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UK Pinball Party 2014 - Put your pics and thoughts here!!

What makes the high voltage even more incredible, is that you did it as an A level art project when you were 18!!!

A clever chap indeed.

And it was also great to meet you at last, even though you've been to Ipswich twice before to collect stuff from me, some how our paths never crossed!! I really enjoyed sharing a few games of BK2K with you, even if you did kick my ****!!!
 
I am suprised that no one has mentioned the dinner yet..

Well i for one didn't enjoy the meal (again) we were served up some 'slop' that resembled chicken curry which was bland and tasteless. I've had better meals in my school canteen.

And the talk looked like it had been 'thought up' around 10 mins before, there was no structure or anything to it whats so ever. Perhaps, and here's just a thought that instead of draging random images around that you could hardly see on a projector - that you actually take the time to create a powerpoint slideshow.

And another microphone wouldn't go amiss either.

Just my $0.02.
 
Dinner looked awful on my plate, so left it and went to the bar and had a nice burger.... so missed the talk.
 
Looks good apart from that really square lockdown bar which I found hurt my hands last year and hasn't changed by the look of it. Anyone played it?

I played it with Andy standing next to me most of the time. The lockdown bar really dug into my hand what with me having tiny girl hands, but Andy explained that in the production version it is a solid frame all the way around and therefore no chunky lockdown bar. I quite enjoyed playing it once i'd got into it a bit - it does flow nicely. Like others have said, couldn't make the right ramp at all, and at first I didn't have a clue what i was supposed to aim for so Andy explained. However, I didn't even think to read the little instruction card which would have given me a clue! The game reset twice when i was playing it which Andy said was due to live updates from America - to be fair, i was playing it at 2am, they probably thought it was quite a safe time to do updates. Also got the ball stuck in the places people have already mentioned, Andy is aware of it and already has a plan to sort it out. I can't speak from a buyers perspective, but if I saw one on-site or at a show, I'd happily play it.

As for the rest of the show, thoroughly enjoyable as always. Yes there were less machines, but i didn't feel like i had to wait ages to play something. One small bug bear was that some of the classics in the main area were not playable simply because there were no credits on them.

Tournament - I really liked the use of the tablets for scoring, thanks to the Raisons. It got very busy though particularly for the classics, I queued for between 30 and 45 minutes each time to get on the 3 machines I managed to play before I had to go play in the League finals. Thanks to Peter, Greg, and everyone involved in organising the tournaments and league stuff and congrats to the winners. I missed watching the final of the main tournament because i was getting ready for the dinner (which i'll talk about next) - A few years ago the final was held in the restaurant with a screen set up for people to watch. I'd really enjoy that making a comeback.

The dinner, well, some good points and some bad. I think it was supposed to be at 8pm but it had gone 8.30 before we even got in the room to sit down. The buffet meant it was served faster, but they seemed to run out of food, and I agree that the curry was not up to much. However, the soup and chocolate dessert were lovely. I still think it went on too long. My suggestion for next year would be to have a simple buffet - sandwiches, chicken wings, wedges, etc, but LOTS OF IT! That would still give the opportunity for people to have a social catch up outside of the pinball hall, and to have a guest speaker, but it wouldn't go on til midnight and I would expect would get more people signing up to it as it should cost considerably less than £40 per head.

Here's (hopefully) to next year.
 
The game reset twice when i was playing it which Andy said was due to live updates from America - to be fair, i was playing it at 2am, they probably thought it was quite a safe time to do updates

I was told the updates were done on boot (makes sense as its a read-only filesystem running on linux) i think the software is just buggy as it crapped out on me too during the day.
 
