This is probably one of my worst problems that I'm facing in my entire life. Most of the time, especially during school, I feel as if I'm completely isolated. I don't know if it's the things that I like to do (especially pinball), that I'm just not cool to hang out with, or any other reason that caused me to feel this way. I'm not a mean person; I'm just having trouble finding people to hang out with. (Though, I do feel that it has to do with what I like to do, because I can't find anyone in this school who likes to play pinball or go bowling.) I enjoy being here and on other sites and met a ton of people (well, sort of), but it just doesn't seem to click to me yet. I also have this problem at home. Again, it's like I have no one to...
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I did the math. I was going to finish well no matter how I did tonight. I didn’t go overboard with practicing. I’m still trying to rest up because I know there is more competition right around the corner. I actually mostly played Spiderman. I just can’t get enough of that game right now.
This week’s machines:
Sopranos
Theatre of Magic
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Monster Bash
Upon arriving at the arcade I saw the games for this week. It was the week that everyone voted for their favorites. We knew ahead of time that Monster Bash and Theatre of Magic were going to be played. I was pretty surprised to find out the other two were Sopranos (a game I had a rough time with on week one) and Creature from the Black Lagoon. If you read my...
* It was August 1978. Within shouting distance of September. South Carolina in the summertime is muggy hot, from the time the sun comes up until a rain shower briefly cools everything down. After that, the breath-robbing humidity returns. The night brings only slight relief. I worked second shift, managed to have my schedule end my day at 9:00pm. I hopped in my '66 Plymouth Satellite, *dropped the top, and hustled to spend a couple of hours with NotTheWife before she went to bed. She was a senior in high school, her family had transferred from an air force base in Spain. I was two years out of school, graduated a year early. We made plans for Friday night, it was her birthday. After that, we talked a little less. Later, I tucked her in...
I prepared harder for this week than ever before. I spent around 24 hours in total practicing on Black Knight 2000 and Grand Lizard. I got the #1 score on BK2000 and the #2 score on GL. I felt very ready to put down a good score on both.
This week’s machines:
Haunted House
The Shadow
Grand Lizard
Black Knight 2000
We had taken the previous week off. I spent most of my off week playing and fixing up the Getaway. When it was time to get back to work, I spent a ridiculous amount of time preparing at the arcade. On Monday when we met up, A LOT of people didn’t even show up. That was disappointing. I don’t know if they gave up, or were spending St. Patrick’s Day elsewhere. Regardless, I didn’t want to do well by default.
The good...
I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to write this. Last time I mentioned that there was a thunderstorm on the night of week 7, and that a lot of people didn’t show up. The following week was declared a make-up week. Now that everyone scores have come in, it’s time to jog my memory. I prefer writing these immediately afterward so that I don’t forget anything, but the situation dictated it had to be this way.
This will also serve as an example of the importance of everyone being there and competing on the same night.
This week’s machines:
Scared Stiff
Banzai Run
Terminator 3
NBA Fastbreak
WHO Dunnit?
It was a dark and stormy night.
Sorry, I always wanted to write that, but seriously it was. Only three of us showed up. We waited for...
We were told the machines to practice for this week were Big Buck Hunter Pro and Monster Bash. My initial plan was to take it a little easier this week. I’ve been wearing myself out physically, and I decided that resting was becoming more important than practicing right now. If this was a race, now would be the time to just keep pace. After tonight there would be two weeks remaining. I figured that would be the appropriate time for making the final push.
I had forgotten this was the week Shaneus was coming to town for the Texas Pinball Festival. I told him I’d meet him at the arcade, and on Wednesday night we met up and had a blast. I ended up taking Thursday off of work to hang out and play with him all day. This wasn’t the rest I was...
We were told the two machines to practice this week were Whitewater and Pinbot. After taking Tuesday to rest, I returned on Wednesday night and ended up getting the #1 score on both machines. I did not get the Grand Champion of Whitewater, but my #1 Rafter score was 1.2 billion. I went back a few times, and by the end of the week I was very comfortable competing on those two machines.
This week's machines:
Jackbot
Tommy
Whitewater
Tales of the Arabian Nights
First things first. If you've been reading this blog from the beginning, you may recall that the machine responsible for my decent into total pinball madness was The Getaway. It has been a dream of mine to own one for close to 20 years now. Last weekend I found one about five...
