Pinball League in SoCal

Just got back from my first ever league night with the OC Pinball League.

Oh man, is it next month yet so I can go again?

I'll have a few pics up later, as well as how I did once the official scores are posted. In the meantime, I can tell you about how cool this whole thing was. They call 'em monthly league meetings. They take place at one of the member's homes, only requirement being that there must be a minimum of 12 machines to play. It's a different home each month. I had a vague idea of what to expect when I walked in, but then actually seeing it takes the brain a moment to process.

The host's main living room, there was no furniture. It's just pinball machines! You've gotta have a pretty understanding wife to let the main gathering room of your home be nothing but an arcade. All the machines were set to free play. The only thing asked of everyone was they bring some food. Believe me, there was sooooo much food it was ridiculous.

Check out the list of tables available for play...

Addams Family
Creature From The Black Lagoon*
Monster Bash*
High Speed
Earthshaker*
Funhouse*
Cyclone
Black Knight 2000
Buccaneer
Cactus Canyon*
Cirqus Voltaire*
Party Zone
Big Bang Bar*
Attack From Mars*
Elvira and the Party Monsters
Scared Stiff*
Metallica*

* denotes tourney table

I've never played a real BBB, so that alone I was stoked about. A few of the guys that in the league, they own Color DMD, so TAF, AFM, and SS all had color DMD's, something I'd not seen in person before. Way cool.

There were 6 rounds of play, so you didn't play every tourney table available. The whole thing was very well organized, a computer program determined which 4 players were put together and ensured that you never played with any one player more than 3 times. You got points for the group you were with, but then there's also points for how you placed on the table compared to the other 5 groups that played it too. That made it fun to go see how your score from round one was holding up by round 4.

I didn't do great, but I wasn't embarrassed either. My tables were...

AFM - 1st
FH - 3rd
MB - 3rd
ES - 4th (holy hell was that a nasty table! Nobody was scoring well on it)
BBB - 2nd
CC - 2nd

Funhouse and Monster Bash threw me for the biggest loop, as those are 2 I do really well on in TPA. They played completely different than I am used to. For starters, the outlanes on MB were much more forgiving, but the center drains were completely mean. There was zero consistency to what the ball would do when ejected from the scoop, no kind bounces to be had. FH drove me mental with not being able to hit Rudy with the upper flipper, I was always too slow. It would also be rolling the ball around fairly slow and then you'd hit a particular rubber and that ball was suddenly greased lightning! Anyways, my strategies that I normally employ so effectively in TPA did nothing for me.

Cactus Canyon, I did really well on in practice session beforehand, but then couldn't get anything going when it mattered. Only reason I got 2nd was because others were suffering the same problem worse. I think that is the saving grace of the whole night too. You'd be put up against an 'A' group player (the top 10) and they'd suffer a horrible game while you put together a nice little run. I loved their frustration, looking at me the new guy with that look of "who the hell are you to beat me?" Even better, for beating one of them, you get bonus points!

I can't wait to see what machines the other people have. Apparently there's one house they go to, where the guy has over 50, many rare or prototype too. These are all in his 'game' house, with his actual house next door. I mean, c'mon!! So first Sunday of every month, I know what I'm gonna be doing now

Nice job, man! Pretty cool that the tournament lineup was almost all TPA machines.

Want to write up a CC, irl vs TPA, orbit(s) experience ;-)

Did you get into this league because you, now, Own a pinball machine?

AWSOME! Sounds like you had fun and met some knowledgeable pinheads

netizen said:

Want to write up a CC, irl vs TPA, orbit(s) experience ;-)

Did you get into this league because you, now, Own a pinball machine?

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I honestly have barely played any CC, as it only just came out for PS3, and I just haven't played it much.

I didn't get into the league because of owning, yet everyone I talked to did own. Hmmmm? But the head of it said there had been too many members for a while due to an article in the paper a while back (how I first heard of it) and only recently had they started accepting new blood.

Real CC doesn't do that wonky kickouts and as far as I know you cant buy invisible bumpers You just need 11 more machines to host the next one

Well so much for photos. Just checked what I had, they were all completely blurry. That's the problem with a GoPro...it doesn't do well in low light situations

Yeah I have that problem enless I use a tripod. Your the king of blurry photos post them and we'll try to guess what they are

shutyertrap said:

Well so much for photos. Just checked what I had, they were all completely blurry. That's the problem with a GoPro...it doesn't do well in low light situations

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Any POV videos?

Seriously, I work in the camera world of tv and film...no way am I posting blurry photos!

And no, I didn't shoot any video.

Results just got posted, I placed 23rd in the tournament out of I believe 47. I'm in the middle! There's 62 players active for the season, this was the 3rd tournament. I like the website they're keeping, has a bazillion different stats on it!