This was my sixth pinball party,the fifth at Daventry.... I've always been a big supporter of the show,was there early (on thurs) I always help set up and this year it was very smooth,the electrics taken care off,and as always a good/ reasonable condition and amount of games,although a few turned off,or awaiting the legends magic......or as usual brought non working.
Nice to see the usual faces n have a natter and some new peeps lots in fact,the competition was a bit hectic and long but again great the the guys n girls works hard to run it.
As for the hotel........ Well where do I start... Our room was dirty n not cleaned correctly my mrs put a flee in the cleaners ear!!! , drinks I think they ran out at one point on certain stuff,way over priced bar food and drinks,breakfast was ok.
As for the talk meal well I was dumb struck @ £40 a head Was nothing more that insane for what we were seved up,it has got worse over the last 2 years I know that Andrew has tried to sort this on a few occasions and In places has succeeded,I'm not going to point the finger at Andrew as it was clearly the hotel at fault,the speaker I enjoyed l liked the fire side chat idea,but a second micro phone needed!... And show gary flower how to use it lol.
I personally felt let down and went home early yesterday.....first time ever....this is a great event that has out grown the venue I think,I want it to continue,and being part of the nlp know how hard it is to get a show off the ground and keep it going year after year,Andrew needs our support and input to keep it all going, I wanted to go and scream and shout at him for the meal fiasco,but knew the hotel and so called chef and staff had shafted him!
So over all a 4 outa 10 for me.
 
@Archyta5 . Saw the F-14 being setup and thought it may have been yours , but didn't have the leds in playfield :)

Had ball stuck on the full throttle as well, happened to most I think air balling off the center post. Shove a post & rubber up there or use mini tyres stacked flush to glass? :)
Feels weird not having something to look up at and anyone waiting they have to try and peer at the playfield to see what's going on.

Barry didn't go to bed after dinner, he stayed up late to own the spider-man with 150 mill.

barry.jpeg
 
@Archyta5 . Saw the F-14 being setup and thought it may have been yours , but didn't have the leds in playfield :)

Had ball stuck on the full throttle as well, happened to most I think air balling off the center post. Shove a post & rubber up there or use mini tyres stacked flush to glass? :)

Nope not mine, hence why I am interested in finding out who's it is. It had a few cool things I liked, especially how the "Williams: Number 1 Pinball in the World" was lit. That was very nice.

I also had this issue with Full Throttle. I got 2 plunges out the game and both times the ball got stuck in exactly the same place, it needs a rubber or maybe a raised up screw in the playfield so the ball doesn't get stuck there. On the 3rd ball something happened to the motorcycle toy (It flipped backwards 90 degrees, looked like it was doing a wheelie!) so the playfield glass came off to fix it. I walked away at that point. There is definitely some improvements to be made to the game but as Andy said it is still 85% done so I'm assuming these sort of things and the weird feeling lockdown bar will get replaced or fixed. If I was playing the game for a long time as it currently is I couldn't, the bar hurt my hands too much as you sort of had to go around it with your fingers to get to the flipper buttons. I wish Andy the best of luck with it but motorcycles could not be more of a snooze theme for me!
 
(+)

Playing two very nice Flash Gordon's (thanks to @pinballmania and @ronsplooter). I now want one.
Playing Safecracker for the first time and getting 'Attack the Vault? HS. Great game Jim.
First Embryon seen and played, what a cool big-ass pin that is.
Meeting up and sharing beer with good pinball lads and meeting a few new ones. Good luck with those legs Mark. ;)

(-)

Bar staff kept disappearing in the hall.
Bit of disappointment seeing the Full Throttle cab.

Thought room was OK. Went out for Chinese Sat night and appears was the wise decision. Good weekend overall I thought.
 
Ah so was that @ronsplooter s Flash Gordon ?

Lovely machine (not that Andys wasn't ) I think the LEDs actually added to it, I'm not usually a fan of them in older machines, must be the space theme or something.. Anyhow lovely machine and well deserved prize winner.

Managed to get a 4 ball game of Star Trek at the end of Sunday only to get to plunge the ball as the power was turned off :mad:

At least I got to plunge the ball, I think the forth player was Lukaz and he didn't even get to touch the machine...

