Slam23
Active member
- Jul 21, 2012
- 1,279
- 2
Hi guys,
Just had a great weekend at the yearly DPO (Dutch Pinball Open), the tournament that is organised by our own Dutch Pinball Society. Aside from the fact that I'm very happy with our third place in the team tournament (yes! My first real pinball prize ever
), it was also a great weekend for playing and talking pinball. It's a pure personal short review, written on the afterglow and residue adrenalin of the weekend. A definite high point was that we had Roger Sharpe and Greg Freres as guests of honor. They both did a seminar and some meet & greets, and they were present when the prize ceremony was held. Great to have those industry legends over from the States and especially Roger has tons of fun and interesting stories to tell. He has a broad view on pinball from his long history and where we as pinball geeks are excited about the recent upswing in the pinball scene (Jersey Jack, the newer Sterns, Heighway Pinball, Silver Castle, Dutch Pinball etc), he put that in proper perspective when he told us about the production rate of machines back in the days of Bally/Williams. There was also a great line-up of old and new pinball machines, the total tallied 170, part for tournament play, part for the casual players. It was a big eclectic collection, ranging from some very old EM-style pins to the latest machines from Stern like Game of Thrones, Kiss and the Walking Dead. There was a Jersey Jack WOZ and even 5 The Big Lebowksi machines by the Dutch Pinball team. They were so-called engineer models that were put out to do some last testing before production. It is fair to say that they still had some issues but overall the pins made a very good impression, they were lightyears ahead from the prototype models at last year's DPO. Tough pin that will do very well in the home market, it's a challenging game! Another nice surprise were the 2 Full Throttle machines from Heighway Pinball. It was my first time on them and I came away impressed by the great flow in them and the real sturdy build. Still not sure about that DMD in the playfield, that will require some re-wiring in my brain probably to get used to that. The new Sterns were nice, never played Game of Thrones or Kiss before, but I was familiar with the Walking Dead pin. I must say that although I always like new pins, I don't fall in love with new Sterns that easily. This was also the case with Kiss which I didn't really like for it's theme. They did a great job with the art though, and the eyecatcher is offcourse the Gene Simmons head with the long tongue. I was a bit disappointed that it was not an LE, so I didn't see the "spitting" mechanism at work. Both Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are themes I really like, and that means that I will have an expectation beforehand on how they should implement it. Last year I already really liked the Walking Dead, and this was even more so this time around, because an LE was brought. That includes a crossbow toy that will let you shoot balls at targets, akin to the phasers in the SSTNG machine. There is one "bow" and it is located almost under the apron. It swings out from under there. I think this is a nice addition because the Well Walker and the Prison Block building in the middle of table are not that interactive as toys. But the 2 things I like most about TWD is the original playfield layout and overall atmosphere. There is a nice red led glow that makes it very menacing. The DMD animations are nicely over the top as far as the violence goes. The Game of Thrones pinball I'm less excited about, it has some great shots, but doesn't feel that different from the Stern Star Trek which in itself has also great flow. There is a bundle of ramps to make and it has the same thing where the ball is shot back with force, like when you hit the spaceship in Star Trek, but what goes back to the Yagov shot in F-14 and the Raptor lane in Jurassic Park for example. In Game of Thrones it's the black dragon that spits "fire". Two things I didn't like about Game Of Thrones is the playfield art that is nowhere near the graphic style that the series has. Great shiny rectangly inserts with no atmosphere at all. Also some of the DMD animations suffer at close-up, and that's often the case when Stern uses real series or movie footage (Spiderman anyone?). The DMD animations on the Walking Dead are far better, because they use more of a comic book style there, then try to incorporate real life images from the TV series. I know there has been a lot of criticism about the playfield art on Game of Thrones, and I think that they missed a chance there. On the other hand, I also get that the table has to be playable and that in a fast game you need clear indicators on the playfield, but even then I feel they could have made more out of the graphic style of the TV series. I even would have settled for a visual style that had been based on the famous intro trailer of episodes. One thing that can be overlooked easily though is that all the Sterns worked perfectly this weekend as far as I have seen. They seem to have their production processes and QA down to a science now and they are the longest active player now in the market, so that can be expected probably.
