Table Pack #53 Speculation

[The Night Flier]

EBD, finally!Awesome news.I'd also love Sharkey's Shootout.Maybe next season.

Wait.Maybe Farsight should also be working on console releases.PS3 is pretty much already 10 tables behind.Call me impatient but it is irritating.Especially having bought a Season Pass i do expect there to be a Season, a regular service.Oh well.

EBD and Doctor Who already make for an awesome Season 6!

 

[BostonBuckeye]

EBD is the one pin I have been waiting for since I first started playing TPA on iOS with the release of FT. 33 tables later I finally get my wish. To say this made my weekend is an understatement. I can't wait to play it on PC in DX11. It is a great pin IRL. Nostalgia is also a big reason I want it. Every pizza joint in Columbus, Ohio seemed to have one during my childhood. I am now actually grateful they waited this long since the graphics and physics now are much better than in Seasons 1 and 2 which I don't think they will ever go back and improve. Too bad because those first two seasons have some of the best pins ever made. IMO they are now even slightly better than they were in Season 3. Shutter trap, I do indeed thank you very much and think you probably helped bring this to TPA. To return the favor I will start beating the war drum for Rollergames. Never played it but you have great taste in pins so we can't go wrong with it.

 

[k88dad]

It's about freakin' time. EBD is my #2 most wanted.

Now about Paragon...

 

[David T. Melnick]

If it is EBD it will make my entire month !

I have been wanting that table since the very beginning.

____
I will love both SS & EBD. Their pics look great. Mister Grey looks like a Stephen King character. Just a Constant Reader.

 

[kinggo]

You all can thank me for dragging Norman away from the FarSight booth at Arcade Expo 2.0 in January and marching him straight over to Eight Ball Deluxe. He had never played it before, didn't understand the appeal. After playing 2 games he looked at me and said he got it now. In case you don't know who Norman is, he's a producer on the game as well as the sound engineer, and also tracks down and purchases all the physical machines FarSight buys. Once he gets excited about a table, he pushes hard for it.

SEASON 6: THE SEASON OF SPORTS
[x] Indy 500
[x] Big Hurt
[x] EBD
[ ] AG Soccer
[ ] Rollergames
[ ] NBA Fastbreak
[ ] Banzai Run
[x] Radical
[ ] World Cup Soccer
[ ] '300'
[x] Vector
[ ] Monday Night Football
[x] Blackwater 100
[ ] Evel Knievel

I see a potential here

 

[Fungi]

I have no idea how it could possibly be taken to reference Sharkey's Shootout. Maybe the same way that this clue obviously meant Black Rose.

Yeah, that was 1 time. 31 packs ago. Literally over 2 and a half years. Over half TPA's lifetime. I think FarSight has stopped being that misleading.

 

[Trackball]

Yeah, that was 1 time. 31 packs ago. Literally over 2 and a half years. Over half TPA's lifetime. I think FarSight has stopped being that misleading.

I had to look that up--yeah, Black Rose was the table that image meant. But Black Knight 2000 was the game immediately after.

That said, that was a really lame clue, yes. But at least Black Rose wound up being a pretty cool table--thanks for introducing me to the game, Farsight.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Nailed it. I need Rollergames, I desperately want NBA Fastbreak, I hope we'll never see another Gottlieb Premiere. And yes, all System 11 tables FTW.

I really want NBA FB too. I've only played it in one session and the next time I was back to that joint it was gone. Such an inspired design.

I'm not saying every System 11 is great, but I would rather play any of them over any given Premiere.

Rollergames
Radical
Swords of Fury (it's possible I just want this for the theme and amazing MB music)
Banzai Run
Mousin Around

These are pretty much the best of the rest, from my experience. I haven't played every System 11, though, and some I haven't played enough to have a real opinion on, but I've enjoyed my time with Game Show and Big Guns, too.

Data Easts have also really grown on me. I'm a big fan of WWF RR, R&B, Tommy, GNR, even Batman. I still hate JP, though.

I'd like to see some of the older Bally tables, like, early 80's. Fathom

And if they could get some of the cool old Sterns from the 80's I would be happy. Seawitch. I stand by my assertion that TPA will no longer get any Sterns because of SPA. Therefore, Sharkey's is clearly out.

 

[shutyertrap]

I am not a fan of Data East tables in the real world, I never liked the quality of their build. In the digital world, that ceases to be an issue so I am much more open to their existence.

 

[Anubis]

EBD would be cool. It's a classic, for sure. And, tough. As a kid, I hated it because it was so tough. Looking forward to it, now. It's a must have in any collection.

 

[HotHamBoy]

I am not a fan of Data East tables in the real world, I never liked the quality of their build. In the digital world, that ceases to be an issue so I am much more open to their existence.

My early experiences with DE tables weren't great. I honestly don't get the appeal of tables like Star Wars and JP. The games I listed though, and LAH, are really fun on a well-maintained table. They definitely have a kind of cheap look about them (although I think Rocky and Bullwinkle looks fantastic).

