I headed over to the Chicago Pinball Expo for 2016 with a bit of trepidation given how bad I felt it was last year. But this year was pretty rock'n. Lots of new games on display.
So without dragging anything out I'll post the big stuff first.
Jesery Jack was out in force at the Expo. 2 Hobbits, 1 Wizard of Oz, and 5 of Pat Lawlers new Dialed In.
Having 5 of their latest machine on display was really how to do it to minimize lines. When you have one or two new machines on hand the lines can get bad (as you'll see in a bit). But this way I was able to play the table six or seven times without waiting long at all.
Dialed In isn't immediately attractive or the theme really grabbing you. But when you play it your opinion changes pretty quick. I think the theme is that you have a city to manage or at least deal with disasters (meteor shows, acid rain, giant spiders???). But in order to deal with the disasters your phone needs to be charged up first. There's a cell phone toy right above a ball scoop. It's initially dead and to power it up you have to hit a stand-up power target that moves across the table. Once you have it powered up you can shoot the scoop and trigger a mission.
The ball lock is a bit harder to hit. There's a small-right flipper near the middle of the table you can shoot it up a ramp to lock. But you have to hit the loop to get it to the flipper. I did manage to active multi-ball in one of my games and came close with a second. It was pretty hectic and not sure what I was shooting for (just went for lit targets) and managed to hit the Jackpot a few times.
There's a magnet under the table on the right which will usually stop the ball and sometimes toss the ball in to the cell phone scoop. There's another video monitor in the top-center of the table that sometimes displays a spider in it, other times a diamond or a box. That shot is a bit hard to hit and as I found if you don't make it fully the ball is likely going to go straight down the middle.
But the game is pretty forgiving in general. Got the ball save and kickback you can enable.
The toys are actually not bad when you see them. There's so many lights and animations going on. Like in the back on one of the habit trails there's a toy of a worker woman. She's holding a wrench and her arm will move up and down in a chopping motion over the habit trail. It looks like the toy can stop/grab the ball if it's going along the habit trail as it's animating.
[video]http://vid19.photobucket.com/albums/b151/Grugle/Chicago%20Pinball%20Expo%202016/IMG_1059.mp4[/video]
You can click on the above video to see a bit of the game in action.
The game also has a camera in there that will take selfie pictures of you while you are playing and start plastering them on the backbox. Was not sure how to initiate that but it was blast watching peoples photos displaying on the screen while they were playing.
You can also connect your phone to the game. I didn't play around with that - one of the Jersey Jack guys had a phone ready you could try it with. But it basically sounded like you play a small pinball app while you are waiting your turn and can somehow impact the game. Kinda wishing I tried that now.
But otherwise this game was a lot of fun to play. I dead hear the JJP guy mention the code was about 20% complete so looking forward to seeing how this game evolves.
So without dragging anything out I'll post the big stuff first.
Jesery Jack was out in force at the Expo. 2 Hobbits, 1 Wizard of Oz, and 5 of Pat Lawlers new Dialed In.
Having 5 of their latest machine on display was really how to do it to minimize lines. When you have one or two new machines on hand the lines can get bad (as you'll see in a bit). But this way I was able to play the table six or seven times without waiting long at all.
Dialed In isn't immediately attractive or the theme really grabbing you. But when you play it your opinion changes pretty quick. I think the theme is that you have a city to manage or at least deal with disasters (meteor shows, acid rain, giant spiders???). But in order to deal with the disasters your phone needs to be charged up first. There's a cell phone toy right above a ball scoop. It's initially dead and to power it up you have to hit a stand-up power target that moves across the table. Once you have it powered up you can shoot the scoop and trigger a mission.
The ball lock is a bit harder to hit. There's a small-right flipper near the middle of the table you can shoot it up a ramp to lock. But you have to hit the loop to get it to the flipper. I did manage to active multi-ball in one of my games and came close with a second. It was pretty hectic and not sure what I was shooting for (just went for lit targets) and managed to hit the Jackpot a few times.
There's a magnet under the table on the right which will usually stop the ball and sometimes toss the ball in to the cell phone scoop. There's another video monitor in the top-center of the table that sometimes displays a spider in it, other times a diamond or a box. That shot is a bit hard to hit and as I found if you don't make it fully the ball is likely going to go straight down the middle.
But the game is pretty forgiving in general. Got the ball save and kickback you can enable.
The toys are actually not bad when you see them. There's so many lights and animations going on. Like in the back on one of the habit trails there's a toy of a worker woman. She's holding a wrench and her arm will move up and down in a chopping motion over the habit trail. It looks like the toy can stop/grab the ball if it's going along the habit trail as it's animating.
[video]http://vid19.photobucket.com/albums/b151/Grugle/Chicago%20Pinball%20Expo%202016/IMG_1059.mp4[/video]
You can click on the above video to see a bit of the game in action.
The game also has a camera in there that will take selfie pictures of you while you are playing and start plastering them on the backbox. Was not sure how to initiate that but it was blast watching peoples photos displaying on the screen while they were playing.
You can also connect your phone to the game. I didn't play around with that - one of the Jersey Jack guys had a phone ready you could try it with. But it basically sounded like you play a small pinball app while you are waiting your turn and can somehow impact the game. Kinda wishing I tried that now.
But otherwise this game was a lot of fun to play. I dead hear the JJP guy mention the code was about 20% complete so looking forward to seeing how this game evolves.
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