not really on topic but has anyone seen the movie "king of kong"?
it is a movie about two guys racing for the top score in Donkey Kong (original). It is awesome. It is a complete dorkfest full of 50 year old virgins etc. Definitely worth the watch
Cheers
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Not exactly what you guys are looking for as pinball sims always lose a lot of realism through their physics engines. But if the right software can come along then this would be the table to use it on.
not really on topic but has anyone seen the movie "king of kong"?
it is a movie about two guys racing for the top score in Donkey Kong (original). It is awesome. It is a complete dorkfest full of 50 year old virgins etc. Definitely worth the watch
Slightly OT but can someone explain to me the skill in pinball? What differentiates a good player from an ordinary one?
The few times I played it I just hammered away on the buttons. What was I missing?
A couple things
1. Understand where the big points are to be had. Each game is different and you want to go after the big points/bonuses/multi-balls
2. Stop the ball with your paddle and then aim your shot. Learn how to cushion the ball with the paddle so you can catch it, instead of having to just wack it right back up with no thought
The great thing about pin is if you are good and understand a game - you have a game go on a VERY long time on just one credit. It's great value compared to most video games.
As a kid did anyone else walk past the pin tables and have one of the high school guys (who at the time all looked like they were 30...must have been the 80s hair and porn'stache) would say "Hey, hold the ball, I gotta [smoke/whizz/comb my hair]" and leave you holding the flipper button with the ball trapped on it? That was one of the most fearful things as a kid. If you ever got bumped and lost the ball you were dead.
I also mis-remembered the name of the arcade I gre up in, it was Cactus Jack's not Jack Daniels.
Fond memories of when they brought in the sit down "full motion" version of Star Wars.
I also skipped many an after lunch class in University as we'd be in the middle of a Foosball match in The Lazy Owl.
Good times, good times.
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i was a huge fan of a pinball called Taxi, used to play it in the westbrook Mall arcade.. good times indeed. as for stand up games, i was the Dig Dug man...
I spent just about all my discretionary funds in college playing pinball. ST:TNG being my #1, but also Black Knight 2000, The Machine: Bride of Pinbot, and basically whatever else was installed in the game room. My local pub has a few pretty good pins, and I still play pretty often. The newer games are OK (Dark Knight), but I really love the early '90s models.
Anyway, I'm going to Vegas tomorrow, and I'm seriously annoyed that I'm booked in meetings pretty much the whole time, and won't have time to visit the Pinball Museum. Next time, definitely.
If I can ever get my SO to get his two junker cars out of our garage, I'm definitely going to get a ST:TNG machine. "All hands, prepare for multiball!"
The Cove closed last year. Guy who owned it was making virtuallynothing at all.
What a joke, that place went to the dumps when they remoddelled Mac Hall. They put a cold and boring corrider through the basement - the only place that had any soul. Cut right through the cove and shrank it into a little cubby behind the stench of baking yeast that is Subway. The cove lost all it's character (the dark alley of arcades and the recessed pool table area. The renovation of that whole area is part of the things I hate most about the U of C. Eventually it started shrinking more and more. Tried to have a lan area for computers which failed and turned into a fast food place. Then it disappeared entirely. The guy who owned the cove did his part in getting the newest arcade games though, from Japan, etc. though.
I wonder what happened to their Star Wars sit-down cabinet. I played that a lot. $0.25 for great vector graphics goodness.
What has really been lost with the death of arcades is the loss of the whole atmosphere. The aureal experience was amazing when you were in a lively arcade and all the amazing sounds and music you heard at once. It's sort of like a casino but really cool instead of lame melodies and the clinking of coins.
I count myself fortunate enough to have visited the cove enough times back in highschool before I ever was in university because by the time I got there, they had already totally messed the damn place up totally.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 04-05-2009 at 11:41 PM.
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not really on topic but has anyone seen the movie "king of kong"?
it is a movie about two guys racing for the top score in Donkey Kong (original). It is awesome. It is a complete dorkfest full of 50 year old virgins etc. Definitely worth the watch
Cheers
Thanks! I love old movies that have arcades in them. I'm downloading now.
Also, remember to check out 'Joysticks' from 1983. "SUPER AWESOME VIDEOGAMES!"
What has really been lost with the death of arcades is the loss of the whole atmosphere. The aureal experience was amazing when you were in a lively arcade and all the amazing sounds and music you heard at once. It's sort of like a casino but really cool instead of lame melodies and the clinking of coins.
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Great post and I agree. I'm not a big gamer. The last system I owned was colecovision when I was a kid - but I liked Arcades for all the reasons you mention.
i was a huge fan of a pinball called Taxi, used to play it in the westbrook Mall arcade.. good times indeed. as for stand up games, i was the Dig Dug man...
There was a dump in Ft McMurray called Leisure World. Basically, a crappy old house converted inot an arcade. They had good pinball games there. Taxi, Cyclone. Earthshaker is still my favourite. It had a motor in it that would shake when you locked three balls up in "the fault. Then you'd get a multi-ball with the entire machine shaking like an Earthquake. Good times.
The earliest ones I remember were the KISS and Playboy machines from the late 70's.
I lived in the country so no local arcades, but there was a big truck stop near my place and a friend and I would walk over there every so often.
I remember playing Black Knight with the magnets to try to save your ball. I was never very good, but every once in a while you would get into a zone and run up a good score, and that would be enough to get me to try again.
When there used to be Red Robin restaurants in town, often they would have pinball machines still for a quarter. After a good Banzai Burger I'd play a game or two. I was disappointed when they disappeared.
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"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
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There was a dump in Ft McMurray called Leisure World. Basically, a crappy old house converted inot an arcade. They had good pinball games there. Taxi, Cyclone. Earthshaker is still my favourite. It had a motor in it that would shake when you locked three balls up in "the fault. Then you'd get a multi-ball with the entire machine shaking like an Earthquake. Good times.
The earliest ones I remember were the KISS and Playboy machines from the late 70's.
That Earthshaker sounds pretty awesome. My faves were
Twilight Zone - particularly if you can find one of the rare machines with Barney The Dinosaur. But the game was just great all around.
Star Trek TNG
Adams Family
Apollo 13 - notable only because it had a 13 ball multi-ball feature. The rest of the game was kinda cruddy but that 13 ball multi-ball was wild.
I remember another interesting one from the 80s called Haunted House, it had another board underneath the main one. Neat design, the game play wasn't that great.
Lots of great machines out there, most of the newer ones are pretty cool.
I was browsing Ebay looking at prices, there's a lot of Twilight Zones for sale, pretty expensive tho. Neat that they can have individual modifications.