Grats! See, I told you in #pinballarcadefans you could be top 20 of 40. Right in the middle. And that's where you turned out to finish your first tourney.

Just got the results from this month's OC Pinball League meeting tournament. Out of 39 players, I managed a 10th place finish! Jumped me up in the total standings from 57th to 49th place, for which I have to remind myself I wasn't there for the first 2 meetings of the season.

What really amazes me with this months place is I thought I did terrible. When I look at my scores compared to the average scores on each table, I'm below it. I did manage 2 first place rounds, which normally give you 10 points, but in one of those I managed to beat an 'A' player, so I got an extra point for that! I also never was the last place on any of the tables, so that helped with points too. Maybe next month I won't always be the first player up. Player order is determined by overall rank, so me being a newbie, I wind up first.

So the machines I played for tourney were...

Jack*Bot
Taxi
Super Mario Bros Mushroom Land
Cirqus Voltaire
Lord of the Rings
Monster Bash

I have no clue what I'm doing in LOTR, yet somehow I took 1st in that round. MB was my other 1st, and I barely got that as if it weren't for another player tilting, he would've passed my score with ball end bonuses. CV was my worst placing in the overall field, 21st of 23 players. Here's the other tables that were in the tournament...

World Cup Soccer
Firepower
Star Pool
Captain Fantastic
Fish Tales

And then there were the tables just there for fun...

Black Knight 2000
Pat Hand
AC/DC

Hurray, I finally got to play an AC/DC!! Yes, it was the version with the lower play field (which wasn't all that thrilling when I got to it) and the owner had just put in the ColorDMD screen that eliminated the dots. I'm on the fence about that. Makes text and score look great, but not thrilled with how it makes the animations look. Monster Bash also had ColorDMD, and that was amazing looking. People were standing around just watching all the animations to see what they looked like in color. Really brings that game up to a whole 'nother level. I hope they do CV one day, since it's animations are even more elaborate than MB's.

Good time had, for sure. Fascinating seeing people's placement of games within their houses, and also to see and play games in different conditions than I've seen previously. For example, the Firepower that was there had mylar covering virtually the whole playfield, as opposed to mine which had it only in select spots. I was shocked to see that mine plays faster! I've also noticed between the 2 meetings I've gone to, that while most of the machines are in good condition, none of them are minty fresh restored jobs. I guess you'd call them all 'players quality'. Changes my perspective a little on what I feel 'needs' to be done on my machine. For some reason I had it in my head that anyone who owns a machine must also fully restore each table to factory fresh. Um, no! I'm still gonna go through with my plans, but that's cuz I wanna trade up. I just no longer feel like I'll be judged as a lesser owner if my machine has a broken plastic or chips in the cabinet.

Well, next meeting is Aug 4th, see if I can't move up the ranks once again!

Sounds like you're having a good time! Just keep in mind that pinball is very volatile, you can be flying sky-high one meet and get shot down in flames the next. (Like me, for example: Any performance at all tonight will be an improvement over the big fat goose egg I laid 2 weeks ago.)

I didn't even know you could use a ColorDMD on AC/DC. The company says they're for WPC/WPC95 machines only. And Monster Bash doesn't have full-color ColorDMD ROMs available for it. Was it in single-color mode?

And yeah, 100% pristine machines are nice, but I look at them the same way I look at perfectly-clean desks: Nice to look at, but if I wanted something to look at, I'd buy a painting.

Sean DonCarlos said:

I didn't even know you could use a ColorDMD on AC/DC. The company says they're for WPC/WPC95 machines only. And Monster Bash doesn't have full-color ColorDMD ROMs available for it. Was it in single-color mode?

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See, this is the advantage to playing in the same league the makers of ColorDMD are in! Monster Bash was brand new, thus why everyone was oggling it. It was full glorious color, even more impressive than what they did for Scared Stiff. AC/DC was single color. Looked a lot like what has been seen for Twilight Zone with the smoothed out graphics. I don't know if that was from the ColorDMD guys or if it's another guy in our league doing that version of things. I heard talk while there of someone thinking about tackling TZ in the near future for full color. I'm positive both these displays will be shown at CAX. The Super Mario machine was also going to be going up to CAX and being part of a tourney. Nifty_LED are the guys that own it, and they are gonna have it spitting out tickets that can then be used in a raffle for $50 off an LED purchase. And then one of the other league players just got a Metallica LE, and they're bringing that up for tourney play too.

