TPA titles in the wild

[Robert Hunt]

Elvira and the Party Monsters was another game that proved elusive on my trip, which was a bummer because I love nothing more than a theme that is gunning for laughs and delivers. Putting Elvira in a pin was friggin genius! With such a strong theme from Dennis Nordman, another SUPER effort from Chris Granner, and a couple of fat ramps - what's not to like? And there were two or three places along that east coast trip that were supposed to have it and didn't, while I debated various course deviations in hopes of finding it, with the result that I made it back to Florida without having played it.

But once again it was the APE to the rescue. And the EatPM I found there was looking and running great. “How 'bout another ball?” How could I say no?

She rocked me in Austin too, with another machine in fine working order.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

CV is probably my most favorite table on TPA. Played a real SCARED STIFF yesterday but the wire form that stops the ball from returning up by the deadheads go's both ways on it and I have yet to hit the skill shot unlike TPA's guarteed every time you full pull.

 

[Robert Hunt]

Yikes! I've suceeded in jamming this thread so full of images that IE9 is choking and won't load the last eight or ten pics! I just get these giant placeholders. Google chrome was able to load the entire page, but then it took its sweet time doing it.

Update: I'm not able to delete posts from this thread for some reason, but I can still edit them (probably a good thing!) And after a reboot Explorer seems to have settled down a bit and has gone back to showing me all of the pictures where they're supposed to be. Problems? What problems?

 

[Robert Hunt]

Fungi I can't deny that when I set OUT on my trip the goal was simply to play as many of the TPA titles as I could find, but in the past two months or so I must have played about one THOUSAND different pins, so if I HAVE a "purpose" its clearly moved beyond this computer game. Still I'm addicted to TPA and have a decided soft-spot for every table they've included in the game, and even for those that they might. I feel like I own them (especially after playing them out in the real world.)

As for Strikes 'n' Spares, a game I don't imagine will actually make it into TPA, I saw the thing at Flippers, but it only robbed me. I can say it LOOKED pretty sharp, but I've also heard that the game is pretty uninspired and has a fairly low ceiling. If FarSight were gonna come out with an unusual pin, my vote would be Safecracker.

And Cactus Canyon? Played it at Flippers! And I'll get to it of course; I've just been taking them in the order they were issued by FarSight (only I somehow skipped over Monster Bash!)

 

[Fungi]

And Cactus Canyon? Played it at Flippers!

Excellent. You're over the hurdle then.

 

[Robert Hunt]

Along with Cactus Canyon, Strikes 'N Spares, Cirqus Voltaire, TotAN, and The Champion Pub (among others) - Monster Bash was one of the games I first encountered at Flippers Variety & Arcade in North Carolina not too far from Kitty Hawk. I had a blast there! Five or six games were either dark or should have been (Eight Ball Deluxe and another old Bally in the back weren't working, and the bowling pin Strikes 'N Spares was down as I said) but everything that WAS working at Flippers was working beautifully. Monster Bash was no exception.

The toys on this pin are a joy! It's no Wizard of Oz, but all of the things that move around and look for trouble are beefy enough to take what's coming. And once again TPA seems to have gotten things pretty much dead on. I'm telling you if learn these games on your phone even, you absolutely WILL be able bring what you know to the real table and have a HUGE headstart over anyone who hasn't. The more I play these games in real life, the more respect I have for what FarSight is doing.

Ran into MB again at the APE, and this copy was immaculate. I never get more than halfway thru this game, but I still loving hearing Wolfie whine about his condition and reading the creature's different excuses, but it only stands to reason that he can't talk.

The Monster Bash at Pinballz was also looking and playing pretty, right alongside its “Top Price Pins” pals Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I've really enjoyed reading this so far. Looking forward to the rest

 

[Robert Hunt]

Scared Stiff! The hits just keep on coming in this game! (I swear I just don't understand all the GRIPING that goes on around here!) The first thing I noticed when I first played this pin at the Silverball Museum (after Elvira's fine rump, and ample bosom spilling out of her shimmy) was that I wasn't playing in “family mode” anymore!

“Shrunken Head!”
“He always WANTED a little head...”

But the game is better when Elvira is rooting for you. “Oooh, do it AGAIN.”

And the sequel really is what clenches Elvira's place as the all-time goddess of pinball. Who else is even in the running?

The real table IS an eye-opener though. With the low and unchanging perspective I prefer in the TPA version, I just accept the fact that some areas of the table are a bit of a mystery to me. So it was sorta surprising to see some of those mysteries at the top of the table (and along the right) get resolved.

Here's a shot from the SS at Flippers that does a pretty good job of showing OFF some of those mystery spots! What a fun pin!

There was no Scared Stiff to play at the TPF, but fortunately there was a Stiff-O-Meter on hand in case any of the OTHER pins were working for you!

And of course Pinballz had a copy too. The people of Austin simply demand to know how scared stiff they can get!

