest, most highly developed cars in the world. There are very few drivers who can handle these kinds of cars. They all learned on much simpler, more basic cars, usually go karts. Experienced pinball players have grown up with simple pinball games and have learned to handle today’s more complex games. New and inexperienced players are intimidated by these games and don’t know what they are supposed to do. WNBJM is like the go kart. EVERYONE can have fun playing it because it is easy to understand. It’s just plain, simple fun. Its design “levels the playing field” for all skill levels of players. We think it will be a great bar game.
Pinball machines are works of art designed and styled to catch your eye and make you reach for a quarter. In spite of all this styling, the instruction cards in the apron are usually black and white or yellow and white. People looking for something more interesting have created custom apron cards for almost all machines. Some of the most interesting cards can be found at pinballcards.com. These re so well doe that they are worth a look even if you don’t need an apron card.
Jersey Jack Pinball has released playfield art for The Hobbit which will be the second JJP machine. You can see a large scale photo of the art work here.
It is always hard to judge playfield art without seeing it on a populated playfield. That said, I don’t like it as much as WOZ, but that is probably because the WOZ theme lends itself to bright colors. The Hobbit has a more muted color scheme to correspond with the theme.
The guys at Dutch Pinball have produced a kit that turns Bride of Pinbot from an alphanumeric game to a dmd game with many awesome rule changes.
They are also creating a pinball machine based on The Big Lebowski. This is a very cool theme and if this video is any indication, they are going to do some very cool things with this theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFgqaPnVzj0&feature=youtu.be