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Scores moved over here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vXF-KIkEEeWykWVZ87wgLqZ0ORfLi92VVcte3GD6WVA Pinball Arcade Tales/Arabian Nights 692,237,790 Ripley's Believe It Or Not 958,418,820 Black Hole 6,299,250 Theatre of Magic 11,153,941,290 Bride of Pin*Bot 8,932,675,970 Medieval Madness 1,802,901,010 Cirqus Voltaire 384,610,780 FunHouse 192,524,070 Monster Bash 4,845,818,340 Gorgar 1,504,740 Creature/Black Lagoon 23,602,044,510 Black Knight 11,885,270 Harley Davidson Stern 908,245,340 Taxi 31,110,370 Elvira/Party Monsters 115,523,330 No Good Gofers 695,682,120 Scared Stiff 774,288,640 Big Shot 411,510 Twilight Zone 7,030,979,970 Star Trek: Next Generation 59,101,973,090 Attack From Mars...

The weight loss: So, after being over weight for quite a number of years I decided in may that it was time to actually do something about it. I joined a Swedish weight loss and excercise establishment called Itrim which focuses on fast weight loss in the beginning and then changing your behaviour to make this loss permanent. I was a bit sceptical to begin with, but a friend of mine who joined them lost 25kg (55 Pounds) )in 8 weeks so at least I had some evidence that this could work. So I signed up and for the last 11 weeks have been eating nothing but meal replacements, drinking only water, carbonated water and coffe. The challenge is purely a mental one, eating 4 meals a day at a total of 800 calories while other people drink beer...

Agony is draining on AC/DC with a 3X song jackpot worth 300 million points lit on the cannon. (For reference, the factory default replay score on AC/DC is 20 million.) Lyman, I know why you made the song jackpot reset each ball, and I agree it had to be done to keep the scoring under control...but I really, really hate that decision right now. Maybe in a future version of the code we could get something like completing the red horns shots 5 times awards Hold Song Jackpot Value?

...is no more! After two previously unsuccessful attempts to complete "Destroy the Ring" on Lord of the Rings were thwarted on the final shot by airballs off the Palantir target (as recounted in Destroy the...GOD @#$%! IT!), I'm happy to report that the Ring was thrown into the Crack of Doom last night, after 2 minutes and 35 seconds of extreme nervousness on my part. (Yes, that's an inordinately long time for a mode that requires only 6 shots, none of them timed.) By the way, CP Pinball's LOTR has the outlanes fully open...and no ball saver whatsoever...

Well, another league season in the can. Numerically, this did not turn out so well: 14th of 22. However, I'm actually more satisfied with my play than I was in my first two seasons. How can this be? There are 7 groups in our league. Win your group one week and you move up a group, lose and you drop a group. The last two seasons I was all over the board - sometimes in the bottom group even. This season I never dropped below the 4th group - that is to say, I've always been playing at least the "average" group, and often a higher one. So I've been doing slightly worse points-wise, but I've been doing it against stronger competition than before...and more consistently, despite that horribly embarrassing zero a few weeks ago. My shot...

While I hope the T2 kickstarter will succeed, and have every reason to believe it will despite that a**hole faux $9500 backer toying with our emotions, is anyone else going to be really, really happy to resume a normal life when this is over?

I've been silent for a while, but I have nothing really newsworthy in the pinball field to offer. So instead, one of my favorite summer drink recipes, for those of legal age: Damn the Weather 1-1/3 parts good gin (I use Bombay Sapphire, but your preference of quality gin will do just fine) 1 part sweet vermouth 1 part Campari 2/3 part Grand Marnier (if no Grand Marnier is at hand: Cointreau. If you're really in barbaric lands, 1/2 part triple sec as a last resort.) Vigorously stir together first three ingredients with ice until well-chilled. Strain into a chilled large martini glass and float Grand Marnier on top. Garnish with orange and/or lemon. Note for male drinkers: This drink looks a lot like a Cosmopolitan when in a martini...