 

[Robert Hunt]

I admit to being intimidated by Twilight Zone at first. It was still fairly new to TPA when I first saw it at the National Pinball Museum but I needn't have worried that would be my only shot at it. In the next few months I would go on to see at least a dozen examples in seven different venues. But on that day I was worried I wouldn't be able to get the powerball into the game! And while the left flipper was game, the right flipper was actually a little weak. But the game wasn't killing me like I was used to having it do on my tablet, and before I knew it a very grungy powerball, that looked a lot like every other pinball, came spitting out of the gumball machine and out into the playfield. The next thing I knew it was sailing thru the air after some random event and landed on the “Battle the Power” playfield, from which it promptly drained. Outstanding! After that me and Twilight Zone came to a new understanding, where I realize that it's only a pinball table and that I don't have to fear it. That's a place in my amygdala that properly belongs to Gorgar anyway...

Crabtowne in Glen Bernie, Maryland was a riot. It felt like “the arcade that time (and technicians) forgot.” But they had some interesting machines! They had a Popeye Saves the Planet that looked stunning but kept shutting down in the middle of my first ball, for instance, and a Fish Tales that would tilt when you weren't even touching it. But this Twilight Zone was a bright spot. It played great!

This one at Silverball was set on five ball play! Was that enough for me to get lost in the zone? No. I had to settle for getting lost trying to find my way back to the Garden State Parkway.

And I had to know Flippers wouldn't be left out of the action, but look how clean this table is.

 

[Robert Hunt]

This fine TZ was at the APE and gave me a few good games:

And these are two of the five or so Twlight Zones that were at the TPF, but I didn't play any of them. That was the first time on my trip I passed up a chance to play a pin from The Pinball Arcade, but there were SO MANY PINS in that room, and only so many hours in the weekend!

The second of these pins features the color DMD, which makes no nevermind to ME, except that only really nice pins would ever come in for such an upgrade in the first place. There must have been twenty super clean pinballs in that tented off section of color DMDs.

So of course I had to play the Twilight Zone I found at Pinballz! Do I want this table thinking I'm intimdated by it?

 

[Robert Hunt]

Star Trek: The Next Generation was another intimidating pin that was new to me when I first saw it at the National Pinball Museum. It looked and sounded fantastic, but I hadn't even set the local high score on my tablet on this game at that point. But after I snapped off a few combinations we were off to the races, and before I knew it I was winging along at warp eight and had been promoted to the position of Captain Janeway's personal steward! In the end, it didn't spare me a snide comment from the robot, but then he was never known for his tact.

But that was the last I saw of Picard and his crew on my east coast tour. Sure there were encounters with the Enterprise-A courtesy of Bally and Data East, but everyone knows that's tough duty after pulling a tour on the Enterprise-D.

It wasn't until the APE that I got another crack at starfleet academy, but let's just say I'm no Wesley Crusher!

And THIS pin from the TPF featuring another one of the color DMDs was apparently signed by the nearly entire cast of the TV show! (A fact which I am only this moment noticing myself, btw.) I didn't play it obviously, but now I'm wishing that I had!

 

[Robert Hunt]

Another pin I kept seeing (to my delight) was Attack from Mars, and this is a table that people have good reason to keep shiny, so that's the way you see them. The first one I played was at Silverball and while it played fine and felt snappy, it was the one that showed the most wear. Still I tormented the invaders and destroyed several of their saucers there (and I'm trying to remember if that was a five ball game like most of the others, but I'm not certain it was.)

At Flippers they had it in a special black-lit room along with Revenge from Mars, Star Wars Episode I, and a Gene Cunningham Big Bang Bar that was “cherry.”

 

[Robert Hunt]

On this VERY nice example I found at the APE, the kickout hole put the ball low into the left slingshot without fail, but it never seemed to trip it. The ball would simply bang off the bottom of the slingshot and onto the flipper without so much as a cross look. Wacky!

I couldn't pass up a game on this fine example from the TPF either.

And this one in Austin played great too, but was probably a notch down in condition from the games I saw at the two shows, or that sign would read $13,995 or something north of there.

 

[Robert Hunt]

It may seem as if every one of these pinballs is my favorite, but the fact is some tables are just fun to play, while others have a genuine hold on me, and Genie is truly one of the latter. It hasn't been getting MORE play on my devices than Firepower or whatever flavor of the month DMD I'm working on, but I do keep going back to it, and of all the pins in TPA, it is the one I can't stop photographing every time I see it. The only pins I have more pictures of in every case feature art by Dave Christensen. So what is it about Genie in particular? I'm honestly not sure I know! I just know I can never leave it without trying to capture something of what makes it so special.

The first time I saw it was in the brightly lit Silverball Museum, where it gave me a fairly floaty game that nonetheless played great. All of the flippers were up to their tasks, and yet the flippers in the upper playfield were not so strong that every shot from them risked ejection. When the dust had settled I had no more than 340,000 points or so, but it felt like a good score, and I was pleased to see that I came very near to knocking off the top scorer in the under-13 girls division!

