Silver Ball Kid
New member
- Dec 22, 2013
- 7
- 0
Hope this isn't too boring. Feel free to quit reading at any point if it is...
I wasn't going to post about this (it was last weekend and I went on Saturday) but it is still rolling happily around in my head so here goes anyway...
I have been obsessed with pinball since I was a kid - 'nuff said. OBSESSED. In December of 2013 I found out about TPA and bought Season One's tables for my pc. Now I have all three seasons purchased and I am "playing" regularly on my pc at home. It goes without saying that my discovery of TPA was the biggest factor in my going to the Michigan Pinball Expo.
The Expo was held in a huge conference/convention-type hall in one of the Student Buildings on the campus of Oakland University which is about 20-30 minutes north of Detroit. The Expo was held from Thursday until Sunday and it was $20.00 to get in for the day. All tables were set to Free Play and there was no time limit. You could even leave the place completely and return to play more later in the same day as long as you left your wristband on. They were advertising that there would be 100+ tables there and quite a few TPA tables were slated to be available for play. All tables were owned by private collectors who were loaning them to the Expo. At the base of each playfield glass, there was a small sticker listing the game's name, production year, units produced and owner. Some were listed as "for sale" on the backglass. There were booths with parts for purchase, playfields and backglasses for purchase as art pieces and the guys from Jersey Jack's were there with three new "Wizard Of Oz" tables to play.
I went to the Expo with my buddy Matt who used to repair pinball machines for a living for about five years when he was younger. Matt and I have been chatting lately about trying to buy a table and "flip it" - shop it completely together and restore it for re-sale. I really want to learn how to do this and Matt is a great teacher. He is also one hell of a pinball layer. It was incredible to have him there with me to ask questions, discuss table issues (in all honesty many of the tables at the Expo had issues or weren't working properly and he explained a lot to me as we walked around) and just play. We stayed for hours - hours. We played a lot of pinball. I was in heaven. Being 47, my experience as a player goes back to the days when there were only EMs around through to today's high tech tables. Like everyone else, I have my favorites and some of them were there at the Expo. It was great to "meet old friends" again (Captain Fantastic, 1978 Playboy, Spirit of '76, etc) and to play a lot of old EM machines. There were even a few old wedge heads around.
First off - EM tables. They were not as popular with the crowd as the newer tables and you could play them over and over usually without any kind of line forming behind you. Maybe it is just because I am older and remember the days when they were all we had, but I love these tables so much. The bells, the sounds of the player units spinning inside and the retro art look of these tables all really appeal to me even today. I also love them because you can't "bulls&%t" around to score on these tables as much. You can either hit drop targets or you can't. You can either nudge well or you can't (I suck at it and Matt is a total pro at it). The "basic" nature of EMs still appeals to me and I had a total blast playing them. Unfortunately, a lot of these were examples of tables at the Expo that had problems. Burned out lights in rollover lanes, bad flippers, loose drop targets, stuff like that. Regardless, I loved reacquainting myself with these grand old tables and the last few Matt and I played on our way out were all EMs.
As far as the newer tables go, we played a lot of those as well. I was especially excited to play tables that were available on TPA because I wanted to check out two things specifically:
1) How do real pins "play" compared to their virtual counterparts and
2) What is it like to go back to tables I played tons as I was in my teens and 20s now that I have learned their scoring rules so thoroughly through TPA.
The games at the Expo that are available on TPA were:
Attack From Mars
El Dorado: City of Gold
Fish Tales
Gorgar
Haunted House
No Good Gophers
Ripley's Believe It Or Not
Scared Stiff
Space Shuttle
Star Trek TNG
T2 Judgement Day
First off, both Gorgar and El Dorado were cordoned off in the area where the tournament was being held and I was furious. I really wanted to play Gorgar badly (ME GORGAR!) because I love the way its scoring works and I played it a lot as a teenager. El Dorado is a table that sat about 2 tables away from the Flight 2000 table at the local arcade my older brother and his buddies used to take me to when I was a kid (think Mitch Kramer in "Dazed and Confused" but not nearly as cool) and they used to give me quarters and keep me occupied on it as they dominted the F200 table. Wanted to play that one badly because now I understand how to score on it so much better but never touched it. Worst off, they sat unplayed for almost the entire time I was there.
