St. Michel Pinball Open / Rockpin - Mikkeli, Finland - Pinball 48 arcade - 26-27/08/2016


With the EPC 2016 drawing near, we decided to visit Mikkeli for St. Michel Pinball Open with the full Team Hopeakuula compliment. The tournament was a double feature, with the main tournament and an aptly named Rockpin side tournament, both with 40+ participating players. Having missed the grand opening of the Pinball 48 arcade, I was also curious to see the owner's, Mara's 3rd arcade in the Mikkeli region.

The two tournaments had similar-ish formats. The main tournament had point based qualification with 6 games, 2 tries per game, with 16 players going to the play-offs bracket. The Rockpin tournament again had a rather tough qualification, with just one try per game. The secound round was also point based, dropping the amount of players from 16 to 8, whom then would go on against each other in a standard bracket from round 3 on.

Games for the main qualification were: Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, Mars Trek, Judge Dredd, Pinball Magic, and an unannounced mystery game, which turned out to be no less than Wizard Of Oz!

Rockpin's qualification games were: Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Rolling Stones (Stern), Tommy, Rolling Stones (Bally), Kiss (Bally), Dolly Parton and Kiss (Stern).

I found the very idea of having both Bally and Stern versions of both Rolling Stones and Kiss pretty epic! I don't know if it's sad or not, but I found I liked the original early SS Rolling Stones a lot more than the modern Stern variant.

Other than the games, it was was really nice to see all the usual suspects once again!


Qualification, Rockpin

I decided to use the Rockpin tournament's qualification as my warm-up session for the main tournament. I hit the nearby grocery store for a sixpack of long drinks and then started to grind away.

First up was Stern's Kiss. It was still a new game for many of the players, but I had played several of them both home and abroad by now. I still have no firm strategy for this game, save choosing the mode that lits all shots and then gunning for the multiball. That netted me a rather mediocre 49M, which left me wondering if the pin was offended as I listened to Metallica as I was playing it.

My personal soundtrack wasn't Kiss today.
Metallica was next to Kiss, so I gave Hetfield and buddies a go. The first thing I noticed was that it took forever to get the Sparky multiball going. I assumed originally it had higher difficulty setting, but I was later corrected that the magned made the ball jump so some shots didn't register. I did very little with Sparky, but I did manage to progress the Snake multiball to the point where it was lit and the Coffin multiball had two locks. After making the 2nd Coffin lock (this was the LE, so it made physical locks and had the super annoying hammer to block the mid-playfield), the game autoplunged, and it made an extremely nasty bounce straight to the left outlane. No ball save. Crap, I was only at 13M at that point.

Next up was Stern's revenge on British rock - The Rolling Stones. I observed several players getting their asses handed to them by this game. I played an extremely bland game of one multiball and one mode, ending with 10M. Much to my amazement it was still up there in the top scores. Go figure. As a comment on the game itself, I find the stage roaming Jagger pretty fitting toy for this game. I bet Mick does a full marathon on the stage in every live concert!

Now that the Stern games were out of the way, it was time for Bally's take on the iconic bands.

Bally's Kiss has always been the Kiss fans' wet dream. As a game I don't rank it that high in the early solid state Ballys. My only workable strategy for it was to plunge for the center lane and then hit the spinners hoping for more lucky center shots. While getting some reads on the game I couldn't help noticing how it brought the best out of most players - you could tell someone was playing Kiss from the constant string of swear words. I did okayish on it with 241k. I found the exact spot for the center lane on my 2nd ball and it also worked for my 3rd ball.

A quick glance at the score card before plunging!

I'm not quite sure what Dolly Parton was doing in the Rockpin line-up, but fine. This is one of the very first games that teached me the whole "there's usually only one worthy shot in early SS games" line of thinking. I'm kind of shamed to admit this, but I had forgotten what was this pony's one trick. All I could think of was "something something spinner". Fortunately RON was there to spoil it for me, Dolly needs one shot at the multiplier increasing drop targets, which lits the right orbit spinner. It goes away with 3x bonus, so go for 2x and then just repeat the right orbit ad nauseam. I managed to do this exactly once, ending with 35k. Still, it wasn't the worst score out there.

