Sequel Games, Pt 3

High Speed 2 - The Getaway.

It is 1992 and peak pinball. The golden age for the game has arrived and arguably the 3 greatest pinball designers in the industry, made 3 legendary games. Pat Lawlor with the Addams Family and brothers Mark and Steve Ritchie with Fish Tales and Getaway respectively.

Today I am focusing on The Getaway. The second and (so far) last of the High Speed concept.

In 1986 there was a big leap forward in pinball game design with the release of the first incarnation of High Speed.

Several innovations came about with this title:

1. A new operating system for Williams, known as the System 11.

2. Alpha-numeric score displays, which could spell words as well as numbers.

3. Auto-percentaging, which was a boon for operators in that they could set the frequency of replays awarded, based on the average skill of the player at that location.

4. A jackpot feature that can build and carry over from game to game.

Coupled with a game that also was a first in concept; it was a machine that told a story.

We are not seeing a simple “shoot the flashing shot” type game. There is a narrative, and one that everyone is familiar with - as common as car chase scenes in movies: Get away from the cops!

This story is an oft told anecdote by it’s creator, Steve Ritchie.

He is test driving a Porsche 928 on the I-5 motorway between Sacramento and San Jose. He’d clocked 142 m/ph. The police pulled him over, and after some discussion let him off with a warning. Steve said earlier he’d got the car up to 162 m/ph. The concept for the game design was born.

The machine depicts a red sports car that appears to be a Lambhorgini Countach, and Mr Ritchie also has a young female friend in the passenger seat.

It captured the imagination of players the world over. Over 17,000 units were sold.

Despite the fact that so many units were made of this title it is quite hard to find today, especially in good condition. It was a well played machine.

The playfields are often beaten and the cabinet planked from weathering. I am sure many of these games would have been dumped in favour of newer models.

The fine example pictured here I imported from a dealer in Melbourne, and prior to that it had been imported from Europe. I found a greek coin in the back of the cabinet.

In 1992, the theme was reprised in The Getaway, High Speed II.

The shot map, artwork and rules are very similar, but it’s High Speed on steroids.

The addition of the super-charger adds some exciting ball manipulation, whereby one, two or three balls might race around the track awarding a cool million on each loop.

The genius of this machine is that although a good player might see the end game rewards, such as red-line mania and super jackpots, it is also rewarding for the casual player. They understand the concept, and a very basic shot off the right flipper sends the ball in to that super-charger for a great visual thrill and points pay off.

The game makes good use of the then newly introduced dot matrix display, and some programming flourishes, with a video mode and easter eggs (hidden modes).

High Speed 2 - The Getaway sold over 13,000 units.

It is more prevalent than its predecessor in collections today because it is newer, and the diamond plate clearcoat did well to protect the playfield. This was used on all Wms/Bally games from 1991 onwards.

In 2019 the police were finally able to arrest this wreckless pinball designer in Brisbane (pic by John Cosson).

Both machines are currently available to play at Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe. They have been restored and finely tuned to modern day standards, with LED’s for extra brightness.

At the end of July 2024, I am hoping to feature a High Speed related pinball event. This will feature twelve of the beloved title (both HS1 & HS2) for a unique tournament, much like the Fish Tales Symphony in 2020.

Along with The Steve Ritchie Hall Of Fame featuring all of his pinball designs since 1978, you should mark your calendars :-) It’s been years in the planning. Still have some logistics to work out, but as they say: “watch this space”.

Sequel Games, Pt 2

Jack*Bot

The third in the Pin*Bot series.

(For ease of typing I will mostly omit the asterix).

When Pinbot was released in 1986 it was considered a great tournament game. But as far as I knew, tournaments weren’t really a thing back then. The IFPA had not been established and the world pinball championships did not take place until the 1st event in 1991, but I guess for localised tournaments...they might have been occuring somewhere.

The reason it was considered a tournament game, was for it’s strategy in making certain shots with both timing and accuracy. On game start, the visor targets will light up in sequence. If a well placed shot hits the corresponding target when it is lit, then the visor comes down, eliminating the need to grind away at completing the bank of targets, and gets the player straight in to ball locks, and multiball.

