Steve Ritchie live for an hour from the Dutch Pinball open. Steve is famous for his great machines and for being a character. This lecture gives some insight into the current state of Stern Pinball and some teases about what to expect in the future. Steve opens the floor to questions and reveals his least favorite of his games, a good story about Steve Kordek and his favorite pins made by other designers.
With the Flippers Walking Dead release party right around the corner, the Stern Pinball release of a Walking Dead tutorial is timely. Memorize it all and you may walk home with a trophy with a zombie on it.
About six weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a guy named Scott Roberts who I thought wanted to play in the league. He responded and said that he is a student at VCU who was assigned to do a ten minute film on a subculture. He had seen an article in Wired magazine about increased interest in pinball. A google search lead him to this blog and then to me. Taylor hosted a pinball night at his house during which Scott interviewed members of our league. I also told Scott that he should get in touch with Kevin Stone who hosts Pinholics in Northern Virginia. The result of Scott’s hard work is this excellent short film.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVK8SaJUccY
PAPA is back and ready to teach you how to play High Speed.
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.
https://www.facebook.com/sternpinball?fref=nf
The speaker surround looks very cool!
Vonnie D has announced a kickstarter seeking funding for a widebody pinball machine called Pinball Gremlins. Vonnie D is looking to incorporate video game-like modes and bosses that they player will fight against for score and to complete modes. The gremlins will also interact with the game to disable parts and affect play. Based on the announcement, they are pretty far along with a white wood and their own led design. If the kickstarter is funded, Barry Oursler has agreed to design modes for the game.
RVA Pinball 