Cheers
Ian




Also Got to put my name in on one of the no fears, which is always a bonus (zig) in case it's anyone on here's and cheers for bringing it...
 
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Great fun overall with all the pinball. I love that the show is at a hotel as it is so convenient but how it got those 4 stars I have no idea. The food at the talk was school dinner standard although the food being served to the other diners looked much better so they were obviously fobbing us off with second rate fare. The bars were understaffed. My room had spiders in the shower and the fan didn't work in the bathroom. My bad was made really badly too for the first night. And my leg hurt a bit. And yes, 2 microphones would have been a great idea and I'm sure the stories from old Barry Oursler would've flowed a lot better. I do like Gary Flowers interviewing but the pauses between hangovers killed the flow a bit.

Great to have everyone come together and organise all the competitions which is the reason I go but I really hope that we can tweak the queuing system. Physically queuing could be so easily replaced by a token based system where you place your queuing token beneath your chosen next game on a big board and everyone can see how many people are in front of you. Then you can keep the main tournament area clear for just the current players and the scorekeepers which will virtually eliminate cheating and just make everything more pleasant. A larger seating area for waiting and chatting would be great. Also a big old sign that displays your player number could flash to summon the next player and the player could be called over the PA and if they don't turn up within say 2 minutes of the call then they forfeit their position.

I bow down to the amazing organisational skills of those who run everything and I personally am so bad at organising stuff myself so I am wary to point out these little niggles but I think they would really benefit the whole experience for everyone.

Also I won a trophy!
 
Had another excellent time at the show this year, great to able to chill out either back in the hotel room or out on the patio when things got too busy or if my feet got too tired. The hall seemed slightly quieter than in previous years, even at the most busiest times on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

A reasonable selection of games again this year with more older machines, but less top modern DMDs. No AC/DC, TZ, MM or AFM to play. A few less machines than before, with a few gaps and several turned off for the duration of the show, including Andy H's New Canesta... :tut: It was a bit annoying finding the number of older games with no credits, including that Bally Six Million Doller Man, which sat there for almost the whole show looking very pretty but on zero credits. :mad: Surprise game of the show for me was Andy Netherwood's Bally Playboy, really enjoyed that one Andy, but just couldn't justify paying a grand for it! Well done to Andy for keeping everyone's games running, mine behaved themselves perfectly this year, with just one ball jam on HGT to sort out along with keeping it's credits topped up.

Great to meet up with all the regulars and catch up with everyone, sorry if I didn't stop to speak to anyone I know. :oops: I don't get involved in the Tournaments, so didn't venture into the "fenced off with stern warnings" competition arena very often, so may have missed a few people who spent the entire show there. :suspect:

The fast food was as awful as ever, with luke-warm jacket potatoes, cold beans and dried out burgers and chips at rip off prices. Lots of people (including us) were seen returning from town with Tesco bags full of food. I didn't go to the Dinner on Saturday evening so cannot comment on it, but heard some bad stories about it. The hotel room wasn't bad, but again the shower fan didn't work, the power sockets were loose on the walls, and for some reason the central heating started up in the middle of Friday night and was making a racket through the pipework.

Great fun to watch Poibug's and Andy Heighway's Ice Bucket Challenge, well done to those two for enduring all that for charity. :thumbs: Well done to everyone who helped in organising the show and who brought their games along. :clap:

EDIT: I noticed a lot more rudeness and machine hogging this year at the show, mostly involving foreign competition players. My partner had a door slammed in her face following one through the hotel corridors, and we also observed one black out and collapse on the patio. There were some "interesting" smells coming from the smoking area at times which may have had something to do with it. :tut: A friend of mine mine got bodily shoved out of the way by someone who wanted to urgently play Star Trek, which backfired badly as I let my friend play on it first :rolleyes:
 
