# Episode 103 – RAWR!!!

**Source:** Head2Head Pinball  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2019-08-05  
**Duration:** 53m 42s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.head2headpinball.com/2019/08/05/episode-103-rawr/

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## Analysis

Martin and Joe discuss their hands-on experience with Jurassic Park pinball at Pinburgh, praising its innovative design, well-choreographed screen animations that don't distract from playfield action, impressive T-Rex and Raptor Pit mechs, and challenging but rewarding shot layout. They compare it favorably to Iron Maiden and predict it will be a commercial success, though note prototype inconsistencies across the multiple machines on display.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Jurassic Park uses animations and screen timing rather than movie clips, making players feel like they're in the park rather than watching the movie — _Martin and Joe both played the game at Pinburgh and discussed the design philosophy extensively_
- [MEDIUM] The T-Rex mech on Premium/LE models could be one of the best toys ever done in pinball — _Joe's opinion after playing the Premium; caveat that it's early to make final judgments_
- [MEDIUM] Jurassic Park is better than Iron Maiden — _Joe's assessment; Martin confirms. Based on limited time with prototype machines_
- [LOW] Keith Elwin was more enthusiastic about designing Jurassic Park than Iron Maiden — _Martin references conversations with unnamed Stern employees; speculative on Elwin's preferences_
- [HIGH] All six Pro machines at Pinburgh played differently due to being prototypes with varied flipper strength and geometry — _Both hosts experienced this firsthand and confirmed by Wason (assumed Stern representative)_
- [HIGH] Premium model Raptor Pit/Amp Suit 2.0 has significantly more gameplay depth than Pro version with post-up mechanism and dirty pool feature — _Joe played Premium and detailed the mechanical differences extensively_
- [HIGH] Ball occasionally gets stuck between Jeep arm and captive ball; solution is tilt or inserting a pin underneath the Jeep rod — _Wason (Stern) mentioned this occurred ~12 times at the show; pins are available as an op fix_
- [HIGH] Jurassic Park has two shots that feed into reverse ramps, which is notable design — _Both hosts identified and praised this feature_

### Notable Quotes

> "The difference is whether you feel like you're in the movie and you're reliving scenes from the movie, or whether you feel like you are in Jurassic Park."
> — **Martin**, Early discussion section
> _Core design philosophy distinguishing Jurassic Park from screen-heavy games like Indiana Jones_

> "It's not just that you've got the Pro that's got all the stuff, and then they've just plonked an extra toy and it moves. It actually is really, really good and just really impressive to look at."
> — **Joe**, Mid-discussion on Premium differences
> _Emphasizes that Premium/LE differentiation is substantive, not cosmetic_

> "Think about games where you get stuck balls... think about how much testing you need to do to mitigate stuck balls. Because [the T-Rex] could land in any of these different locations."
> — **Joe**, T-Rex mech discussion
> _Highlights design complexity and engineering rigor required for the mech_

> "It's going to be a smash. It's going to be a freaking smash."
> — **Joe**, Final assessment
> _Strong commercial prediction from experienced player_

> "I think this was more enjoyable to design because they enjoyed the theme a bit more."
> — **Martin**, Final section
> _Suggests Stern internal feedback on designer satisfaction with Jurassic Park vs. Iron Maiden_

> "None of them played the same... The right flipper was a little weaker, a little drooped, so the left ramp was a lot harder."
> — **Joe**, Prototype variability discussion
> _Documents real issues with prototype consistency across multiple machines_

> "It reminds me of the left ramp in Spider-Man... Every single time I was making that shot, I was reminded of Spider-Man."
> — **Martin**, Shot layout discussion
> _Shows Martin's familiarity with classic layouts for comparison_

> "God damn, this is a very symbiotic relationship... We've got to bring different things to the table."
> — **Joe**, Art vs. rules discussion
> _Reflects the hosts' complementary expertise (collector priorities vs. player priorities)_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Jurassic Park | game | Upcoming pinball machine designed by Keith Elwin; in late prototype stage at Pinburgh with Pro and Premium models |
| Keith Elwin | person | Designer of Jurassic Park; was present and playing at Pinburgh |
| Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Jurassic Park; represented at Pinburgh by Wason and other employees |
| Pinburgh | event | Tournament event at Replay FX where Jurassic Park prototypes were on display; Martin, Joe, and their girlfriend attended |
| Martin | person | Co-host of Head to Head Pinball; collector purchasing a Limited Edition Jurassic Park; attended Pinburgh |
| Joe | person | Guest on Head to Head Pinball; experienced player; played both Pro and Premium Jurassic Park models |
| Replay FX | event | Event hosting Pinburgh tournament and pinball machine displays |
| Wason | person | Stern representative at Pinburgh; fielded questions about Jurassic Park design and prototype issues |
| Iron Maiden | game | Previous Jersey Jack Pinball machine designed by Keith Elwin; used as comparison point for Jurassic Park |
| Spider-Man | game | Classic pinball machine referenced for left ramp shot placement similarity |
| Indiana Jones | game | Stern pinball game criticized for excessive movie clip usage; contrasted with Jurassic Park's animation approach |
| Aerosmith | game | Pinball machine referenced for right ramp shot difficulty comparison |
| KISS | game | Pinball machine referenced for ramp shot deceptive difficulty |
| AC/DC | game | Pinball machine referenced for bell toy ball exit comparison |
| Dardenne | game | Pinball machine referenced for pop bumper shot difficulty comparison |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Jurassic Park game design and mechanics, Screen animation choreography and player experience, Premium vs. Pro model differentiation (T-Rex, Raptor Pit), Shot layout and playability assessment
- **Secondary:** Prototype machine variability and consistency issues, T-Rex mech design and engineering, Comparison to Iron Maiden and other Keith Elwin designs, Playfield art style and aesthetic coherence

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.87) — Both hosts are enthusiastic and impressed with Jurassic Park. Joe declares it 'a smash.' Only minor criticisms relate to prototype inconsistencies and some shot placement/difficulty learning curve, which are expected at this stage. High confidence in game quality.

### Signals

- **[event_signal]** Pinburgh had significant queue depth for Jurassic Park machines (7-8 deep for Premium, generally high turnover), indicating strong community interest (confidence: high) — Hosts waited in long lines; multiple machines available but heavily played
- **[competitive_signal]** Jurassic Park shot layout is deliberately non-obvious; outlanes are large and punishing; players at Pinburgh struggled to find optimal shooting patterns (confidence: high) — Hosts noted few players 'blew it up'; learning curve observation; comparison to Star Trek's forgiving layout
- **[design_philosophy]** Jurassic Park implements sophisticated playfield-to-screen timing synchronization where ball return ramp delays align with animation display windows (confidence: high) — Hosts extensively discussed this choreography; Joe specifically noted when to look up/down based on ramp returns
- **[design_philosophy]** Jurassic Park uses immersive environment animations (arcade game style) rather than movie clip playback, creating different player experience than Indiana Jones (confidence: high) — Extensive discussion of screen choreography timing and playfield focus; deliberate design choice described
- **[personnel_signal]** Keith Elwin appears more enthusiastic about Jurassic Park than Iron Maiden based on indirect Stern employee conversations (confidence: low) — Martin's hearsay statement; caveat that Elwin would never say this publicly; speculative on designer satisfaction
- **[announcement]** Jurassic Park pinball officially shown in playable prototype form at Pinburgh with Pro and Premium models; Limited Edition confirmed (confidence: high) — Hosts played multiple machines; Keith Elwin present; Stern official presence at event
- **[product_strategy]** Premium/LE models feature animated T-Rex mech and upgraded Raptor Pit with post-up/dirty pool, while Pro has simpler versions (confidence: high) — Joe played both; detailed mechanical differences documented; Joe confirmed Premium is 'better model'
- **[product_concern]** Prototype machines at Pinburgh had inconsistent playfield geometry and flipper strength, causing significant variance in shot difficulty across different games (confidence: high) — Both hosts experienced this; Joe played four different Pros and Premium; Wason confirmed prototypes are not production-ready
- **[sentiment_shift]** Strong positive reception from experienced players; Joe predicts 'smash' commercial success; comparison favorable to Iron Maiden (confidence: high) — Final assessments unambiguously enthusiastic; Joe's direct statement; Martin's purchase commitment
- **[technology_signal]** Occasional ball sticking issue between Jeep arm and captive ball in multiball; Wason confirmed ~12 occurrences at show; pin fix available as optional mod (confidence: high) — Hosts witnessed it once; Wason provided technical explanation and workaround; low probability of real-world impact noted

