Great news for competition pinball players !
After many years there's again an OPEN belgian competition.
The past years there was a belgian pinball championship but it was limited to belgian players only.
Now there's a new competition that's open for everyone.
It's on November 3 and 4, more info here: http://www.belgianopenpinball.be/
Showing posts with label competition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label competition. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Pinball competition
Got a message saturday afternoon to ask if I was available to play pinball competition that evening.
Sure, why not ? I'm not a competition player but enjoy playing some games.
The competition was organised by www.belgischeflippercompetitie.be
They organise competitions for a few years now. In the past I never entered as there is a lot of demand and when registration opens, it's usually filled in a few minutes (and I never bother to look when registration opens and try to enter).
Thsis years the rules have changed, and teams of 4 players are entered. It was one of these teams that was one player short, so therefor they asked me.
The competition saturday was held at the nice gameroom of http://www.pinbasement.com/
Two large rooms in the basement with a great collection of games, both old to new..
Some of the games I remember are WCS, Diner, Fire, BSD, MM, MB, Sopranos, Whitewater, World Poker Tour, CFTBL, ..
The competition took a while, about 5 hours.. it was always in blocks of 3 games. First played with 2 against 2 of another team. Then there was a zen-game with all players of both teams. Zen-pinball is playing with 2 players of one team, each player controls one flipper button.
Each game scores 5 - 3 - 1 - 0 points for 1st, 2nd, .. position.
We played average, we were happy each time that we didn't end last, on most games our team had 2nd and 3rd position.. unfortunately this wasn't well for the final ranking and we ended up last. Getting the highest score on a game got you 5 points and this is really needed to score points - so when you look at it strategic it's better to have one great player and one bad/average so you get 1st and last place (and thus get 5 points) then having 2 average/good players and end up with 2nd and 3rd place as this only gets you 4 points :-(
Anyway, who cares..
I had a great time, was in a good team, played some nice pinball machines, saw a lot of friends back and met some new people (and finally met people in real life I only knew online).
Sure, why not ? I'm not a competition player but enjoy playing some games.
The competition was organised by www.belgischeflippercompetitie.be
They organise competitions for a few years now. In the past I never entered as there is a lot of demand and when registration opens, it's usually filled in a few minutes (and I never bother to look when registration opens and try to enter).
Thsis years the rules have changed, and teams of 4 players are entered. It was one of these teams that was one player short, so therefor they asked me.
The competition saturday was held at the nice gameroom of http://www.pinbasement.com/
Two large rooms in the basement with a great collection of games, both old to new..
Some of the games I remember are WCS, Diner, Fire, BSD, MM, MB, Sopranos, Whitewater, World Poker Tour, CFTBL, ..
The competition took a while, about 5 hours.. it was always in blocks of 3 games. First played with 2 against 2 of another team. Then there was a zen-game with all players of both teams. Zen-pinball is playing with 2 players of one team, each player controls one flipper button.
Each game scores 5 - 3 - 1 - 0 points for 1st, 2nd, .. position.
We played average, we were happy each time that we didn't end last, on most games our team had 2nd and 3rd position.. unfortunately this wasn't well for the final ranking and we ended up last. Getting the highest score on a game got you 5 points and this is really needed to score points - so when you look at it strategic it's better to have one great player and one bad/average so you get 1st and last place (and thus get 5 points) then having 2 average/good players and end up with 2nd and 3rd place as this only gets you 4 points :-(
Anyway, who cares..
I had a great time, was in a good team, played some nice pinball machines, saw a lot of friends back and met some new people (and finally met people in real life I only knew online).
Monday, July 4, 2011
Started to play my Twilight Zone again
Since last week I have room again in my gameroom ! Before I had an extra machine in for a restoration.
That Medieval Madness is now gone, and now I finally could set up the Little Pro mini golf game. The Little Pro was disassembled since last year in my gameroom, it was in the middle path of the gameroom, in front of my Bram Stokers Dracula and Twilight Zone pinball machines.
So yes, I couldn't play any of these games for almost a year.
To be honest, I even think it was about 5 years since I played Twilight Zone.
OK, I may have played like two to ten games a year on it.. not more.. but that was not really playing, really trying to get a highscore, enjoying the game.. it was more to check if the machine still worked.
A few years ago we even had decided to sell our Twilight Zone as we didn't play it anymore.. but in the end played a few games on it again and decided to keep it anyway.. as it's in such good condition, it would be nearly impossible to find one again should we miss it.. but not that we really play it often.
Since three days now I'm again addicted to Twilight Zone. I really want to set a high score and enter my initials.
That's the goal I've set to myself. The machine has reset to its default settings and high scores, so about 600 million is needed.
Not too high.. should be a possibility for me you'd think ?
