New Tables Fun

[HiHat]

So have you guys been enjoying the latest batch of tables?

Nothing here is as awesome as the Addams Family, of course, but I am especially enjoying Cyclone and Ted and Red. Safecracker is pretty cool too, and I'm warming up to Jackbot; I think I like it better than Pinbot.

Are these the final releases of Season 4?

 

[Johni3w6]

I'm enjoying Jackbot more than Pinbot.
What's nice about JB is that initial drain down the left side after the plunge is saved rather than the unforgiving PB.

 

[ScotchYeti]

It's interesting that the different rules and animations make such a difference in Jackbot.
I like "Ted and Red" even more, it looks and plays fantastic. Great job by Farsight!

I couldn't convince myself to buy the other tables too. What's your take?

[MENTION=1227]HiHat[/MENTION]: yes, this completes season 4.

 

[Industrial_Foods]

Love Ted and Red, really great table. Quite deep too.

 

[DA5ID]

yeah, my 2 favorite tables on TPA are Addams and Road Show - guess that puts me in the Lawlor camp.

 

[The Digital Man]

It's interesting that the different rules and animations make such a difference in Jackbot.
I like "Ted and Red" even more, it looks and plays fantastic. Great job by Farsight!

I couldn't convince myself to buy the other tables too. What's your take?

I have to get all of them when released, I feel incomplete if not.

 

[Johni3w6]

I have to get all of them when released, I feel incomplete if not.

Yup I'm the same way.

 

[DA5ID]

I have to get all of them when released, I feel incomplete if not.

me too. I just like pinball too much and I figure the digital versions are preserving the history of pinball as all these machines continue to get rarer and out of reach -never mind that the digital pins are affordable and accessible. Some of these tables I may never get to play IRL but when I do find them in the wild I am extra happy to plunk quarters in them and I at least know their ruleset so I get longer playtimes.

 

[The Digital Man]

me too. I just like pinball too much and I figure the digital versions are preserving the history of pinball as all these machines continue to get rarer and out of reach -never mind that the digital pins are affordable and accessible. Some of these tables I may never get to play IRL but when I do find them in the wild I am extra happy to plunk quarters in them and I at least know their ruleset so I get longer playtimes.

Agreed.

 

[WhiteChocolate]

yeah, "new tables" FUN!!!!

CYCLONE: can't say it's a favorite new one off the bat, but it is a ginchy one for an older machine (happy that TPA gives these their day, as i'd missed so many older machines). somehow reminds me a bit of nordman's "dr. dude" and "party zone" in play and rampage ("it's an oursler!" ; it also seems a vague future inspiration for "funhouse"... nothing more evil that clowns and circuses! lol! and that flipper-clown sure looks a wee bit manic lol ;0...

deceptively slow; it is one of those tables that if you don't keep your mind on the ball while it's rolling, it's liable to get grabbed by the sides or SDTM before you know it. nice when you figure out that the upper lightbank (usually for bonus multipliers on more recent machines) gets you thirty secs of double scoring... gets your game to that next level of high scores pretty quickly!

XENON: i know the other hardcores here rip on it, but i really like this one - simplicity in the play of it (good starter tables for beginners, and sometimes you just want a nice, simple table to pass the time with); nifty and slightly sexy theme done up in a really nice "heavy metal" style (maybe an inspirational predecesor to "bride of pinbot"?); lots of room to bat the ball(s) around (though that seems to be a big complaint about it - i understand in modern terms, it's "wasted space"*). besides, when i see tables like these that i know i saw growing up, but rarely or if ever got to play, it just warms my heart!

funny bumper-zone up top-middle - i suppose a number of other tables have this trait, but it seems like xenon's set of bumpers can hold onto the ball an unusually long time, often bouncing back up into that drop-catch dimple above, just over and over and over again - one ball i launched spent at least the first thirty seconds up there, which seemed ilke a looooong time especially right off the bat... i kinda mentally shelf that with LCA's "bad/not great initial launch areas" behavior... ;0 (LCA's "ready aim draw" thing almost every time after launch, though, is much, much more annoying, to the point that it kills that table!)

not having read all (or any!) of the rules as usual, i noticed a couple questionable things that seemed in the "bug or feature" dept. - during multiball, i somehow got one ball all the way left-up into the upper loop, and then -past- the chute-gate (i presume there's a chute-gate; seems to be one all the time otherwise) - and back down to rest upon the plunger! so i played out the rest of the remaining ball; when that drained, the table waited for me to replunge the saved ball... rest of that round played out normally. is that normal behavior?

also potentially buggy; once i got past 500k or so, i started getting the "extra ball/game" spanks three/four-plus times per ball! however, i only got one actual EB to play (which felt about right anyways) - something seemed to be triggering off a lot of extra cab-slap sound fx...

the backglass of xenon had one of those "infinity mirror" effects to it, didn't it? i don't know if that's easily replicable in tpa; would be obviously too much c/gpu effort to render that live! and probably a bit too much effort for just one table to jimmy up a prebake process for that... too bad! anyhow, i just think it's a snazzy machine, for an older one. i think it's a fun play (or, to stretch for argument's sake, "it's not an un-fun table!" ;0)

JACK-BOT: not much i can say about it, other than "good! better than pin-bot"... for some reason, i'd always been a bit cool on the "bot" series, though there's no arguing they're popular plays ("bride" of course being a bit of a hoot for its whacked-out goals and scoring, but other than its theme, i don't find it a terribly fun play). i didn't look up any viddys of it before its TPA release, so i was surprised (and a bit disappointed) that it isn't all that different in layout from the original pinbot, but that's just me... perhaps a good example of a "good 'nuff" table getting a revisit and a polish! card-shark robots... who woulda thunk it?? ;0 ("futurama?" "jack-bot did it!" lol!)

