Tag Archives: pinball

The Road to Pinburgh

Posted on by
1

images

Get ready….

Get set……

REGISTER!

Today may have seen the biggest sign that pinball is back. In under 2 hours 400 people from across the globe signed up for the largest pinball tournament in the world. What took weeks to fill in 2013 filled faster than anyone could imagine. Registration began promptly at 12 noon today and I sat at my keyboard constantly refreshing hoping to land an early spot for nothing more than bragging rights. Glad I signed up when I did, with a server delay that seemed to take forever I was the 135th person signed up. Phew.

Chris and I are both planning our first pilgrimage to the hallowed halls of PAPA this spring. There is certainly no other place in pinball that I want to visit and I think that Chris feels the same way. I’ve been in the hobby about 9 years and this is really the first time that I have felt like I had to get to PAPA. I don’t what it is, could be the history of it rising from the soggy grave from the flood 2004 or getting a chance to see some of the greats donkey kick their way to greatness. There is an allure to PAPA that has a hold of me and this is my year… and I can’t wait.

So here is the deal with Pinburgh, you get to play a LOT of pinball. I don’t exactly know how it works and I am pretty lazy to reading in depth rules but one thing I know is that I am going to get to play a LOT of pinball and possibly some pinball with some of the top players in the world. What I do know is that Pinburgh is set up as a match play tournament. You are placed in either 3 or 4 player groups and you get points for how you finish on each table. You play for 2 days like this and that is used to determine what group you will be playing in and attempting to qualify for. So basically you’re guaranteed two days of competitive play against varying players, not too shabby.

Stay tuned….

National Pinball League

Posted on by
Reply

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.

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Burn Out

Posted on by
1

IMG_6067

I like pinball. At some point there was an infatuation that kept me playing or fixing to the wee hours of the morning. I’d lift the hood to tweak a switch because it seemed just a little too sensitive or worse not sensitive of enough. I’ve collected, restored and played my personal games for over 8 years now and I am frankly burned out. I have a project I can’t stay focused on and I rarely flip my games on unless I have friends over, what happened?

One thing that has been interesting, as I play more socially, is that I have a harder time getting into playing by myself. The hobby for me is now as much about talking and drinking  a beer as it is about playing. I have never been a very social person but now it seems that the hobby I could so selfishly delve into has lost its lonely luster that I could so readily lose myself in. I don’t think this is such a bad thing on a personal level but I’ve always been able to close the doors of my workshop and while away for hours doing the most mundane of task. Those task now just seem mundane.

With all of this being said I must say that the tentacles of this hobby are sticky and it is hard to break away from. The thought of ditching my pins has crossed my mind in the past and the creation of my charity tournaments was born from a need to do something with these social coffins that I had gathered in my basement. Sharing my hobby while raising money for a great cause seemed like a no brainer and has easily become the proudest thing I have done in this hobby. The pile of people that loaded into my basement to play really got me going again and I saw a new direction for my interest in the hobby.

Through the Pin(t)s for Kids tournaments and the RPL I got some of the love back as I found the sharing of my games to be as rewarding as playing them myself. Something about someone hitting a jackpot for the first time takes me back to the first time I lifted the playfield and took in the smell of stale cigarettes and beer that had seasoned my first pinball machine. Now that our second season of league is in full swing I seem to be looking for that smell again. Getting our league going has been great but now I need something new. I need something to re-spark the love I have for the hobby.

Hoping to find some of that love back this weekend as I am attending a semi-local tournament. The great thing about this hobby to me has always been the different aspects of it, whether that be the hunt of a new game or the accomplishment of a full restoration. Competitive play seems to be the avenue I have yet to truly explore. I obviously am playing in a league and have played in a few tournaments but I’ve never considered myself a player. I like to play well but I have the focus of my 3 yr old when it comes to competitive pinball. I have no expectations for this tournament other than to try to stay focused but also to have fun: to not take it too seriously but to not disappointment myself by not giving it my all.

Wish me luck.

 

 

Charlottesville Knockout Tournament

Posted on by
3

image image

On Saturday, Mike O. and I played in a tournament in Charlottesville.  The tournament was held at the Lazy Parrot Backyard BBQ on Pantops Mountain.  A few things about the Lazy Parrott.  The owner is a pinball guy who took part in the tournament.  He usually has four machines at the restaurant.  Also, there are two Lazy Parrots in the same shopping center.  If you go to the Lazy Parrott and there are no pinball machines, you are in the wrong place.  I learned this the hard way when I was in Charlottesville the week before the tournament and went to the Lazy Parrott that is pinball free.

