EldarOfSuburbia
New member
- Feb 8, 2014
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- #21
A brief synopsis of my visit - both days.
Friday:
- Played Walking Dead, enjoyed it, I posted a bit more detail (but not much, really) in the Walking Dead thread.
- Played some WOZ, also my first time, it's good but as has been said by many of game design, often, "Less is More". Boy is that a busy table. A lot of nice features but maybe if they'd decided to drop a couple an concentrate a bit more on some of the others, it'd be even better. Hopefully lessons learned for The Hobbit. The Hobbit has the potential to get Jersey Jack properly noticed - WOZ is a good collectors' table, a fine, solid, debut, but The Hobbit is a mainstream, current license and the table that might make it into movie theaters, though their asking price ($8k) is going to make distributors balk a bit.
- Played Jurassic Park for the first time in nearly 20 years. CHAOS!!
- Came to the conclusion that I need more F-14 Tomcat in my life, one way or another. It's moved high up on my "if I ever buy a table..." list.
- Played Silverball Mania and X's And O's and realized those are two more tables I'd played in the early 80s and completely forgotten about.
- Bemoaned the lack of AC/DC, Metallica, Stern Star Trek, and TSPP. There were two Family Guys, but they were constantly occupied and I wasn't that inclined to wait.
- Wondered why owners of tables, particularly late 70s-early 80s SS table, just don't take care of them. In particular, there was a Flight 2000 with flippers so weak even a well-hit ball only made it halfway up the lock lane. Major fail. Really though, missing lamps all over, flippers mostly weak and/or ineffectual - c'mon, this is basic maintenance stuff, you'd have a better chance at selling your table if you invested a couple hundred bucks and a few hours getting it back in shape.
Saturday:
- Had my daughter with me. She displayed all of the flail-and-hope technique that a 7-year-old pinball novice can muster. But more on that later.
- She really liked Super Mario Mushroom World, though I observed it was being very unfair with some of its pipe kickouts.
- We played WOZ together, she managed to get the "There's No Place Like Home" save started, and the table proceeded to have the ball kick STDM from the auto-plunge. I've still not seen anyone make the Save Toto save. I made one shot, bricked the second.
- There was a very nice BK2K, I think the same one that was at Allentown, it has a drink holder on one of the legs
Shame it was set up with a definite right-to-left slope, either that or the right flipper mechanics were off. Balls up the left ramp to the upper playfield barely made it at best. Upper right flipper, balls never fed cleanly to it, meaning the orbit was almost impossible to hit; I never managed it once. Why spend so much time making a table look and sound beautiful - it had a sub-woofer hooked it, it sounded AWESOME - and not get it leveled correctly? Asking price was $5k. Yeah, I would've.
- Congrats to my daughter for competing in the Kids' Tournament (on Mr & Ms Pac-Man). She did okay. Everyone got a miniature gold plastic trophy!
- ...and finally:
I lost. It turns out her weak plunging is just about damned perfect for Tommy's skill shot, and she got a lucky ricochet into the mirror on ball 3 to start multi-ball. I totally bricked my game.
Friday:
- Played Walking Dead, enjoyed it, I posted a bit more detail (but not much, really) in the Walking Dead thread.
- Played some WOZ, also my first time, it's good but as has been said by many of game design, often, "Less is More". Boy is that a busy table. A lot of nice features but maybe if they'd decided to drop a couple an concentrate a bit more on some of the others, it'd be even better. Hopefully lessons learned for The Hobbit. The Hobbit has the potential to get Jersey Jack properly noticed - WOZ is a good collectors' table, a fine, solid, debut, but The Hobbit is a mainstream, current license and the table that might make it into movie theaters, though their asking price ($8k) is going to make distributors balk a bit.
- Played Jurassic Park for the first time in nearly 20 years. CHAOS!!
- Came to the conclusion that I need more F-14 Tomcat in my life, one way or another. It's moved high up on my "if I ever buy a table..." list.
- Played Silverball Mania and X's And O's and realized those are two more tables I'd played in the early 80s and completely forgotten about.
- Bemoaned the lack of AC/DC, Metallica, Stern Star Trek, and TSPP. There were two Family Guys, but they were constantly occupied and I wasn't that inclined to wait.
- Wondered why owners of tables, particularly late 70s-early 80s SS table, just don't take care of them. In particular, there was a Flight 2000 with flippers so weak even a well-hit ball only made it halfway up the lock lane. Major fail. Really though, missing lamps all over, flippers mostly weak and/or ineffectual - c'mon, this is basic maintenance stuff, you'd have a better chance at selling your table if you invested a couple hundred bucks and a few hours getting it back in shape.
Saturday:
- Had my daughter with me. She displayed all of the flail-and-hope technique that a 7-year-old pinball novice can muster. But more on that later.
- She really liked Super Mario Mushroom World, though I observed it was being very unfair with some of its pipe kickouts.
- We played WOZ together, she managed to get the "There's No Place Like Home" save started, and the table proceeded to have the ball kick STDM from the auto-plunge. I've still not seen anyone make the Save Toto save. I made one shot, bricked the second.
- There was a very nice BK2K, I think the same one that was at Allentown, it has a drink holder on one of the legs
Shame it was set up with a definite right-to-left slope, either that or the right flipper mechanics were off. Balls up the left ramp to the upper playfield barely made it at best. Upper right flipper, balls never fed cleanly to it, meaning the orbit was almost impossible to hit; I never managed it once. Why spend so much time making a table look and sound beautiful - it had a sub-woofer hooked it, it sounded AWESOME - and not get it leveled correctly? Asking price was $5k. Yeah, I would've.- Congrats to my daughter for competing in the Kids' Tournament (on Mr & Ms Pac-Man). She did okay. Everyone got a miniature gold plastic trophy!
- ...and finally:
I lost. It turns out her weak plunging is just about damned perfect for Tommy's skill shot, and she got a lucky ricochet into the mirror on ball 3 to start multi-ball. I totally bricked my game.
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