I live in Inianapolis, which is a desert for pinball, and about 45 minutes from me a town has a fantastic Drive-In (they show old reels of schlocky films, mostly horror). In the back they converted a barn-style shed into a beautiful arcade. In addition to some fantastic MAME cabinets (they have CRT monitors!) they have 5 pinball tables - WWF RR, SW, WC'94, R911 and... Batman Forever. Bally, Gottlieb, Sega and Data East all right there. The WC'94 is obviosly the best - and is working good as new. The WWF is easily the second best table, though, and it's also astonishingly well maintained. I never tire of Macho Man's callouts.

 

[invitro]

My early experiences with DE tables weren't great. I honestly don't get the appeal of tables like Star Wars and JP. The games I listed though, and LAH, are really fun on a well-maintained table. They definitely have a kind of cheap look about them (although I think Rocky and Bullwinkle looks fantastic).

Aren't JP and LAH pretty much the same table?

I think DE tables actually were cheaper. Made of cheaper parts, anyway. This is the main reason why Sega beat WMS... they spent money on licenses instead of designers and parts. (IMO of course)

 

[rehtroboi40]

Aren't JP and LAH pretty much the same table?

I think DE tables actually were cheaper. Made of cheaper parts, anyway. This is the main reason why Sega beat WMS... they spent money on licenses instead of designers and parts. (IMO of course)

In my view, WMS did themselves in with their own quality. Their machines were so well-built and easy to maintain that operators didn't feel the need to fork over money on new machines, especially since many of their 90's machines could still draw a profit well into the 2000's. Of course, the licensing cost for the Phantom Menace (part 2 of 2 for the "pinball 2000" series obviously didn't help them.

Data East pinball machines had lots of short-term appeal, but I don't think they anticipated that people might still enjoy them years, even decades later.

 

[invitro]

In my view, WMS did themselves in with their own quality. Their machines were so well-built and easy to maintain that operators didn't feel the need to fork over money on new machines, especially since many of their 90's machines could still draw a profit well into the 2000's.

That may be the case, but it doesn't explain why they did buy new Sega machines. I think the answer is that operators & pinball players preferred big Hollywood movies like ID4 and Twister to cactuses, gofers, and Voltaire.

 

[Kaibun]

Aren't JP and LAH pretty much the same table?

Jurassic Park is a lot like Whirlwind. And LAH feels like a weird fusion between TZ and TAF. So yeah, they're not quite the same.

 

[rehtroboi40]

That may be the case, but it doesn't explain why they did buy new Sega machines. I think the answer is that operators & pinball players preferred big Hollywood movies like ID4 and Twister to cactuses, gofers, and Voltaire.

Now that I think about it, I should've been more clear-I was talking about strictly WMS machines. You were right about the whole licensing thing, even though IMO, the WMS tables of the late 90's still seemed to be more durable. I always thought that Sega tables were best when played out of the box. It was easy to tell when a Sega/Data East machine had been on the floor for a few months. Never got to play too many newer Sterns IRL, so I can't say if they had the same feel. The few I do see nowadays look like they haven't been properly maintained in at least a decade.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Aren't JP and LAH pretty much the same table?
(IMO of course)

Heck no!

As the poster stated above, JP is basically a crappier version of Whirlwind.

 

[invitro]

Heck no!
As the poster stated above, JP is basically a crappier version of Whirlwind.

Well, JP and LAH look and feel mostly like mirror images of each other, except that the kicker is in mostly the same location. More than that though, the rules are very similar. I remember JP being more like a TAF ripoff, mirrored. I don't remember the rules having much in common with WWind. I know what you guys are saying, sure, and I remember people saying these things back in the 1990's. I just think LAH and JP may be more similar to each other than either is to TAF, WWind, or especially TZ.

I'm still curious what LAH has that makes it so much better than JP though . I'd guess that if someone liked one, they'd be a sure shot to like the other. Just guessing of course. I'm ultra-familiar with all of these (thanks to TPA) except JP. Of course I played JP a lot back in the day, and I remember its general feel well, but not so much the rules beyond the modes.

 

[invitro]

I always thought that Sega tables were best when played out of the box. It was easy to tell when a Sega/Data East machine had been on the floor for a few months.

There was a wide variance in mechanical quality to Segas. Batman Forever was a piece of non-quality-controlled crapola when it was released. I was one of many people who raised a stink about it, and maybe it meant something, as Sega changed their mechanical tests/errors code quite a bit for Apollo 13. That machine, and Goldeneye and I think others about that time, were pretty solid mechanically. I know of course that I've played only a tiny percentage of the total set of these machines, so my recollections may not be typical.

 

[invitro]

While I'm rambling about Segas... I remember how the flipper strength on the more-than-one (three?) Frankensteins and Mavericks I played declined pretty quickly, both over long time and during a game, to where it was often very unlikely that the ramps on those tables were possible. I would try for two multiballs on Franky right after starting a game, and then forget about the ramp for the rest. This is a no-fun part of real "in the wild" pinball that I don't miss.

And I remember when Sega went to a total switch from drop targets to the (presumably?) much less expensive standups, by Apollo 13 or earlier. But I think not too many later-1980's WMS machines had drop targets, either. Maybe the somewhat-dull long banks of standups on A13, Goldeneye, etc were more noticeable. (I don't mean to pick on these tables in general too much. I enjoyed A13 and G'eye quite a lot when they were new. I even wrote or helped write their first rulesheets. )