Solution: Added your event listener to a VIEW not a WIN or something else.

I tried one at the store, most likely going to slice open this huge thing (2x the size of an orange). It tastes like an orange, maybe with a little bit of Grapefruit flavorings. It’s hard to tell.

Death Star Data East Speaker Cover Scan: hertzelle.com/deathstar.psd

Update:

1. Play some games that I’ve always wanted to play. Visual Pinball just doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
2. Meet some fellow pinheads.
3. Analyze what machines other people at the party were attracted to.

A lot of people were surprised that I haven’t played a lot of pins in “real life” but since I’m fairly new to the actual hobby, it not surprising to me. There really wasn’t a good place to play pinball that was accessible to me growing up and so I just flat out didn’t get to play any real games, but rather played a lot on Visual Pinball (a pinball emulator of sorts).

So as the night went on, I decided that I wanted to start scoping out some games that I thought I would love to have. Here is my quick review, where I post a picture of the machine and my quick thoughts of features and how I felt about the machine (if I can remember). This is mostly for my benefit, so that later down the road I can remember what I thought about each machine.

If you don’t like TL;DR, you make leave now =].

Roadshow by Williams

[IPMD]

I have fond memories of this machine, it’s the only pinball that i know of that I have a “childhood” attachment with. However it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve played a *real* Roadshow.

I remember playing this game at my local tilt when I could and one time during a company party at Busch Stadium I ended up sneaking away from my Dad to go play this machine (which was on Free Play) to end up getting yelled at (was worth it).

Features of Interest:

Widebody, Williams Brand, Shaker motor (LOVE!), Red and Ted, variety of playfield elements.

Concerns:

Owning this machine would be awesome. However, Red and Ted scare me from a technical standpoint. They always seem broken. Which is understandable, although Williams has said they are “proven technology” from Funhouse, I disagree! Every single Roadshow I’ve ever played has at least one problem with Red and Ted, usually more. Even this machine last night was acting up, at one point Ted closed his eyes for a long period of time and didn’t open them again until the game reset. So from a technical point, I don’t know if I could handle this machine and it’s two heads of solenoids and gear-levers.

Cirqus Voltaire

[IPMD]

This is my first time even hearing about this game. I was attracted to it by the giant Neon light on the ramp.

I was surprised with this machine:

Ringmaster, Neon, Playfield Ball, Hidden PopBumper.

This game had some wierd shit going on in the backglass, I was in sensory overload and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. There is a ball that shoots around in the backglass and goes on this wheel thing, it was different.

The Addams Family

[IPMD]

I can’t decide if I like this game or not. It was fun to play, but I don’t know if it was the light or just the effect itself, but “The Power” is some trippy shit.

Basically this game has magnets directly under the playfield which in my opinion are pretty crazy.

The magnets will periodicly either save or just “zap” your ball right into a side. The trippy part is that I’m a very “analytical” pinball player, “calculating” the shots before they happen. Well with the power you’ll be figuring out a balls path between where it’s coming and where it needs to go and suddenly the ball will go WOOSH and go in a direction that is completely unexpected. After three games, I was having fun but feeling sick of the sudden movement of the ball in directions that my mind didn’t expect. *Clicks Fingers Together Twice*

More Games…

Indian Jones:

• Upper play field was neat, I liked all the different outholes and the number of balls the game seemed to utilize.

Whirlwind

• The fan is nice, the spinning disks in the middle of the field didn’t seem to affect the ball too much. I would prefer a dotmatrix machine.

No Good Golfers

• Didn’t like this game too much, the ball just seemed to be going EVERYWHERE. I was excited about all the different stuff going on initially, but it seemed to me that the game never ended after it drained like 9 times. I ended up draining my last few balls because I was bored with it.

Whitewater

• This game is actually pretty neat. The topper has a nice effect to it and the variety of modes and ramps on the playfield are pretty entertaining.