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## Transcript

 you're listening to the head-to-head people podcast find us on facebook email us at head Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 103. And my name's Martin, and in my hotel room... Joe, not being completely... not being creepy at all. You didn't see me under the bed at all. Your girlfriend is in the room with us. That might make it sound even more creepy. I think it does. I'm getting nods from her. I don't know. Creepy? Hot? I don't know. I mean, I wasn't going to judge. Let's see where this leads to. The reason why we're obviously in a room together... We're in love. Probably the second time. Well, if we count the whole Pimberg experience and we were in the David H. Lawrence Centre, or whatever his name is, we're here from Pimberg. And we have survived four days of Pimberg. Have we survived? Yes. I would say we did. Okay. Very gleefully. Did we? I mean, it all ended in your hotel room, so it sounds like a successful weekend for me. Now I've been officially christened as part of the podcast. The funniest thing is watching your girlfriend laugh. She gets it. She totally gets what's happening here. Okay, so, Pinberg. Do we want to talk about the tournament as in Pimberg, or do we want to talk about Replay FX, the event itself? What do you think? Because that involves having to talk about Jurassic Park, which we've now played. A lot. What would you like to go with first? Either or. Okay. Let's talk about Jurassic Park. Why not? Because we can. Okay. So we got, at Pimberg, there were six. We talked about this last week. There were six pro machines and one premium Jurassic Park, and its designer, Keith Elwin, was there. Sort of back and forth, because he was obviously playing in Pimberg. We got to play the pro first. What did we think, Joe? It's going to be great. I think that it's... You know, I talked to Wason about it, and that they're still prototypes, so they're not final. and there was some clunkiness in there just because they're prototypes. But I mean, they still shot great. The layout was super fun to shoot. The rules are really interesting. I thought that it's a really good package. The graphics and everything were put together really well and I didn't miss any of the movie clips or anything when it... Oh, my God. I just had a choking fit. Shot well. The rules were cool. I liked the different rules they had in there. The animations, I thought, were very well done. Right. And I didn't miss the movie clips at all. So, isn't that bizarre? Because, obviously, we talked about the fact that, you know, it was just animations and it should have the clips. I can't remember whether I said this before, but I'll say it now. The difference is whether you feel like you're in the movie and you're reliving scenes from the movie, or whether you feel like you are in Jurassic Park. You know what I mean? So it's almost like... I mean, yes, there are throwbacks to the movie. I won't spoil it for those people that haven't seen it. like, you know, the extra ball animation. But it's making you feel like you're there in the park. And, you know, a lot of the animation shows you from the perspective of being inside the Jeep, travelling through the park and coming across various dinosaurs. And it just, it works. There's a lot of different animations. There's a lot of varied animations. They use the screen, you know, real estate really well. It communicates to you what's going on visually with lots of big writing. So I'm kind of... And urgency too. Yeah. Like with the modes, as the modes are getting slower, or you're trying to save a guest or the T-Rex is coming, like the screen, if you're looking at the screen while you're playing, you know, you feel the urgency. They're showing you the urgency that you should be feeling. And I would say it feels a lot – it feels similar, more similar to like a video game than like a movie. Like when I – when playing it and seeing the animations and watching other people play it, immediately I thought of like the original Jurassic Park sit-down gun shooting game that I remember playing when I was younger in arcades. Yes. Very similar like graphics, the Jeep chase and all the various different things. and I thought that it worked really well and I didn't like you said whether or not you want to be you're in the movie or you're watching the movie or if you're like part of the movie like the polar opposite would be say Stern Indiana Jones which literally you spend the entire game watching the movie because every scoop and everything in that game is just playing movie clips over and over and then the entire time you're sitting there like alright I want to play pinball stop showing me everything Yeah, right. So I think that's on the opposite side of the spectrum. And that's what I was saying about this in that, you know, if you... Okay, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but the game is fast, right? It's fast. If you miss your shots, they come down. So when you're playing the game, you're looking at the play field. That's it. So you don't want to miss stuff that's up on the screen. So what it actually shows you, this is what's really interesting, and I think it's the best I've seen it. And maybe it might be like that on Black Knight, which I just haven't played that much. But I think what they've done is they've done really good, I'll call it choreography, right, between the video assets and what's happening on the play field. Meaning you look up when you need to and at exactly the right time when you look up, something is displayed to you on the screen. so that timing between the play field and the animations on the back i think they've synchronized that really well they know the player experience when you're going to look up show you a bit of information get back down do what you need to do and it just works well you don't feel like you're missing anything you're seeing what you need to and then get back into the game yeah like the pad the paddock paddock is that the terminology i think it's paddock paddock yeah either way um so like the way that those modes work is super fun and cool. You have to rescue the guest whenever you rescue a guest. It shows the guest getting picked up in various different ways. That's when the little pop-up comes up like the Cactus Canyon thing, right? That's that one? No, so once you get into the mode, that's how it starts. And then when you're in the mode, when you hit a rescue shot to save a guest, the screen will show you picking up that guest via helicopter or jeep or whatever. And then the same thing where if if say you trap the dinosaur if you hit the trap and then you capture the dinosaur like literally because well most of the time it's on a ramp or something that you make the shot and you're like yeah i got it you look up and you see the dinosaur get captured so it's like the timing and everything but in but it's not it's like a quick like hit so that it's enough time for you to look up see the dinosaur get captured and then look back down your your balls now finally made its way back to the flipper so like you said the timing right you actually get to see more of the screen because of the returns for ramps are longer or long enough for you to look up, glance up while you know the ball's in safety, get the information you need, go back down, poof, right back in the game. Yep. Yeah, it's really well done in the fact that you have the choices of you can rescue, you can rescue the guests to give you bonuses, then you can also capture the dinosaur to give you bonuses throughout the rest of the game. And then also the different, the whole so clever of how you have herbivores and carnivores and how differently they act in the modes with how they pursue guests, and some of them just wander around and accidentally step on guests, and then there's other ones that will chase guests. So then the urgency of playing those, where if you're in those ones, you have to actively try and go get the guests quickly. Other ones, it's not so much, and maybe you focus more on just capturing the dinosaur. It's really cool, and this is just a small, tiny part of the game. This is just the basic modes, and then you have the T-Rex modes, and then you have chaos and all that. It's like, ugh. Oh, yeah, right. It's not even done yet. It's not even done yet, Martin. Okay, so we've still got a lot more to talk about, but I think right from the outset, we love this game. Very, very good. Love this game. And confirming I'm in on a limited edition. And so I got to play the Premium. And so, you know, Premium's going to be closest to LA, obviously. and we'll talk about probably the differences that I noticed first off for that. And the first one is the animated T-Rex, which kind of looks like a bit of a snake. But besides that, what I really, really like about this, the T-Rex, is it doesn't just look like a stupid... That's probably a bit harsh saying stupid, but let's just say a simple... you know, like Homer Simpson, right? On Simpsons of the Party. Just looks at the door. Just looks at the ball. You know, and just turns left and right and it looks like you can tell that it's just on something that rotates left and right, right? What I like about the T-Rex is it actually looks I'm not going to say it actually looks like a dinosaur, right? I'm not freaking stupid, right? But it actually looks like something that's animatronic. You know what I mean? I was about to say, it's an animatronic arm. Animatronic arm. So as it's going up and down and diagonally and all this kind of stuff, I was just looking at this thing going, fuck, that looks cool. It just looks really cool. I, okay, you know, it's too early, so I'm not going to say it, but could well be one of the best toys that's ever been done. There you go. Yeah, for a toy, absolutely. For a toy. Yeah, I mean, for me, my favorite toy, pretty much, I mean, I have to really, really think about