This is why it boggles my mind that there are no expos for pin in SoCal. Lot of collectors and people working on the electronic end of things down here, so little in the way of public pinball. Why I really hope the Museum of Pinball succeeds, cuz then I have no doubt major tourneys and expos will take place there.

shutyertrap said:

See, this is the advantage to playing in the same league the makers of ColorDMD are in! Monster Bash was brand new, thus why everyone was oggling it. It was full glorious color, even more impressive than what they did for Scared Stiff. AC/DC was single color. Looked a lot like what has been seen for Twilight Zone with the smoothed out graphics. I don't know if that was from the ColorDMD guys or if it's another guy in our league doing that version of things.

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Ah, you saw a beta.

I tried setting my TZ a while back for white, smoothed graphics and didn't care for it. White dots, however, is bloody amazing. The photo in my blog is really not doing it justice.

Congrats SYT! I know once you get FP running you'll hone your skills Sounds like there are enough people in to it down there to organize one WHY NOT? I like the sigma displays on the later games with alot of action on the DMD's it smooths it out. Does the Color DMD work with the DMD extender? THAT would be cool

Holy ****e!

I just got back from my league night this month. You would not believe the setting. I've got pics, I'll post 'em when I have more time, suffice it to say, I thought I was walking into the Venetian in Vegas, not some dude's house! Like I said, I'll let the pics do the talking later. For now, I've got to give you the run down on the machines we had available to us in his home arcade.

ROW 1 (left to right)

Krull
The Shadow
Scared Stiff
Lochness Monster (the last Game Plan machine)
Varkon (pinball in an upright cabinet via mirrors. what a trip!)
Safe Cracker (whitewood prototype)
Revenge From Mars
Tron LE

MIDDLE ROW

World Cup Soccer
Whirlwind
Johnny Mnemonic
The Getaway
Radical (prototype)
Phantom of the Opera
Attack From Mars
Twilight Zone

BACK ROW

Kingpin (you kiddin' me? there's only like 8 in existence!)
Funhouse
Golden Cue
Earthshaker
Medieval Madness
Judge Dredd
Cactus Canyon
Monster Bash

RANDOM LOCATIONS

Joust
Indy 500
Wizard Blocks (whitewood, prototype Pin2000)
Playboy (whitewood, prototype Pin2000)

I put in bold all the tables I got a chance to play. I know that more of the machines were prototype versions than what I listed, but I only knew for sure the ones I marked. I commented to the host how immaculate all his machines were, and he laughed and said it's not quite true. Uh, okay? Anyways, he said a lot of these were HUO machines owned by the designers. I have to wonder how many Pin2000 Wizard Blocks and Playboys are even out in the wild, other than these. Both were VERY far from complete in programming, especially Playboy, but I got a better idea of where Williams was planning on going with Pin2000.

If you're wondering why I didn't get to play the other machines, well it goes like this...once the tourney starts, they turn off any machine that is not a part of it. Not sure the reason for that, but in general the people are easily distracted, so I think it's to help the tourney run faster. So I arrived with my son, who immediately started in a kid's tourney. By the time he finished, the adult tourney was about to start, so I missed out on a few. We left as soon as the tourney was complete, because it was past my son's bedtime and he was pooped. Kids are only invited once a year, so next time I'll get my hands on a few of these others.

I should point out, this wasn't even all the machines available. Apparently there are a few others on other floors, but that was off limits. Did I mention it's a 3 story house used exclusively for entertaining? Yeah, dude bought the house next door to his original house and then spent 8 years turning it into this!

As for the tables I played for tourney, they were...

Earthshaker (scored horribly on it)
Indy 500 (never played before and took 1st in my grouping of 4)
Kingpin (same as above)
World Cup Soccer (took 2nd in grouping, almost 1st)
Radical (took 2nd. Fun machine despite lame theme)
Judge Dredd (holy spectacular flops! I bombed hard hard hard. Really like the table though!)

We'll find out our overall scores in a few days, hopefully I've moved up in ranking again. All I know is, I'm so stoked to have gotten to play so many uber rare machines these past 3 league tourneys. I think the only machine I haven't seen or touched yet that I'm curious about is WoZ...and I know at least one of the league members owns one, so it's only a matter of time.

Pics coming soon...

Sounds more like a museum trip than league night. It's a too good to be true kind of collection. Can't wait to see the pics.

Also please gives us some more gameplay review of the rare pins you played.

as soon as I read Lochness Monster I geeked as hard as you did! AWESOME!

Pics!

Let's start with the view from ground level, looking down into the courtyard.



Followed by the view looking up. Under the columns, that's the arcade.



Here's part of the arcade itself.



In case you're wondering, there were a few video games too. That Sega 'box' you see in the foreground, that's the operator controls for this 360 degrees of motion shooting 'ride'. As for the tables themselves, they all looked gorgeous. Shiny, waxed, properly leveled, properly functioning, not a dog in the bunch.

Did I mention there was a wood burning pizza oven just down the hall?