STERN Strategy Guide for Game of Thrones
In a change from the norm, STERN Pinball has published a rule sheet for Game of Thrones pinball, along with basic strategy examples.
I think this is a good move on their part. It would have only been a matter of weeks before the fan-made strategy guides and videos came out, and yet most casual players might never see those. This creates a better opportunity for players of all skill levels to understand there’s a lot more going on than just flipping the flippers. And it will come in handy next Sunday at the Game of Thrones Launch Party.
Download the PDF here.
‘Tommy’ on the Big Screen + Raffle
Tommy Showing at the Carnegie Philanthropic Flipout Fundraiser
Location: Alameda Theatre, 2317 Central Avenue, Alameda, CA 94501
Admission: $20 online through Eventbrite –
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/carnegie-philanthropic-flipout-at-the-alame…
Doors open at 5:30pm, show starts at 6:30pm
Dust off your bell-bottoms, lace up your platform boots, grab your glam-rock sunglasses, and get out your wallets to support the Pacific Pinball Museum’s restoration of Alameda’s Carnegie library building! Join us at the historic Alameda Theatre for a special 40th anniversary screening of The Who’s iconic pinball film “Tommy,” as we raise funds to reopen the Carnegie library to the public as the new home of PPM’s expanding collection of pins from the 1800s to today.
The Carnegie Philanthropic Flipout festivities include:
- The debut of “BALLS-A-POPPIN! The Banging Art of the Pacific Pinball Museum,” a documentary by Aracelli Frias and Konrad De Ruttié: www.balls-a-poppin.com
- A live auction of a Bally Captain Fantastic pinball machine and several backglasses
- A special appearance by Captain Fantastic himself
- Beer and wine available for purchase at the theatre snack bar
- The Who’s 1975 rock opera film “Tommy” on the big screen
Please note: “Tommy” contains material that may not be suitable for children.
Costumes are encouraged but not required. All proceeds from this event go directly to support the restoration of Alameda’s Carnegie library building as the new home of the Pacific Pinball Museum, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching art, science, and history through pinball, and preserving and promoting this important part of American culture.
Purchase your ticket today on Eventbrite:
http://carnegie-philanthropic-flipout-tommy.eventbrite.com/
Additional information on the Carnegie Campaign can be found here:
http://pacificpinball.org/articles/pinball-museum-needs-your-help
Pacific Pinball Museum Groupon
Get yer PPM Groupon right here.
- $7 for admission for one adult ($15 value)
- $22 for admission for two adults and two children ($45 value)
www.johnpopadiuk.com Chronicles the Zidware Trainwreck
I was a bit surprised to see a referrer from http://www.johnpopadiuk.com/ assuming it was from the man himself, given all my posts on the subject are decidedly negative. But nope. Turns out someone who’s clearly pretty pissed off (and rightly so) registered the domain to provide a timeline of the Zidware fiasco and how John royally screwed hundreds of players out of an estimated million-plus bucks. That’s an estimate because apparently John’s pinball-making abilities are only exceeded by his talents at bookkeeping, and lawd knows how much he really took in or where the money went.
Smart money says it went here
I followed the Zidware (Magic Girl, Retro-Atomic Zombie Adventure, Alice in Wonderland) and Skit-B (Predator) sagas closely but dropped out of the loop when their respective failures became certain and entered the legal grind phase. Imagine my surprise to learn that Jpop did an interview with the Coast2Coast Pinball Podcast. Listen to it here, or don’t, because like everything else that comes out of Jpop’s mouth, it’s mostly a tour in excuse-making. Here’s my quick and dirty paraphrased summary:
- “I didn’t realize building boutique pinballs was different than the deep-pocket resources I had at Williams.”
- “It took a year to design the cabinet.” (why reinvent the wheel?)
- “I was ignoring reality and just pursuing the American Dream.”
- Jpop, on realizing after eight months that Magic Girl could not make money or cover costs: “If we knew everything in the very beginning, do we just not move forward?” (Answer: Yes. You go back to the drawing board)
- When asked if he could understand why a pre-order buyer would stop sending in scheduled payments after four years of waiting and no game, no communication, missed calls/emails: “Obviously, I can’t understand it because I’m not on the other side of the fence of it.”
He goes on to explain that a few of his customers came into his shop, sat him down and explained that since he’d taken customer money he had an obligation to deliver. This, astoundingly, was something of a revelation to him. “Obviously, I realize that today, but back then I needed more explanation.” Yes, he actually said that. A 50+ year-old grown-ass man needed it explained to him that if you take money to build something you need to actually deliver!
He talks about the difficulties building a custom OS for his platform, and again, it begs the facepalm-inducing question of why they didn’t go with an existing platform like the P-ROC, particularly for such a small run of games.
John rambles on with “nice-sounding” words which, taken together, make almost no sense or amount to total dodges of the question being asked. What little can be deciphered from his word salad illustrates he not only has zero business sense, but is simultaneously oblivious of his ethical or legal obligation to give customers something in return for the money they paid him under contract.
He seems more concerned with the fact that “nobody likes me anymore.” John says (paraphrasing): “I work, I pay my taxes, the only time I’ve ever gotten in trouble was a speeding ticket.” In other words, he can’t understand why people are so upset, because in his eyes he’s had a pretty plain and vanilla track record and he’s an “alright dude who never set out to screw anyone.” He just never planned to deliver anything for the thousands and thousands of dollars of money they sent him. That’s not the same as stealing right?