With the ever increasing number of TPA table releases, there was bound to be overlap with them in physical presence. Just for fun a list of TPA tables I have seen and/or played this weekend in no particular order:
TZ, Roadshow, Gorgar (sadly broken most of the time), Whirlwind, BOP (including 2.0 P-ROC), AFM, Medieval Madness (re-release and conversion into Medieval Castle https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/medieval-castle not working yet though), Funhouse, MB, CFTBL, EATPM, NGG, SS, SSTNG, Dr. Dude, Cactus Canyon, White Water, Centaur, The Champion Pub, T2 (including a very nice chrome edition with very tasteful LED lighting), Fish Tales, Junk Yard, BSD, The Party Zone, Earthshaker, Jack-Bot (also broken), Getaway, F14 Tomcat and Frankenstein.
Although I think that in the long run I will profit from my TPA experience in real life pinball, this weekend the opposite seemed true. I chose all TPA tables except one in the individual qualification tournament and sucked big-time on all of them. I know they will play very differently (and harder) in real life, but still couldn't get my brain to accept that when I played them. I got my best score on the one non-TPA table and that was a Demolition Man that I hardly knew. I keep telling myself that knowing the rules and how to best achieve scores by playing TPA will give an edge in real competition, but on the short run I will have to learn how to play better and differently on the real machines. The one exception was the Party Zone I played on in the team tournament, that one I rocked as the only member of our team. But then I was already playing a whole day and the negative TPA effect seemed to have disappeared. I'll go over to the thread about that topic and post some of my experience there also.
Well, there you have it, a great tournament, lots of fun, nice to be there with all the good pin folk. Looking forward to next year!
If you want to check out more about this DPO, Pinball news will definitely have a report on it in the coming days, because Martin Ayub was present the whole weekend and taking pictures.
Just had a great weekend at the yearly DPO (Dutch Pinball Open), the tournament that is organised by our own Dutch Pinball Society. Aside from the fact that I'm very happy with our third place in the team tournament (yes! My first real pinball prize ever
), it was also a great weekend for playing and talking pinball. It's a pure personal short review, written on the afterglow and residue adrenalin of the weekend. A definite high point was that we had Roger Sharpe and Greg Freres as guests of honor. They both did a seminar and some meet & greets, and they were present when the prize ceremony was held. Great to have those industry legends over from the States and especially Roger has tons of fun and interesting stories to tell. He has a broad view on pinball from his long history and where we as pinball geeks are excited about the recent upswing in the pinball scene (Jersey Jack, the newer Sterns, Heighway Pinball, Silver Castle, Dutch Pinball etc), he put that in proper perspective when he told us about the production rate of machines back in the days of Bally/Williams. There was also a great line-up of old and new pinball machines, the total tallied 170, part for tournament play, part for the casual players. It was a big eclectic collection, ranging from some very old EM-style pins to the latest machines from Stern like Game of Thrones, Kiss and the Walking Dead. There was a Jersey Jack WOZ and even 5 The Big Lebowksi machines by the Dutch Pinball team. They were so-called engineer models that were put out to do some last testing before production. It is fair to say that they still had some issues but overall the pins made a very good impression, they were lightyears ahead from the prototype models at last year's DPO. Tough pin that will do very well in the home market, it's a challenging game! Another nice surprise were the 2 Full Throttle machines from Heighway Pinball. It was my first time on them and I came away impressed by the great flow in them and the real sturdy build. Still not sure about that DMD in the playfield, that will require some re-wiring in my brain probably to get used to that. The new Sterns were nice, never played Game of Thrones or Kiss before, but I was familiar with the Walking Dead pin. I must say that although I always like new pins, I don't fall in love with new Sterns that easily. This was also the case with Kiss which I didn't really like for it's theme. They did a great job with the art though, and the eyecatcher is offcourse the Gene Simmons head with the long tongue. I was a bit disappointed that it was not an LE, so I didn't see the "spitting" mechanism at