Avatar

• This new game by Stern is really interesting, it has a “Navi” ball feature which seems neat. I’d like to know if the ball has a different weight than a normal pinball, I’m thinking it does. This game is hard to just pickup, which I think makes it a little less fun for me. I was struggling to get into any modes or pick up any multi-ball. I eventually just left the machine to let other people try it out, as it was brand new at this party last night. I’ve played this game before at a shop in Chesterfield, I didn’t really enjoy it then and had the same feelings I did last night. For some reason it doesn’t seem “fun” to me.

Notes on Tron, based on Avatar:

• Word on the street is that Tron is in the line-up for Stern pinball machines, I hope it does justice to the movies and I hope it’s not “Avatar” like.

The Lord of the Rings

This is without a doubt my next game. I’ve been wanting one just about as long as I wanted my Star Wars.

Features I like:

Modes, Path of the Dead, Ballrog, Magnet Ring, Variety of Multiball’s, Giant Sword.

I would love to get a Limited Edition of this machine, just to see what this game is like with a Shakermotor. Hopefully there will be a few of those around and not in too bad of shape by the time I can afford one of these.

Like I said, this will be my next pin.

Champion Pub

This is a surprising little game as well. I played this game at random, not immediately attracted to it. I was pushing start over and over by the end.

This game is fun because the giant punching bag in the middle of the playfield turns around into a guy that punches the air as you try to “defeat” him.

Also there are two mini playfields at the top left and right. The top left one is a jump rope game where the ball is positioned in the middle and a metal wrench looking thing starts spinning around like a jump rope. Using the flippers you press to “Jump” the ball over and over and over. Mean while the “rope” gets faster and faster, until it knocks your ball off back into the game.

The playfield on the top right are two mini boxing gloves that punch the ball towards a punching bag, this is neat because it counts how many times your successful and opens up different modes depending on how far you make it.

Final thoughts:

There are many more games I played, some made impressions and other did not. I think for sure, I’ve got some ideas of what I want in my basement eventually. Now I just have to get there.

Here is the full gallery of all the pictures I took with my camera phone that night. Mostly machines, but a few cases of “group” shots.

Throw in a few scenes of Linux commands being typed into a futuristic computer and I’m officially hooked on Tron. I will be excited when they announce another movie in the future (whenever that happens, it will). I think there is room for a sequel in there with what happens to Tron at the end (not going to spoil it). Got to see it with my new Tron junkie Mandy last night, was great fun!

Wow what an inspiration. If I was just shown this movie when I was a kid, perhaps I would have gotten into computers a lot faster or something.

I’ve said this to myself several times in the last couple of years, “How much science fiction is out there that I’m missing??!”. It seems that I’m always the last to jump on the bandwagon for all these amazing Science Fiction adventures.

I’m going to make it a goal to make sure that I do some research towards any future or past movies / books / whatever that I should be apart of, before it’s too late!

I’m going to go see the new Tron movie this Friday, I’m indifferent with my expectations, anything about how my programs could potentially duel the mainframe is pretty epic.

I spent an hour or so refreshing the look of the Craig Tracker and added Stats. Here is the “mini” version, there are a lot of “hidden” things that get activated. Still enjoying tweaking everything. Lots of fun here.

This device is worth every penny. I was afraid I was going to have to re-wire the network, but that wasn’t the case. This little device joined up as a client to my existing network ( i knew it would ), but on top of that stole the WPA2 code for the existing network from my dads macbook and used it to connect to the network without me having a clue what it was doing. ( Pretty crazy Apple Keychain shit, I think ).

The sound quality is great, I’m able to stream to it, my dad is able to stream to it, and his iPod (And my iPod?) was able to stream to it.

$Apple_Rep++;

Craig is a really awesome dude and I’m very lucky to have him as a good friend, oh look I took pictures and shot a small video:

I use to listen to this TAPE a lot when I was a kid. It’s funny to hear the sounds without the typical tape warp sound from the tape degrading.

It’s also interesting that 10+ years later I still know a lot of the lyrics!

The Beatles… Good Stuff !