I like it so much I had to go two nights.
It started on the CES expo floor at the Stern booth. They were selling Avengers and Transformers in "The Pin" form factor. They had 6 or so machines lined up and they were pretty much full, but no lines to play. This was on Thursday, so I have no idea how busy they were on the first 3 days of the show.
I talked to the guys manning the booth and they sort of seemed a little like reformed mobsters. I thanked them for still being open and they confirmed that most of their sales were in fact to the home market. I told them we'd be at the PBHoF that night and finished out the day at the show. They said to say hi to Tim for them.
The PBHoF was open until 11:00 on thursday and 12:00 on Friday. We closed it down both nights. On thursday we arrived around 9:00 and I immediately went for the MM. I played a few games even though the castle gate would immediately shut after opening. Slightly frustrated and disappointed, I moved on to play just a game or two on several machines. I played EM's, SS's and DMD's.
Now it has literally been a couple of decades since I have played on commercial pinball machines. I think in the last 20 years, I played RFM at the local bowling alley once just a month or so ago. I do have a virtual pin so I enjoyed the benefit of knowing quite a few rulesets and ball-handling techniques that I must say translated well to many of the games in the Real World.
Let's just get the negative out of the way: CFTBL had a dead flipper and ate me and my competition's quarters. NBD. We just moved on. This was on Friday night and it seemed like Tim had a couple of helpers that night. i reported the failure and he immediately issued us a refund. We didn't even ask. In fact, my compadre said he thought the place was such a good deal that he didn't even care if a few machines stole his money. They were very gentle on us compared to the slots we had tried earlier.
Now let's get back to another highlight on Thursday. I was racking up a couple of free games on 37 centigrade when in came the guys from the Stern booth I had talked to earlier in the day. And who was with them? None other than Gary Stern. They were wandering around with Tim looking at some machines and when they showed up on my right, I asked the sales guys if they were jealous of our PBHoF plans. Gary Stern said, "na, we just followed you here." I must say that these guys simply exude an old mobster type of ambience and I continued to be reabsorbed by my game.
Anyway, to shorten a long story, these are the games that were played. If there is no comment, the game appeared to be working 100%:
LOTR
ToM
ToTAN
Abra Cadabra
Time Machine - scored a free game and a match
Johnny Mnemonic
MM - Broken gate in the castle
Iron Man
Transformers
Centigrade 37 - won 2 games by score
CFtBL - Dead Right Flipper
Jacks Open
No Fear
The Machine Bride of Pinbot- Brutally spanked me for 2 games
Batman, The Dark Knight
TZ
Xenon
AFM - won a free game
Orbitron - the strangest pinball I ever played.
Probably a couple more I'm forgetting
I must make one comment. The games were actually in better order than I expected considering the quantity of them. I played over 4 hours between the two nights and I thought the replay scores were very reasonable. A couple of the machines were really worn, but I thought that was totally par for the course.
Over the two nights, my compadre and me probably spent around 20-25 bucks and thought that it was clearly the best deal in Vegas.
I immediately had to try some of those games on my simulator once I got home and I must tell you that where I thought the ball was floaty on Future Pinball, I now think it is a very accurate representation of how most of the EMs played. In fact, some of the DMDs like Ironman and Batman are also represented extremely well in Future Pinball. But for most games, Visual Pinball gives a more accurate simulation. I must say that my simulator has made me a much better pinballer than I ever thought possible and If offered, I would not trade my simulator for any one machine in the building - they are all just that much fun.
It started on the CES expo floor at the Stern booth. They were selling Avengers and Transformers in "The Pin" form factor. They had 6 or so machines lined up and they were pretty much full, but no lines to play. This was on Thursday, so I have no idea how busy they were on the first 3 days of the show.
I talked to the guys manning the booth and they sort of seemed a little like reformed mobsters. I thanked them for still being open and they confirmed that most of their sales were in fact to the home market. I told them we'd be at the PBHoF that night and finished out the day at the show. They said to say hi to Tim for them.
The PBHoF was open until 11:00 on thursday and 12:00 on Friday. We closed it down both nights. On thursday we arrived around 9:00 and I immediately went for the MM. I played a few games even though the castle gate would immediately shut after opening. Slightly frustrated and disappointed, I moved on to play just a game or two on several machines. I played EM's, SS's and DMD's.
Now it has literally been a couple of decades since I have played on commercial pinball machines. I think in the last 20 years, I played RFM at the local bowling alley once just a month or so ago. I do have a virtual pin so I enjoyed the benefit of knowing quite a few rulesets and ball-handling techniques that I must say translated well to many of the games in the Real World.
Let's just get the negative out of the way: CFTBL had a dead flipper and ate me and my competition's quarters. NBD. We just moved on. This was on Friday night and it seemed like Tim had a couple of helpers that night. i reported the failure and he immediately issued us a refund. We didn't even ask. In fact, my compadre said he thought the place was such a good deal that he didn't even care if a few machines stole his money. They were very gentle on us compared to the slots we had tried earlier.
Now let's get back to another highlight on Thursday. I was racking up a couple of free games on 37 centigrade when in came the guys from the Stern booth I had talked to earlier in the day. And who was with them? None other than Gary Stern. They were wandering around with Tim looking at some machines and when they showed up on my right, I asked the sales guys if they were jealous of our PBHoF plans. Gary Stern said, "na, we just followed you here." I must say that these guys simply exude an old mobster type of ambience and I continued to be reabsorbed by my game.
Anyway, to shorten a long story, these are the games that were played. If there is no comment, the game appeared to be working 100%:
LOTR
ToM
ToTAN
Abra Cadabra
Time Machine - scored a free game and a match
Johnny Mnemonic
MM - Broken gate in the castle
Iron Man
Transformers
Centigrade 37 - won 2 games by score
CFtBL - Dead Right Flipper
Jacks Open
No Fear
The Machine Bride of Pinbot- Brutally spanked me for 2 games
Batman, The Dark Knight
TZ
Xenon
AFM - won a free game
Orbitron - the strangest pinball I ever played.
Probably a couple more I'm forgetting
I must make one comment. The games were actually in better order than I expected considering the quantity of them. I played over 4 hours between the two nights and I thought the replay scores were very reasonable. A couple of the machines were really worn, but I thought that was totally par for the course.
Over the two nights, my compadre and me probably spent around 20-25 bucks and thought that it was clearly the best deal in Vegas.
I immediately had to try some of those games on my simulator once I got home and I must tell you that where I thought the ball was floaty on Future Pinball, I now think it is a very accurate representation of how most of the EMs played. In fact, some of the DMDs like Ironman and Batman are also represented extremely well in Future Pinball. But for most games, Visual Pinball gives a more accurate simulation. I must say that my simulator has made me a much better pinballer than I ever thought possible and If offered, I would not trade my simulator for any one machine in the building - they are all just that much fun.
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