work. Both Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are themes I really like, and that means that I will have an expectation beforehand on how they should implement it. Last year I already really liked the Walking Dead, and this was even more so this time around, because an LE was brought. That includes a crossbow toy that will let you shoot balls at targets, akin to the phasers in the SSTNG machine. There is one "bow" and it is located almost under the apron. It swings out from under there. I think this is a nice addition because the Well Walker and the Prison Block building in the middle of table are not that interactive as toys. But the 2 things I like most about TWD is the original playfield layout and overall atmosphere. There is a nice red led glow that makes it very menacing. The DMD animations are nicely over the top as far as the violence goes. The Game of Thrones pinball I'm less excited about, it has some great shots, but doesn't feel that different from the Stern Star Trek which in itself has also great flow. There is a bundle of ramps to make and it has the same thing where the ball is shot back with force, like when you hit the spaceship in Star Trek, but what goes back to the Yagov shot in F-14 and the Raptor lane in Jurassic Park for example. In Game of Thrones it's the black dragon that spits "fire". Two things I didn't like about Game Of Thrones is the playfield art that is nowhere near the graphic style that the series has. Great shiny rectangly inserts with no atmosphere at all. Also some of the DMD animations suffer at close-up, and that's often the case when Stern uses real series or movie footage (Spiderman anyone?). The DMD animations on the Walking Dead are far better, because they use more of a comic book style there, then try to incorporate real life images from the TV series. I know there has been a lot of criticism about the playfield art on Game of Thrones, and I think that they missed a chance there. On the other hand, I also get that the table has to be playable and that in a fast game you need clear indicators on the playfield, but even then I feel they could have made more out of the graphic style of the TV series. I even would have settled for a visual style that had been based on the famous intro trailer of episodes. One thing that can be overlooked easily though is that all the Sterns worked perfectly this weekend as far as I have seen. They seem to have their production processes and QA down to a science now and they are the longest active player now in the market, so that can be expected probably. With the ever increasing number of TPA table releases, there was bound to be overlap with them in physical presence. Just for fun a list of TPA tables I have seen and/or played this weekend in no particular order:
TZ, Roadshow, Gorgar (sadly broken most of the time), Whirlwind, BOP (including 2.0 P-ROC), AFM, Medieval Madness (re-release and conversion into Medieval Castle https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/medieval-castle not working yet though), Funhouse, MB, CFTBL, EATPM, NGG, SS, SSTNG, Dr. Dude, Cactus Canyon, White Water, Centaur, The Champion Pub, T2 (including a very nice chrome edition with very tasteful LED lighting), Fish Tales, Junk Yard, BSD, The Party Zone, Earthshaker, Jack-Bot (also broken), Getaway, F14 Tomcat and Frankenstein.
Although I think that in the long run I will profit from my TPA experience in real life pinball, this weekend the opposite seemed true. I chose all TPA tables except one in the individual qualification tournament and sucked big-time on all of them. I know they will play very differently (and harder) in real life, but still couldn't get my brain to accept that when I played them. I got my best score on the one non-TPA table and that was a Demolition Man that I hardly knew. I keep telling myself that knowing the rules and how to best achieve scores by playing TPA will give an edge in real competition, but on the short run I will have to learn how to play better and differently on the real machines. The one exception was the Party Zone I played on in the team tournament, that one I rocked as the only member of our team. But then I was already playing a whole day and the negative TPA effect seemed to have disappeared. I'll go over to the thread about that topic and post some of my experience there also.
Well, there you have it, a great tournament, lots of fun, nice to be there with all the good pin folk. Looking forward to next year!
If you want to check out more about this DPO, Pinball news will definitely have a report on it in the coming days, because Martin Ayub was present the whole weekend and taking pictures.
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