First put my electronic level on the playfield, the game was tilted almost 1 degree to the right. No wonder the game played weird. Now it's level. But I think I still need to adjust the playfield tilt and make it either more or less steep.
Like it is now set up, the game is just brutal. I've always hated The Addams Family because the magnets can drain the ball so quickly you can't do anything at all anymore.. but my Twilight Zone is even more a drain monster !
I've had more drains the last days than you can imagine and had more than one game that went like this:
- ball 1: skill shot, rocket kicker, popbumpers, left outlane.
- ball 2: skill shot, rocket kicker, popbumpers, right outlane.
- ball 3: skill shot, rocket kicker, popbumpers, sdtm.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh
game over without the pinball touching the flippers at all.
Other times: skill shot missed - slotmachine kickout - want to catch it on the right flipper and sometimes it bounces up and goes straight into the right outlane. Why ???
I've had dozens of games where at the start off ball 3 I had less than 10 million points (which is what you can earn with one successful skill shot).
Setting a high score seems an impossible task :-(
I did have a few good games - about 5 times I got between 500 and 550 millions. So almost there.. just have to be a really good game with every ball and I'll get there, I'm sure.
It probably also doesn't help that it's been about 10 years since I shopped the game.
While it is still pretty clean (as it's hardly been played), the rubbers are dead. The red flipper rubbers should be bouncy, but they are not.
I've had ball drains whilest trying to pass the ball from one flipper onto the other, because it didn't bounce hard enough off the flipper tip.
So next on the list is to put fresh rubber on this machine and see how much of a difference that makes.
It probably also doesn't help I'm still recovering from pneumonia. My reflexes are too slow, half of the time I see the bal drain and think 'maybe I should've tried to nudge the machine to rescue that pinball'.
But no more excuses. I should be honest: I'm bad at playing pinball.
Don't get me wrong - I love pinball machines. I love to play them, I love to work on the machines, but I'm just not a good player.
I'm just too bad. I haven't played in the belgian pinball championship for years as I'm not well enough so just don't bother (my goal usually is to be in the top half, but in reality I'm somewhere 2/3rd down the list). The competition is held in january, and I only play often in my gameroom during summer. As from october it gets too cold and I almost don't play anymore. So in january I've totally forgotten how to play pinball and do even more stupid mistakes that frustrate me because I know I should do better but it's been too long since I played.
It's not that I'm really bad a bad player - on a game that fits me I can get high results and get a top 5 score.
The problem is if a game doesn't fit me. I'm not good at nudging, trying to save and keep the ball in the game at all cost, .. then I drain with very low points, which gets my ranking down quickly.. and to do well on competitions you have to average well on any game, and do your best with every ball.
This weekend also was the TIF: Italian pinball championship. The previous two years we visited it, but not this year.
Two years ago we included it with the start of our holidays, last year we even drove especially over there for a weekend.
Not this year. It's just not a good weekend (first weekend of july is the start of the summer holidays, so everyone is driving to the south of Europe with large traffic jams as a result. Last years drive was too exhausting, and this year it would have taken many hours more.. this was not worth it..
I feel sad about it as I loved to meet my Italian friends again, I love to meet pinheads, I love to play all those unknown games I've never seen before..
Maybe one day I'll practice more playing pinball and become a better competition player.. but I've been telling this to myself the last years and I seem to play less and less. I'll just forget about playing championships at all and just concentrate on repairing and restoring these great machines..
That Medieval Madness is now gone, and now I finally could set up the Little Pro mini golf game. The Little Pro was disassembled since last year in my gameroom, it was in the middle path of the gameroom, in front of my Bram Stokers Dracula and Twilight Zone pinball machines.
So yes, I couldn't play any of these games for almost a year.
To be honest, I even think it was about 5 years since I played Twilight Zone.
OK, I may have played like two to ten games a year on it.. not more.. but that was not really playing, really trying to get a highscore, enjoying the game.. it was more to check if the machine still worked.
A few years ago we even had decided to sell our Twilight Zone as we didn't play it anymore.. but in the end played a few games on it again and decided to keep it anyway.. as it's in such good condition, it would be nearly impossible to find one again should we miss it.. but not that we really play it often.
Since three days now I'm again addicted to Twilight Zone. I really want to set a high score and enter my initials.
That's the goal I've set to myself. The machine has reset to its default settings and high scores, so about 600 million is needed.
Not too high.. should be a possibility for me you'd think ?
First put my electronic level on the playfield, the game was tilted almost 1 degree to the right. No wonder the game played weird. Now it's level. But I think I still need to adjust the playfield tilt and make it either more or less steep.
