Category: other

Skill Shot 34, May 2014

By Kayla Greet

AC/DC pinball has been so wildly popular since its release in 2012 that recently Stern re-launched it with new artwork and better gameplay. While many fans of the game were pleased to have an improved, fresh playfield, the added artwork might not be so popular amongst the ladies. The backglass translite features Luci, a character created specifically for this game, in a bikini posed by an electric guitar with devil horns and an AC/DC tattoo on her hip. But wait, there’s more! On the lower playfield, two scantily clad girls with bosoms prevalent flank the shots in Hell; to the far left, there’s a new insert featuring cleavage. Worst of all is the side art: Luci on her hands and knees looking back at you with a clear view of her barely covered nether regions. Thus I now dub thee T’n’AC/DC pinball.

This recent release is a stark representation of tasteless pin art featuring women, but this is in no way a new trend. Sometime in the 70’s there began a definitive shift in the portrayal of females on pins. I suspect it syncs up fairly well with Roger Sharpe’s demonstration of pinball as a skill-based game and not solely for gambling, which has its own negative connotations. At the time, pinball was thought to be seedy and tough. You’d find many tables in corners of sketchy dive bars with the promise of sexy women nearby; at the time, art was quite literally imitating life.

From my experience in the 7 years I’ve actively played pinball, I have run across very few tables that portray women in positive or powerful roles. Those on the short list that come to mind are The Flintstones, Tron, Monster Bash, Theater of Magic, Xenon, and Red and Ted’s Roadshow. Although Theater may be big in the cleavage department, like Xenon it puts a woman in charge of the entire game. Xenon was Bally’s first game to feature a voice, and the first pinball game ever with a female voice. Suzanne Ciani is responsible for composing and synthesizing every sound on the pin.

This got me thinking about women’s involvement in playfield development, concepts, music, art and design of pins. Unfortunately I have yet to find a game where anything other than the art or music is lady-made, making conceptual design of pins monopolized by men. Margaret Hudson created artwork for nearly 20 pins including popular titles like Spider-Man, The Simpsons, Eight Ball Deluxe, Wheel of Fortune, Spectrum and Time Machine (in which she drew herself into the backglass). She worked with a mix of licensed art and original work, all of which cast women in a positive or at least neutral light.

On the other side of the coin, there are alternative “Adult” or “Rated R” translites, one of
which briefly showed up on The Sopranos at Add-A-Ball. While the original translite showcases the Soprano family, this alternate translite prominently displays a stripper on a pole at the Bing. While stripper toys are included in the playfield of the game (kudos to Gameworks, who installed Troll dolls on the poles to make theirs kid-friendly), this translite is considerably racier. An eBay seller makes these and others, including some like World Poker Tour with straight-up naked girls pasted on a background of cards and chips. Stern’s new Mustang, which has yet to arrive on location, already has three alternative translites available. So if you get bored of looking at Ford’s logo, there’s always the ‘Mustang Sally’ version with girls in daisy dukes bending over the hood of the car. I can’t imagine pinball would be so male-dominated if the majority of games featured sweaty, hairy chests and bulging crotches.

When pin art is sexualized in a cartoonish way, it can distract and disconnect the player from the purpose of the game and its theme. But context is everything. Both Elvira pins are completely over the top with innuendos and cleavage, like the star herself. This seems acceptable since the Mistress of the Dark deliberately exists in an over-sexed world of double entendres — the Stiff in the Coffin is a rare close brush with risqué male pin art. Time Warp from 1979 is the only game I know of to show a naked guy’s bits and get away with it, simply because it’s da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Around the same time in Japan, Sega – while slightly lost in translation – made a pin called Woman Lib which features a backglass covered with women in protest waving flags and banners. I’m not saying we need more politically motivated game art, just less of the erotic female form, please! Or at least try to strike a gender balance. And I don’t mean games like Gorgar or Paragon with bare-chested men with female slaves at their feet.