Robert Blakeman. I love the crane in Batman. I love the crane as a toy. That's one of my favorite toys. But, yeah, I mean, the fact, and it's funny because we were talking about this when we were talking back when we were rumors about when we thought that this was going to happen and then what we thought that they'd take from the, you know, the Data East version. We were talking about what could they do with the T-Rex to make it cooler. Yeah. People were like, well, it shouldn't have a T-Rex. And both of us were like, well, it could do all sorts of cool things. if they've reused it. And that's exactly what they did. They've done it. It lowers and lowers its jaw so it holds the ball. Then it picks back up while it's going on and then it decides sometimes it'll just go over and nicely place it on the ramp. And then sometimes it'll just throw its head back and forth. Throw it to the left, throw it to the right into the pop bumpers. So I just want to make this point right now, right? Think about, I don't know, think about games where you get stuck balls, right? But, you know, there's games where you get stuck balls. If you've got this mech that now just randomly throws the ball, think about how much testing you need to do to mitigate stuck balls. Because it could land in any of these different locations. Admittedly, there's only so far it comes out and around. But you've still got to check that area to make sure that there's absolutely no way that ball can get stuck. Yeah, and I opened that on, if you're staring at it, over to the left, there's a plastic there that protects that inner orbit that's next to the kick ramp, and they have holes on top of it. They have a hole, yeah. Specifically for the ball to be able to roll off so that it's still within the orbit safely, not flying and landing in the middle of the play field, which probably would be heading for the right end lane or whatever. So, yeah, they've put a lot of thought into what it can do. And also, I mean, I had no idea that it actually, the ball went into the mouth from the ramp. I thought that it went into the ramp and then, like, kicked up and then went through its mouth. Oh, yeah, no, it actually lowers all the way down. The first time I saw that. Yeah. I was like, oh, the jaw actually lowers. He goes down and then the jaw goes down. Correct. And then it's enough for him to grab it. So cool. It is so cool. And so really the point I'm making there is that it's not just that you've got the Pro that's got, you know, all the stuff, and then they've just plonked an extra toy and it moves. It actually is really, really good and just really impressive to look at. And just, I don't know, it does set the premium apart from the Pro. The helicopter on the right that spins around, whatever, not bothered. And my big feature, I thought when people would ask what they thought and what you thought the big differences were, I thought it was going to be the Ampsuit. The Ampsuit toy itself, even by itself as a toy, I was looking forward to it more than... It's the Raptor Cage enclosure. But I know, it is. Ampsuit! Yeah, it's Ampsuit 2.0 because it does so much more stuff than the Ampsuit in a similar fashion. So, I mean, just the fact that you have the Ampsuit gate now, and then the Raptor gate, and then you have two stand-ups that are angled in there, not just like the Ampsuit where they're just flat and they throw them back at you. So you have those so you can ricochet off of them, which is not in the old design. Sure. And then also you have the straight-on shot, which has a stand-up in the back. But now in the Premium, so on the Pro, if you hit that, it goes and flushes out towards the control shot and then dribbles out that way. That's right. So I sort of said the parallel was kind of like the bell on ACDC, where if you get behind the bell, it sort of comes back and just dribbles out to the left and comes around. That's kind of similar to what it does there. Yeah. So now on the premium, similar thing. It doesn't have that exit on the back, but within that, maybe it's a little deeper. So now there's a post that pops up that can turn it into a Newton ball, which then can be used for stuff itself. Also, then once it progresses to the next stage, the gate returns, the post drops, and then it turns into a dirty pool. Yes. So then you're hitting the ball into those stand-ups, and potentially you get double credit if you hit them both. You get probably triple credit if you hit the middle target or whatever. And then it's its own ball lock. So there's so much cool stuff with that mech. I know. The premium 100% is the better model. Correct. And it's interesting because obviously we know a lot of people saw the photos and they went, oh, they don't look different. No, they really don't look different when you're looking at pictures. And from top down view. You can't see the gate from looking down on it because it's the same decal. Correct. Just one has a mech and one does not. Correct. so really the T-Rex does sort of add a little bit of gameplay change the new the Raptor Pit slash Ampsuit area has quite a bit of change to the gameplay so let's talk about shots I guess really because for me that's the most important thing like before when you were talking about all the rules I was like oh I didn't notice any of that like herbivores and carnivores what i didn't know notice any of that because for me when i step up to a machine all i'm wanting to know about first of all is how does it look and how does it feel you know how does it feel to play how are the shots um and and one of the things i mean i knew this we've seen shots of it one thing i still think is very cool is how you've got the plunge shot into that reverse ramp plus you've also got the right alley shot that goes and does the reverse. Reverse ramps are awesome. I know, but you've got two shots that go into a reverse ramp. Yeah. That's very cool. It's just a very cool thing. So, you know, and obviously I think you guys might have seen the three-shot skill shot, which is effectively that left ramp, right ramp, and then side ramp combo. And to get it is a beautiful thing. it feels so good. I saw someone do it. I did it. You probably didn't see that. No, obviously because you would have said, I saw you do it, which you didn't. Yeah, I wasn't in that game, sadly. I saw you get two of them. Yeah, that's true. So, again, what I like about the shots on this machine is there's some that are easier than others, which is how a game should be, you know? I think the left ramp feels really good. it's in a weird place it is in a weird place and I'll tell you what it reminds me of the left ramp in Spider-Man yes right now but this one won't kill you if it rejects that's true well maybe but you know how there's probably been many ramps that are in a similar location but just the where you actually flip on the flipper to me it just felt like I'll and it just reminded me Really early. Every single time I was making that shot, I was reminded of Spider-Man. And it's even worse because it's further back than Spider-Man's entrance. So it's even earlier than Spider-Man. Correct. So it feels even weirder. Yeah. But I don't know. For some reason, I just kept thinking Spider-Man. The right ramp is not that easy. No, it reminds me of kind of like Aerosmith's right ramp. It's very... Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're feeling it, you can hit it. Yep. But it's... It also for me Iron Maiden right ramp where it not a wide open ramp But it looks way bigger than how hard it is to hit It hard isn it It like Kiss ramp It doesn look that small Why can I hit that thing Correct. Why am I bricking that shot when it's just there and I should be getting it? It's quite a narrow shot, so I think that's why. The hard one was the O ramp. Yeah, okay. The O orbit for me was... So the hardest one really is the right... Is it an orbit? Yeah. I guess it is. It goes up behind the... It actually goes up behind the bumpers, and unless it's lit for something, when a post comes up, it puts in the bumpers. Or it goes around above the upper up-kick ramp, that orbit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then it flies back at the flipper. Yep. Yeah, I had a lot of issues with that. Yeah, you did. Most of the time, the only time I could hit it was via the left ramp. Because then it was lower than, or I guess higher than you think it would be, which is where you were missing anyway. because the ball is carrying to the right. Whereas from a trap, it's a super tight shot, and either I was hitting the Keith Elwin post, don't leave my flipper down post, or the right ramp post. It was super hard. And on that game, the chaos multiball is super important. It's the easiest one to get at this stage. I mean, we say easiest. But if it happens to come up, I didn't notice any way to specifically pick your T-Rex mode. Yeah, and that's kind of, again, my lack of rules knowledge. I mean, you would have seen, you spell chaos, it's C-H-A-O-S, left to right. So it's left ramp? No. Control room. Yeah, control room, which is the left. No, let's call it the bloody fuel shot. Left side M-Suite. The fuel shot. Then you've got the left ramp. The A is the right ramp. O is the right orbit. And then S is the right to the reversing ramp. And it is a really satisfying shot. It feels good. They all feel awesome. Oh my god. My only issue is that, like you said, they had six of them there in a premium. Yep. And I think I played four different pros in the premium. Yes. None of them played the same. You did say that earlier tonight, that they just felt very different. One of them was you couldn't hard plunge to get it up the kicker. You had to punch it to get it around. Other ones, it seemed like the left ramp was much harder. The right flipper was a little weaker, a little drooped, so the left ramp was a lot harder. Other one, the O orbit was easier, I think, because that flipper was flopped. They were all in different