Click here for my High Scores on PC Table:Highscore:Wizard goals Addams Family501.605.6603 Attack from Mars18.599.099.6002 Big Shot96.3204 Black Hole1.278.4305 Black Knight1.810.9003 Black Knight 200010.467.1704 Black Rose354.488.3703 Bram Stoker's Dracula2.903.689.5602 Bride of PinBot1.252.995.8205 Cactus Canyon141.046.1804 Centaur7.785.5505 Central Park5.6964 Champion Pub113.461.1902 Cirqus Voltaire91.268.2603 Class of 181244.798.7401 Creature from the Black Lagoon724.313.4303 Cue Ball Wizard342.755.4902 Cyclone7.346.0202 Diner21.929.2403 Dr. Dude22.336.0104 Earthshaker18.775.4105 El Dorado EM0 El Dorado: City of Gold1.620.6401 Elvira18.411.8605 F-14 Tomcat0 Fireball0 Firepower931.8305 Fish Tales27.278.8401 Flight 20002.780.7205 Fun...

Yesterday after filling out many job applications, I decided to unwind by going to Rossi's in San Marcos to check out their Creature from the Black Lagoon table. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have a nice little arcade in there including a very nice air hockey table, many retro games and even a TMNT 4 player machine. Back to the main subject--I eventually found the table and first off noticed that it's a 5 ball table which I did like. Spent about $2.50 on it total. Also noticed that it had a dollar bill feeder, so ended up using that a couple times. The table's artwork looks it has been well maintained and after I got FILM lit I saw the movie reels light up. When I got to the Creature Multiball, I was happy to see the...

Howdy Forum Fans, The reason I call this entry "Stranger in a Strange Land" is because I never went out to discover pinball here in Portland. I've lived here for 14 years and the only machines I played were at the bowling alley I bowl at. The first 8 years here in Portland were spent with a mate who did not really like pinball. They loved bowling, but no pinball. After constantly playing pinball from 1973-1998, I can't believe I stopped playing pinball. Then again, my mate was pretty persistent and it was easier to do what they wanted instead of what I wanted. After my mate passed in 2006, I never really thought that Portland was that big of a pinball city. All the places that me and my mate went, there were no pinball...

That's the sound of me scoring 0 points in league last night, mostly due to Mystic not even letting me touch the ball, and Tommy and I continuing to have violent disagreements over what constitutes a mirror shot. On the other hand, my AC/DC and I are getting along just fine...345M so far.

As promised, the pair of machines in my living room. Note the white DMD on Twilight Zone...I might not even convert to multicolor once ColorDMD releases the ROM for TZ; the white is just too perfect. And yes, the AC/DC's DMD is the standard red and not orange...I think my phone's red-eye reduction feature is to blame for that. In other news, I've already lost the left ramp flasher and two lower playfield G.I. LEDs on the AC/DC. I'm guessing they came loose in the shipping misadventures. Between that and TZ's remaining mystery strobing inserts, it seems the pinball gods do not want me to have properly lit machines! I think I better lose my case of perfectionism quickly...everyone keeps telling me it's almost impossible to keep these...

I've had an absolute blast playing these tables on my iPad. The touch screen gives it the more authentic feel for me when I play. Yes, I'm really that much of a pinhead. ;p Anyways, here we go. These are in the order that the app brought them up to me. Most of these are on the FarSight Leaderboards. The only ones that aren't are Twilight Zone and Attack from Mars for which I have picture proof on both. It's easy to take screenshots on any Apple device. Just press your Home and Power buttons at the same time and you'll see the screen flash for a second. Check your photos and it's there. :) I did have 515 million on No Good Gofers two tournaments ago, but can't remember the rest, so this score I got yesterday will do just fine. I'll be...

Decided to have another pinball day today. Met with a friend of mine then made my way to Surf Bowl for Red & Ted's Road Show. Reminds me of Funhouse with a construction/demolition theme to it along w/two heads as opposed to Rudy. I had seen it before, but it's been a long time. Worked pretty well for the most part with exception of the ball getting stuck in the left inlane and an issue I'll mention shortly. Gotta admit the rumbling from the blasts were unexpected, but made the game lots of fun. Spent $4 on the machine before the ball ended up getting stuck in the Flying Rocks portion after getting the 25 million bonus from the left plunger. After that, the machine couldn't find it and that was pretty much that. Made my way to the...

