Pinball General

[Anonymous No.5776459]

How to find pinball and pinball tournaments in your area:
US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Finland, London
https://pinballmap.com/
Worldwide:
https://pinside.com/pinball/map
Europe:
https://findapinball.com/en/

Tournaments:
Depending on where you live, there may be a facebook group for fans in your area.

Pinball Simulators that will give you a free virtual pin or two as a sample:
Pinball Fx 3 (Sorcerer's Lair, Fish Tales)
Zaccaria (Time Machine)
Pinball Arcade (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)
Stern Pinball Arcade (Also Frankenstein)
There's also Visual Pinball, which is a freeware pinball simulator.

How to become Good at Pinball (wholly optional):
https://www.deadflip.com/tutorials/ (techniques in .gif form)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-WQLGFMr97DnxeE1Rmi-wAwa-Vm7D-7i

Individual machine tutorials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci7gXjSLq9o&list=PL-WQLGFMr97CQpOQDEvRqAiSqcvSuK11h
https://pinballvideos.com/t

Recent Happenings:
Willy Wonka pin releases.
Stern announces Star Wars home edition pin for $4000 street price.
Jurassic Park pinball machine announced.

Jurassic Park gameplay stream is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcx_KH_6nZ0

[Anonymous No.5776524]

Most of Zen's original creations are kinda bland and I can't really put my finger on why.

[Anonymous No.5776597]

>>5776524
I feel the exact same way, and I also can't put my finger on it. The tiny flipper gap certainly doesn't help.

[Anonymous No.5776641]

>>5776597
I think the biggest aspect has always been the lack of spectacle in their tables. Despite their 3D animations, there isn't really anywhere close to the number of sound effects, callouts, or lighting effects that you can find on any traditional pinball table.

[Anonymous No.5778591]

bump

[Anonymous No.5779298]

>mfw my Judge Dredd pinball is delayed for another week because the seller wants to double check the crane because there was an error when I tried it

Just hurry up!

[Anonymous No.5779569]

Thoughts on pinball design:
The lightshow for a pinball machine should not flash lights which I need to see to make gameplay decisions. It shouldn't flash the ball-saver light or the rollovers, because I need to see which rollovers are lit and which aren't.

Each multiball in the JJP Pirates of the Caribbean is different and interesting. That's cool.

I think that having an LCD screen embedded into the playfield like in Alien is better.

[Anonymous No.5780783]

>>5779298
Are you getting it shipped? I thought you were there to play it in person.

>>5779569
With the exception of Cirqus Voltaire, which does it incredibly well, I’ve never played a game with a screen on the playfield that feels helpful. It’d be the perfect place to tell the player how much points they’re getting from the shots they’re making, but the games like Monopoly or Star Wars or Wonka that I’ve played make them gimmicky and incredibly useless. I’d like to see what a company could do to make the main display good for spectators as they seem so adamant on doing while making playfield displays actually mean something.

[Anonymous No.5781082]

>>5779569
Lowering the HUD even a little helps immensely. Cirqus Voltaire is a better game because of it.
>>5780783
I haven't seen Monopoly or Star Wars, but I know that, in Willy Wonka's case, the main screen that actually displays general info is in the traditional position on the Translite while the other screen is mostly just another playfield element that fills a limited number of roles, similar to the theater hologram and phone on Dialed In and the Crystal Ball and Hologram on WoZ and Ghostbusters, respectively.

[Anonymous No.5781169]

>>5781082
Star Wars is probably one of the worst offenders ever made because of how often the main lcd display is obscured by movie clips and cinematics; whenever you want to look up to check for what to shoot next, there’s another dumb movie clip in the way of all the useful information they put on it. Meanwhile, the lcd display on the playfield is sitting blank for most of the game, sometimes displaying TIE fighters that you’ll never actually shoot for because the 3-bank is an incredibly dangerous shot that’s only good for multipliers. It makes you wish that they’d do more with it since they spent so much money to include it in the first place.

[Anonymous No.5781239]

>>5780783
>Are you getting it shipped? I thought you were there to play it in person.
The guy lives like 20 minutes away from me, which makes the whole thing strangely frustrating. Oh well, better safe than sorry...

[Anonymous No.5782135]

>>5780783
>>5781239 here, the guy brought the machine to my home. Do you know much about this machine? If so, I've got a pretty technical rom-related question.

[Anonymous No.5782183]

>>5782135
I can tell you how the game is supposed to be working, if that’s what you’re asking about. Pinside is good if it’s as complicated as individual manuals and schematics.

[Anonymous No.5782464]

>>5782183
I'll try to keep it simple, since I only have basic knowledge: when I turn up the game, it tells me to enter diagnostic mode, and that I have to check some switches (crane, opto, etc...). But everything works perfectly in game (including the deadworld), so the guy told me it was likely an old rom or something, and some switches changed. Turns out it might be right, since it's a L1, which, I believe, supports the old locking deadworld... and yet when I boot it, it says "prog L4".
So I'm kinda confused: it works just fine, but the error messages bother me. Any idea? Try another rom version?

Other than that, it's an incredibly fun pinball.

[Anonymous No.5782647]

>>5782464
Changing the roms just to address the error messages is a bit overkill. As long as you can tell that everything is working, you can safely just skip the error messages. Still, looking into updated roms can be something fun to do another day.

[Anonymous No.5783884]

>>5782647
I guess that's somewhat autistic of me, but since I purchased a few stuff (rubbers, decals...) I also ordered a new rom since it was cheap.

[Anonymous No.5784897]

Pinburgh 2019 stream happening right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOdPJXu26Q

[Anonymous No.5786094]

>>5784897
That's some great footy.

[Anonymous No.5786178]

>>5784897
Oh baby, F-14 always makes such a good finals game. So many FAT saves