Pinbot 2 (The Bride of Pinbot) reprised the theme in 1991 with a radically different layout (will discuss at another time), but Jackbot was a return in style to that 1986 original.

Released in 1995, and contrary to popular thought, Larry deMar led the design team for Jackbot, not Barry Oursler. Barry had designed it’s predecessor and was consulted, but the re-imagining is all Larry deMar.

The reason this game came about at all, is because the Williams factory could foresee a gap in the production schedule, and wanted a title that could fill the spot.

They dismantled two Pinbot machines and re-wired them to play on the WPC board architecture. They did not change anything in the playfield design, apart from the inserts and their placement.

On the theme, Larry explained: “We find Pinbot and the Bride Of Pinbot in the casino. It has been every gambler’s dream to beat the odds and even cheat a little to win big. This game provides the opportunity for the player to do just that.”

Larry was known as one of the top programmers in pinball, wth many industry firsts under his belt.

Jackbot was his swan song game, as after this project he was promoted within Williams to be Director of Engineering.

Jackbot had a working title of Pinbot DeLuxe and after an hour long brainstorm session they decided on “Lucky Star”.  However, later no one could remember the title, so they went back to the drawing board on what it should be called. Larry had hoped that it might be “Honeymoon in Vegas”, but everyone said it was too long.  During the design process the team just kept referring to it as Jackbot and the name stuck.  There was some resistance to that from the sales group as they felt it was too similar to Pinbot, but ultimately they managed to be persuaded.

Jackbot is intended for the casual player to enjoy. The shots are quite easy. Wide open playfield. Simple to start multiball.  The wizard mode being Casino Run and relatively easy to achieve. A very good player might get it two or three times in a game. Casino Run brings in to play that risk vs reward element where a player may push their luck to maximise the payoff. It can be quite exciting, by seeing just how far you can get before a bomb destroys all your dividends.

If one wants to understand the multi-ball stategy though, it is a bit more elaborate - the different scoring potential to the many jackpots, and building to Mega Visor. That is quite difficult to get to.

Larry mentioned that a player can “cheat the casino”. How so?  Well if the player wants to rapidly push the buy-in button while the dice is thrown, or a keno card is played...Pinbot might just be able to bump the craps table, and swing it in your favour.

Once in Copenhagen in 2017 I was lucky enough to play Jackbot with the then Italian #1 player Daniele Acciari. He professed at the time to it being his favourite game. I watched as he blew it up, and his knowledge of the rules was very intriguing to me.

Certainly when the game came out, and up until that point in 2017 I had not shown much interest in the game.  I was never terribly big on rules, but I knew enough to know it was quite shallow, and seemingly to me, an obvious game.  

It did not sell very well for Williams.  Larry states that if Jackbot had done better, we would probably have seen a return to more simpler games in the years following.

It also has a unique anomaly which not many people know about, called switch validation; this is not just unique to Jackbot, as many games require 3 minor switch hits before the ball saver is even started. This is unique to games that can plunge to a flipper, without activating any switches (think Game Of Thrones, Spiderman, Metallica, Iron Man). So potentially a short plunge on Jackbot can bring about a multiball without ever being in danger of draining out.  I saw this technique used by Daniele in my game against him.

One thing I really do admire on Jackbot is the playfield art package. It is understated but rich in colour.  While Python Anghelo did the art on Pinbot, he collaborated with John Youssi on Bride of Pinbot, so it’s a nice continuity that John Youssi should do all the art on Jackbot.

I used to marvel over a collector friend’s Jackbot machine in Auckland and for many years told him that if he ever sold it, I would be keen. It was the nicest condition Jackbot that I knew of. And since my game with Daniele in 2017, I was dead keen to get one myself.

Eventually yes, he did sell, and it did come my way.

It now resides in the line-up at Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe.

Go try it out.

Sequel games, Pt 1

I thought I would write a little about sequel games. This might turn in to an ongoing series, so let’s call this Part 1.

In 1991 Williams released Terminator 2 pinball.