I played every other TPA table that was available to me and I can't even begin to describe how awesome it was. Most of the newer tables had short or long lines behind them and you really couldn't get replays on them because you would need to move on and let others play. Still, to stand there and have the confidence that comes from knowing how to score big on these tables was just awesome. Some random thoughts on a few of the tables:
Space Shuttle - For some reason I really like this table on TPA and it was so great to play a real one. I had a few great games on it (it was one of the tables that didn't have as many people wanting to play it) except for the fact that the mechanism on the multiball loop was broken so you just heard "abort mission" when you made the shot and got no multiball. Still, I was totally comfortable on it and would have racked up some good scores if the multiball function had worked properly. Matt and I played this one with a guy who just happened to want to be on it when we had it and as I explained the details (drop targets to re-close airlock, etc) he was just staring at me like I was some kind of cyborg. He asked how I knew all this and I told him about TPA.
Fish Tales - I'm not sure why, but this was SO MUCH EASIER than on TPA. I was really good on this one and it was one of the few times I gave Matt a run for his money socre-wise. Part of it was definitely that the table was set on a very gentle angle compared to TPA.
T2 Judgement Day - This is a table that I poured a ton of money into in my early 20s and I was totally stoked to play it. Unfortunately, it was set on the Expo floor so that it was physically touching the 1978 Playboy table next to it at the side of the head. There was some slob pig guy on the Playboy machine when Matt and I were finally at the front of the T2 line and he was nudging his machine so hard and often that he was causing us to tilt on ours. We just eventually walked away without finishing our games. This was another machine that was WAY easier than on TPA except for the infamous "don't make it up the left ramp and get a SDTM drain that never hits the center post" that anyone who played this in real life knows so well.
Scared Stiff - What a blast. There was a decent line for this one and when Matt and I got up to it I kind of broke down the mini games for him before we started and just quickly filled him in on the details so he kind of had an idea of what he needed to do. I had a great game on it, multiple free balls, Scared Stiff and all that. People behind us were kind of surprised but I would NEVER have been able to do that in the days before TPA. Another "gentler angle" situation where I could really work the physical nature to my advantage. Fun. Seriously, really fun.
Attack From Mars - I saved this one for last. Other than the Jersey Jack's "Wizard of Oz" tables, this one had the longest lines of any table at the Expo. Now, truth be told I never ever played this one back in the day in real life. Never. Not sure why, because it was usually available in arcades for me. I was more into Funhouse and Cyclone and T2 and a few others back then and I knew those well enough that I played them instead. Anyway, we waited and waited for this one and when we finally were "on deck" the two guys who had the table flatly refused to let us play without them. Matt and I were a bit irritated with this but it was obvious that we were going to either play 4 way with them or not play, so we relented. One of the two guys had just scored 8Billion before they let us on and he was all puffed up about it and kind of gave it to Matt and I verbally as we set the game up. "I'll even go last" he said as if he was doing us a favor. Well, we played two games with them and he never got over 150 to 200 million either time. It was obvious that he didn't really know how to play and had just gotten very lucky right when we got to them. I told Matt that we were going to make sure we smoked them and I gave him a lot of quiet directions the first time so he knew how to get to Total Annihilation, Extra Ball after 2nd attack wave, etc. After game one they started making excuses as to why they scored so poorly and after game two Matt and I were satisfied that we had humbled them enough to leave them to the game. So much fun...
Here is the biggest thing I left the Expo with:
Pinball still rules. Also, The Pinball Arcade rules and the people at Farsight do a great job preserving these tables for us. At the end of the day, though, no pinball sim can ever touch real pinball. I'm not saying that as a criticism, either. It's just that pinball is a physical game and you can not simulate that. Balls jumping up and striking the glass and making that sound. The speed of the game. The feeling of controlling the seemingly uncontrollable. The sounds and the sights and the lights. No simulation can ever really give me that feeling. Not saying I am going to stop playing TPA because I can't, quite frankly. Just saying that those glorious wooden boxes contain something elusive that can only be felt when playing in the physical world.
Also, this will be totally against the grain based on what I read on these MBs, but I'd love to see more EMs in the future on TPA. I know they do not appeal to a lot of players, but I love them for what they are and I love playing them.
Sorry for being so long-winded. It's just that my wife is going to gouge my eyeballs out if I don't shut up about pinball, so this was kind of "verbal therapy" for me.