Like it is now set up, the game is just brutal. I've always hated The Addams Family because the magnets can drain the ball so quickly you can't do anything at all anymore.. but my Twilight Zone is even more a drain monster !
I've had more drains the last days than you can imagine and had more than one game that went like this:
- ball 1: skill shot, rocket kicker, popbumpers, left outlane.
- ball 2: skill shot, rocket kicker, popbumpers, right outlane.
- ball 3: skill shot, rocket kicker, popbumpers, sdtm.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh
game over without the pinball touching the flippers at all.
Other times: skill shot missed - slotmachine kickout - want to catch it on the right flipper and sometimes it bounces up and goes straight into the right outlane. Why ???
I've had dozens of games where at the start off ball 3 I had less than 10 million points (which is what you can earn with one successful skill shot).
Setting a high score seems an impossible task :-(
I did have a few good games - about 5 times I got between 500 and 550 millions. So almost there.. just have to be a really good game with every ball and I'll get there, I'm sure.
It probably also doesn't help that it's been about 10 years since I shopped the game.
While it is still pretty clean (as it's hardly been played), the rubbers are dead. The red flipper rubbers should be bouncy, but they are not.
I've had ball drains whilest trying to pass the ball from one flipper onto the other, because it didn't bounce hard enough off the flipper tip.
So next on the list is to put fresh rubber on this machine and see how much of a difference that makes.
It probably also doesn't help I'm still recovering from pneumonia. My reflexes are too slow, half of the time I see the bal drain and think 'maybe I should've tried to nudge the machine to rescue that pinball'.
But no more excuses. I should be honest: I'm bad at playing pinball.
Don't get me wrong - I love pinball machines. I love to play them, I love to work on the machines, but I'm just not a good player.
I'm just too bad. I haven't played in the belgian pinball championship for years as I'm not well enough so just don't bother (my goal usually is to be in the top half, but in reality I'm somewhere 2/3rd down the list). The competition is held in january, and I only play often in my gameroom during summer. As from october it gets too cold and I almost don't play anymore. So in january I've totally forgotten how to play pinball and do even more stupid mistakes that frustrate me because I know I should do better but it's been too long since I played.
It's not that I'm really bad a bad player - on a game that fits me I can get high results and get a top 5 score.
The problem is if a game doesn't fit me. I'm not good at nudging, trying to save and keep the ball in the game at all cost, .. then I drain with very low points, which gets my ranking down quickly.. and to do well on competitions you have to average well on any game, and do your best with every ball.
This weekend also was the TIF: Italian pinball championship. The previous two years we visited it, but not this year.
Two years ago we included it with the start of our holidays, last year we even drove especially over there for a weekend.
Not this year. It's just not a good weekend (first weekend of july is the start of the summer holidays, so everyone is driving to the south of Europe with large traffic jams as a result. Last years drive was too exhausting, and this year it would have taken many hours more.. this was not worth it..
I feel sad about it as I loved to meet my Italian friends again, I love to meet pinheads, I love to play all those unknown games I've never seen before..
Maybe one day I'll practice more playing pinball and become a better competition player.. but I've been telling this to myself the last years and I seem to play less and less. I'll just forget about playing championships at all and just concentrate on repairing and restoring these great machines..
Thursday, July 15, 2010
italian pinball championship
New article online about our trip to Milano and TIF: italian pinball championship.
We had a good time, although the trip itself (especially the drive back) was exhausting.
We had a good time, although the trip itself (especially the drive back) was exhausting.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Italian pinball championship
I'm preparing for the Italian Pinball Championship that's in Milan next weekend.
We're going ! Hope to see you there ?!
Heres more info about the italian pinball championship.
We're going ! Hope to see you there ?!
Heres more info about the italian pinball championship.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Italian Pinball Championship
We're back from our holidays in Italy.
Last week (June 1 and 2) the TIF italian pinball championship was held near Milano.
We went over there and then stayed a week extra at lake Garda on holiday.
It was the first time the Italian pinball championship was organised.
The full article and pictures will be posted later this week on www.flippers.be
I'm not a tournament player, I hadn't played any pinball competition for 2 years and before that I usually end up somewhere in the middle.. and except for Medieval Madness I didn't know well any of the machines we had to play on..
(at home I almost hadn't played the last 3 months, only the 2 weeks before the competition I played every evening on my MM to get used to playing pinball again and work up my ball controll skills)
Before the competition started the machines were available to play already..
I did very bad on most, except on Cactus Canyon which I really like and got scores between 10 and 56 million.
Then the competition started. Everyone was divided in groups and played 4-player games.
It's very different from the way I usually play.. at home I play relaxed, on my own.
On some machines I did much better than in trials, I think it's because we played
multiplayer games and I saw what the others where shooting for.. there's also pressure to keep up with scores from other players.