This type of imagery against women does two things: it leaves very few female role models in this hobby, and continues to encourage questionable behavior from men.
Bowen Kerins, a well-known and longtime player / teacher of pinball, recently re-shared a photo of half-naked women originally posted on the Always Pinball group on Facebook with the caption “Interactive Pinball Toppers”. Bowen brought this up for discussion as he and many others believe it’s deplorable. In a one-on-one conversation, he expressed “This sort of garbage just segments everyone. The only thing I can do is tell people they’re being a-holes.”

When you see that kind of thing, know that some guy out there will think that it’s no
t only funny but that it’s also okay. This is not the way to encourage women to be a part of the culture. It’s perpetuated by things like a Pinball Pin-Up Calendar and The Girls of Pinball pageant shows, which a man from Spokane tried to gain momentum for in Seattle last month. These things simply have no purpose in pinball culture and promote women as accessories to the hobby rather than active participants.

In the Seattle area we have many women-centric events that foster a friendly, educational environment for pinball. FLiP (Fabulous Ladies in Pinball) and Babes in Pinland both meet monthly, for camaraderie and casual tournaments. The Northwest Pinball and Arcade show is featuring a women’s tournament for the first time ever this year and Shorty’s has now made their Powder Puff tournament an annual event. We have the opportunity to positively shape the direction of the pinball community. Let’s make sure we respect 50% of the potential pinball player population.

Originally published in Skill Shot 34 (May 2014)

Shorty’s Annual Powder Puff Tournament is Sunday May 25th. Details here.

by Kevin Birrell

If there’s one rule that 90’s movie-themed pinball machines follow, it’s that the best games are themed after the absolute worst movies. Johnny Mnemonic? Demolition Man? Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Horrible movies, but great games! It obviously follows that Congo, a 1995 movie with an abysmal Metacritic score of *22*, would become the best pinball machine ever to roll out of the Williams factory doors. Designed by John Trudeau, the Congo pinball machine has many unique features combined with a smooth and satisfying layout, hilarious callouts, supreme dot-matrix artwork and a bangin’ soundtrack composed by Vince Pontarelli. Its uniqueness starts when you plunge your first ball. There are two skill shots in Congo; the first is a traditional “hit the flashing target”-style skill shot. The second, however, requires you to plunge the ball softly across the playfield and landing it in the left outlane, where the ball is then kicked back into play and a super skill shot is awarded. The game takes advantage of this feature in a fun mode started at the MAP award saucer called Skill Fire. In Skill Fire, the flippers are killed and the player is given 20 seconds of unlimited ball save to plunge as many skill and super skill shots as possible. The regular skill shot in this mode starts at 10 million points, and the super skill shot starts at 20 million points. However, both shots’ values increase by 10 or 20 million when you score a skill shot or super skill shot respectively, up to a maximum of 50 million per regular skill shot and 100 million (!!) per super skill shot. A perfect run of this mode can score over a billion points in only 20 seconds! Another cool feature is the backwards-sloping lower playfield, where you use the gorilla to flip a ball down into the C-O-N-G-O targets in the Gray Attack mode. This playfield also gets some use during the “Super Multiball” wizard mode, where you can score jackpots on both playfields at the same time! Such a feature wasn’t seen on a game again until The Simpsons Pinball Party, which was released ten years later!

The beauty of Congo lies in its numerous ways to score points. There’s no point in Congo at which absolutely nothing is ready to go for some big scoring action. Even when no locks are lit and the Mystery and Map saucers are unlit, the player is only 3 left orbits away from the AMY mode, in which the ball is fed to the upper flipper for three shots at the AMY rollover target area, worth up to either 25 million or 50 million each, depending on whether or not the Mine Shaft orbit is used to make the shots. Completing this mode rewards the player with 15 diamonds.