I made sure to practice really hard this week. I didn't want to find myself in the same situation as last week. We were told two of the four games, Star Trek LE and Genie. There's only so much practicing you can do on Genie, but I played A LOT of Star Trek, and I got to a place where I felt very comfortable about playing it this week.
This week's machines:
Elvira and the Party Monsters
Genie
Medieval Madness
Wizard of Oz
Wait... what?
We were given our score cards and told which machines had been chosen. Everyone seemed content, and no one questioned the omission of Star Trek. I thought maybe I had messed up, but I asked the judge and was told Star Trek had a weak right flipper. I wasn't going to let that throw me. Tonight I was...
* * *
* I love to listen to music while I play pinball. Many places that used to have pinball machines also had a juke box, so while I played, I had the advantage of listening. Sometimes, the music wasn't exactly my cup of tea (once played "Lawman" while "Tiny Bubbles" by Don Ho was playing. You can Google it). Other times, the songs were right up my alley. A lot of bowling alleys on military bases had juke boxes with Motown songs by the dozens. Then when rock (decades later "classic rock") became popular, the juke boxes reflected that.
* Now, there are so many options available if one wants to hear music. In less than ten feet from where I play TPA, there are no less than six sources of music: a stereo receiver, CD player, Pandora...
*
* No, I'm not talking about the app.
* (Cue the sitar music...)
* I'm talking about playing half of a table, controlling a flipper, with another person playing the other side. This style, this method, really illustrates just how well we not only play the game, but how we interact with others.
* We think ourselves to be skilled at all aspects of a table, but that's not necessarily true. Not only are people left and right handed, we have a dominate eye. There are several different tests on the Web, if you would like to find your dominate eye. Pinball is physics, motion, energy, force, angles. And your eye helps establish where the ball is at a particular moment in time, by triangulation. Your eye helps you gauge when to hit the ball...
Click here for my High Scores on AndroidTable:Highscore:Wizard goals
Addams Family1.111.608.8404
Attack from Mars109.854.945.3705
Big Shot262.3905
Black Hole19.807.8905
Black Knight4.467.5505
Black Knight 200029.585.7105
Black Rose591.280.4105
Bram Stoker's Dracula2.642.715.5602
Bride of PinBot9.818.816.9505
Cactus Canyon216.762.4805
Centaur6.075.9205
Central Park5.7705
Champion Pub219.011.9803
Cirqus Voltaire156.772.2905
Class of 181259.432.3704
Creature from the Black Lagoon1.056.049.4805
Cue Ball Wizard1.279.144.0205
Cyclone10.632.2105
Diner40.011.6105
Dr. Dude59.967.8705
Earthshaker63.331.8805
El Dorado EM149.1603
El Dorado: City of Gold2.202.8603
Elvira29.057.9205
F-14 Tomcat6.422.1304
Fireball124.7605
Firepower1.737.3505
Fish...
This week the games we were told to practice ahead of time were Scared Stiff and Banzai Run. I got the #1 score on Banzai Run during practice. The furthest I got on Scared Stiff was level 8 of the Stiff-o-Meter. I felt like I was ready.
I got there on Monday night, and only two other people showed up. My girlfriend was feeling sick. As much as she hated to do it, she had to stay home. My buddy #1 and our other friend that's been with our group since week one showed up as well. Basically it was just our normal group minus my girlfriend.
I got there an hour early. By the time 7 o'clock rolled around, it was pouring down rain outside. Since I've been a kid, that's always been my favorite time to be at an arcade, especially raining on a...
We were told the machines to practice for this week were Theatre of Magic and Black Knight. At the end of my last blog I talked about how the #1 ranked guy and I were killing ToM in practice. I ended up with the Grand Champion score. Black Knight was being very difficult and having left flipper spasms. I figured it was all part of playing on an old machine. Like Genie, I thought only a certain amount of practice was in order. Luck was going to be a big factor.
I got an email around 6 am on Saturday morning saying the DMD on Theatre of Magic was broken. Uggh. The replacement machine was Ripley’s Believe It or Not. I was actually okay with that. I decided to spend a few hours before they opened playing and remembering the rules on TPA. I...
* A while back, OmegaDef wrote about in his blog two guys stealing the games he won during a tournament. I made the comment that pinball karma will come back around on them. We've all seen it happen, someone loses a ball, then slam tilts causing everyone to lose the game in progress. For the rest of the evening, that player can't seem to win a game, feeding quarter after quarter into the table like it was a slot machine in Vegas. Or Player Number Three crosses the line from harmless trash-talking to an insult, resulting in SDTM, STDM, left out lane and SDTM.
