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Keith Elwin Wins Pinball World Championship
Yesterday, writes reader woohoodonuts, "Keith Elwin won the world pinball championship in Pittsburgh, PA for the third consecutive year. The weekend-long event fielded 406 players from all over the world and distributed over $36,000 in prizes. The three games chosen in the final round were Stern Cheetah, Bally The Addams Family, and Bally Creature from the Black Lagoon. Keith scored over 500 million points on his final ball with $10,000 on the line to defeat fellow American, Andrei Massenkoff, by nearly 300 million points." Next year's gathering is slated for August 11-14, also in Pittsburgh.
The bar I worked at had The Addams Family pinball machine for about a year.
Very good memories there :) "Thing! Lend a hand!"
I'm glad there are still some of these weird people around that actually like a game of pinball! Way to go!
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Yeah.
But did he do it without shaking the machines?
slow news day?
There's got to be a twist!
Stuff that Matters :-)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Are there any pictures or videos of the event?
Y
1. Gertrude, "the Beast", Rosensplinter wins 2010 Grosvenor championship.
2. Punjabi Cricket referee sanctioned for under-regulation sock length.
3. Bull-baiting champion Clive Rosenrochflockensberger retires after 15 years. Recalls many fine seasons at Hockley-in-the-Hole. Disparages Tutbury.
Did he get a crown?
In my opinion, the best pinball game ever was Black Knight 2000.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
But I think the best game ever had to be the Twilight Zone. It freaks me out just thinking about getting the "POWERBALL!".
The fact that they included the Addams Family as one of the games in this contest definitely makes it legitimate IMHO!
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
Put in your earplugs, put on your eye shades,
You know where to put the cork.
I can't believe this got posted on Slashdot, and am thrilled that it was. Such a great, great event. If you like pinball in the slightest, you need to head to Pittsburgh next year for PAPA 14. The tournament is the emphasis, but the PAPA facility is huge and filled wall to wall with one of the largest and most amazing collections of pinball machines in the world. Everything from "bingos" to the newest pinball machines. You don't need to play in the tournament to enjoy this event, though it's even better if you do play in it. Also you can pick up essential skills just by watching the top tier players, and this year there were 3 HD video cameras that made it possible to actually see them play. Hopefully next year more cameras will be put in place so that all the games can be watched, or perhaps just more HD cameras, with the facility able to switch which are shown on the big screens. That would make it possible to keep the action showing on the screens during the finals without needing to fork out for more TVs.
--- What?
It's to bad most games on site are beaten to death and they don't get fixed as well.
At least a few places like game works try to keep them working and they even get new test games as well.
Revenge From Mars is much better!
For many of my generation, the pinball was the first electronic machine you could interact with, before even programmable calculators, and a lot more interesting than BASIC on green and white alternate line paper. Understanding how it worked was an introduction to what could be done with simple boolean logic, latching relays, and electromechanical counters.
Now get off my lawn before the robot mower hits you.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I've been working with a guy called Brian Dominy (last time I checked he was 132rd on the wppr) who has designed and created an open source operating system that runs on the original WPC hardware found in pinball tables: http://www.oddchange.com/freewpc/ You can use it to change the rulesets and animations for WPC games, I have to admit it's been great fun working on the project and I'd encourage others to do so as well.
He will have his cool set up that places video cameras over the playfield so you can watch the amazing action. October 1-3, Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA. http://www.pacificpinball.org/.
Fixing pinball machines is expensive...
No sig today...
when it says Keith Elwin won the tournament for the third consecutive year, it means he is now 12, and getting too old for this shit.
(just kidding - I have no idea how old he is).
Actually. Fixing pinball machines in itself isn't all that expensive. Some of the more exotic parts might set you back a bit if you don't have your own metal shop, but mostly it's just very time intensive.
Now fiddly bits like the lights you have to change, for which you have to basically take half the machine apart are horrible. The later designs thankfully are a bit more maintenance aware in that you only have to take about a quarter of the machine apart :)
Where the real cost comes in is if you want to restore it to 'original', so with original flippers, bands, artwork, etc. *that's* when it gets expensive.
Just maintaining a working machine to play on, not so much.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Just curious if anyone here that attended knew about the tilt settings for these games. There doesn't appear to be anything in the rules or contest information. I find that a critical part of the enjoyment and challenge of a pinball game is being allowed to wiggle the machine a bit to save that ball if necessary, at the risk of losing your turn if you shake the machine around too much. Ultra-sensitive tilt is no fun, but If the tilt detector is non-existent there's no challenge either as you could almost get infinite turns (I remember playing a couple of games where you could lift the entire machine to save your ball if it went down a side panel)
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
can we get a final rom update for Big bang bar?