These are the highest scores I have obtained during league play on real machines. All are set to 4-ball play (5 ball in the case of EMs, 3 ball on R&B(!?)) and extra balls are off. Addams Family 43,014,880 Alien Poker 868,340 Attack From Mars 4,715,532,270 Avengers 3,405,480 Banzai Run 777,490 Black Knight 2000 769,290 Black Rose 29,200,000 Centaur 1,377,430 Cirqus Voltaire 17,031,130 Creature 125,838,690 Cow Poke 1,940 Defender 1,065,710 Demolition Man 986,725,100 Dr. Dude 711,700 Elvis 13,777,740 F-14 Tomcat 1,330,900 Fish Tales 58,640,830 Flash 104,270 Fun House 3,479,350 Getaway HS2 56,888,930 Hurricane 13,047,250 Indy 500 254,912,920 Jack...

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) and Even More Recommended TPA Tables for Beginners and Beyond (DLC Packs 8 - 11). Difficulty is rated by pinballs, 1 being stupid easy and 5 being blood-on-the-cabinet tough. Cactus Canyon (3.5 pinballs): The real machine is somewhat unfinished, as its production was halted in favor of the Pinball 2000 machines. However, enough of it made it in to be a quite playable experience. It has a vaguely AFM-ish feel, what with the Gold Mine being about where AFM's lock is, Stampede...

So the shipping company, who shall remain nameless, that was supposed to get my AC/DC machine to me last week discovered that it was unable to get a 18-wheeler to my house. Seriously, in this day and age with GPS and Google Maps and what have you, no one thought to look up my address and think "oh, he lives on a circle, perhaps we should use a smaller truck"? After rejecting their attempt to deliver the machine to some other location and leaving me to finish their job, the machine is now on its way to one of their "partners" in St Louis so that they can deliver it...and I get to wait another 3 days for a machine that is less than 50 miles away. :mad:

Just a quick note to clear up a minor mystery in the AC/DC strategy thread, when I said testing was about to become easier. Yes, my TZ will soon have someone to talk to while I'm at work: a new-in-box AC/DC Premium! This will also give me something to play while the TZ is getting an electrical overhaul, as resolving the last few blinking light issues looks like it's going to require more advanced surgery than the first half needed. I was torn between this and LOTR, but eventually I decided I'd rather have one stop-and-go game (Twilight Zone) and one fast, flowy game (AC/DC). LOTR has a little flow with the Ring combos and such, but when played correctly it's very much a stop-and-go game in the same mold as TZ. Two such games and...

As of 20131031, on iOS: Attack from Mars : 70,708,628,990 Big Shot: 239,140 Black Hole: 6,976,930* Black Knight: 6,087,240 Bride of Pin*Bot: 7,651,912,820 Cactus Canyon: 407,417,710 Centaur: 28,820,080 Central Park: 6,707 Champion Pub: 340,149,490 Cirqus Voltaire: 245,913,390 Class of 1812: 54,693,680 Creature: 3,536,084,610 Dr. Dude: 32,415,980 Elvira: 32,525,130 Firepower: 1,361,300 Flight 2000: 6,101,790 Funhouse: 262,697,330 Genie: 1,495,480 Goin' Nuts: 5,863,180 Gorgar: 1,252,280 Harley Davidson: 734,414,800 Haunted House: 1,837,470 Medieval Madness: 843,876,150 Monster Bash: 3,328,376,360 No Good Gofers: 947,437,450 Pin*Bot: 15,032,860 Ripley's: 290,685,940 Scared Stiff: 1,358,390,500 Space Shuttle...

No, not machines with 6 pinballs in them (Twilight Zone, Indiana Jones, ST:TNG, Tales from the Crypt, and probably a few others). I rate TPA table difficulty on a scale of 1 to 5 pinballs, and I sometimes compare real machines with that scale as well. Given that I've assigned the real TZ a 5-pinball difficulty rating, are there harder tables...a 6-pinball machine? Yes, definitely. Here are some of the real terrors of the pinball world for you to avoid or seek out, as you see fit. I'm going to include only machines I've personally played, so feel free to chime in in the comments section if I've missed a spot. Ripley's Believe It or Not! (5.5 pinballs, 9 for Atlantis): It could just be that I've played a lot more real TZ than I've...