places because they were all prototypes. you know and i asked wasting about that the pros they're all prototypes they're close but they're not production games so if anyone had opinions or thought that those games played weird they're prototypes so keep that in mind yeah and the premium was a very prototype yeah yeah yeah is it that the premiums are not close yet so that like don't certainly don't judge that model not ready yet but yeah they've got to build them test them because the le's come out first and they're practically the same thing. So outside of just the clunkiness of just brand new prototype games, they all had their quirks, but they all still played. Everything worked. The only weird thing that a couple people mentioned and it happened once in one of my games is the issue with the Jeep and the captive ball with balls getting stuck there. Really? So we did have one where a ball got lodged between the Jeep arm and the captive ball. How do you get it out? The only way we were able to free it was tilt. Right, because it's not actually a motor that actually moves it around. And weirdly enough, because I saw people mention that online, and I asked Wason about it, and he mentioned that, well, there is an op that's not recommended, but there's a pin in the machine that you can, if you look underneath the, I don't know if you can actually see it in the artwork or anything like that, but underneath the Jeep rod that the captive ball arm is on, between that and the ball itself, the captive ball ball, there's a pinhole, same similar size than what you'd see underneath a flipper that they align with. Right. You can put like a little pin there that would prevent a ball from going in that area. But he had mentioned that it happened, you know, 12 times or whatever at the show that he noticed, and most of the time with flipping and subtle shut, you know, moving, it would come out. Right, okay. So I don't think it's going to be a big issue. But if it's on a tight tilt... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You might be in a little trouble, but... So put the pin in if you've got a tight tilt, is what we're saying. Yeah, maybe, yeah. I mean, the odds of it happening are so slow. I mean, you have to be in multiball play, you have to hit that captive ball at the same time while you're hitting another ball in that area so that it sandwiches it. I mean, what are the odds of that happening? Yeah. So the only... For me, the only... Oh, so the other shot that's really obviously super satisfying is the smart missile shot through the pop bumpers. That's great. Okay. It's hard. I don't want to do all these comparisons, but it does kind of remind me of, you know, the through the pop shot on Dardenne. There you go. I've said it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it kind of is. It's actually an easier shot than that one. Yeah, you don't actually have to really shoot that shot that much. Well, you're doing multiple. Yeah. When they're coming to attack you. There's probably only two shots I kind of go, huh? No. The side ramp's obviously awesome. It's harder to get than I thought. Yeah. Yeah. I had issues with it. I thought it was going to be really easy because... A lot of half ramps. Listen to me. Listen to me say this. I thought it was going to be really easy because I saw Keith Elwin playing it and he kept hitting it all the time. Like, I know what I'm saying as it comes out of my mouth. Of course it looks easy when Keith Elwin does it because it's his machine. also he might be the world's best player sure the only two shots that I kind of go huh are the sort of middle orbit mm-hmm up the top and the loopy shot you know there's a loop shot kind of like Iron Maiden sort of loop shot from the left from the upper right so you're talking about the first one you were referring to is the spinner shot I guess there's a spinner there is there the one that's to the right of the left ramp no what which bit of the left ramp, the T-Rex ramp, to the right of it is the spinner shot. There's the one that's up the middle. Is that what you were thinking about? That's the first one. And then the other one you're talking about is the one that's the orbit next to the pick ramp. Yes, correct. So those shots, I'm not sure what they do yet. They're there for dinosaurs and rescues, and I don't know if there's... There'll probably be added rules of looping or something along those lines. Yep. I didn't notice any but the spinner is important for a lot of things yeah the fact that you can build that spinner and it's how many ramps you hit I don't know if you knew that but like so if you hit if you all there's four ramps in the game so every one of those ramps will build and make your spinner worth more so if you hit one ramp your spinner is worth say whatever 10k If you hit two ramps before you hit the spinner, it's 20k or whatever exponentially. I think it's the same similar scoring as the loops on Iron Maiden, how they build. So it's the same thing. So if you hit all four ramps before hitting the spinner, the spinner is worth a lot. And then if you hit all those and then if you hit the rescues in the game, light your inlanes, which is your smart missile, or your super spinner, so then you can make that even worth even more points because the right in-lane light super spinner, which is whatever times what your lit value happens to be because you've hit the ramps on the spinner. But the spinner also is used for the control room modes and all sorts of stuff too. But that one was, I saw, that's more used in the upper orbit. Most of the time when I hit the upper orbit, it was because I was missing the sidebar. That's exactly right. Yeah, and I didn't feel like I was being rewarded for doing anything. But again, early code, so we don't know what that's going to be really. Yeah, and some of them, it was easy to hit the side ramp. Others, it was a lot of halves, which is probably a combination of just different variabilities in the flippers, power, and my ability to aim. Yeah, fair enough. And it was the same. And, you know, because there was a lot of people in the line for all of these machines, like you never really had an opportunity to get on them straight away. There was always somebody playing, and if not two to three, sometimes five to six deep. The premium, because there was only one there, usually had about seven or eight people deep just waiting to play it. And, you know, you're at Pimberg, so there are varying degrees of talent, is a nice way of saying it. so I didn't I guess I didn't really see all that many people besides yourself Joe really find their groove with the shots and really sort of blow it up I did see some very good games but I felt people were really sort of coming to terms with the layout it's not your bog standard fan layout yet again from Keith, it's something unique and people need to find those shots. The shots are not in obvious places and the outlanes are for real and they're big. I hardly ever lost the ball down the middle. The Dandry the right outlane was just a gobble hole seemingly. It's just it takes a while to find the shots and then also figuring out what you should be shooting at any given time. You know, and any new game is going to be like this. It's not like a Star Trek where it's like you can miss by an inch and a half either way and you still hit the ramp. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. And I never even put up a really good game. I saw multiple people break like 200, 300, and my highest game I think was like 100. Yeah. Yeah. So I couldn't put it together. Yep. Same. So the last thing probably to talk about is how we think it looks. How pretty is it? I think the play field looks really good I think the map and the play field looks it's functional what's interesting is if you look at the back glass art it's very cartoon hand drawn animation you know what I mean cartoon type and then you've got the side art which looks a bit more rendered. It's not necessarily, you know, line art. And the play field doesn't look as line art as I thought it would. It is not, it's not photorealistic, but I think the art there is, particularly the map, I think almost looks like a map that you would, you know, you would see on Google Maps. You know what I mean? It doesn't look cartoony. And I'm not saying that I don't like it, but the three things from the back glass to the side art to the play field, they're not the same. Yeah, I'm probably going to have to defer to you on this one. When I finally got up to the game, I played it. I didn't look at it. I didn't find that. I didn't. Honestly, I didn't think to look deeply at around the game. I was just so excited to play it, I just started plunging and playing. Yeah, no, totally understand it. But in hindsight, I should have. Yeah, fine. You've got a podcast, you should be looking at those things. I know, see, I'm still a noob at this. No, I know. But I guess because I was in the queue for quite a bit, and was just trying to think about... So you're buying one. You're in a different field. I'm just going to be playing them wherever they are. Correct. You're making a big purchase. Okay, but that's the interesting thing. I looked at the art and tried to understand what I thought about it, but I have no idea what the rules are. You look at the rules and didn't look at the art. So it's all based on what's important to us. God damn, this is a very symbiotic relationship. I know, right? We've got to bring different things to the table. I'm loving it. So overall, what do we think, Joe? It's going to be a smash. It's going to be a freaking smash. This is better than Iron Maiden. Yeah, it is. It is. and it's what I can understand from conversations with maybe some Stern employees. I'm not going to mention whom they are. I believe this was more enjoyable to design because they enjoyed the theme a bit more. Well, I'm sure that... I mean, he'd never say it and I can't imagine that