I got a text from Matt yesterday, by the way. It said:
"We need to find a decent arcade."
Cheers, everyone!
I wasn't going to post about this (it was last weekend and I went on Saturday) but it is still rolling happily around in my head so here goes anyway...
I have been obsessed with pinball since I was a kid - 'nuff said. OBSESSED. In December of 2013 I found out about TPA and bought Season One's tables for my pc. Now I have all three seasons purchased and I am "playing" regularly on my pc at home. It goes without saying that my discovery of TPA was the biggest factor in my going to the Michigan Pinball Expo.
The Expo was held in a huge conference/convention-type hall in one of the Student Buildings on the campus of Oakland University which is about 20-30 minutes north of Detroit. The Expo was held from Thursday until Sunday and it was $20.00 to get in for the day. All tables were set to Free Play and there was no time limit. You could even leave the place completely and return to play more later in the same day as long as you left your wristband on. They were advertising that there would be 100+ tables there and quite a few TPA tables were slated to be available for play. All tables were owned by private collectors who were loaning them to the Expo. At the base of each playfield glass, there was a small sticker listing the game's name, production year, units produced and owner. Some were listed as "for sale" on the backglass. There were booths with parts for purchase, playfields and backglasses for purchase as art pieces and the guys from Jersey Jack's were there with three new "Wizard Of Oz" tables to play.
I went to the Expo with my buddy Matt who used to repair pinball machines for a living for about five years when he was younger. Matt and I have been chatting lately about trying to buy a table and "flip it" - shop it completely together and restore it for re-sale. I really want to learn how to do this and Matt is a great teacher. He is also one hell of a pinball layer. It was incredible to have him there with me to ask questions, discuss table issues (in all honesty many of the tables at the Expo had issues or weren't working properly and he explained a lot to me as we walked around) and just play. We stayed for hours - hours. We played a lot of pinball. I was in heaven. Being 47, my experience as a player goes back to the days when there were only EMs around through to today's high tech tables. Like everyone else, I have my favorites and some of them were there at the Expo. It was great to "meet old friends" again (Captain Fantastic, 1978 Playboy, Spirit of '76, etc) and to play a lot of old EM machines. There were even a few old wedge heads around.
First off - EM tables. They were not as popular with the crowd as the newer tables and you could play them over and over usually without any kind of line forming behind you. Maybe it is just because I am older and remember the days when they were all we had, but I love these tables so much. The bells, the sounds of the player units spinning inside and the retro art look of these tables all really appeal to me even today. I also love them because you can't "bulls&%t" around to score on these tables as much. You can either hit drop targets or you can't. You can either nudge well or you can't (I suck at it and Matt is a total pro at it). The "basic" nature of EMs still appeals to me and I had a total blast playing them. Unfortunately, a lot of these were examples of tables at the Expo that had problems. Burned out lights in rollover lanes, bad flippers, loose drop targets, stuff like that. Regardless, I loved reacquainting myself with these grand old tables and the last few Matt and I played on our way out were all EMs.
As far as the newer tables go, we played a lot of those as well. I was especially excited to play tables that were available on TPA because I wanted to check out two things specifically:
1) How do real pins "play" compared to their virtual counterparts and
2) What is it like to go back to tables I played tons as I was in my teens and 20s now that I have learned their scoring rules so thoroughly through TPA.
The games at the Expo that are available on TPA were:
Attack From Mars
El Dorado: City of Gold
Fish Tales
Gorgar
Haunted House
No Good Gophers
Ripley's Believe It Or Not
Scared Stiff
Space Shuttle
Star Trek TNG
T2 Judgement Day
First off, both Gorgar and El Dorado were cordoned off in the area where the tournament was being held and I was furious. I really wanted to play Gorgar badly (ME GORGAR!) because I love the way its scoring works and I played it a lot as a teenager. El Dorado is a table that sat about 2 tables away from the Flight 2000 table at the local arcade my older brother and his buddies used to take me to when I was a kid (think Mitch Kramer in "Dazed and Confused" but not nearly as cool) and they used to give me quarters and keep me occupied on it as they dominted the F200 table. Wanted to play that one badly because now I understand how to score on it so much better but never touched it. Worst off, they sat unplayed for almost the entire time I was there.
