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[img width=480 height=577]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-005/gs/U-005-S-00170-B.jpg[/img]
It is pretty amazing, when you think about it, that video games can present practically as many universes as our imaginations can conceptualize. Race car drivers, ancient warriors, formless deities, abstract observers, mustachioed occasional-plumbers, the possibilities go on and on. We tend to settle into comfortable niches, as is human nature, but really any medium so tethered to artistic expression can as open as our desire to explore.
Continue reading Thoughts On My Time With Virtual Pinball
[img width=311 height=524]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/P_NES.PNG[/img]
Most people do not think of the NES when they think of pinball. They would be very right to forget the small library of sub par pinball games on the otherwise heralded system...but SOMEONE has to play'em right? While it only has a few titles, the NES is certainly one of the places you could play.
Continue reading NES Pinball Games
[img width=700 height=1035]http://i.imgur.com/PNIJoEM.jpg?1[/img]
Heya Friends! Over the holiday break, I took a trip to one of my favorite places on earth, and decided it needed to be shared with everyone. Silverball Museum, located on the Asbury Park boardwalk, is a "pay-one-price" style arcade loaded with a plethora of classic and new pinball machines, as well as some staple game cabinets.
Continue reading Neo on Location: Silverball Pinball Museum - Asbury Park, NJ
[img width=700 height=505]https://advancehappynewyear2017.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/advance-happy-new-year-pics-2017.jpg[/img]
Pic from advancehappynewyear2017.com
For many of us, to say the year 2016 has been difficult would be an understatement on par with mentioning the N-Gage never quite surpassed the Game Boy Advance. It seems everyone I know had a tough year for several reasons, and I spent quite a bit of it with family members in hospitals or medical appointments. Many good things happened, but it seemed every week the idea of a return to some 'normal' got pushed further and further out. I think I see some disadvantages to this whole 'being the adult' thing that never got spelled out alongside the whole cookies-and-bedtime-whenever-I-want setup. Or maybe it was spelled out and I was too busy drawing plans for my future home, complete with helipad and shopping mall in the backyard. (Was I the only kid who drew that up?)
Oh, and I guess some famous family is moving out of a nice house near Virginia and the new family moving in is making the neighbors nervous or something? We live in a strange country. And it's not even Canada! (Although I hear they have some nifty retro-stocked video game stores up there.) And apparently some Brexfast thing happened and now importing games is all confusing and/or tasty? Crazy world.
Most folks on this site likely play games to unwind, unless you play games to get mad, in which case I recommend Carrier Command for Xbox 360. For the rest of us, it's good to have our go-to games for decompression.* You know what I mean; those games you aren't necessarily playing to complete, but rather to mentally unfurl and let the stresses of the day process somewhere in the back of your mind.
Continue reading On Video Games as a Processing Tool During Tough Times
This series will focus on visits to barcades, game stores, conventions, etc. and our first stop is Tokens & Tankards. Nestled within downtown Mount Prospect, Illinois (18 W. Busse Ave) in what used to be an old pizza parlor, Tokens & Tankards provides a spin on the classic barcade as they offer up classic British and Belgian pub plates paired with local craft beers.
Continue reading Traveling Tales: Tokens & Tankards
The following was written up early last summer for appearance on another site that ultimately didn't run it. So I'm posting it here...
[img width=680 height=348]http://thecontrolleronline.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Pinball-Arcade-Logo.jpg[/img]
When I was in my early teenage years, the arcades were experiencing what would be their final hurrah before entering into a sad and ongoing fifteen year decline of increasingly shuttered mall stores, vacated boardwalk buildings, and empty pizza parlors. In many ways, however, the pinball arcade had already gone through this transition while the arcade itself was yet thriving. When I was a kid, most arcade hideouts had long ago tossed Pin-Bot and Space Shuttle machines to make room for more Mortal Kombat, Tekken, or NBA Jam cabinets. Pinball Wizard was not an anthem for my generation (I guess we had Guile's Theme, instead) and pinball was starting to be seen as a poor investment for arcade owners. As a kid, I didn't care. Pinball was something that I'd play to bide my time if all the video game machines were already taken. As an adult, however, I now lament the lost opportunity to spend more time with these masterful creations.
Pinball Arcade, published by FarSight Studios, offers a salve of sorts to my feelings of regret. FarSight previously published the excellent Pinball Hall of Fame titles which featured classic tables from pinball companies Gottlieb and Williams, each of which were painstakingly and lovingly recreated in video game form for a wide variety of consoles. Pinball Arcade takes that basic concept - detail-focused recreations of classic tables (complete with spot-on physics) - and offers it in the form of an PSN/XBLA/iOS title. This entry represents not only their best work to date, but it is also perhaps the best pinball video game to ever grace a console.
[img width=640 height=360]http://www.tech-gaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/The-Pinball-Arcade-1.jpg[/img]
On consoles, the game comes with four tables at an initial offering price of $10. Those tables are Theater of Magic, Black Hole, Ripley's Believe it or Not!, and Tales of the Arabian Nights. These are all heavy hitters in the pinball machine market: Theater, Ripley's, and Tales regularly command $5,000+ to purchase a machine on eBay or at conventions, and Black Hole will likely cost you at least a couple of grand. No video game can give you quite the same feeling as you would get playing the original, but I find it much easier to drop $10 for an excellent facsimile of that experience that to drop $20,000 for the real thing. Having played a wide variety of pinball video games in the past and having played three of the actual tables that are included in this collection, I can say that I've never played a title that feels closer to reality than Pinball Arcade.