If you’re going for a big score on Congo, there are a few things you should know. First, determine whether or not the game is in tournament mode. If you don’t already know if it is, you can force the game into Tournament Mode by holding down both flippers after inserting your coins and waiting until the display says “TOURNAMENT MODE ENABLED”. Tournament mode sets the Mystery awards in a fixed order. This is advantageous because it allows you to start the game by lighting Mystery (by spelling Z-I-N-J) and shooting it to start Diamond Hunt Multiball, a two-ball multiball in which every shot is worth two diamonds. Diamonds serve two purposes; firstly, they light your locks at increasingly large intervals throughout the game. Secondly, they increase your regular multiball jackpot value. Since you only need a small amount of diamonds to light the locks for your first multiball, you can maximize the amount you have coming into your first multiball by taking advantage of Diamond Hunt Multiball to score more than enough diamonds to light your first lock, and then use the first G-R-A-Y award (20 Diamonds) to light your second lock. With a good run in Diamond Hunt, this strategy could be the difference between multiball with 30+ million point jackpots and multiball with 16.5 million point jackpots. If you use this strategy, the second G-R-A-Y award, instant multiball, will be ready for you after the first multiball, meaning that you get to play a second multiball for free!  Additionally, this strategy puts you quite a bit closer to Super Multiball (which you reach by collecting 100 diamonds) than you would be by lighting the locks normally. Cruising through the MAP awards should also be a priority since reaching Skill Fire can be good for up to a billion points, as I mentioned earlier. Spelling MAP with three consecutive shots to the left ramp awards you an extra 20 million for the “MAP Combo”.

One final cool trick in Congo involves the “Mine Shaft” video mode where you attempt to navigate left and right through a mine shaft in search of diamonds, points, and not getting mauled by wild creatures. There is one path through the mode at any given time in gameplay that will give you the point awards and progress you towards completing the mode. This path is random, but it will remain the same in a multiplayer game until the mode is completed by collecting the 50 million award and 15 diamonds at the end of the shaft. If you are playing with someone who starts this mode but doesn’t complete it, you can take advantage of that situation by learning from their successes and mistakes. You can use the path they used to score at least the same points they did! Additionally, if you finish the mode, you handicap the other players since the path will change before they play the mode again.

Congo rocks, seriously. I am currently using the “multiball is lit” song as my ringtone. If you haven’t played Congo, you really owe it to yourself to give it a shot. From tournament nerds (like me) to casual players, everyone can find something to enjoy in Congo. Even if it’s just laughing at the dude with the awesome sunglasses on the translite.

Originally published in Skill Shot 33

originally published in Skill Shot 33

The first IFPA Washington State Pinball Championship happened at Another Castle in Edmonds on February 3rd, to determine who would represent our state in the US National Championship competition later in the year. The contest featured the top 16 players of 2013 who could attend the tournament, and in the event that someone couldn’t make it (or decided to compete in another state’s championship), the next top ranking players were then invited to attend. 28 states and 3 Canadian provinces held their Championship Series events on the same day in order to prevent players who ranked highly in multiple regions from competing in more than one Championship. Locally this made people like Dave Stewart and Tim Tournay, who both have ties to the east coast, make a decision to either play here or in another state. They both chose to play here. Likewise, Vancouver’s Robert Gagno, who was the top-ranked player in both British Columbia and Washington last year, decided to play in the WA Championship. One surprising omission from the tournament was Cayle George, the highest ranking IFPA player in our region, who was out of town visiting a hot babe and didn’t compete in the series at all. D’oh!