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Overall a decent show.....anytime you get to play that many pins in one place is a good thing IMO :) As others have mentioned, not as many games as previous years but some really interesting stuff with favs being Bally Playboy, Zaccaria Combat and Stern Dracula. The best thing about the UKPP for me through is meeting up with mates, having a few beers and chatting about pinball :thumbs:

Playing two very nice Flash Gordon's (thanks to @@pinballmania and @@ronsplooter). I now want one.
Lovely machine (not that Andys wasn't ) I think the LEDs actually added to it, I'm not usually a fan of them in older machines, must be the space theme or something.. Anyhow lovely machine and well deserved prize winner.

Thanks John and Ian, glad you enjoyed it :D I have to say that the prize was very unexpected but nice to get. @BigIan there's no LEDs in my Flash Gordon, just regular bulbs. I think the new playfield inserts and clearcoat just make them look really bright (I had a few people think there were LEDs in it) :)
 
A big thanks to all involved and put on a great show, it was the first Daventry event I have been to. I really loved how it was a proper pinball event without any arcade machines taking up space.

I have been to several Slam's in Worthing over the years but not been able to attend Daventry mainly due to the lack of a nearby train station. This year I was fortunate enough to have Archyta5 look after me in the chauffeur department which I am very grateful.

Surprise game for me was the Wheel of Fortune that everyone seems to be talking about, it is a marmite game and I thought it was hilarious, it is a game I would love to show my parents since they loved the show years ago.

I finally got to see Full Throttle at long last after looking for it at the previous 2 EAG shows in London.
Love the light up side panels, and I like the new improved trans light artwork.
The playfield has a lot going on which is great, although the ball getting stuck wasn't great,but I know that can easily be fixed.
Shame we couldn't play 2 or more player games, but I know that will be rectified.

I am old fashioned and would love to see a more traditional looking back board that is more chunky with a larger sized translight and an LCD extender screen that mimics the same as the one on the play field for other players to watch and also since I keep looking up to it out of habit :rolleyes:

As also mentioned, very uncomfortable to play with the positioning of the flipper buttons. I know this is a prototype cabinet and will be changed, hopefully the backboard can be tweaked as well before finally released.

I really want to support Heighway games, but due to the theme I will be patiently waiting for the next offering hoping it is something that appeals more to me. Futuristic Sci Fi would be great hint hint ;)

I wanted to ask if we could have a look under the hood of the machine to see all the connecting PCB's working with a lot less wiring. Here's hoping on a future weekly update that includes it in the news.

I also thought it odd that there were no ACDC machines, not that I am complaining since I can play that anytime at the pipeline.
I was more than happy to play SS classics like Centaur, Playboy, Black Hole to name a few which I haven't played for many years. I am even enjoyed Dolly which was the first time I played her.

All in all a fantastic weekend for me. Two thumbs up :thumbs::thumbs:
 
Thanks to everyone for putting together another excellent UKPP!

I only made it to Sunday this year and wasn't able to completely soak up the full atmosphere due to a niggly headache, but was really pleased to see so many older solid-state games! I was surprised that many of the usual modern DMD suspects were missing, although the show still managed 3 STTNG machines.

Highlight for me was seeing and playing not one, not two but three Bally FLASH GORDON pins! How awesome is that? They were all fantastic and it was interesting to keep rotating between them to see how differently each played. All great, just different.

Biggest surprise was how great Zaccaria games are! Loved the EM NAUTILUS with the cut-out side panels. Interesting to look at but even more fun to play. Seemingly so sedate compared to the bling of modern pins, the ball glides around and then it brushes a slingshot and WHAM! The ball flies back and forth faster than you can see - blink and it's down the drain.

Got to play my all-time favourite pin again - BLACK HOLE - and pleased that it was being less temperamental that last year, but sad to hear that it had been sold to someone from Switzerland so will likely be leaving UK shores.