This was intended to be the first game to display a dot matrix score display, but whether it was due to production schedules, or to time the game exactly when the movie hit the theatres, Gilligan’s Island from Bally slipped ahead.

In these days, since the acquisition of Bally by Williams Electronics in 1988, the factory would alternate a Bally title, with a Williams title.

Its designer; Steve Ritchie, is famous for introducing many industry firsts with his games (notably Flash, Black Knight, High Speed and AC/DC - I will discuss at another time).

Director James Cameron was reportedly very forthcoming with IP for this game’s production. They loaned the design team some props to use in their design process, and I believe the team were also privy to the daily rushes of the movie being made.

The result was a revolutionary game, that captured the hearts of both movie and pinball fans.

Williams sold 15,202 units of this title.

I can remember going to see the film in the cinema, and then that same day playing the brand new pinball game in the arcade.

It was turned up loud, and the soundtrack rocked.

With the new DMD (dot matrix display), it suddenly made all the earlier alpha-numeric games look old.

In 1991 we are hitting peak pinball for this time. Funhouse and Bride of Pinbot had just come out, and Addams Family was next in line to be released. They were indeed glory days for pinball.

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In 2002 Steve Ritchie revisited the Terminator licence, and under his newly established Steve Ritchie Productions company, he designed Terminator 3.

The promo material proudly announced “He’s back!”

Both Steve Ritchie and Arnie as the terminator are back.

Steve from his tenure at Atari since finishing with Williams in 1996, and of course the next installment of the Terminator movie franchise.

Steve brought together the same team that helped him make T2 in 1991. Programmer Dwight Sullivan and musical composer Chris Granner.

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Neither games are terribly deep in strategy.

What they lack for in depth, they make up for in pure adrenalin based fun.

T3 is more of a fan-layout, and both games reward successive combo shots.

It includes a RPG shooter game within the backbox, which was a unique feature.

T3 was released between Simpsons Pinball Party, and Lord Of The Rings. Both very popular titles for Stern.

T3 did not sell particularly well. Possibly around 2,000 units or so, but because Stern Pinball is not a publicly listed company the exact figures will never be known.

You can now play the T3 at The Borough bar in Tawa, and the freshly restored T2 will be available at a new central Wellington location from 13th June.

Footnote: At this same location and next to the T2, will be another beautifully restored classic from the same era…sure to delight.

Pincade Akld 2022

So I haven’t been using this blog feature. Not much at all. It seems a shame with all that is going on with pinball around me at this point in time so I thought I would lay down a few words.

Maybe I have been overthinking the content, and it might be fun to just get more scribblings out, for anyone interested.

Just got home from a weekend in Akld, for the re-branded Pincade.

Those who have been around the pinball hobby in NZ will know of the 15 year history with Pincade, and how its founder Yee Fong passed away last year.

This year we are trying something different: Akld, Wgtn and Chch Pincade all held on different weekends throughout the year. Wgtn’s turn is in early July, and I hope as many of you can come as is possible. Chch is planned for November.

The intention of Pincade is to bring people together in an organised fashion to see different collections, gather and compete in various tournaments, and for social time.

Even now, I am still meeting people who come for the first time. It’s great.

This year it was the youngsters’ turn to shine, in the trophy stakes.

So cool to see them come through and place in the top four, out of a pretty large field of 70 competitors…and both comps were on old games too - System 11’s (1986 - 1990) and the classics (typically pre 1985).

It reminds me that the future of pinball really is with the youth.

We are also spoilt by having available a grand collection of very robust and nicely restored older machines, nary would you see in a public location. Thanks RD :-)

Playing pinball well is one thing, but to play tournament pinball well is a litmus test. The gameplay can never be predicted.

It’s a head game too. How to play well under pressure.

Always for fun. The NZ way is not to give generous cash prizes. That would mean hefty entrance fees, and we believe that inclusion and participation is more important.

You can follow the tournament series here: IFPA Pinball.

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This week we have the first Wellington monthly meet (Poneke Pinballers) on Thurs 5th May at 6pm, at the recently established Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe. Limited to 40 players, please join in on the fun.