Keith was happy that it was Iron Maiden. and not Archon. Well, on record, he did say that he didn't love Iron Maiden. Yeah. So, I mean, as far as I'm sure that, you know, there's some just direct parallels where you just make this, that, and it would have been the same regardless. But, oh, yeah, he's way more into this theme than that is. Yeah, correct. And I think that the – I like the rules better in this than Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden, like, it's not – yes, within the modes, there's some – It makes sense in the modes with what you're doing, and it feels different. But it's still very pinball-y, whereas I feel like the rules in this, especially the Pau Doc modes, it's a very clever, different way of playing. And how what you're doing and the thematic connection between the guests and trying to capture the dinosaur. Well, correct. I don't know. Just something about that. It's more interesting. It's more fun to do. Yeah. There's urgency because it's not simply timing down. The dinosaur is chasing the guests. Yeah, okay. And then you need to try and, you know... But the difference as well is, if you think about Iron Maiden, right, and you think about the five modes which are named after songs, and one of them is Two Minutes to Midnight, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's Two Minutes to Midnight. We're all going to die. sort of theme integration. Can you do with that? No. You know? It's a Tuesday clock. I know. And Rime of the Ancient Mariner, right? Exactly. It's a completely different theme. Unless you give a shit about the band, you don't really care. Right. I don't, so that's why it lands better for me, I suppose. That's right. But then if you think about you as the designer and how you make that into theme integration, well, theme integration is the band and the art. But when it comes to modes, it's very hard to do theme integration. When it comes to Jurassic Park, you can tell a story. And that was the comment that I heard, was it's just really good to be able to tell a story with this theme. Versus just giving, you know, nods to the band. Correct. Or, you know, homage to the song and the theme of the song. Yep, correct. Like, this is, you know, this is more for us, where, like, a rock thing is just more for the fans. Correct. And stuff like that. We're like, this would, it really feels like you're in Jurassic Park and the entire time they're like, Nedry, that little fuck, where did he put that stuff? Like, what did he do to the park? And you're running around the park trying to fix all the things that he did. Yeah, exactly. Putting all the dinosaurs back. Yeah. You know, and rescuing. I mean, it's stupid and everything. Like, you don't need to rescue these people, but you feel like you have a vested interest. Yeah, you do. You don't want the guests to die. We are humans after all. Yeah, so it's like you want to – so there's the added stress of trying to rescue the guests while you're missing. you're seeing this dinosaur slowly creep towards it and you're like, ah, come on. Yeah, exactly. It's weird because it's like I don't necessarily feel like I've gotten that feeling from another game that I've gotten from playing this game. And that's theme integration. It's theme integration and it's the way it makes you feel like you are there, as we said before, instead of being a person that's watching a movie clip. Yeah, you're like in the movie Cloverfield. Like, you're just some dude on a phone in the same event, but it's like you're not the main story. You just happen to be in the park while the same things are happening, but you're not Jeff Goldblum. You're just the security or some other dude, you know, and you're just trying to... Or Laura Dern. I think they're the only three. Well, congratulations. I just know Jeff Goldblum. And the other one who's the brother of the environment guy. What's his name? I don't know. They're British. I know. He was John Hammond that owned the park. Oh. I can't remember his name in real life. It's been a while since I've seen those movies. Anyway, David Attenborough. Not because they're bad people, so don't go there. Yeah, no. They're actually amazing people. So there you go. Have we said enough about Jersey Park? No. Did we miss anything? No, it's just so good. I think it's an absolute... Everyone go buy it. Yep. So I can play it. Do it. Well, I'm buying it. I know. You just need to fly over. But you're not going to get it for another year. Yeah. November, whatever. So did you actually, have you heard, is it yours? I know how it works is you say, I want it, and then they haven't necessarily said you can have it. They have contacted me and said, it's yours. So there you go. See, I didn't know that. So now I'm super excited for you. There you go. I'm in on this. And I've just got to sell something to make way for it. I wonder what it's going to be. I think we all know. I know. Anyway, so let's talk about ReplayFX. We just had four days of it. And if I'm honest, I am rooted. Do you see how I use that? Because you would say, does that mean that you're supporting somebody? No, I'm rooted means I am so tired. I am really tired. It has been solid four days. Not just the tournament, not just Pimberg. I'm talking about the event itself because we'll talk about how we did in Pimberg I just learned a term I just learned a new term really? rooted? rooted I haven't heard it in that context like you're rooted in reality you're like a tree but you know when I say get rooted that means get fucked but if I say oh I'm rooted it means I'm rooted and I've been rooted are very different. Okay? So let's leave it at that. So let's talk about Pimberg. So day one well the night before day one is probably the best way for me to start And that was where I drank too much Yeah? Did you? I did. And so then we go into day one, which is qualifying, right? Everybody, there's a thousand people there. I think it ended up being 998. Maybe there was a couple of people that got dropped out. And the first day is you are playing with anybody. It's tiered Swiss. So the better you do, the harder the opponent. And you're playing five rounds, four games each. Scoring is 3-2-1-0. And at the end of five rounds, depending on the points that you've accumulated, you are then put into your qualifying brackets like A, B, C, D, E for day two. And then you'll play within group A, group B to then get top 40. How did you go day one? Can you remember day one? It was four days ago. That was last week sometime, right? I don't know. No, my day one I had... One of the best day ones I've had. It didn't... Ever. It didn't come with... I've had a... I was... Two years ago, I think I was the number one seed going into, like, the fourth group, and then just got tanked after that. But no, I think I went... I think I did 11, 10, 11, 9, 9? Yeah, you were just smashing stuff. Yeah, so it's... Honestly, it was the only day where I felt like I was on my game, where I was playing well, I wasn't making a lot of mental mistakes, I wasn't making a lot of physical flipper mistakes, and it just happened to go together. Some of the – even on – and oddly enough, some – I played – the games I excelled on on day one were completely opposite of the games that I did well on on day two. Like day one, I was playing on all areas really well. Day two, I played terrible on the moderns. Right. Like at least three of my groups, I believe I went 0-3-0-3. and the two I lost for the modern games. I'd lose on the modern-modern and then I'd lose on the medium. But then I'd win the EM and I'd win the solid-state games, which is completely polar opposite of where my skill set is, honestly. I mean, so I don't know. But the first day went well and the second day I maintained. After the first day, I think I was the second seed. Going into day two? Right, you were indeed. Behind the goat? Yes, indeed. So I didn't fare so well on my... And I'm trying to remember how I actually went, but my first round, I scored a three. And I was seeded like 135th, And that first round dropped me down to like 600. So then for the next four rounds, I was just trying to claw my way back. And I never really did hit great heights, if I'm honest. So, you know, I got a three, I think I got a nine, a seven, an eight, and then a seven. So nothing spectacular. and that put me into B division. That was my... I was in B division. And I wasn't too disappointed with that, but, you know, I was relatively high. But the thing to note, the difference between bottom of A and the top of C division was maybe two, three points. Yeah, it's super tight. Correct. So I actually missed out on A division by two points. those that missed out by one point were tiebreaker so they do a bit of a count back I won't talk about that so I missed out on A division by two points and I was kind of okay with that because at least I was sort of high B division and then we go into day two and I just looked up what my day one stuff actually was too also day two for me the night before I didn't drink at all and I went to bed early So the next day, I started with an 11, then a 6. That wasn't so great. Then a 7. Oh, no, maybe I'm not. No, I started with a 10, then an 11, then a 6, a 7, and my last was a 4. But by that stage, I knew I'd qualified. Going into the last round of qualifying in B, I was seeded second. And one of the highlights of that was that I got to play in my last group. against Roger Sharp. I know, I get to see that. I was very jealous of you at that moment. Yep. So, anyway, that was good. So what that meant was that I qualified in B Division 7th into the finals, because you had to be top 40. I got into the finals. I was happy with that. How did you go day two? Yeah, so much like you were, I'm actually looking at my stuff now. So I won 11, 11 and won the first round, 9-3, 10-2, 11-1, and then 6-6 at the end of the night. Which, I don't know what it is. It's probably just because generally I'm not in good