The tournament was played on these machines:  Star Trek the Next Generation, The Getaway, Funhouse, Metallica, Spiderman, Harley-Davidson, Party Zone, Nascar and No Good Gophers.  The tournament was a three strike tournament.  Each player who comes in third or fourth for a round receives a strike.  Once a player finishes in the bottom two of a four person group three times, he is out.

I think I counted a total of 19 players in the tournament.  I had met some of the players from Northern Virginia when a few of us played in the Fairfax Pinball Open last year.  There were some very good players there including the current number seven player in the world, Trent Augenstein.  Most of the players were friendly and welcoming.  The tournament was set up to encourage new players by waiving the entry for anyone who had not previously played in a pinball tournament.  The entry fee was $5 with an optional $20 sidepot for those who wanted to play for a little more money.

Four player groups were drawn at random, put in random order and sent to a random machine.  All this randomness ended up putting me on the machine The Getaway for my first three rounds.  I had seen the machine before and had some idea of the rules, but I had not played this machine prior to the our first round.  I was selected to go first in a group that included Mike O (who went last) and Trent, the current number 7 player in the world.

I struggled in the first round and received my first strike of the day.  One of the highlights of the day was Mike O. stepping up like a boss and taking down the number seven player in the world like it was just another day at the office.  Video to come.  Mike had it won before he even started his third ball.  When Mike finished, he stepped back from the machine and screamed, “That just happened!” in his best Ricky Bobby accent.  I think I was actually more excited about Mike’s win that he was.  Anyone who has met Mike knows he did not scream after winning, but that’s how I remember it.

As I kept grinding on The Getaway through rounds two and three, I finally manage to scrape out a win in round three against two of the Northern Virginia guys.  One of the Northern Virginia guys set the GC on The Getaway with over 300 million points.

My final game was on Star Trek the Next Generation.  I played with Kevin Stone, Justin and Phil.  All very nice guys who were friendly and gave me advice on how to play.  The game was relatively close between the four of us until Kevin and Justin started and scored in a couple of valuable modes.  Kevin was able to start the video mode for which he knew the pattern.  He told me the pattern afterwards and I am going to try to get there one of these days.  That was my fourth strike and booted me out of the tournament.

As the tournament played on, I got in some games on the machines that weren’t in use for the round.  I played games on each machine other than Nascar.  Nascar was in use for a separate high score tournament and was being played most of the time.

The tournament was a very good time and taught me some lessons for future tournaments.  I need to be able to warm up before the tournament starts.  Even if you know a machine pretty well, each machine is set up differently and I need to get a feel for how that machines is playing that day.  I also need a warm up to get the eyes and hands working together well.  I was running late from being out of town with my family and arrived at the tournament with just enough time to play one game of No Good Gophers before the tournament started.

I also need to know the rules of each machine.  As I watched the other players use specific strategies while I flailed around on The Getaway, I knew I should have taken the time to know the rules of the game.  I had played Stark Trek The Next Generation many times on the ipad and that knowledge of the rules and shots made me much more competitive than I was on the Getaway.

Thanks to the organizers for a great tournament.

 

 

Hey Look Waterskiers!

Posted on by
Reply

Fish Tales tutorial by the current PAPA Champion and master of the tutorial, Bowen Kerins.  The bluegrass music seems to make Fish Tales a love it or hate it game.  I love the music and the various callouts.  As Bowen notes in the video, there is so much music and sound in the game that there is a separate music theme that only comes up when you enter your initials for an achievement.

Bowen also refers to the fact that many tournament players don’t try to lock balls for multiball because it so often leads to a drain.  Instead, many tournament players focus on the boat ramp.  Unless you can reach the super jackpot in multiball, there are many easier ways to come up with similar scores.  My favorite quote is “multiball in Fish Tales frequently just flames out with nothing on the board.”

Lots of pinball diehards don’t like video modes where you stop playing pinball and play a video game on the DMD.  Fish Tales has to be an exception to this rule. I challenge you to not enjoy shooting torpedoes at boats and waterskiers.

