Normal
This is my 2nd post in the forums (the 1st was a bug notice---hah!)Not sure if this thread holds any interest these days, but FWIW...I grew up playing videogames (Atari, C64 at a friend's, arcades, NES) and the other arcade stuff was a natural side dish. I'm not a huge gamer nowadays (or an obsessive pinhead), but pinball has been involved in each of my returns to gaming. And there's something in my soul that keeps getting braided to barely popular art forms.Somewhere around 1990, I played the first table I was any good at, in a bowling alley. I think it was a Bugs Bunny theme. For a brief spell, that table was more compelling than bowling; and then it wasn't, because we all got huge amounts of illegal firecrackers.I started playing Go around 1993, and arcade games were suddenly brainless. (Chess was always a dull game for me.) But there's little physical action in Go. Pinball is pure contraption (to paraphrase Auden), and its appeal to me is perennial.In 2000, after college, I tried to get into videogames again with a GameBoy Color. The only game I played to any extent was Pokemon Pinball---a deviously addicting game. (Anyone remember it?) I sometimes went for 3 hours on the first ball. Stupid fun.Around 2002, my friend's bar (in Brooklyn) got a TOM machine, at which I absolutely sucked. But I learned the table well enough. It was grimy looking, and when I first played the TPA version I realized, by the audio, that I knew the table from real life. I realized, from the lamp, that I've played TOTAN a bit too (and don't remember sucking at it quite as much).Spring of 2013, my GF got me a PS Vita. Nifty gadget. First demo I downloaded was Zen 2, which was decent enough pinball for 1-2 minutes, but it annoys me to see how Marvel has gotten THAT obnoxious. Eventually I got TPA to work on the Vita (took a few months), and after a bit of BH I was impressed. Impressed enough to buy Season 1, anyway. Lovin' that BS table, which I might have played (once? twice?) IRL.The PSV is great for the buttons & stick nudge, but the resolution & views (widescreen landscape) are garbage. I'm considering a tablet if I can line up controller support, just for a better pinball experience... but we'll see if the charm of the game (of gaming) endures. The quantity of bugs in TPA makes it crapware by any standard. But pinball does keep bringing me back. I mean, is there anything in gaming quite as exhilarating as... Multiball?
This is my 2nd post in the forums (the 1st was a bug notice---hah!)
Not sure if this thread holds any interest these days, but FWIW...
I grew up playing videogames (Atari, C64 at a friend's, arcades, NES) and the other arcade stuff was a natural side dish. I'm not a huge gamer nowadays (or an obsessive pinhead), but pinball has been involved in each of my returns to gaming. And there's something in my soul that keeps getting braided to barely popular art forms.
Somewhere around 1990, I played the first table I was any good at, in a bowling alley. I think it was a Bugs Bunny theme. For a brief spell, that table was more compelling than bowling; and then it wasn't, because we all got huge amounts of illegal firecrackers.
I started playing Go around 1993, and arcade games were suddenly brainless. (Chess was always a dull game for me.) But there's little physical action in Go. Pinball is pure contraption (to paraphrase Auden), and its appeal to me is perennial.
In 2000, after college, I tried to get into videogames again with a GameBoy Color. The only game I played to any extent was Pokemon Pinball---a deviously addicting game. (Anyone remember it?) I sometimes went for 3 hours on the first ball. Stupid fun.
Around 2002, my friend's bar (in Brooklyn) got a TOM machine, at which I absolutely sucked. But I learned the table well enough. It was grimy looking, and when I first played the TPA version I realized, by the audio, that I knew the table from real life. I realized, from the lamp, that I've played TOTAN a bit too (and don't remember sucking at it quite as much).
Spring of 2013, my GF got me a PS Vita. Nifty gadget. First demo I downloaded was Zen 2, which was decent enough pinball for 1-2 minutes, but it annoys me to see how Marvel has gotten THAT obnoxious. Eventually I got TPA to work on the Vita (took a few months), and after a bit of BH I was impressed. Impressed enough to buy Season 1, anyway. Lovin' that BS table, which I might have played (once? twice?) IRL.
The PSV is great for the buttons & stick nudge, but the resolution & views (widescreen landscape) are garbage. I'm considering a tablet if I can line up controller support, just for a better pinball experience... but we'll see if the charm of the game (of gaming) endures. The quantity of bugs in TPA makes it crapware by any standard. But pinball does keep bringing me back. I mean, is there anything in gaming quite as exhilarating as... Multiball?