Pinball In Lockdown

Well, we have all of Aotearoa in Level 4 lockdown. That’s as tight as we get under NZ law. Tighter than we have seen overseas. I’m not here to discuss my opinion on the lockdown, and I hope you are doing well in your respective bubbles. Let’s talk pinball during this time.

I’ll put a link to this on the Facebook page and feel free to comment underneath.

Those of us with a pinball at home, can play, clean, restore, perhaps investigate and fix that annoying little fault you have put up with for so long…maybe even stream pinball over Twitch if you’ve gotten super smart and that floats your boat. I’ll write a blog entry. I don’t really write any, maybe this might start something more frequent if any of you want to read them?

At present at home I have two working games that I can play (Supersonic and Medusa), and seven dead ones. The Supersonic I bought from Dave Peck in Auckland (who has the best Bally solid state collection anywhere).

The Medusa came from a friend here in Wellington. He had really done a number on it. Rescreened the cabinet, and even re-painted the playfield by hand. Yes you heard right. Hand painted the whole playfield. Sounds wild, you wouldn’t know it from looking. Maybe that could be another blog entry down the track.

So these two working ones have the afore-mentioned niggly faults. The Supersonic loses the sound effects occasionally and reverts to chimes. The Medusa has a sticky left flipper. I have chosen to ignore them thus far. I know how to fix them, but slight procrastination and prioritising are my friends at the moment.

But I’m rarely playing these two machines anyway. I am nearly finished a Roadshow restore for a friend. Not far to go, I have all the parts I need. When I say restore, I mean playfield and mechanical. Stripping, cleaning, new rubbers, new LED lighting, electronic and mechanical repair. Plus flipper rebuilds of course.

Usually I start any pinball restore with getting the major mechanical and electrical faults sorted first. Before any cosmetic stuff. This way when I am dismantling to clean and re-rubber I know what needs attention at the same time.

Cabinet is fine as it is, and the legs and levellers are new. One of the joys for me is to get a game looking smart, and dialed in so it plays like a dream. I want no credit dots (a credit dot is a fullstop after the credit or free play indicator that denotes an error message with the game. It could be as simple as a switch that has not been activated in 30 plays, or something more problematic).

In my opinion Roadshow is a great game, but suffered from code that was not fully fleshed out. In 1994 I think it was rushed to a deadline of an AMOA trade show and the design team probably didn’t get to do all that they wanted. Designer Pat Lawlor wanted the game to have more dialogue with the player, just as Rudy taunts the player on Funhouse.

Also the game strategy is linear, with the journey going from East to West coast USA, so from the beginning the same three modes come up a lot. Damn that taxi cab! There is a new eprom available to randomise all the modes and I have it but it’s not installed yet. I do wonder how this will affect the story-telling nature of the game, insofar as the object is to travel as far as you can to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

US country singer Carlene Carter provides the voice of Red, and she debuted her new song of the time “Every Little Thing” on the jackpot shot within multiball. Pretty cool!

Roadshow is one of the 7 wide body titles of 1993/94.

It references Pat’s previous titles: Earthshaker, Whirlwind and Twilight Zone, as well as the obvious Funhouse with the claim that “two heads are better than one”.

Once the Roadshow is done, I will move on to a Flintstones, which I am really looking forward to.

I love playing pinball, sure, but equally I love bringing them up to spec.

So with Covid, site pinball can’t be played unless we are in Level 1. Some sites with other operators run them at Level 2 but the games should be cleaned regularly and buttons sanitized and to be honest, in practice I’m not sure many places do this. I just instruct my sites to keep the machines switched off and then there is no problem with it.

When we get back to mingling, there will be more pinball get togethers, and here in Wellington we have a comp set for 25 Sept, if we are in Level 1 at that stage. Who knows? We shall keep a watch.

So if you have a pinball at home, what are you enjoying playing or working on?

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I was recently given by friend Mike Davidson a scan of an amusing letter. He was helping go through some of the late Yee Fong’s pinball related belongings and found something written by Roger Newman. I have inserted this below his podcast on this site and it’s a great read.

