Top 10 machines - I'm really amazed how un-fun they are

I can't believe Sorcerer doesn't get more love. It talks, has multiball, a creepiness to it, and reminds me of the guy on zep iv, the wizards from lotr, and d and d. Plus I remember playing it in Champions as a kid!
 
Pinwizkid said:
I feel kinda lucky that I fell in love with late 80's Williams games (system 11's) before anything else. They are affordable and were designed at the height of originality in pinball story telling (think High Speed, PinBot). I would rather buy 5 system 11 machines than one CV or MM. Those games are wonderful in their own way, but with the price tags the way they are, the system 11 machines are just too terrific of a compromise.

Brendan
Click to expand...


A man after my own heart. ;)
 
I have to agree. A top ten is a personal thing.

I'm personally not big on AFM, or AF. I remember liking IJ more when I was younger, but I had a chance to play one more recently and it seemed to have more cheap drains than I remember.

On the other hand, I really love Cactus Canyon. I played it a few times back when it came out, but it didn't really catch me until I played it in VP. Need to find a real cab to play again. If it's as fun as VP, I may be broke soon.

MM is good, but it took me a while to really get a feel for it. It plays fast to me at the flippers and can have some cheap drains from time to time.

Count me in the tried to like CV. I can't play this in VP, it's just too boring. I'd love to find a local machine to give it another shot, but I really can't get into it atm.

My top 5 in no specific order would be

World Cup Soccer
Tales of Arabian Nights
Cactus Canyon
MM
Simpsons Pinball Party

Older stuff

Space Shuttle
Taxi
 
The top 5 games I want in my collection are:

LOTR (own)
Williams IJ (own)
Spiderman, TZ or Monster Bash

I put the or's in there because I only have room for more. There are a lot of B titles I love such as Whirlwind, Dr. Who and Corvette but I doubt I will ever find them up here in Alaska and they aren't worth paying $500+ to ship.
 
Hey, nice to see you around here, SealClubber. I must have missed your other posts.

Well, on Thursday I'll be delivering one of my "top ten" pins to a buyer. My Indiana Jones has sold, but I'm filling the gap nicely. I'll post pics of what I put in its place later...
 
'sup JAR! I'm new to this site. Found it when searching for an AFM Playfield. It's not looking good. So I am going to look at a Spiderman on location tomorrow. If it is in good shape I may buy it. If not, I'll pass. I played it several months ago and it worked but was dirty but don't remember too much else about the condition as I didn't know it was for sale.
 
I played a TOTAN this weekend down in Seaside. Played about 20 games and I am hooked! What a sweet game. I had no idea what the rating was, but I was not surprised to find it in the top 5-6 when I got back home.

The other pin I played a bunch was Cactus Canyon. Pretty surprised when I saw what that one runs. Fun game, but I could never pay the going rate for that sucker.

3rd for my quarters was No Good Gophers. Love making that left flipper shot after the jump has dropped down.

There were other great pins as well, but I was only there for a day, so I concentrated on the ones that I liked the most. MM had a crappy left flipper. There was a LOTR, but I can play that anywhere. AFM I need to play more another time. Same with CFTBL. Monopoly was too beat up to really judge.
 
I happen to have a NGG here at the house Brick Top. You should come by sometime soon.
 
Hey man, hows it going. I was hoping/thinking you might chime in here.

You have a few games I definitely need to try out. Cirquis Volitare, Theater of Magic and World Cup Soccer to say the least. You have been into pins much longer than I as well, so I would love to get together and hear your thoughts on different designers and styles.

I need to see that Picard manuver as well. It takes me 10 tries to get that sucker just right. I even rebuilt all my flippers and put the prototype coil in the upper right hand one, hoping it would help.
 
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Of Course it took awhile but grew to love TZ and had to buy it and I consider it Best Game Ever. AF is somewhat basic but still love the theme and voices. RIP Raul Julia, you rocked it. Funhouse great, whirlwind great, earthshaker great. MM very good as is Cactus Canyon, but expensive. Pinball 2000 is a disgrace IMHO and I always get sH$T for saying so. A Basic ss game with 1 two ball multiball and only one ramp but really really fun, and cheap is Sorcerer. Love it. Downside is the lousy durability of the playfield. Try to find one that isn't worn to the wood. Basically early Gottlieb, and 80's to 90's Bally/Williams, and a few stern like Pinball Party are/were truly exceptional.
 
Deadly said:
I FINALLY (after 8 years of living in Portland) made it down to Ground Kontrol last night. What a sweet place that is. I've been looking to add another pin to my collection so I thought it'd be nice to "play before you pay" ;)

[...]

First of all almost every pin there is running a major steep pitch and they went with smaller balls on all but a couple machines. I didn't care for that but it makes sense. People are playing more than drinking and they need to make money and what a better way than to make it harder to hit the ball.
Click to expand...

@Deadly: Art Santana, manager of Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade here!

Glad you finally made it down! Thanks for the kind words about our arcade! Just want to clear a few things up.

Sorry you don't like how our tables are pitched. We find shallow games to be rather tedious, so the machines at Ground Kontrol are set the same as the ones we have at home.

As for using smaller balls, these are the only ones we buy:

http://www.marcospecialties.com/product.asp?ic=PB116

There are plenty of ways to shorten game time built into the game, but we don't use them. We don't like greedy outlanes (though we temporarily opened them up last weekend to speed up our annual Portland Pinbrawl tournament). We go with the factory defaults in the software settings, except we limit the number of extra balls to 2.

An operator with one or two tables in a location might have cause to shorten games, to keep one or two people from monopolizing play. We don't have that motivation. Ground Kontrol has 26 machines, so there should always be several tables to choose from, even on our busiest nights!

Hope to see you again soon!

Art
 
ArtGK said:
As for using smaller balls, these are the only ones we buy:

http://www.marcospecialties.com/product.asp?ic=PB116
Click to expand...

Hi Art thanks for the reply. Ya know I could be wrong "which you are saying I am" but even my wife made the comment about the balls looking smaller "geez that sounds bad" on some machines. Funhouse appeared to have normal size while other games do not. Seriously they look different in size.
Regardless you guys have a freaking sweet hang out and I thank you for all you do!

Tomdotcom - hard to judge when you haven;t seen the games first hand don't ya think?
 
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Yep I'm not judging you or the place. I just can't see them using smaller balls...but who knows. I'm just saying I didn't think they'd be the type of place that would do that. But your right you saw them and I didn't so what the F do I know.
 
tomdotcom said:
Yep I'm not judging you or the place. I just can't see them using smaller balls...but who knows. I'm just saying I didn't think they'd be the type of place that would do that. But your right you saw them and I didn't so what the F do I know.
Click to expand...

I could be dead wrong - but I'd love to go down there out of the blue and demand to compare my balls to theirs lol

It doesn;t matter - but I do highly recommend anyone local get your asses down there. What a sweet joint.
 
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