I played every other TPA table that was available to me and I can't even begin to describe how awesome it was. Most of the newer tables had short or long lines behind them and you really couldn't get replays on them because you would need to move on and let others play. Still, to stand there and have the confidence that comes from knowing how to score big on these tables was just awesome. Some random thoughts on a few of the tables:
Space Shuttle - For some reason I really like this table on TPA and it was so great to play a real one. I had a few great games on it (it was one of the tables that didn't have as many people wanting to play it) except for the fact that the mechanism on the multiball loop was broken so you just heard "abort mission" when you made the shot and got no multiball. Still, I was totally comfortable on it and would have racked up some good scores if the multiball function had worked properly. Matt and I played this one with a guy who just happened to want to be on it when we had it and as I explained the details (drop targets to re-close airlock, etc) he was just staring at me like I was some kind of cyborg. He asked how I knew all this and I told him about TPA.
Fish Tales - I'm not sure why, but this was SO MUCH EASIER than on TPA. I was really good on this one and it was one of the few times I gave Matt a run for his money socre-wise. Part of it was definitely that the table was set on a very gentle angle compared to TPA.
T2 Judgement Day - This is a table that I poured a ton of money into in my early 20s and I was totally stoked to play it. Unfortunately, it was set on the Expo floor so that it was physically touching the 1978 Playboy table next to it at the side of the head. There was some slob pig guy on the Playboy machine when Matt and I were finally at the front of the T2 line and he was nudging his machine so hard and often that he was causing us to tilt on ours. We just eventually walked away without finishing our games. This was another machine that was WAY easier than on TPA except for the infamous "don't make it up the left ramp and get a SDTM drain that never hits the center post" that anyone who played this in real life knows so well.
Scared Stiff - What a blast. There was a decent line for this one and when Matt and I got up to it I kind of broke down the mini games for him before we started and just quickly filled him in on the details so he kind of had an idea of what he needed to do. I had a great game on it, multiple free balls, Scared Stiff and all that. People behind us were kind of surprised but I would NEVER have been able to do that in the days before TPA. Another "gentler angle" situation where I could really work the physical nature to my advantage. Fun. Seriously, really fun.
Attack From Mars - I saved this one for last. Other than the Jersey Jack's "Wizard of Oz" tables, this one had the longest lines of any table at the Expo. Now, truth be told I never ever played this one back in the day in real life. Never. Not sure why, because it was usually available in arcades for me. I was more into Funhouse and Cyclone and T2 and a few others back then and I knew those well enough that I played them instead. Anyway, we waited and waited for this one and when we finally were "on deck" the two guys who had the table flatly refused to let us play without them. Matt and I were a bit irritated with this but it was obvious that we were going to either play 4 way with them or not play, so we relented. One of the two guys had just scored 8Billion before they let us on and he was all puffed up about it and kind of gave it to Matt and I verbally as we set the game up. "I'll even go last" he said as if he was doing us a favor. Well, we played two games with them and he never got over 150 to 200 million either time. It was obvious that he didn't really know how to play and had just gotten very lucky right when we got to them. I told Matt that we were going to make sure we smoked them and I gave him a lot of quiet directions the first time so he knew how to get to Total Annihilation, Extra Ball after 2nd attack wave, etc. After game one they started making excuses as to why they scored so poorly and after game two Matt and I were satisfied that we had humbled them enough to leave them to the game. So much fun...
Here is the biggest thing I left the Expo with:
Pinball still rules. Also, The Pinball Arcade rules and the people at Farsight do a great job preserving these tables for us. At the end of the day, though, no pinball sim can ever touch real pinball. I'm not saying that as a criticism, either. It's just that pinball is a physical game and you can not simulate that. Balls jumping up and striking the glass and making that sound. The speed of the game. The feeling of controlling the seemingly uncontrollable. The sounds and the sights and the lights. No simulation can ever really give me that feeling. Not saying I am going to stop playing TPA because I can't, quite frankly. Just saying that those glorious wooden boxes contain something elusive that can only be felt when playing in the physical world.
Also, this will be totally against the grain based on what I read on these MBs, but I'd love to see more EMs in the future on TPA. I know they do not appeal to a lot of players, but I love them for what they are and I love playing them.
Sorry for being so long-winded. It's just that my wife is going to gouge my eyeballs out if I don't shut up about pinball, so this was kind of "verbal therapy" for me.
I got a text from Matt yesterday, by the way. It said:
"We need to find a decent arcade."
Cheers, everyone!