Don't worry guys, Dolly hated everyone equally.

Then it was The Rolling Stones again, this time the Bally variant. I had no idea what to do here and I just winged it. And it did show in the scoring department, ended the game with 45k.

Speaking of UK, next up was Tommy. I still consider Tommy the best pin Data-East ever made. Having had Tommy at our little hideout, I'm pretty familiar with it. Too bad that didn't materialize into a good score this time. My approach to Tommy is pretty much the same as to the Twilight Zone - start mode, light mode, start another, light another, flail to win. I got some modes running, but the two first balls were pretty useless. I started the pity multiball on my last ball, collected the jackpots but that didn't help much with all the failed modes before it. I ended the game at 215M.

Last in the line-up was GnR. I went with the poor man's jackpot-approach (super bumpers + axl 3-ball). I totally tanked the main multiball and was left with 425M. At first I thought it was a total loss, but seeing a surprising amount of sub-200M scores I was cautiously optimistic about it.

As the Rockpin tournament had no real time scoring system, I had no idea how I had done. I tried to spy on the paper score sheets, guestimating I was in top-16 in most of the games.

In the end I was 14th out of 16 players to qualify. I didn't think much of it, as like said before, this was just a warm-up. It wasn't until I wrote this blog entry when I realized the official scores got my GnR entry wrong. My 425M was interpreted as 42M. After some speculation, it turns out I would have been 9th, but as the 2nd round wasn't player vs player, my 9th position wouldn't have changed anything, nor would it have affected any other player meaningfully.


Qualification, St. Michel Pinball Open

As I arrived to the scene, OMO and MRA were already dominating the main tournament qualification. I observed the games briefly, noticing some important points, mainly the unknown EM game, Mars Trek, having a total facist tilt and Medieval Madness's moat upkicker feeding SDTM. I had big hopes for Wizard Of Oz, as I've played every variant out there and as far as I know, this was the first ever WoZ in Finland.

I started my games with Mars Trek. A total wild card game for me, but it played quite nice. I had no clue of what was the pony's one trick here, but as the bonus was in 10k's, I kept hitting the bonus increasing left orbit. My final score was 612k, which according to the score keeper was among the top scores for that night. I played another round, ending with 512k so the former score remained.

From there I continued to Medieval Madness. I guess I must be among the very few people who have totally gotten bored with the whole MM and AFM hype. Still, MM is a pretty solid tournament game, although I already dreaded the moat upkicker. On my first game I just smashed couple of castles and didn't even get any of the multiballs running. Bulk of the 13.1M I got was scored on the last ball, officially making it a (crappy) one ball wonder. On the second game I didn't even bother with going for the main multiball, and went for the trolls instead. I got the Troll multiball going, but didn't do much with it. I was extremely disappointed with my final result of 13.5M, but was surprised that very few playes had gotten to the 8 figure scores.

While I was there, I also made an attempt at Attack From Mars, which turned out to be a real shit show from the start. My second game didn't give me the multiball either, but at least I knocked down couple of saucers before draining at 1.4B. Blah, stupid Martians.

I had never seen Judge Dredd with a Color DMD before. It was kind of neat, although I didn't care too much of the fruit loops colored buildings in the attraction mode. I took my usual approach here, start with Blackout and then work up from there. Got couple of crappy bounces on my first game, which ended at 107M. I managed to tilt around 30M of bonuses on that. I played the second game a bit calmer, trapped the other ball to the left flipper and repeated the left ramp. It wasn't exactly a game I would have recorded on video, but the 226M was still among the best scores at that point.