Obituary

Yee Fong

19 April 1958 – 22 May 2021

I can’t remember the first time I met Yee, but it must have been roughly 20 years ago. There was the matter of distance, with him living in Auckland and myself in Wellington.

Our friendship stepped up in 2008 when he hosted the first ever NZ Pincade festival.

On that first occasion it was just run on Saturday at his home and another collector Willie’s home who lived a block away. There was a Friday night at Hamish’s for the people from out of town.

Both Yee and Willie had wonderful pinball collections.

Yee was particularly strong on video arcade machines as well as pinball. He had a range of the dedicated imported cabinets, which he chose to keep in their original format - not multi-gaming them, which was a trend at the time.

Run over the first weekend in March, and since approx 2012 also alternating between Christchurch and Wellington for the add-on Thursday/Friday.

When we met at his home, Yee used to employ his children to provide the hospitality.  Topping up drinks and food bowls, and helping everything to run smoothly.  It was a high point of the weekend, with speeches and spot prizes given out to many.

Yee also used to coordinate a whole range of great Pincade merchandise, and I see the tee shirts and hoodies being worn by fans all over the world.

The annual event grew and grew in popularity. We generally had 25-30 Australians coming over, as well as a few from further afield such as the United States and Europe.  Hundreds of Kiwis.

Pincade ran right up until last year, 2020. There were thoughts of even hosting this year, but with covid-19 denying the international visitors it was decided to cancel.  Also Yee’s health was up and down. He had been battling cancer for the past few years, and for a while there it was thought he had beaten the illness. Things were looking good.

Yee was our humble hero.  He was always generous and inclusive, doing his best to make the event fun for all. 

Not only with his pinball community, his work peers at Air New Zealand held him in very high regard too. He had been there since he was 17, starting an apprenticeship in avionics engineering, with a career stretching an impressive 44 years.  It was his workmates that gave him the nickname Rocky. For his tenacity in standing up for what he believed. 

Fly high my friend.

Yee is survived by his wife Pamela, and children Hazel, Megan and Reuben.

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For an audio interview that I did with Yee when he was in good health, June 2019, please check out Episode 4 on my podcast page.

Reprint of Mike Burke’s pinball memories

My pinball years – Late 1970’s – 1990.

I am quite sure I have got my facts right, but as time marches on the memory is the first thing to go.

I’m born and bred in Lower Hutt, so most of my experiences happened in the Wellington area.

My first memory of playing a pinball game must have happened when I was about 9 (1976). I played a EM (electro-mechanical (pre-1977)) at a corner dairy in Petone. I have no idea what the game was and I don’t think the game lasted very long.

My first “real” experience was playing Meteor (Stern 1979) one Saturday night at a local Chinese takeaway. I played all night with a friend, and I was hooked. That must have been in 1980.

Wellington

There was an arcade called Fun City in Courtenay Place. It was long and narrow but it had lots of EM games. I used to try go there if ever I went to the pictures. By this stage the spacies craze was big, and there were arcades opening everywhere. Most arcades just had video games (which I played), but occasionally one or two had a pinball machine. Amongst the games I remember playing were:

Incredible Hulk (Gottlieb 1979)

Seawitch (Stern 1980)

The Amazing Spider-man (Gottlieb 1980)

Nine Ball (Stern 1980)

Kiss (Bally 1979)

Haunted House (Gottlieb 1982)

Stellar Wars (Williams 1979)

Gorgar (Williams 1979)

Freefall (Stern 1981)

Mars – God of War (Gottlieb 1981)

A place we used to visit was the Regent Picture Theatre. It had an arcade (Spaceworld?) and a couple of older pinball games. One of those was Hercules, which I could almost guarantee was the one that used to be at the Silver Ball Palace. Another older game and the only place I have seen it was Space Invaders (Bally 1980).