There are a number of things that Pinball Arcade does right. For one, it offers online leaderboards that allow you to compare your scores with those of your friends and with others from around the world. I have been surprised by how much I have enjoyed this feature of the game, as it really delivers a sense of mutual competition that is reminiscent of the actual arcade experience. For another, it offers extremely easy to understand breakdowns of table goals, how to score, what spinners and lights mean what, etc. It seems a small thing for a pinball game, but the writer for the brief tutorial paragraphs deserves a bonus: those short blurbs of explanation are extremely succinct and informative without being condescending. The game offers a number of incentives for playing often and improving your skills: each table has a set of table goals and harder wizard goals which you can try and achieve (successful completion of which will net you trophies or achievements on PSN and XBLA, respectively), and finishing all of the goals will allow you to play tables with tilt turned off. Each tables menu also has a section detailing the history of the table and offers scans of the original flyers for you to pour over.
Oh, and those who purchase the PS3 version get the Vita version for free, so that's a nice bonus as well. The Vita version, while taking a slight drop in the visuals, performs extremely well and is my preferred platform for the game. You can't go wrong with any version, though.
[img width=640 height=363]http://i.imgur.com/NLDtnl.jpg[/img]
FarSight has indicated that more tables will be continue to be released as DLC at about $2.50 per table. So far these tables have included "Monster Bash," "Bride of Pin-Bot", "Medieval Madness," "Funhouse," and "Cirqus Voltaire" with promises of "Attack from Mars, "Star Trek The Next Generation" and "Twilight Zone" coming soon (and, again, almost all of these are extremely expensive machines on the pinball market). They have also built into their game the opportunity for tournament and challenge play with the addition of future tables, which should make leaderboard chasing even more exciting.
Whether you are a grizzled veteran of the pinball craze in arcades, a video gamer who has ever enjoyed any video pinball title in the past, or just a person who likes games that motivate you to improve your score, youll find a lot to love in Pinball Arcade. It might not give you the exact sensation of feeling all the bumpers and becoming part of the machine, but you can still work out those crazy flipper fingers (on shoulder buttons) while pursuing your own (virtual) pinball crown.
 In case you've been living under a rock for the past two weeks, pop music legend, Michael Jackson, has passed away. One thing the Thriller superstar was known for was his giant Neverland Ranch, which was foreclosed and auctioned off last year. As part of the auctions, the arcade in Neverland Ranch was sold. The Orange County Pinball Lab website got a look inside and took several panoramic shots of the arcade. Check it out here: http://www.pinsane.com/pi.../events/MJ_09/index.shtml. Or if you prefer, you can view the arcade's contents in the auction catalogue here: http://www.juliensauction...el-jackson/icatalog4.html
Some of the highlights (for me) include:
- Giant Lego Darth Vader
- Darkstalkers arcade machine
- Super Street Fighter II
- Sega R360 (That thing looks freaking awesome)
- NBA Hangtime (LOVED that game as a kid)
- Galaxy Force (I remember playing that game in the arcade as a kid and how awesome it was that it spun and tilted)
- Several kiosks including N64, 3DO, PS1, Virtual Boy, Saturn, SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast,
- Mocap Boxing (It's like Project Natal!)
- Guitar Freaks
- Dig Dug
- Donkey Kong
- Neo Geo MVS
- Marvel Vs Capcom
Quite the collection I must say. I don't know if he was a gamer, but I'm sure a lot of guests were. Creepy, no?
I know it has not been that long since my last entry but I have made a lot of progress recently so I figured that it was a good time for an update.
I was able to finish cleaning the last six rollover switches and overall I am happy with how they turned out. I think some of the dirt might have been holding them in place better though because since cleaning them numbers three and five now have a tendency to stick, which would not be so bad if they did not rack up the score and make a very annoying noise.
Continue reading My, mostly, lifelong dream PT 4 with more pictures
I bet you were wondering if this was ever going to get posted, well I am happy to report that here it is and I now have a functioning pinball machine, although it still has its fair share of problems....
Continue reading My, mostly, Lifelong Dream Pt 3
Part 1 can be found here: LINK
Part 2: What I actually bought...
First for the good, the playfield is in fair to good condition with minor wear and only a couple spots of touch up which is pretty good for a game almost 30 years old. Another piece of good news is that new glass was installed because someone sat on it, apart from that though there is not much to get excited about...
Continue reading My, mostly, lifelong dream PT 2 with pictures!
Another week means another week of features! This week, we will take a look at a small part of the handheld market. The featured game this month is Pinball. This is a very quirky game where you get to play Pinball anywhere you want! Well, in 1987, it was an awesome idea. There have been many times that this game had kept me busy. Okay, it still does sometimes!
The featured image of the week is from the Nintendo DS game Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I figured that since the new movie was released and the last book hit the shelves, it'd be a good time to feature one of the Harry Potter games. The game is based off of the fourth book. Although a tad easy in gameplay, it is a fun game to play through, especially if you like the Harry Potter series.
Our featured hardware is the poor Neo Geo Pocket Color. The Neo Geo Pocket Color was a much maligned system that either came out too early or too late. No one really seems to know. It had some great games, like Bust-a-Move and Baseball Stars. I think the biggest thing that hurt it was the price point of the parallel console system. Many people equated Neo Geo with expensive. That is why I have dubbed this system poor.
The featured collection this week goes to epv39. Epv39 has quite a handheld collection, not to mention one of the cleanest and most organized collections on the site. Take a look!
I think you all would agree that this is a very special week for the features. I think this is the first time a game was featured that wasn't plugged into a console. Make sure to check out the forums and keep it tuned in to channel 3!
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