Next up was Wizard of Oz. I had pretty clear goals here: start a Munchkin mode, stack multiballs, profit. The game however wasn't having any of that and I ended my first game at measly 37k. On the second game I at least got the main multiball going, but that was pretty much it. I couldn't find the right miniplayfield loop shot to save my life. The Crystal Ball shot was also seemingly impossible and I had to settle for 126k.

So far I've played all editions of WoZ. I last played this model in Pittsburgh.

With one game to go, I was already in the top-16. Naturally that would change tomorrow when rest of the players would come, but for now at least getting qualified looked pretty good. The last game for my qualification would be Capcom's Pinball Magic. I had ... well, less flattering memories of this game from past tournaments in Mikkeli. My approach for this game was just playing the multiball. The multiball can be started from just one lock, but it naturally gets better with 2 locked balls. This time the game played quite nicely and I got the multiball running on the first ball. It started out by knocking out one of the balls, but I cradled both remaining balls and then repeated "jackpot" and "raise/relite jackpot" shots. After the multiball I got in couple of the 10M advance magic level or whatever shots and ended up at around 200M. Even at that point I had the second best score, so I switched to a more relaxed mode of playing and as the 3rd ball drained, I was at 417M.


That pretty much blew everything else out of the water, so I didn't bother to play a second game on it at all. After the score was recorded, I was #1 in the qualification.


At that point I was dead tired and hungry as hell. We planned to hit a kebab joint on our way back to our hotel, but turns out none of the downtown places were open. I had to pull the local pizzeria/kebab place finding app, and according to that the nearest open place was on the other side of the town. So, we returned to the hotel, hungry. In addition to being hungry, my feet were killing me and my back hurt. This is how it feels to be out of warranty.


We returned to the arcade the next day. First thing I had to check was the main qualification rankings. Yup! I was still #1. We arrived at around 12:00 and the play-offs were scheduled from 18:00 on, so it was one long day of just hanging around. I tried to keep on playing the free play games, but there were so few of them. 5 hours later the scores were finally in, and while MRA was tied with me for the #1 position for a brief moment, in the end I was never dropped to #2. I was somewhat happy with the result.



Playoffs, Rockpin, Round 1

After sitting idle for over half a day, the playoffs were finally starting. The first round of Rockpin's playoffs played pretty much the same as the qualification, we had 4 pins to be played as single player games. The line-up was: Kiss (Bally), Rolling Stones (Stern), Metallica and Dolly Parton.


I was among the first players to have a go at Metallica. I had some good shot in there, but didn't exactly have a dream game. I estimated my 24M would be somewhere among the last places.

While playing Metallica, I kept the Rolling Stones on eye, witnessing several hardcore players getting their asses totally kicked by the ever roaming Jagger target. I played the same kind of useless round as in the qualification, scoring almost the exact (10M) same as back then. Thinking back the qualification scores, this might be an okay score.

Next I played Kiss. I wanted to get over 100k and I did it. Barely. If there's a better strategy for Kiss than "skillshot the center lane, go all out for the spinners", let me know. 138k.

Last it was Dolly Parton. I couldn't do squat with it, only hitting the lit spinner one time. This and Metallica might have tanked this attempt.

Much to my amazement the 24M on Metallica was actually 4th best on round 1, the game was really hard on even the other seasoned players. I was 6th on Kiss, ditto with Rolling Stones and 9th on Dolly Parton. Much to my amazement I was 4th in the round and among the 8 to qualify out of the 16 players in total.


Playoffs, Rockpin, Semi-final

The 2nd round switched to player vs player format, best 2 out of 3. I went against an old gaming buddy of mine, JSZ. I might have told this one earlier, but back in early 2000 I used to frequent a large service station cafeteria in Kotka. The place had a well stocked arcade, often with 6 to 8 pins. Every weekend I drove there with my buddies to remove that pesky JSZ from the high scores. And every time I came back, the APZ filled score lists were again changed to JSZ. We only met in face to face almost 10 years later in a pinball league game.