RED & TED'S ROAD SHOW: another great table i never even knew existed before TPA - thanks farsight!! :0 and one of my new faves, perhaps my #1 fave now in TPA... already got it on iOS, but couldn't wait for the ps3 just to have a bit more nudge control. haven't had much time to play it yet, but having some nudge'll help make a big diff in my scores, i bet. nothing much else to say about it, other than "it's pinball awesomeness," and my new favorite lawlor!!

SAFE CRACKER: and on with the lawlor (all hail lawlor! ;0) - SC is fast becoming a strange, different #2 favorite for me... and thanks to the magic token collection, i'll probably play it a lot to try to get them all! "experimental" tables don't get a good rep here ("goin' nuts," anyone? ;0) - but this one seems like another "lost goodie" that could start getting some love now.

the "one ball till sudden death" rule isn't all that difficult to deal with once you get a handle on playing/handling the table (no "goin' nuts" feel to that, thankfully!), and the backglass boardgame is actually very fun compared to just being a different take on the "video mode" - although there never feels like much skill involved in it, just like most dice-rollers (it'd be nice if it had a bit more challenge to the different landed spaces, perhaps even revert to the pb field for awhile while leaving your boardgame position in place till you get back up there - that'd throw off the magic token "scoring" though).

it seems like there's a lot to talk about with this table, its diffs and unique take on a fun pb table - it didn't completely turn over the pb landscape (and probably shouldn't! - i'm not sure i'd like if suddenly every manufacturer started doing "one ball on timer only" kinds of rules; lol - would be a nightmare!), but this table tried to do at least three things out of the ordinary (timed play, backglass play, magic tokens), and at least in virtual form, all three really, really, REALLY work out well. (but maybe probaqbly these three diffs made it an unfavorable real-world play - i wonder how the machine worked in the RW with the tokens; were there really only 28 or so unique tokens per machine?? so, if people walked away and never came back to spend them for the "assault on the vault," that meant those tokens were gone for good? how'd they deal with that?)

*p.s. lol, now i've got a great idea for a new pb table: "WASTED SPACE" ...


































another p.p.s. hehe! ;0 what -is- up with that wasted space up top?? forum error?? i didn't notice till i tried to post just now... have fun!!! :0 (okay, weird - now that extra space i saw up forum is gone... what up with that?? ;0 wish i had a screenshot of that...)

 

[The Digital Man]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

 

[WhiteChocolate]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

hehe, just read it again!!

 

[Extork]

Just got home from work, so my eyes are kinda tired. But maybe I'll have my phone read your post out loud to me Whitechocolate. ....2 hours later

Anyways, I can't remember if it was because of this thread, but I went and bought season 4 yesterday. The only reason I haven't been on the PS3 in the last 2 or 3 years is because I've been butt hurt about losing all my downloads. And the PS3 was from a friend, so I had to start all over. End rant. You guys have been there before probably. But now I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to play on the PS3. And it couldn't've been better timing for me to snap out of it. Just a couple of things... Red and Ted seems to have a reddish tint, and xenon looks pretty flat besides the bumpers, well and cyclone. I mean compaired to like Black Hole or something. But that's not a huge thing, still fun as all get out

 

[Silvergunner]

Oh boy, in germany we are not able to download Cyclone to Safecracker for xbox one because of a marketpace issue.In germany we get only Cyclone,Jack*Bot and Xenon,but no Red & Ted and Safecracker for PS3!!! Farsight: Would you kidding me ?

 

[Espy]

Oh boy, in germany we are not able to download Cyclone to Safecracker for xbox one because of a marketpace issue.In germany we get only Cyclone,Jack*Bot and Xenon,but no Red & Ted and Safecracker for PS3!!! Farsight: Would you kidding me ?

So is this the case for PS3 in Europe - we get three tables instead of five?

 

[Dedpop]

Yep. Someone is blatantly thumbing his nose at us.

 

[Extork]

Yep. Someone is blatantly thumbing his nose at us.

But ur are aces in my booklet. If it were up to mer. I d say tables to the people but the are agave don't have teh tables. But I are ok for your ter have derm nowp. Sooo gud they r

 

[Industrial_Foods]

Am I the only one that thinks bride of pin bot looks like a drag queen? What's with the chin?

 

[Dedpop]

But ur are aces in my booklet. If it were up to mer. I d say tables to the people but the are agave don't have teh tables. But I are ok for your ter have derm nowp. Sooo gud they r

J'ai rien compris.

 

[Dedpop]

Oh boy, in germany we are not able to download Cyclone to Safecracker for xbox one because of a marketpace issue.In germany we get only Cyclone,Jack*Bot and Xenon,but no Red & Ted and Safecracker for PS3!!! Farsight: Would you kidding me ?

So is this the case for PS3 in Europe - we get three tables instead of five?

pinball arcade facebook today :
"Unfortunately Safecracker and Roadshow were delayed but we are working on getting them released as soon as we can sorry for the trouble".