Lower Hutt

In 1981 the greatest thing happened in my home suburb of Lower Hutt. The Silverball Palace arcade opened. At the time this arcade was said to be the biggest in NZ. The ground floor had mainly table top arcade machines but there were 3 pinball machines: Black Knight, Xenon and Hercules. Then the second floor opened and what a major surprise it was to see so many pinball machines in one place. Needless to say I played every one of them. The games I remember at Silverball Palace were:

Hercules (Atari 1979)

Harlem Globetrotters On Tour (Bally 1979)

Future Spa (Bally 1979)

Genie (Gottlieb 1979)

Black Knight (Williams 1980) – 2 of them

Firepower (Williams 1980) – 2 of them

Xenon (Bally 1980)

Alien Poker (Williams 1980)

Flight 2000 (Stern 1980)

Viking (Bally 1980)

Flash Gordon (Bally 1981)

Jungle Lord (William 1981)

Eight Ball Deluxe (Bally 1981)

Supersonic (Bally 1979)

Time Warp (Williams 1979)

Hot Hand (Stern 1979)

also in Wellington:

After the Silverball Palace closed it’s doors in around 1984, pinball playing around Wellington was very limited. There weren’t too many remaining arcades after the video gaming bubble had burst. The same was happening all over the world.

There were mainly two places in Wellington you could play pinball. The first being Crystal City on Manners St. Crystal City was the old Fun City in a brand new location. In fact it was pretty flash for an arcade (it even had fake chandeliers, hence its name). The guy who owned this place I think was a Williams fan. He had imported original Stargate and Robotron video games from the States, often avoiding the NZ built cabinets. He also brought in a Hyperball (Williams 1981) game. While not strictly pinball, Steve Ritchie did design it. Unfortunately it broke down too often and the public lost interest. A friend of mine bought that exact Hyperball machine for $20 back in the early ‘90s and it was a blast to play. (The game is now in Christchurch – ed)

Crystal City also had Firepower 2 (Williams 1983) when it was first released and that certainly got a lot of play. It wasn’t until 1986 when they finally bought another game which was Grand Lizard (Williams 1986). This was the game that came out straight after High Speed, but unfortunately Grand Lizard was no High Speed. I did like it however for it’s Jungle Lord type features and it was easy to clock. Grand Lizard was the last pinball bought by Crystal City.. Another Williams video game Crystal City did buy was Star Rider (their only laser disc game). It wasn’t bad but like other LD games at the time there really wasn’t much to them. It had a nice dedicated cabinet that was converted in to another game later on.

Meanwhile further down the street, Wizards opened up in either 1983 or 1984. I think it was orginally called Pinocchio’s. I remember being excited at the time because on opening day it was advertised you could win a pinball machine. The day came and what a major disappointment. To win a game (an old EM I recall) you had to get the highest score on a Pole Position game. I just walked straight back out as I sucked at Pole Position. Soon Wizards got a few pinball machines in; Pharoah, Firepower and Bally’s awful answer to Hyperball: Rapid Fire (1981). That was about it as far as Wizards and pinball goes.

A video game side-note about Wizards. Unbeknown to my friends and I, the Wellington Wizards used to get in sample games from Williams, Atari and Bally. The games that turned up in their dedicated cabinets were Blaster (in the black/rounded duramold cabinet), a cockpit version of Sinistar, Turkey Shoot, I Robot, Major Havoc, Discs of Tron, Professor Pac Man. If we had known back then that these dedicated games were so rare, we would have found some way to buy them.

Palmerston North

Apart from the occasional new game turning up at Crystal City that was pretty much it for pinball in Wellington. Luckily for my friends and I, we discovered Georges in Palmerston North in 1985. Georges was an arcade that was long and narrow with a smaller mezzanine floor, and it just happened to be the home of the Palmerston North Pinball Club. Usually the latest pins (mainly Williams) were lined up along the right hand side wall, and the EM’s were located upstairs.

Every 2 or 3 months, we used to drive up to Palmy really early on a Saturday and spend all day playing games. One trip we did go and play Sorcerer (Williams 1985). It had been out a while but I had missed the last road trip and hadn’t played it. So a friend and I drove up early one Saturday morning, too early actually as the arcade hadn’t opened when we got there. When it did finally open my friend rushed down to play Sorcerer so he could show the game off to me. Because he was in such a hurry to get to the game, he hadn’t noticed the small crowd of people gathered around a game on the opposite wall, under the stairs. Well, I noticed it, and I didn’t even make it down to Sorcerer. After about 5 – 10 minutes my friend was getting a bit pissed off I hadn’t bothered to see him play. So he comes over to abuse me, but I didn’t take any notice because I was too busy playing High Speed (Williams 1986) all day, and I didn’t even play Sorcerer at all. High Speed was definitely a whole new level of pinball entertainment.