We started off with Stern's Kiss, with JSZ as player 1. Neither of us played the game that well, JSZ commented he was still learning the game, I had some kind of an idea at this point, but had the exact same problem with the Love Gun multiball as before. In the end JSZ played both multiballs and I only played the Demon multiball and lost.

Next up was ... Kiss, again. This time the Bally version. Having found the center shot really saved my bacon there and even when JSZ came close on his 3rd ball, I took this one home.

The deciding game was played on Bally's Rolling Stones. And what a show that was! JSZ started out with a poor ball, I did exactly same being within 1k from him. Our 2nd balls were both a bit better, but both were still well below 100k. JSZ got couple of good drop target shots on his last ball, ending up at around 110k. At that point my heart rate was at around 150bpm as I knew my spot in the final was just one ball away! It started good, I just wanted to hit the saucer to collect the bonus for some rather risk-free points. Instead I found the rubber post next to it and got a center drain. I ended up with at around 90k points. I might have made it if I had done the saucer shot. Well, damn.


Anyway, I was out of the Rockpin tournament and off to the positions 5-8 game. It was a real 'meh' class game against JAX, IDO and SUI (who was no-show) on GnR. JAX owned the game with 1.8B, I couldn't get anything done right and had to settle for 795M. In the end I was 2nd, thus getting the 6th place in the whole tournament. Blah.


Playoffs, St. Michel Pinball Open, Semi-final

Having 2 byes meant I would be starting the main tournament straight from the semi-finals. I actually got to play almost 7 and a half hours after arriving to the venue. The format was player vs player, best 3 out of 5. My opponent, IDO, had started straight from the bottom, raising up the ranks from the round 1. After a seemingly easy 1st round he got to play a fierce full 5 game round against JHQ and having won that he was now ready to challenge me.


The round started with Pinball Magic. I went with the same strategy as in the qualifications, multiball all the way. I had serious trouble getting the left ramp shot and even when I got some good shots from random flailing, I lost over 50M to IDO.

Next we drew Medieval Madness. I finished some of the orbit/ramp shots to have couple of madness multiballs lit, then used that to bash the castles. I avoided the moat as much as possible, while IDO got couple of really crappy bounces from it. I was around 30M with IDO around 15M at the end.

It's been a while when I've played the Wizard of Oz in a tournament against other player. I completely wasted my first two balls trying to get the crystall ball lit, and being over 100k behind IDO on my last ball I had to play the main multiball without stacking a mode with it. That was a desperate call that didn't work.

Next up was possibly deciding game for this round, on Super Straight. The abbreviation "SS" left me hoping it would have been Scared Stiff! The game itself was an EM clunker with me having no idea on how to approach it. We were pretty much tied till the end, but IDO won. This also meant the second time for today I got eliminated in the Semi-final. Can't say I was too happy with the outcome.


I played the 5-8th positions game against MRA, ESA and JAX. It was a total shitshow for me and being 3rd there just added to the huge disappointment. I was 7th in the whole tournament.


The outcome

I qualified in the main turnament as 1st and 14th in the Rockpin side tournament due to a clerical error, I would have been 9th otherwise. That would have not changed the playoffs games in any way.

I did a double faceplant in the quarter finals, getting eliminated in both tournaments in the last round.

I was 6th in Rockpin and 7th in the main tournament.

Official results

Also: fuck.


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Oriveden Flipperikisa 2016 - Orivesi, Finland - Pelihelvetti arcade - 23/04/2016


Barely being recovered of the jet lag from the PAPA/IFPA tour, we headed out towards Orivesi for their annual tournament. As with most Finnish and European tourneys, my folks tagged along as well. This tournament included a splits tournament as well for the first time(?) so me and my dad teamed up as usual as team XPS.

The main tournament had 5 games to play for high scores in qualification, with a total of 10 entries and maximum of 3 entries per game, then head to head playoffs. The splits tournament had very similar format.