Other awesome pins included BUCK ROGERS, DRACULA, HOT WHEELS, PLAYBOY, COMBAT, DEFENDER, and special mention to @myPinballs for bringing his unique HIGH VOLTAGE. Way cool :cool:

Only pins that failed to ignite my enthusiasm were MYSTIC (lame layout) and MAGIC CITY (didn't like the tiny flippers - too much like bagatelle). Biggest let down though was PARAGON. Not because it's a chuff game. Quite the contrary, it's an awesome game! I should know, I've got one. It was disappointing because it was so badly setup. Loads of missing GI and feature lamps, mis-aligned flipper making the VALLEY OF DEMONS near impossible and wobbly legs. Oh well... hopefully mine will be finished in time for next year and we can all enjoy some proper 70s retro SUPERSIZE widebody solid-state :D

Actually, I'm wrong. The BIGGEST let down was the £3.50 cappuccino from the hotel bar. OMG, it was AWFUL :eek:
 
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Ooh, meant to add a link to my Flickr photoset:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterduerden/sets/72157646708934819/

I managed to photograph every pin at least once in layout order. Some that I really liked got more (the LOTR because my mate was interested in buying it but couldn't make it to the show). All have been named and tagged by manufacturer. At some point I'll build a definitive list for Sunday. Sorry some of the photos are really blurry - my old iPhone 4 is getting worse. Forgot to bring a proper camera.

Only ones I missed was a folded TAF by the competition back row and the kids competition pin by the loading doors. I can picture it... blue... but can't remember what it is? ROADSHOW?
 
The kids competition pin (on Saturday anyway) was Stern Transformers I believe.
 
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The kids game on Sunday was Jack*Bot :)

Transformers was the Saturday choice for the kids game and it proved to be a very big hit with the kids. :clap:
 
Out if interest @Moonraker, do you know what was wrong with the IROM MAN that sat in the corner of the competition area all day? Surprises to see such a top modern pin out of action.
 
Ooh, meant to add a link to my Flickr photoset:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterduerden/sets/72157646708934819/

I managed to photograph every pin at least once in layout order. Some that I really liked got more (the LOTR because my mate was interested in buying it but couldn't make it to the show). All have been named and tagged by manufacturer. At some point I'll build a definitive list for Sunday. Sorry some of the photos are really blurry - my old iPhone 4 is getting worse. Forgot to bring a proper camera.

Only ones I missed was a folded TAF by the competition back row and the kids competition pin by the loading doors. I can picture it... blue... but can't remember what it is? ROADSHOW?
Thanks for the ( mostly ) awesome photos Nedreud, makes me sad I couldn't be there.
 
Out if interest @Moonraker, do you know what was wrong with the IROM MAN that sat in the corner of the competition area all day? Surprises to see such a top modern pin out of action.

I do happen to know...

It was a competition only pin and Greg decided to use it as a reserve machine for the league finals, so it sat there un-used as none of the league games played up. :oops:

You will have the chance to play it at Special When Lit when you come over for the meet on 27th. :cool:
 
Sounds like an ace get-together, I'm really sad to have missed it so I totally appreciate all the detailed comments.

I went to the last 3 UKPPs and they were all ace. Sounds like this one had a few more older games, a few less newer games, but so what. To some that may be a negative, but to many others it woulda been a big positive - partly an age thing I expect: as Hannibal Lecter said, "we covet the things we see every day" so it's the first pins we ever fell in love with that will always live in our hearts.

No surprise about the meal, it's been a no-go at every event I've been to. I'd go even further than Kate and just cancel it, replaced with a room booked for 90 minutes for a lecture / slideshow / Q&A, and just have Dominos or Pizza Express deliver a load of cheap and reliably tasty scran.

Please guys, post more pictures and videos, especially of people and interesting tidbits and all the stuff that makes a meet so good. It's the people and the stories and the drinking and the camaraderie that I missed, as the pinball itself takes a back seat at these social gatherings.
 
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