I did extremely bad on MM and CC. I blame the heat (somewhere around 35 degrees C)
and standing up too long and not drinking enough.. Only got like 1,2 million on CC,
I really don't know what happened I couldn't concentrate at all anymore.
Drank a lot of water and then it went much better, in the end I got a very good score on ToTan (a game I also don't know the rules of..). Even got 2 great scores at totan: I was already doing quite well but on my last ball the pinball got stuck and couldn't be nudged out of position, the game tilted and the referee decided all 4 of us had to play again. In this replay game on my first ball I even scored more than I had with 3 balls on the discarded game, finished somewhere around 22 million if I remember correct.
After playing the electronic machines we had to play on 4 electro-mechanical pinball machines too.
Game duration was much shorter there, I did good on some, a bit less on others..
In the end I ended up 10th, around the middle position. What I expected (although I had hoped for a bit higher.. still mad on how bad I did on CC and MM).
The competition was a lot of fun.. especially meeting new people from around Europe
(mostly Italians, but some were from Germany and even from Poland).
Last week (June 1 and 2) the TIF italian pinball championship was held near Milano.
We went over there and then stayed a week extra at lake Garda on holiday.
It was the first time the Italian pinball championship was organised.
The full article and pictures will be posted later this week on www.flippers.be
I'm not a tournament player, I hadn't played any pinball competition for 2 years and before that I usually end up somewhere in the middle.. and except for Medieval Madness I didn't know well any of the machines we had to play on..
(at home I almost hadn't played the last 3 months, only the 2 weeks before the competition I played every evening on my MM to get used to playing pinball again and work up my ball controll skills)
Before the competition started the machines were available to play already..
I did very bad on most, except on Cactus Canyon which I really like and got scores between 10 and 56 million.
Then the competition started. Everyone was divided in groups and played 4-player games.
It's very different from the way I usually play.. at home I play relaxed, on my own.
On some machines I did much better than in trials, I think it's because we played
multiplayer games and I saw what the others where shooting for.. there's also pressure to keep up with scores from other players.
I did extremely bad on MM and CC. I blame the heat (somewhere around 35 degrees C)
and standing up too long and not drinking enough.. Only got like 1,2 million on CC,
I really don't know what happened I couldn't concentrate at all anymore.
Drank a lot of water and then it went much better, in the end I got a very good score on ToTan (a game I also don't know the rules of..). Even got 2 great scores at totan: I was already doing quite well but on my last ball the pinball got stuck and couldn't be nudged out of position, the game tilted and the referee decided all 4 of us had to play again. In this replay game on my first ball I even scored more than I had with 3 balls on the discarded game, finished somewhere around 22 million if I remember correct.
After playing the electronic machines we had to play on 4 electro-mechanical pinball machines too.
Game duration was much shorter there, I did good on some, a bit less on others..
In the end I ended up 10th, around the middle position. What I expected (although I had hoped for a bit higher.. still mad on how bad I did on CC and MM).
The competition was a lot of fun.. especially meeting new people from around Europe
(mostly Italians, but some were from Germany and even from Poland).
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Rosmalen jukebox open air show
Not a lot to post.. been very busy with a lot of non-pinball things the last days.
Visited the Rosmalen Open Air jukeboxshow last sunday. It was great ! Very good weather, really lovely to walk around. Not a lot of pinball machines to see but there were some nice collectibles.
Pictures will be online on my site later this week.
I also worked a few hours on my new dvd about the Belgian Pinball Championship that was held in January. I'm half way now, the show tour is ready, interview with Henk de Jager, and the quarter final of the championship.
I hadn't worked on the dvd for almost 2 months. My goal is to finish it by the end of next week.
I will only make a 'european' version, not converted into NTSC format, not subtitled in english.. my other 2 dvds just don't sell enough for that. And now I have a long interview with Henk de Jager who explains the details about his custom pinball machines and an interview with someone who restores old Bally bingo machines.. it's just too much work to subtitle it all.
Visited the Rosmalen Open Air jukeboxshow last sunday. It was great ! Very good weather, really lovely to walk around. Not a lot of pinball machines to see but there were some nice collectibles.
Pictures will be online on my site later this week.
I also worked a few hours on my new dvd about the Belgian Pinball Championship that was held in January. I'm half way now, the show tour is ready, interview with Henk de Jager, and the quarter final of the championship.
I hadn't worked on the dvd for almost 2 months. My goal is to finish it by the end of next week.
I will only make a 'european' version, not converted into NTSC format, not subtitled in english.. my other 2 dvds just don't sell enough for that. And now I have a long interview with Henk de Jager who explains the details about his custom pinball machines and an interview with someone who restores old Bally bingo machines.. it's just too much work to subtitle it all.
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