At this point, even the former licensee (and customer), who wanted to effectively take over operations of Zidware, now publicly ridicules John:
“Its more like he needs someone or something to blame his incompetence on. Like I said this is a joke and not even worth debating. The game looked great, thanks to Yeti, but the game sucked and was no where close to 90% completion indicated to me. It was a giant waste of my time and money, end of story.” -WCBrandes
The cherry on top? John makes sure to mention that he’s had to spend his own money on his legal defense. Oh the humanity! Well, by god, forget everything I said above. I mean, the guy has had to suffer the insufferable burden of paying for his defense without, you know, like, money just given to him!
Read more at http://www.johnpopadiuk.com/ and here:
Primitive London (1965)
PRIMITIVE LONDON is an exploitation pseudo-documentary that took aim at the supposed darker side of London night life in the mid-60s. Here’s what it had to say of pinballers:
Gork and Blip Go To Targ
Two aliens travel to earth using MST3K special effects to find The House of TARG, an arcade in Ottawa, Ontario, which also features live music and Perogies. Sounds good to me.
Two World Champions Teach You Pinball
I’ve attended and given many seminars on how to play pinball so I can say from experience this is one of the best. 2011 World Champion Andrei Massenkoff and multi-World Champion Bowen Kerins do an excellent job covering both the basics and lots of advanced technique. To deliver all this flippery goodness they use Paragon, which is an older solid-state game, and Full Throttle, which is a brand new game from boutique manufacturer Heighway Pinball of England.
Thanks to Pinball News for the video.
Heart of the Party
Re-imaging of ‘Heart of the Party’ (1995) by Severed Heads, an Australian pop-techno band.
Here’s the original:
Iron Throne Tournament Series
GeneX of Orange Photography is running a 3 or 4-part tournament series with cumulative results counting for IFPA ranking points.
I just learned of this series-event this past weekend and event 1 is already in the bag, however, you can still qualify for the “final battle” or just come out for a standalone good time.
To qualify for the “final battle” your cumulative results have to be in the top 24 over the three events.
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Battle 1: Sunday October 11, 2015 @ 2:00pm – Gestalt (3159 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103) – (archived results: Main Tourney / Finals)
Battle 2: Game of Thrones Pinball Launch Party: Sunday October 25th, 2015 @ 2:00pm – Gestalt (3159 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103)
Battle 3 and/or Final Battle*: Sunday November 8th, 2015 @ 2:00pm – Gestalt
Each Battle will have a $5 entry fee. Formats for the preliminary Battles may vary depending on the location but will use MatchPlay to Battle in Groups of four (4) if we have more than 20 entrants. If we have under 20 we will battle head-to-head in a 2-strikes format (using Brackelope)!
As you may know, in Game of Thrones, when you lose, you are pretty much dead, but this isn’t really Westeros and you won’t die! Instead, everyone will earn points on a set scale according to their finishing position.
More details, including the results of the first event, on the official page here. Also, the Facebook events page is here.
Drunk History – Pinball Prohibition
Two Comedy Central guys get drunk and talk about pinball’s illegal past. Embedding disabled so check out the video here.
Of course, like nearly every historical account of pinball’s illegality, what they never mention is that it was used for gambling. Players could win credits on a machine (games back then could rack up 10 – 100 credits or more in a single game) and then “redeem” them at the bar for nickels.
For about the first 15 years of pinball’s existence the games didn’t have flippers. All you could do was plunge, nudge and pray. Despite the “For Amusement Only” signs on the machines, payouts were the norm. In 1947, flippers were added to pinball and for the next twenty years or so it split into two factions: “skill games” and “gambling games”. From 1950 to 1960, the vast majority of Bally’s production was Bingo machines, a flipper-less pinball-like gambling game, and they continued to produce them into the 1970s. Cities and towns often didn’t want to split hairs over which was which, so they simply banned them all.
This song by Lonnie Irving was about a long-haul trucker who gets hooked on Bingo machines and loses everything.
Also, in many cases, it wasn’t about the machines but the mafia. Pinball-as-gambling was insanely lucrative and naturally the mafia wanted to control the action. Banning pinball was a way to hit the mob square in the pocketbook. Check out the excellent mini-doc below for more about Bally and the mob.
Pat Lawlor joins Jersey Jack Pinball
Though it’s been a fait accompli on pinball social media sites for quite awhile, it’s now official from JJP!
For those of you who don’t recognize the name Pat Lawlor, he’s the designer of some of the most popular and revered games ever made, including The Addams Family and Twilight Zone. You can see the games Pat has had a hand in here.
STERN Goes Virtual
I’ve been saying it for years. When the iPad was introduced, one of the top App downloads was Pinball HD. It sold millions of copies!
Pinball was never dead, it just changed venues, and virtual pinball is a great way to get people into the scene. One example: I played a guy at a league night who’d never played an actual TZ but knew the rules to Twilight Zone from playing the virtual table! He’s now one of the top contenders in the Bay Area.
Kudos to STERN for getting on the bus.
More info HERE
pinballbayarea.com 