I have an Addams Family machine and it isn't too bad. I had to pay someone to take a look at it when we first got it because it was reseting (turned out just to be a harness problem) but lots of the typical repairs require no more than maybe some pliers or a soldering iron. I'm pretty sure that many machines in arcades could be fixed pretty easily but the arcade owners are too lazy or won't take the few minutes to figure out what needs to be done. Parts aren't even that expensive. A whole flipper kit is only like twenty bucks, bulbs are cheap in bulk, etc.
When will the "World" Championship be outside of the US?
So he won the World Championship, but the important question is, can he make the Android live?
I skimmed the headlines earlier, and I swear I saw paintball world championship. Yeah, I guess pinball makes more sense.
It's to bad most games on site are beaten to death and they don't get fixed as well.
At least a few places like game works try to keep them working and they even get new test games as well.
For real? They only really use this facility once a year and the games are very well-maintained... This isn't some Dave and Buster's.
Surprised this didn't get coverage
http://tetrischampionship.com/
How can you have a pinball championship without a Gottlieb electro/mechanical game from the late 70s? Now THAT's a pinball MACHINE!
Being an avid pinball player I was pleased to see this make it onto /. I thought I would post some other great pinball events in California.
Already occured (but will happen again next year)
Pin A Go Go http://www.pinagogo.com/ May 14-16 Dixon California
California Extreme http://www.caextreme.org/ July 17-18 2010 Santa Clara California
Upcoming
Pacific Pinball Expo http://www.pacificpinball.org/ Oct 1-3 2010
All of them are great shows and we're lucky here in northern California to have 3 great pinball conventions.
Also anyone else interested in pinball in the northern California area there is the Bay Area Pinball Association (BAPA) http://www.bayareapinball.org/
There are a number of players in our league who compete in our local tournaments, as well as the various California Tournaments, and even national and international tournaments. In fact the #2 player at PAPA A division was from our league (Andrei).
Pinballers are a dying breed. Play while you can...join a league...have fun.
-Alex
I never really understood pinball or enjoyed it much up until a few years ago. In my mind, the premise of pinball was to bang the ball around, cross your fingers and hope it didn't go down the drain. Repeat for three balls, insert more coins.
Then, a few year ago I had a friend who worked at a bar where the manager was into pinball. This manager made sure that there were always a couple of well maintained pinball cabinets with good gameplay. The staff would finish a night shift and play pinball until dawn on many occasions, which hooked my friend.
He in turn explained to me that there was actually strategy to these things. You didn't just bang the ball around - you made sequences of shots to advance a game. You calculated your shots. You aimed. There was a process to gaining a multiball - and more importantly, there were times when triggering the multiball was much more advantageous in terms of your score.
Once enlightened, I was hooked. At one point, I used to be able to plop two bucks into The Lord of the Rings for the 5 credits and play for a couple of hours off the replays. Regrettably, that manager moved on and the cabinets fell into disrepair. Nothing kills a good game of pinball quite like a dead switch making it impossible to advance the story. I quit playing there, and they lost my beer money. There are currently zero places in town now where I can get a quality round of pinball.
This is the tragedy of pinball as I see it. The money required to manufacture and maintain these things is so large compared to the income derived that it's not surprising, to be honest. Even worse, your target market actually becomes less profitable as they improve and earn free games. Basically, you're hoping to capture the 'bang the ball around' crowd as your primary income source - which runs counter to making good, deep games.
My long term goal is to buy a cabinet for myself. I'm actually looking forward to the maintenance as a hobby!
Culture is more than commerce
I tryed to play LOTR games with bad / poor flipper buttons / flippers and that just kills the game a few years ago I was in reno NV and there 3 of them all with bad flippers one place did have a roller games that I think was working good for it's age. The VP + VPM ver is not as good the real game but it's better then the beat down game on site.
LOTR is a real good game.
You can learn great tips from Keith himself with the Pinball 101 DVD here:
http://www.filmbaby.com/films/4276
Watch championship play from a recent tournament with an overhead view:
http://vimeo.com/13530521
Watch professional pinball play on the TourneyCam system at the upcoming Pacific Pinball Expo:
http://pacificpinball.org/exposition
Why don't they make "hobbyist" machines, like Arduinos and bread boards but for pinball machines?
Why should there even be "exotic parts"? Surely in all of mankind's engineering prowess we can figure out how to build a pinball machine with common, pre-machined parts.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It's a great game - chock full of complicated bits that can go wrong, and when any of the bits go wrong, it's a terrible game :)
Culture is more than commerce
A lot of people are working on their own custom machines - some just change the artwork and layout of a playfield, some make everything including the whole hardware and software from scratch.
On my site http://www.flippers.be/ I have an overview of custom pinball machines.
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be