The tournament was officiated by Rod Olsen and Amanda Kunzi and held in the adjoining storefront to Another Castle, with machines loaned to the event by a variety of operators and collectors. Some of the pins included popular titles like Spider-man and Twilight Zone as well as lesser known games such as Party Animal and Tri Zone. Seattle’s tournament clique is a friendly group; the beginning of the contest was rather relaxed and pleasant, and you wouldn’t have known it was a serious tournament until people started to lose. Top-seeded Robert was knocked out in the first round in perhaps the biggest upset, but that was overshadowed by Raymond Davidson kicking a machine in a fit of anger. That it wasn’t even the pin he was playing and it was actively in use at that moment in another match caused some to wonder if a new rule needs to be added regarding this kind of behavior. Despite only 16 contestants in the tournament, it was a day-long affair which ultimately led to 20-year-old (and regular Skill Shot contributor) Kevin Birrell claiming the title of Washington State Champion. By winning this tournament, Kevin is now invited to play in the US Championship that will be held a few days before the IFPA World Championship in Colorado at the end of May. It’s rather well known that Kevin loves playing in tournaments, and there will be a lot of them in Colorado at that time, so we are sure he’s very happy. We can only hope that not too many of these tournaments are held in bars. Happy!

The Seattle Pinball League began their 2014 season at Cupcake Castle (aka The Cartoons’ house) in February. It was a pretty packed house and a bunch of fun as usual.  It was also rather surprising that some of the younger contestants did so well in the tournament, which we take as proof that pinball’s resurgence is here to stay. Steve Cartoon and Dave Stewart have taken the reigns of the SPL website and Facebook page and have really given a boost to the communication amongst the league members. Meanwhile, Julie Gray has taken over the scheduling tasks for the year, which basically means maneuvering around all the other events (both local and national), a task that is becoming more difficult than it’s been in the past. The March SPL event is at Another Castle Edmonds. As mentioned above, Another Castle has a side storefront, and they are knocking out the wall in between that and their current arcade room. Eventually they plan on creating a gated wall that will allow the arcade to stay open when the store half of the business is closed. This may allow them to serve drinks in the future and have a similar setup to Dorky’s, where they would be all-ages during certain hours and then 21+ at other times. We will have more details about how the project is going in our next issue. Next!

Other monthly events include the 3rd Sunday Tournament at Olaf’s in Ballard, which has a tight and colorful pinball room. Hosted by Pinheads Pinball, this tournament features a movable camera above the pins so contestants can watch the action in the next room, which is pretty cool. Nycole Hyatt hosts the Last Sunday Pinball Tourney at Narwhal, in the lower level of Capitol Hill’s Unicorn bar. At their first tournament in January, bar manager Nick Crowson won and decided that he shouldn’t take the money, instead putting the cash into the prize pool for February’s tournament, much to Geoff Simon’s delight as he was that month’s winner. Babes in Pinland is held at Add-a-Ball Amusements in Fremont on the first Thursday of the month, and is for women only. As mentioned in an article in our last issue, this event is hosted by Skill Shot’s Kayla Greet, and the posters by Bernard Blvd have been pretty snazzy (especially the Feb one). Skill Shot also organizes the First Sunday Tournament @ Shorty’s with rotating hosts who decide on the format. February’s tourney was a double elimination head-to-head hosted by Michael Warfield. Michael made prizes to go along with the regular tournament awards. March’s tournament was a reality TV-themed contest hosted by Tim Tournay, and had different tribes and immunity necklaces like Survivor, an award for The Biggest Loser, and the winners received flowers at the end just like on The Bachelor. Reality!

On the weekly tournament scene, Full Tilt Ballard (Monday), John John’s Game Room (Tuesday) and Add-a-Ball (Wednesday) are all moving along and getting decent crowds. The Full Tilt tourney got a big boost in attendance (with almost 30 players) when Cathy Cartoon held her birthday celebration there on Feb 3rd. There would have been one more if 4-year-old Colin Carlson had played; he’s really good but doesn’t like some of the pins with scary images! Add-a-Ball has been adding some interesting games to their lineup, such as Party Animal and The (Roy Clark) Entertainer, along with their collection of wide-bodies. We think their tournaments are still worth points, but there haven’t been any submissions to the IFPA website in some time. John John’s recently got a Congo, which is featured in this issue, although they may need a few more game changes if the number of turned-off pins is any indication. Flip Flip Ding Ding in Georgetown is going to begin bi-weekly tournaments on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. Flip Flip is part of the Button Makers shop and they are just beginning to expand their hours this month. The listed hours for Thursdays say 9PM but we expect that to change on tournament nights. Change!