If it wasn’t for Georges, my friends and I would not have seen some great games because none of them ever made it down to Wellington. Some of those other games were:

Space Shuttle (Williams 1984)

Comet (Williams 1985)

Pin-Bot (Williams 1986)

Road Kings (Williams 1986)

F-14 Tomcat (Williams 1987)

As the 80’s came to a close, it was very noticeable that less pinball machines were making it to Palmy. The amount of games at Georges seemed to drop with every visit and eventually the mezzanine was shut. Our road trips became less frequent but we probably still went up there twice a year. In the middle of 1989 a restored original 1980 Black Knight game turned up and I had a blast playing that as I hadn’t played it since the Silverball Palace days. Then the six monthly visits started to turn in to years, mainly because pinball machines were making a welcome return to Wellington, and soon Georges was no more.

Footnote...other games:

I remember seeing a Orbitor 1 (Stern 1982) at Auckland’s Rainbow’s End in 1987, didn’t have time to play it though. I occasionally was in Auckland and this is where I saw my first Banzai Run (Williams 1988).

Fish tales symphony on video

As part of NZ Pincade 2020 I decided to wrangle 10 x Fish Tales pinballs together for a fun speed-based pin-golf type tournament. I don't think this format has been used before. All 10 games were set to 5 balls, and for each round the player won points descending from 10 - 0, depending on who achieved their target (ie: award Monster Fish, start Rock-The-Boat, start Multiball, start Video Mode), and in what order. What we did find, is that If players raced too fast and did not achieve their goal at all, they scored a "0". Needless to say, we had quite a few zeros in this comp :-D With 40 players, each set of games took approx 30 minutes to play out. Was great fun.

Fish Tales Symphony tee shirts

I have a few of these spunky 4 colour screened tee-shirts left. Not many but a very limited number of men’s (Staple): 3XL, 2XL, L

and women’s style (Mali): XL, L and M

If you want one please let me know and I can arrange to get you one. $40.

I wanted something to remember the event by, and so do you!

Pincade 2020

Pincade 2020 is coming to Wellington. This is the 13th annual event, organised by our pinball ambassador: Yee Fong. Pincade starts in Wellington on Thursday 5th March and transitions to Auckland on Friday 6th March to run over the weekend at various locations.

Have a listen to Yee’s interview on Episode 4 of the Pinball Spots Podcast to hear about his motivations for this event.

This year I have something special for you. It occurred to me a while back that a lot of collectors in Wellington own a Fish Tales machine. With the eccentric nature of this very popular game, the up-tempo country and western music, and percussive nature of the flapping fish topper (often disabled in public venues), I thought about the idea of running a Krypton Factor-type event with a lineup of TEN Fish Tales games.  

I’m calling it the “Fish Tales Symphony”. 

But that’s not all … I have an 11th Fish Tales machine which will be sure to impress too! Come and find out why, and join in on the frivolity :-D

EVENT DETAILS

Location: Boneface Brew Bar in the Brewtown craft beer precinct in Upper Hutt.

Wednesday 4th March: public Free Play and practice evening.

1pm Thursday 5th March: Pincade 2020 officially begins with The Fish Tales Symphony starting at 2pm (which will be a fun competition run on all of the games).

At 6pm there will be a 3-Strike IFPA accredited tournament on the other pinballs as well as on as many of the Fish Tales games we need to make up numbers.

If you look at the Pincade thread on Aussie Arcade you will see all the fabulous merchandise available (custom designed each year) the various packages that are available for attending Pincade 2020.  

You can register for Pincade by e-mailing Yee Fong directly.

Please note that numbers are limited on both the Auckland Friday night event and the Sunday event, so register as soon as you can.

I look forward to seeing you there!