Huge thanks to
@Big Phil and everyone who worked their butts off to make the weekend a success - sorting problems, fixing machines and - also - just bringing them along!
It wouldn't be the same without you!
I did spend quite a bit of time on the new machines that
@David retro kindly brought along, and I got the impression he might've wanted me to do a write-up,
as I did with the AEG in January, for the benefit of anyone who didn't manage to get along to the event (all three of you). Sadly, didn't manage to get many pictures due to the extensive queuing for the 'new hotness'.
I'd already played (and discussed) Blues Brothers in January, so didn't try it again.
I played ABBA once and it felt,
as it did when I played it at AEG in January, to be a pretty 'meh' title that does the business if you're an ABBA fan, but isn't going to set the world alight with its (very purple) artwork or pedestrian gameplay. My impression of the rules was that there's a lot of 'shoot all the shots to collect ALL OF THE THINGS' going on, including shooting the shots to collect the outfits. It's hypocritical for me to complain about SHOOT TO COLLECT ALL THE THINGS rulesets, as I own an Elton John and an
AFM, but it is one of the most unimaginative ways to deliver a ruleset imaginable. I probably played another five pins, over the weekend, with the exact same approach to rules.
I played a couple of games of
Ninja Eclipse. As reported on Pinside, it's better than you'd expect and a solid effort for a first pinball machine. Which is code for 'it looked and played like a really good homebrew'. It is priced below a Stern Pro in the UK, and I'd definitely prefer it to a good proportion of Stern's less memorable efforts. There were also a couple of really interesting shots from the inner flipper into the battle area. If you like anime themes, I wouldn't sleep on this one - it is quite fun.
Galactic Tank Force had a massive queue all weekend, thanks to some incredible work by
@SeikoKid on the rules and mechanics. I played it two years ago, and liked it then, but eventually spent my money on an Elton John instead. It is genuinely the funniest, goofiest pin in existence, with a decent ruleset and a banging layout thanks to Dennis Nordman, who also contributed to the design of classic Bally-Williams pins like Scared Stiff and White Water. At one point, I even lost a ball due to an ill-timed cow noise and then burst out laughing (due to the same cow noise) while my husband was playing. It's not a beginner's pin, but it's super-fun for intermediate players, and the only thing that puts me off owning one is the difficulty reselling or
getting parts for the thing (
they're already the same price as a Stern Pro for a super-blinged-out edition).
***
David had kindly brought a
Multimorphic P3 with Princess Bride installed. I have a history with P3 as I played Heist (and ROCS) at a league event and, if I had the money and the space, would spend several thousand on the system just for ROCS. Princess Bride is the first P3 title I've played that is on par with a good non-P3 pinball machine and I played it several times over the weekend, including getting to the top of the high score table for Battle of Wits.
Princess Bride is a joy. The style seems to have been pilfered wholesale from JJP's fantasy titles, which is no bad thing. The playfield screen shows instructions for every mode and multiball as they come up, meaning (unlike with Dune), from the first shot, you know exactly what to shoot for and how to complete each mode. The rope mech, where the ball literally climbs the Cliffs of Insanity as you shoot alternating shots, is a work of genius - on par with some of the best mechs in pinball. The rules are really fun, with a variety to the modes. There is even a 'left-handed swordsman' mode that you have to complete with... your left hand.
I had such a good time with this pin and I think - if you are on the fence about a P3 - this title might convince you, especially if you have a chuckle each time the film clips come on. However, unlike Dune (discussed below), this is a very casual title. My husband got a significant distance into the game on a walk-up first play and I also ticked off a lot of modes in the on-screen book on my plays. All the shots are satisfying, but none of them are a real 'wow' moment, and I don't think any successful tournament players would get full value out of this one before it was stuffed back in its box. That said, if you have kids who like pinball, this might be the game where you sit down for a family viewing of the classic 1980s film, before shooting some balls.
***
Anyway, onto the MAIN EVENT -
DUNE, the new pin from Barrels of Fun whose first game was Labyrinth. I queued for probably an hour over the weekend, to play three games of a pin I had no intention of owning; don't tell me I don't do anything for you, folks! My last game I got >46 million which, according to my Pindigo friends, is pretty impressive, but the cost was coming off the pin with sweaty hands and it nuked my scores on every pin I played for the next hour. This pin is an Ironman-tier knife fight in a phone booth, which - I guess - fits the theme of surviving in a desert while being harassed by literal psychopaths and giant worms.
There are few safe returns to the flippers. The ball is normally out of control, and getting it back under control again involves lots of swearing and wrestling the machine, somewhat how I imagine riding Shai-Hulud with discount ice picks. I had to fight for every million. Every few seconds, the machine makes a high-pitched thumper noise, which was audible over ABBA and managed to annoy me as far as the EMs across the corridor. It became an ear worm. On the drive home, the car wheels clipped the cats' eyes at high speed on the motorway, and that made the exact same noise. I can't even imagine listening to that in my front room, and hope it can be turned off.
Otherwise, the film music is quite nice and various Fremen voices shout encouragement to the player. The video clips are also all from the (very good) film. The artwork, sadly, is also from the Villeneuve film, which is distinguished from its David Lynch predecessor by the omnipresent sepia. Every time the rippling 'water' mode came on, the lighting effect reminded me of a lazy river at Centre Parcs. The backglass is rather nice, with a semi-stained-glass effect, and a prominent image of the photogenic Timothy Chalamet playing Paul Atreides.
Again, a gent in the queue with me liked the art because it was subtle. I, personally, don't think 'pinball' and 'subtle' should exist in the same sentence, but that's just me.
The lifting sandworm mech that dropped a ball onto the wireform was just great - on par with mechs like JP2's dinosaur, and with the drama (in lighting and film clips) of the start of Godzilla multiball.
My view on this one is that the queuing was definitely justified. If you're an intermediate or above player, this should 100% be on your radar. It has some great ball paths. Great film clips and licence. The code seemed pretty strong too, especially the 'pain box' where you try to save your ball after draining by holding down the action button and playing with one hand (at least one person tried to play with their chin on the button). However, it is totally inaccessible to any player who doesn't have a shot at getting
into the Top 35 in the Pinfest Classics comp. Most of the shots simply don't do anything most of the time, and the ball is so hard to control that it's perfectly possible to walk up to it, start off nothing and get nowhere. I had two seriously flunky games where I waited for ages, only to have a five-second game with scores that got me roundly beaten by
@roadshow16's kids
)
teamwork at its finest.
)
only have a cheap machine as they can't afford a proper one