shape. But the ends of nights on all tournaments, I fade. I don't know about you, but once it gets to the 9-plus, 10-plus o'clock, my skills just start making really stupid mistakes. and my play drops off pretty steadily at that point. So I ended on a 6. And then my second day was just treading water, trying not to fuck up everything that I had built on day one. So I got 6 wins, 7 wins, 6 wins, 5 wins, 7 wins. So then more or less I was just trying to tread. I dropped, obviously, because I was the second seed, and I think I ended up 14th. Yeah. But I didn't play well at all, really. I mean, I was average or above average on day two, but I still only dropped, you know, 10 seeds or so, which shows that it's super important to do well on day one. Well, correct. To build your safety net. Correct. Because with that, I was still able to get a bye on going into day three, which is obviously super important. And so just like whenever points matter on every day, all the time. So it's thankfully. It does. And, you know, one thing I noticed, and this is all the way into the finals as well, we're still talking, let's say, you know, it's top 400 people, right? You're obviously in the top 200 with the people that are in A Division. These people are really good at playing pinball. So I can't remember what game it was, but there was one, I think it might have been Deadpool, and I just put up this phenomenal score. And I was like, I was sitting pretty. I was thinking, you know what, I got this. And then this person, and I don't know, it wasn't like a phenomenal score, but let's say it was 300 million, right? Which I think it was. That's pretty good. That's not bad. And then this person on his last ball, who was on 2 million, ended up 400 million points. So you just, you never felt safe. Not for a second. And also because I didn't know these people, I didn't know their skill level. There was no expectation. No. It's just hard to know. You just be like, oh, this person, and you have no idea what they're going to do or what they're capable of. Correct. Just whether you're watching all stressed out being like, eh. Correct. See, it's almost a blessing because you don't know these people, whereas everyone I was playing against, I knew, and I knew what they were capable of, which probably put extra pressure on myself. realizing that there's a certain floor that I need to be at to have a chance to win, assuming that they don't play to their level. So that comes with its own stress with all that stuff anyway. But then, you know, and people have to remember when we were mentioning any kind of scores or they see any kind of scores from this tournament, these games are hard. There's no ball saves on most of them. There's no posts. There's no rubbers. The rules have been set to hard. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know about you, if you saw any specific games that... Did you see any specific things changed on games that really surprised you or you didn't overly understand why they were done or anything like that? Not necessarily, but there were some things that were particularly brutal, like removing the right gate from Fathom on the bottom of the bar, right? Yeah. Like, that's particularly nasty. and I just saw so many people drain like that. But, you know, they would... Yeah, they toughened up the machines. The machines were in great condition. When I say great condition, it wasn't necessarily like they were perfect show machines, but flippers were generally strong and era-appropriate, is what I'd say. Meaning, like, if it was an old EM that was meant to have weak flippers, it had weak flippers, but the strength of what they meant to have. Nothing felt unfair or damaged is what I came across. Yeah, and it's funny you mentioned error-specific or error-appropriate because while we were playing, after the fact, playing $5 games or whatever with friends, I got to play one of your favorite games. Rolling Stones. Well, yes, that too, which played, which... I still think that game's not bad. Okay, you're wrong, but keep going. but you are but no I played CSI and it's just the flippers are wrong yeah okay it's from that where and we played 24 we played 24 at the terrible dojo tournament which we'll get to maybe at some point but it's just I guess what was that that's 24 CSI Lord of the Rings but Lord of the Rings has got good flippers but those have the new most Lord of the Rings have the Lord of the Rings LE flipper coils in it which boost the power Right, okay. And when you play CSI, it is such a chore to hit things. And it's just that ramp. And that's what I was finding with 24 as we played it, the Dreadful Dojo tournament. The right rip. It was just so hard to get anything. They honestly all need the Lord of the Rings flipper coils. Right, okay. I think. Yeah. But doesn't that make the game too easy? because if you could make that ramp shot in CSI, that's all you would do and you would just be in multiball all the time and it would be pretty boring. But at the same time, if the flippers were stronger when you miss, you'd die more. Yeah, true. Fair enough. It wouldn't be as a slow return, slow rebound. Yeah, but that one is quite an easy shot though. It's a pretty wide ramp. I suppose. Yeah. It just feels wrong. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, CSI is a bit of an interesting one. Oh, so there were a couple things. One, which is a reminder for, which is funny because Chuck Webster played it and he couldn't figure out what was going on. Right. But so on Family Guy, the mod that they do is they will remove a captive ball from the… Which I played Shrek. Shrek. Shrek. And they did that. Yes. Yes. Well, it's on Shrek or Family Guy. Correct. It's the same thing, yeah. And he didn't realize that that was a thing. I explained to him what that means, and he was like, oh, well, that's cool, but them saying we removed one captive ball is not descriptive enough to know what that means. And what it means is that the two captive balls in that game are connected via a track, and normally they each have a captive ball, and then there's a pin in the middle of the track so that they cannot connect to each other. Whereas this mod is you remove the pin, you remove a ball, so then now one ball continues from one captive ball to the other. So if you hit the Stewie one, it'll transfer to the front captive ball. And then if you hit that captive ball, it will transfer to the other captive ball. Which means you can't spam backhand the front captive ball to get Stewie pinball. It'll transfer to the upper ball, which then you have to hit with the side. Oh my god. Do you know, I didn't work it out, that that was actually connected and it was now... It must loop around. It's a connected circuit. Right. So you hit one, it transfers. so you have to alternate. I couldn't work out why. Sometimes I was hitting the... It was the donkey shot. I think it still says pinball, doesn't it? Yeah. And sometimes it was giving me letters and sometimes it wasn't. Because neither previous players had knocked it over or you yourself had. Yeah, right. I must have, yeah. Yeah, so that is a clever mod that makes the game more fun because you can't just sit there and backhand. That's very cool. But it's one of those mods. If you don't know... I still did manage to get Donkey Kong just saying. Lord of the Donkey. But there's one mod specific that I saw that, A, I didn't understand why they did it. The only thing I could come up with is that I could have possibly guessed of why they did it, but I didn't think it was bad enough to do it. And then also, I think that by doing it, it kind of broke the game. Right, okay. So, Star Wars. Which one? Stern. Okay. So they disabled the post in the Hoth Death Star orbit. Right. Now, okay. As I was walking past that, it was always being played, so I never got to play it. I did see that sign. Explain to me what that means. Is that the one that does the ramp up? So, yes. Okay. So what that means is that you... You can never get the Death Star shot. It will never hold the ball. So the only thing I can think of is the reasoning by it is that they didn't want people playing video mode, right? Okay, gotcha. But if you think of that, how do you light that video mode? Now, when we talk about that medieval, we're not talking about the mode multiple, the mode video mode. We're talking about the lit video mode, which you get via force targets. Right, which is then the left and right force. You're in the Millennium Falcon. Yes. I'm pretty sure that's how you pronounce it. So you have to spell force like four times to light that. Oh, really? Yeah, it's like three or four. Okay. So that's what you're assuming you're trying to prevent. Sure. So by doing that, right, so what we discovered is that so now you're incapable of starting modes via Hoth or Death Star Shot. Yep. The only shots you can start modes for are Endor and Tatooine. Right. Okay, hold on a second. Endor is the left ramp and Tatooine is the right scoop. Shot you should never shoot, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and what we discovered... So, anything from the horseshoe doesn't work at all. It registers, but you can't... It doesn't hold the ball, so it doesn't give you a chance to start anything. Well, you don't have to. You can just start it via the ramp. Yes, but here's the problem. Is that because that's disabled... So, say you're going Leia, right? Yep. And you start Endor by accident. Happens all the time. Right? You pass. Do I? Yes, you do. Well, one of the strategies is the pass. so that you don't play a mode and lock yourself out. If you were a good player, you'd pass, right? I'm hearing that. Yeah. So what happens now is that what Nick found out when he was playing is that he passed on Endor and he passed on Tatooine, not knowing the consequences of the post not working, which essentially locked him out of modes for the entire game. Because you couldn't... Because you can't start via Hoth or Death Star and you can't relight a planet start once you've passed on it. Okay. So you can't, so now Endor's out. The left ramp will never start. As far as we can tell, it will never start a mode. And then the same thing with Tatooine. So like literally, it breaks the game because the game's not smart enough to realize that you can't start modes from those orbits from either side. So when they, but this is the whole thing, when they say disable, sometimes they disable them in software. Sometimes they actually just unplug cables. So like the smart missile in Jurassic Park, that's, I believe that's not actually software. I assume it's a cable. I think you just push the button and it's not actually connected anymore. Yeah, because I don't think they were smart enough back then to disable such a smart missile. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. I mean, I think some data is back then you can't even turn multiple off, whatever. Yeah, so I don't... Maybe this is in the software and just the software isn't smart enough to compensate properly. Because that's what I would... The reason why I'm bringing that up is that that's what I would think, is if you've got software in there that you change to say, disable that ramp thingy, flap that comes up, it would then know that though you're locked out of that and it's got to compensate and do it some other way. Yeah, so I wonder if they'd never thought of that. Yeah. Or they'd never been. And I wonder if the idea was, I mean, obviously I'm not criticizing Papa or anything that they chose, but I wonder if... We definitely are. of just the idea of saying, well, video mode takes two minutes or whatever it takes. We want to get that out, so let's just disable that gate so that can't happen. I don't know if then it was played to go, well, what are the consequences of that change, and can the software handle what happens when that happens? I don't know. And maybe there's something we were missing, the fact that maybe there's some way to relight your Endor after you've passed on it. But it was solid, and both of them were solid, and the other two were lit, and no matter what we did, that never changed. Well, if anyone knows a Pimberg that understands what the fuck we're talking about and explains that there was ways that you can light those modes, write into head2headpimple at gmail.com. We'd love to find out why, because if you can't do it, then we need to let Papa know that they shouldn't do that in the future. Or, more importantly, we need to educate the player base to how to get around such a big change like that. Because it's just going to lock you out. What are you going to do? Yeah, because if you don't know, because say if you're doing the normal strategy, and you get into Endor, and you normally would pass on that, you wouldn't do that normally now, if this is the case, knowing that. Because then... Can you start modes via the mystery shot? Yes, if you don't pass on Tatooine. But what he did is he had passed on both of them. because like off the plunge it actually went into Tatooine. Right, now what I was saying is whether one of the mystery awards is start a mode. Oh no. No. No, that's not in there. Okay So no no that was the most clever the one the one mod I saw that when we were playing we were like wait this seems like maybe this wasn the software isn't quite hip to what's going on. Yeah. No, I think that's a clever attempted modification. Yeah. There were a lot of sheets on these things with all the mods. I just, I didn't play those machines. It was more so that just about all of them had zero rubbers. on outlines and center posts. And the most cool, clever thing that I saw is that, because you saw it, there were multiple copies of games. Correct. And it's really cool how they've been able to math out how long a bank takes with X games, because one of the, for example, one of the Dark Knights, one of the Dark Knights had lightning flippers on it, no rubbers. the other Dark Knight had regular flippers and some rubber same thing Rolling Stone one Rolling Stones no rubbers other Rolling Stones rubbers there are multiple copies of games that one of one of the star pools had extra balls on the other star pool did not I played both in day one but they're balancing out the banks exactly which is so clever that's very cool and they can even take the exact same game and say well this game can be used in this bank if it has lightning flippers whereas in the other bank it can be fine and have rubbers and be okay. And they can still do this across multiple banks same copies. I mean it's a little confusing if you've played you end up playing both and one is like you're playing a Black Knight with lightning flippers and a Black Knight that's normal or something. Because the Black Knight on stage was deadly. That game does not need lightning flippers. No, it doesn't. It is a dickish game enough. With no ball save and no rubbers. So let's talk about day three, which was finals. Yeah, it was very short for both of us. Spoiler alert. So because we were both top 16, we had a bye. Which is, I was kind of a bit confused trying to work out. It is, but there's top 40 qualify and the top 16 get a bye. So what happens is there's 24 people that play in the first round, only 12 go through yep right they're joined by another 12 12 people yep and those they become 12 and then the four top four join that because they get two buys and there you go you got your top six thanks to you right that's how it works so I was I'll go with mine B division I was in my round and I got two points and was out how about you how'd you go Wow. Two points. Okay, look. What games did you play? Okay. First game was Time Machine. I played that Time Machine. That had a tilt on it. Brutal. It was tilt. Well, okay. So, here's a couple of things. So, interesting rulings. The first one that I had before that was somebody got extra ball. I think it was on... Might have even been Deadpool. and then when it came to my ball, they plunged my ball. And I went, as he plunged it, I went, no, no, no, no, no. And he goes, oh, no, well, you know, it's extra ball. And I said, no, extra balls are points. And he goes, oh, well, I'm just so used to my league having extra balls on. Dude, it's day three. What are you doing? No, this was actually day two, admittedly. I thought this was in finals. I was like, oh, my God. So anyway, so he was DQ'd. It was very upset for him because he was actually a really nice guy. but on this particular tilty time machine the person sort of gave it a bit of a tilt at the end of their ball and when my ball started and it was ball three I had a danger come up and I'm like oh what do I do so that was time machine and I decided to continue playing that person got no they got a warning They didn't get DQ'd. Yep. And then I had the option of either... Compensation ball. Yeah, and by compensation ball meaning start a new game. Don't play that ball to start a new game or continue with that. And I didn't really have that much going on, so it was kind of like toss a coin which way, so I continued. But anyway, that game was brutal and... Super fast. And super fast. Those flippers are... just... It's... Like, it reminded me of Robocop, which is also another Dota East of that era, where it was just ridiculously fast. And effectively what you do on that game is ramp to light, warp something, star warp, star warp, and then you've got 15 seconds to get a ramp for a million points. Well, yeah. Yeah, that's the start. Well, it's the... If you hit the star ramp itself, it spells star ramp. Yep. which then is the million and that carries across players I kept thinking it was any ramps no the other ramps spot colours to get your locks yeah that's right so I found that out after because I kept hitting the right ramp and it wasn't doing Star Wars and everybody else had done Star Wars I know so anyway I fucked that one up my game after that was Lost World Valley I hate that game Yep, and it was brutal, and it kicked my butt, and I think I may have come second, maybe? So I have one point. One point going into game three, which was The Walking Dead. And this is my moment. This is one of these ones where... I think it was almost exactly the same. Right. It was Walking Dead, Time Machine. Mm-hmm. Strata Flight's the next one. Right, okay. And then Coney Island. Right. Okay. Which we had an issue with Coney Island where the tilp bob was not centered. Right. And it was killing people and then they fixed it after our game. Right. Okay. People weren't happy about it. Yeah. So my moment that I kept reliving was on Walking Dead where I was player four, but obviously because I come last. And everybody had sort of gotten between, you know, 20 and I think someone had put 70 Miller and I had a couple of shots left to start prison and I had two banks left on the targets to start bloodbath and I thought you know what I'm going to go for broke I'm going to go for bloodbath got one time one of the the final like one of the targets down that I needed and then I had bloodbath targets to go got one of them down just had two targets to get couldn't hit him went for the shot missed it power drain out the right outline from this things just went bang bang down gone and i just couldn't believe it because that was that moment where had i started bloodbath would have got prison would have blown the thing up in theory but in theory of course then i could tell you about my game on that okay well then let me just finish that so that i came last on that then i played stratoflight the old em and i put up this great score thinking it's gonna be great and then everybody just passed me and i came third so i ended up on two points on that round and I was out and I was happy to see the fucking ass of bloody finals. So there you go. How'd you go? My Walking Dead game, when I played that exact game in my bank on day two, is I got into Bloodbath first off, two out of balls. I