But the table really comes into its own in a dark room like the one they had set up at the APE for tables from this period of early solid states where it was sitting next to a beautiful Gottlieb Joker Poker. And THIS Genie wasn't playing floaty at all. It was playing pretty brisk! All of the flippers were strong, and yet even when you got the ball into the upper playfield you had the feeling you could stay there and slug it out some. And in fact I earned multiple free balls on that table more than once, something which is still tough to do every time on my tablet!

In comparison the Genie at Pinballz was a comedown. This one wasn't particularly floaty either, but the flippers were of unequal strength and were too weak in any case. Oh well! Two out of three Genies charmed the heck out of me!

(And speaking of charm, this table SOUNDS charming, and TPA nailed it. If you disagree, there is an Avengers out there somewhere that should make you very happy.)

 

[Robert Hunt]

I have Crabtowne to thank for my first appointment with the Doctor, coming to TPA as it did three weeks after I got back to Florida. (Come to think of it my first games on Attack from Mars and Genie came on the real pinballs as well.) But like anybody I'm aware of the "short list" and didn't pass up any chance to play any of those pins I came across either, as well as just about every other game that would make any list of top fifty possibilities for TPA.

And that Dr. Dude was in pretty good shape by Crabtowne standards! While it kicked my ass, it wasn't because it was broke. I just didn't really know what I was trying to do, and with a pin that's in your face like that it takes a little getting used to. (Anyone ever play Spectrum?)

But as far as gripes about TPA go, the whinging over Dr. Dude takes the cake! For one thing, anyone who doesn't like the sound package in this pin must be partly dead inside. It may be silly, but it's good fun, and it features more first rate original music from Chris Granner. And I have one word for the camp that won't shut up about how HARD the Dude is on TPA: Zen.

The APE provided a chance for a more thorough examination, and by this time I was an old hand at the game (having had it on my tablet for an entire week (that I mostly spent playing Genie.)) But who cares? I was ready! And this pin did not disappoint! Even with those coiled wires you can see there, with polygons truly beyond measure, the game seemed to be running at well over 60 frames per second!

The one I saw in Dallas was in even better condition than the one in Florida, and what's more, it seemed to be in far better focus – except when it wasn't.

 

[Robert Hunt]

Firepower is still another pinball machine I've seen a bunch lately, but the only time I saw it on my trip north it was in rough shape (But then, the rundown arcade it was in ALSO seemed in rough shape.) The flippers were weak and even intermittent, and the table was well worn. But still the game sounded impressive!

More recently I've been playing the heck out of it on TPA, and the examples I saw at the two shows in particular were killer; fast & furious! Here's the gorgeous one from the APE that gave me the first REAL games of Firepower I played in about thirty years:

There were two nice ones at the TPF, and somehow I managed to get halfway decent shots of both playfields.

Gameplay was fantastic on all three of these tables, and I had little trouble locking balls, getting to multiball, and getting extra balls here and there. In comparison, the Firepower I saw at Pinballz was nowhere near as nice as these. And as far as TPA version goes, I can't speak to whether it has bugs that spoil it for the wizards. I can only say I have trouble putting it down.

 

[Robert Hunt]

There's a Cactus Canyon at Flippers, and like most of the pins they have there from the DMD era, it's in impeccable condition. I had no idea at the time I played it that it would be coming to TPA, but I knew it had a great rep, and I wasn't disappointed with how it played; I thought it was a hoot! I was hitting the bad guys and other targets, and generally enjoying myself, which isn't always how a first go at a strange pin works out!

Now I can't say I've made any progress with this game on TPA. I think between my phone and my tablet I have about six hall of fame points.

But I did see a pretty nice looking Cactus Canyon at the TPF, although I didn't get a chance to play it because there was a line out the door:

With Central Park we're finally down to a game you won't see every day, unless you work at a place like the Silverball Museum. And those older games are what makes that place so fantastic. There are fifteen or twenty more modern pins there, but the incredible EM's are the reason to go. Now it's no secret that games with short flippers can be pretty severe, but what DOES seem to be a secret is how many of them can be really fun. Did Central Park at Silverball play like the one in TPA? Not quite. I don't remember winning fifteen free games for every third or fourth game I played for instance, and I don't remember watching the ball bang around like a proton in a nucleus. Instead the game played a bit more “leisurely” and I was scoring on the order of seven or eight hundred points per game. But I don't fault FarSight for tuning this one a bit “live.” If it wasn't so sprung they'd probably never hear the end of it! This isn't serious after all - it's pinball!

 

[Robert Hunt]

So that's it so far! In just the past few months I've gotten to play 23 out of the 26 games that are currently a part of The Pinball Arcade. I've only missed Harley-Davidson, Big Shot, and No Good Gofers (although I DID have a few gofer sightings!) But I'll manage to "pin down" these few stragglers soon enough. It's Gottlieb's Goin' Nuts that has ME sweating!

 

[canuck]

Great thread...but PLEASE compress the pictures, there is no need to post a 3000px wide fuzzy cellphone picture. You could easily reduce them to 1200px wide or less. It's killing my browser, and others too.

 

[night]

Great post! Nothing wrong with the size of the pics. Canuck: you know what they say about men with large pictures, right?