Flip Flip Ding Ding had their soft opening the same day as the State Championship on February 8th. We went to check it out, but a rare Seattle snowstorm seemed to keep most other non-Georgetown residents away that night. This spacious location is operated by Levi Dittebrandt and has some unique games like Judge Dredd and Police Force. While it looks like they can fit more than the 14 pins they currently have, perhaps more seating might also be a good idea. On Feb 22nd, Flip Flip had their official grand opening with the First Annual Flip Flip Ding Ding Tournament. This was a full points IFPA tournament, drawing 30+ contestants and lasting longer than the optimistic 4 hours listed on their event page. While there were some glitches with games and a disgruntled contestant, it seemed to go well for the brand new location, especially for SF’s TJ Beyer, who won. A similar tournament scenario occurred at Dorky’s Annual Valentine’s Couples Tournament, as they were convinced to make the tournament worth IFPA points this year. We’re not sure how a team tournament breaks down into points (and in fact, no points have been submitted to the IFPA to date) but it was an added incentive for potential players. Dorky’s tournament officials became a bit overwhelmed by the number of contestants and some of the games breaking down, but hopefully this won’t discourage them from having more events in the future. The future!

In other local tournament news: the Barry Oursler/Python Anghelo Fundraiser Doubleheader Tournament happened on March 9th. Hosted by Bobby Conover/20XX at Full Tilt Ballard, this event was basically back-to-back tournaments and part of a nationwide drive to help these two pinball pioneers with various medical bills. Also on March 9th was the first of the new 2nd Sunday tournaments at 8-Bit Arcade in Renton.  This first tourney had as the grand prize a vacation package for two which was won by Nicholas Polimenakos ! Upcoming tournaments include the 3rd Annual Tommy Tournament at Shorty’s on April 6th. This is a blindfolded tournament hosted by Skill Shot and part of the First Sunday events we’ve been presenting there. Bring a partner! The Annual 420 Tournament at Add-a-Ball is on Easter Sunday this year, which seems to cause some people to wonder if they should have changed the day of the event. We’re not sure a 420 tournament would have the same sense of celebration if it didn’t happen on 4/20, and we are sure that Brad and Travis would balk if anyone asks them to change it. Balk!

Other Skill Shot news: Since we’re running most of the tournaments at Shorty’s lately, we have talked Avout into making the Powder Puff Tournament an annual event! Like last year, this year’s Powder Puff will take place on the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, May 25th. We’ve been debating removing The One To Beat feature from the List page of the zine. Is this something that you, the readers, like and want us to continue? We would appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have. Have you Android users checked out our Skill Shot App yet? This app links directly to our online Pinball List and will help you find the closest pinball machines in the city! Unlike this zine, our online list also has locations in King County and possibly soon Snohomish County as well. There’s an iPhone version on the way. We still have t-shirts and Skill Shot Collections available so please check out our website for more info: www.skill-shot.com

Pinball Tidbits: This year’s Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show will happen on June 6 – 8 at the Tacoma Convention Center. Expect more details next issue! * The Seattle Pinball Museum recently got a neon sign with their logo on it for the front of their building. It is very nifty! * Add-a-Ball recently had all the keys for their business and machines stolen. They are rightfully very mad about this. * Marquee Amusements finally took the last pin out of Golden City. No one can puke under it anymore. * The Hurricane is closing at the end of the year. This is part of Amazon reinventing the neighborhood. * Jeffrey Neumann is contemplating a move to Seattle. He is Skill Shot’s first subscriber. * Maka is moving back to Seattle. * Support Local Pinball!