think I started a mode. Yeah, cool. As you would. Didn't really do anything. The rest of the game, I put got into Wellwalker. Okay. Didn't break 30 million. Both of those. Okay. And the winning score was 41. Right, okay. So, of that game, never feel bad about starting anything on that game and not getting something. Okay. Because it's completely within the realm to get something out of everything. Yeah, I know. Yeah, so, so my finals was So you went in as 14th seed? Yep. and which A division which is amazing keep going and in my group was Colin MacAlpine Alexander Kazmachik Kazmachik yep and the third player I wasn't I did not know okay but but you're awesome whoever you are yep and so we were on stage and the first game is so Colin's the one who got to pick the banks and he picked probably the one bank I didn't want to play. But so we started on Funhaus and I don't know about you but do you have access to Funhaus? Do you play Funhaus a lot? Yeah, I know Funhaus quite well. So I know Funhaus. I know exactly what to do on Funhaus. The problem is that I play Funhaus once every few years because there aren't any really in our area that we play. so more or less my game was spent trying to find where the shots were so like my first ball was trying to figure out where the mirror was never found it second ball, finally got into got into the quick multiball go to plunge it don't make it up to the around fully come back down, die, never get to do anything with that third ball, get all the locks ready can't get it in the mouth end up two million coming last on Funhaus. That was super awesome. Then the next game was... Wildfire? Is that right? Or Solar Fire? Solar Fire is the two-level one? No, it's... Is it a stern? It's in the same era as Charlie's Angels. It's a Gottlieb. It's... Oh, Wild... It's like Solar Ride? Maybe? Could have been. Sure. Either way. So that game, I won that game. It had the two double flippers on the bottom. Okay. I won that game. And then, so I got three points going into the third game. Third game was Jackpot, which I hate playing in competition because it's so stressful. Yep. It's not hard. It's just properly soft plunging, properly getting control. Yeah. Outlines are brutal on that. it's just it's probably the most stressful game to play in competition because any tiny fuck up can completely derail your entire game in your hopes of winning but I mean with that said on my first ball I was able to soft plunge open the visor go to put it in the visor get one eye in there soft plunge fuck up get it in there die okay yeah lock stealing second ball well weirdly the one thing I found out is that well there's no lock stealing you just have to relock sometimes. But one thing I found is that on my second ball, I locked the left eye, but it remembered that I had locked one, so it started multiball. So I was like, okay. So I get the plunge, I'm like, here we go, gonna three-switch this, gonna get my hit target and my under-ramp target so I can vet before I validate, get some progress here. Soft plunge, get the ball, I'm like, here we go. And this is just a sum-up of my entire day and the tournament that I did. is just everything was off. It was a little off. Just enough to just fuck yourself. So then I go to shoot under the ramp. I clip a drop target, goes in, doesn't quite get there, comes out, hits a sling, dead. I get like one jackpot. Well done. I get into, I was able to get the visor down a second time. Hooray. Die. Third ball, get it in, get one eye. can't get the other eye, everything goes wrong. And at like 1.5 billion, come in third. So now I'm going into the last game. I have four points. The other person, the person I can't remember, had two points. Colin had five points. And Alexander was crushing it and was sitting at seven. So I had a chance. All I had to do was at least beat Colin. If I beat Colin by one place, I got to at least get a tiebreaker. And what is the last game? Spanish eyes Oh he's Spanish eyes The one that's got the Pop bumper in the middle Yeah And so So So First person Puts up like 60k No like 30 something k And I'm like Okay that doesn't seem that bad Colin puts up 70 I'm like okay 70 seems doable Alexander had 30 Going into ball 5 And put up And ended up putting up Another 100k On top of that On his ball 5 Which didn't necessarily matter because I only need to beat Colin. So I'm like, one watching, I'm like, oh, you know, 70k doesn't seem undoable. I got up there and put up 20k. It would not let me play. Every shot I took killed me. It was brutal. I had one specific one where I finally hit the orbit. It went around, if you know the way it looks, it went around, flushed down into the pop bumper area, bounced over, and then went back up over the pop bumper, not activating it went around it and then went and died. I was like, okay, this is great. 20k. I was just like, alright, well, this was never meant to happen and it's fine. I mean, I didn't play good enough to deserve it. I wish that it was a more controllable EM. Okay, so here's the whole thing, right? Like, we all know the ball is wild, right? Pinball. The ball is wild. It's a mix of luck and skill. sometimes, sometimes you do get really unlucky, and particularly with solid states and EMs. And as I said, that's what fucked me up, really, was, well, if you think about the, my solid state was Lost World, which was really difficult. My EM was Strata Flight, whatever. But my, the one that was supposed to be okay was Time Machine, which was brutal as all fuck, and then you got The Walking Dead. What a bank. you know so we we just didn't have those moments to i guess mitigate the lack of luck and because of the fact that and when they're this hard and like that's the biggest thing that i've noticed is that like the higher echelon players you know if they have if you've played funhouse until you just you know the game you know the where the mirror is on average yeah that's supposed to be on the plunge or where that's supposed to be from a trap. I didn't have that innate... No, I had an idea of where I thought it should be, which was wrong. Right. But if you're playing against someone who has that and you don't have that, what it comes down to is if they happen to be right, then obviously they're making the shots. But they're also closer when they're missing. And it's do I live long enough to find the shots, which is where I think is where you get the next level from where I am is having the knowledge to properly shoot at shots you haven't shot before and be able to guesstimate I don't know how if it's just experience of playing copies or being flipping and maybe having an idea of where but I find that like I watch other people find shots way quicker than I can or even right away. Whereas when on games I haven't touched before and if I can't find the shots quickly, I'm dead before I actually get a chance to find the shots. Right. So then it becomes this, you know, when I'm missing, am I dying or am I living? No. Can I get the ball back? Can I learn from my mistake? Yeah. And sometimes at this high a level, you can't fuck up like that. You just can't. Yep. You can't make those small mistakes. Yeah, there's no room for error. Nope. So your shots have got to just nail it every time. Yep. Yeah. I get it. So then, obviously, on to the finals. We'll just go really to the winners. Keith Elwin, he won again. You know, greatest of all time. Awesome. Another fun note is that when Colin was putting up that score on Spanish Eyes, I was behind him watching, and I just was sitting there watching him. I just happened to look up and, oh, the game is literally right underneath his banner. Right. Okay. That's why he knows. I'm not foreshadowing at all. Yeah. That's a nice visual thing to look at. So there we go. So Keith won. Daniela Achari was second. Andrew Rosa, that's Andy Rosa Jr., he was third, and Chris Stevens. We watched the finals. It was over by game three, but it was just as exciting to watch, which is amazing. Then we had the women's tournament. Holly, I'm going to, hopefully I get to pronounce your name right. Holly Koskinen came first. We watched that. That was amazing to watch. Rachel Kahlik was second, Kerry Wang third and Priyanka Koshkar was fourth so well done to the women as well, that was a great tournament to watch as well and then we had Intergalactic and I didn't have all the results but I do know that Ryan Wanger from Comet Pinball Ryan who's a fantastic guy and I got to catch up with him which was great, he won that which was fantastic How was your experience in the Intergalactic? Terrible, I put four games up didn't care, I just, I paid for it It was, you know, an hour and a half to two hours wait per game. It was just difficult. It was, yeah. It was just difficult. Weird stuff on game, like, weird game things. Like, talk about mods to a game. They disabled Kleon Multiball. I know. On Star Trek. On Star Trek. And the game still had a two-hour wait on it. Yeah. Yeah. Wrap your head around that, people. Yep. Two-hour wait. two and a half hour wait, I think it was. Yeah, and other games had the Judge Dredd upper right flipper kind of broke, and they just put a sign that said it doesn't work well, don't use it. And the lines were just... The lines kind of broke my will to compete. I didn't want to wait, and it'd be like, we'd be off playing something, and then you'd randomly get a text saying you were up on a game you forgot you were even fucking waiting for. Yeah. And then you'd go over there, you'd go in and be like, oh, well, that was fun, and then... You just walk away. Yeah, I didn't care. I didn't finish it. I wasn't bothered. I put up four games out of ten. I just didn't care. It was... I was all pim... I was pimpled out by then. I really was. So... And I'm... I'm pimpled out now. I've had a really good four days, but I'm ready for whatever's next. It's been a lot.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 07b4573a-72d9-4053-99f8-4c5118d05e77*