* It happens in the reverse as well. At an impromptu tournament, you front a friend a couple of tokens, only to find a dollar bill blowing thru the parking lot on the way to your...
On my trip to Pittsburgh last weekend, I had the opportunity to stop by one of the two pinball locations I wanted to go for: Bradish Street Pinball Parlour or Kickback Pinball Cafe. Obviously, I had to choose the latter due to the distance between the hotel and the locations. And I did not expect to have this much fun at a pinball location than ever before with any arcade I visited! It was about 4:00 when I arrived (It was hard to find a parking spot!), so I had an hour to get a few good games in before the owner closed down for the day. Also, since it was my first time playing these games, my scores actually came out pretty decently. Now, onto the games:
Banzai Run: This was officially the first Williams pinball game that I...
It's one of the most frustrating things about pinball. You've recently put up a really solid high score, let's say 200M on the TPA version of FunHouse. Then for the next five games you don't break 50M. So you take a break, come back two days later, play five more games and still don't break 50M. Then you play five more games off-and-on and on your fourth one you hit 100M. But still you wonder: if I can hit 200M, shouldn't 100M be relatively easy? Shouldn't I get at least half my high score at least half the time?
Not at all. If you are, it's a sign your high score probably should be much higher.
Pinball scores are not evenly distributed. Not even close. They actually roughly follow something called the gamma distribution, which means...
My High Scores for TPA (as of Feb 21 2014)
Tales of the Arabian Nights *66,684,070
Creature of the Black Lagoon *168,692,550
Dr. Dude *7,774,760
Scared Stiff *55,817,910
* *(Time Limit Silver Tourney 1/25-2/8/2014: 74,697,740)
Elvira and the Party *Monsters *15,872,580
Firepower *803,740
Funhouse *21,533,220
Genie *508,480
Gorgar *640,920
Harley Davidson *203,245,350
Medieval Madness *67,866,800
* *(Time Limit Silver Tourney 1/25-2/8/2014: 108,853,460)
Monster Bash *267,622,480
No Good Gofers *23,074,210
Ripley's Believe It Or Not *32,132,450
Star Trek: TNG *572,343,980
Taxi *3,809,200
Theatre of Magic *1,240,291,660
* *(Time Limit Silver Tourney 1/25-2/8/2014: 3,903,411,500)
Twilight Zone *426,490,790
Attack From Mars...
Once again, I'm slacking on my coverage of the latest table packs! So it's time to get that fixed. For thoughts on earlier tables in TPA, see Recommended TPA Tables for Beginners and Beyond, More Recommended TPA Tables for Beginners and Beyond (DLC Packs 5 - 7), Even More Recommended TPA Tables for Beginners and Beyond (DLC Packs 8 - 11) and Yet More Recommended TPA Tables for Beginners and Beyond (DLC Packs 12 - 14).
Difficulty is rated by pinballs, 1 being stupid easy and 5 being blood-on-the-cabinet tough.
Champion Pub (5 pinballs): Don't get me wrong, the Pub is a fun table, but it's quite a ballbreaker as well. Death shots galore, even made shots are sometimes punished (the left ramp to the boxer is somewhat ill-behaved). Hell...
This week's machines:
Monopoly
Transformers
The Sopranos
Demolition Man
I arrived at the arcade a little bit early. I was super excited and actually pretty nervous. I couldn't wait to finally do this. I noticed which four machines had been picked, and I was starting to really regret last weekend's "training session", because I'd only ever played Demolition Man a few times and hadn't played any of the others before. We met up and found out there were 10 people competing in the Novice league this season.
I had invited some friends to join, but they all backed out. Except one. My girlfriend. She got into pinball through me. I've been teaching her a lot, and she has gotten really good. We both had been waiting for this.
We were...
I've been playing pinball for a very long time now. It was around 1998 that I met The Getaway at a pizza place I worked at, and it all finally clicked for me. I couldn't stop playing it. My friend Mike and I went at each other's throats competing for Grand Champion. Somewhere along the way, I became very good at pinball. He and I developed tricks that we didn't realize other people knew. The coolest move we "invented", we called the Death Save. It wasn't until recently that I discovered there was a whole world of people who already knew what we knew, and they even used some of the same terms we mistakenly thought we had coined.
See, I always loved pinball, but I never really sought out pinball. If a bar I went to had a random...