World Cup Soccer ’94

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_5657

GOOOOAALLLLLLL!!!!!!

The attraction to this game by kids may be why grown ups don’t clamor up to this table but once they play it and figure out how much there is to do and how fun it is you’ll find parents patiently waiting for their kids to finish that “one more game.” Both my daughters love this pin and I don’t blame them a bit.

WCS’94 was designed by arguably the most artistic of famous 90’s B/W designers, John Papuduik. His titles include Cirqus Voltaire, Theater of Magic and Tales of the Arabian Nights, all three of which are aesthetically breathtaking tables. I have played all of his games and have owned CV. I personally think WCS’94 is the best of the tables and only for the theme did it not reach the heights of his other games. Fortunately this lack of interest in the theme has kept the game in the “affordable” bracket for years and has allowed people to stumble upon the game which rarely happens with a title that cost 3-6 thousand dollars. At 1k the game is a steal for what it is and would be my recommended table for anyone wanting to enter the hobby.

My game was routed and is easily in the poorest shape of all my tables having a small  amount of playfield wear by the right flipper. If the wear indicates anything it is the substantiation that this is one of the funnest pins to just walk up to and play. Wear often indicates neglect but in this case I think it simply demonstrates the utter playability of the title.

In WCS’94 the goal is to travel through the host cities until eventually playing Germany in the finals. Shots award ticket stubs that in combination will award the chance to collect travel by hitting the left orbit. Completing the skill shots will light the opportunity to collect three cities so should never be taken lightly. There are ample opportunities to score big on this game and there are several stackable modes that can create huge bonuses so keep that play tight as to not tilt away those 100s of millions to put your game over the top.

My daughters love this game so I keep the settings relatively easy compared to my other tables. Hearing them scream out GOOOOAAALLLLL is one of my favorite moments in the game room. The one issue with my game I need to look into is that it has weak saucer kick outs. I think it is just a matter of swapping in some new coil sleeves but the game plays decently and getting under the hood is my least favorite thing to do. Eventually.

So if you are looking to get into the pin hobby and need a pin with lots of playability that won’t kill your wallet WCS94 would be my first choice. It has certainly created more than one new player in my house, young and old.

IMG_9414

Game play video

Rule sheet

http://www.ipdb.org/rulesheets/2811/WCS.HTM

Monopoly

Posted on by
1

IMG_4834

Monopoly.

I bought this pin because my wife liked it at a pinball party we went to years ago. I am always looking for a table that will bring her to the dark side of pinball and this was my heroic attempt at doing just that, heroic in the sense that I added a table to the lineup that I could claim was a heroic attempt at bringing my wife to the dark side of pinball.

Monopoly was released by Stern Pinball in 2001. The game was designed by Pat Lawlor and of course utilizes one of the most iconic of board games as its theme. Theme integration is done very well as the player makes shots to advance their way around the play field.

The playfield seems very open but there is actually a lot to shoot for with four ramps, 6 pops, several saucers as well as a third rotating min-flipper. I don’t know what it is about this game but I really, really like it. I also think it makes for a great league or tourney table as the shots are very obvious and the game is very “playable” and by that I mean very responsive to nudges and passing. Strategy is pretty straight forward: advance around the board collecting all properties, once all properties are collected the wizard mode will begin which I believe is a timed, similar to the wizard modes in Twilight Zone and Safe Cracker.

I frankly have never sat down and read up on strategy for this game but there are  two MBs, one of which is the train MB which is accomplished by hitting a quick return wire ramp just above the left flipper. This ramp advances along the railroads in the game so after hitting it four times it starts a two ball MB. The main MB is achieved by use of a hard lock. Lock is lit once the player travels around the board game. Depending on the games difficulty both locks are available once the player passes go one time and then the right ramp is available to start the MB. Jackpot shots are accomplished by hitting the side ramp off of the upper right flipper.

Monopoly is certainly not a complicated game and with it’s iconic license it is probably one of the most approachable games in my lineup. There are certainly nuances to the rules that a seasoned player will enjoy exploring but the game is very “beatable” if the goal is to get to the wizard mode. Personally its is all about trying to bang out high scores more so than how “deep” you get into this table. Depth does not always equate to fun and Monopoly is certainly proof of that. Worth a couple of quarters in the wild.

rule sheet

http://www.ipdb.org/rulesheets/4505/monopoly.html