Tall Tales
Pinball. I will kick your ass. I have 3 Texas titles and one City title. Not that they mean anything, but bragging rights. This is me whipping up Pinbot. I would run it up to some ungodly amount of free games then walk away. We are talking BILLIONS, not millions, of points. At Mama’s Cafe on Westheimer, some dumbass who used to play daily there and had high score of 15 MILLION; and was shooting his mouth off to drunk buddies. I challenged him and told him I would spot him a million a ball; free balls count as same play ball; $1500 per ball. He thought I was full of shit, but said sure. Not that he had the money, but I had a backer anyways. After 2 hours of me playing I had over 87 million and was headed towards 100 million, still on first ball with about 7 stacked up. He didn’t get to play. I told him he had been set up by the guy who owned the machine. No money exchanged hands, and I simply threw the game, left my initials of EDX on the machine, and had a few beers and left. So yes, I will kick your ass in pinball earthling…..and have been playing since 4. Also won a pinball contest at Confetti’s here in Houston, BLINDFOLDED….and got FREE TICKETS to The Who concert!
Grab Bag
Robert Gagno talks Autism, Pinball
“I have always had strong interests in certain things. I used to love exit signs, rotating fans and fire alarms when I was little. My mom said she would let me turn switches on and off to keep me in one place but would have to watch me around fire alarms. I remember following the “Pull Alarm” directions at least three times and all the excitement it caused.”
Read the full article here.
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Robert Gagno is high-functioning autistic and ranked 5th in the world out of over 36,000 registered players. He is the top Canadian player. A short documentary about Robert called “Wizard Mode” is going into production after a successful Indiegogo campaign. Additionally, a distributor scooped up the film and is offering to one-for-one match all contributions for the remainder of the campaign. There’s still four days left so if you’d like to contribute, go here.
Life and Times of Tim – Insurmountable High Score
A recovered alcoholic puts all his energy into dominating a pinball machine. Then Tim steps up and ruins everything.
Some NSFW language.
Archer Pinball
Ride into the danger zone with Archer Pinball, a new table from the pinball wizards at Zen Studios! Archer Pinball throws players into the spy life with the world’s greatest secret agent (and his coworkers).
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.
pinballbayarea.com 