Qualification, splits

We arrived less fashionably late, and only had bit over an hour to finish out splits entry. I quickly glanced over the rules, we had Fish Tales, No Fear and Hurricane, with 3 entries on each.

Since other games were being played at that point, we started with Hurricane. Funny thing about Hurricane is, that it's extremely rare game in Finland. Back in the 90s when we still had state monopoly on both gambling and entertainment games, the state owned company ordered one of each new pins, trialed them on location and then decided on whenever to buy them or not. The story goes that Hurricane flunked hard and they didn't order any more of those. I know this, as that trial run Hurricane was sold to a gaming company, where I worked in early 2000 and I actually worked on that specific Hurricane. Seeing the game we played here still had Finnish Mark prices in coin mechs makes me want to believe this is that same game. </history lesson>

Anyway, there's only one approach that I know of for Hurricane, and that is to go for the jackpot from the very beginning. The jackpot is lit when you collect all the PALACE letters from the right ramp, and skillshot gives you a free letter. Since it starts with "PAL" already lit, the jackpot is doable on your 3rd ball without looping the right ramp obscene amount of times. We spent 2 games on this approach, with my dad on left flipper taking care of the ramp shot and me on the right side, ready to make the timed jackpot shot. It just wasn't happening as the main ramp shot turned out a bit more challenging than anticipated.

We flipped sides for the 3rd game and went collecting the million shot from the center ramp instead, getting up to 5M. Seeing others struggle getting over 1M I think we had a good game there.

Next we took on No Fear. We went 100% multiball here with me on the right side. Start multiball, collect jackpots, repeat. Our first game was around 500M, the next closer to 900M with super jackpot collected. I've never done that with splits before!

After our 2nd game time was running out, but as other team was playing their 1st ball on Fish Tales, we played another game on No Fear, getting up to 750M.

While still standing in line for Fish Tales, it dawned to me that we had made a colossal mistake here! Sure, there was 3 entries per machine, but that was 3 entries MAX per game, with 6 entries total. We were in such a hurry that we completely missed the 6 entries limit in total! Now we had 6 entries played with one game to play. It was judged as us losing our best score in the last game, with was that 900M round in No Fear. There were a lot worse scores than our 750M on it, so I think we still had a fighting chance.

Team XPS on Fish Tales

In Fish Tales we opted to go with modes, but couldn't make the right orbit shot to save our lives. With the 3rd ball starting at less than 15M on the board, I made a desperation call, shot the ramps couple of times to get the monster fish lit and collected that, ending our game to around 30M. 

Checking on how we're doing - still in the game, it'd seem.


Qualification, single player

The main qualification was played on 5 games: Scared Stiff, Kiss, Wrestlemania, Avatar and Metallica. I started off with a pretty joyless game of Wrestlemania for 38M. According to the scoring system it was right there in top 5 on that game, so I didn't bother wasting more entries on that.

Avatar again didn't give me much reason to smile with a rather pathetic 12M score. Much to my surprise it was somewhere among best third of games.

Next I took on Metallica, which was probably one of the best playing Metallica Pro's I've played in a while. I've played much better games on Metallica, but after finishing my 60M game it turned out to be 2nd best in the tournament, and was most likely the only entry I'd have to play on it.

Last fall I got to play Kiss for the first time here, and I got around 80M on it on first try. Sure, the software has evolved since that, but my two first entries with 3.5M and 6.9M scores were still pretty pitiful. I had to play the 3rd and final game on it as well, only getting to 27M. Still, I easily take that over the previous scores, but this might just have been the weakest game in my qualification.

Next I picked the only non-Stern game in the lineup - Scared Stiff. I played a pretty bland game of 8M on it, leaving Stiff-o-meter lit when I drained my last ball. As the top-5 fit in 10M+ range, I just needed a little bit better game, and that's what I got on the next try with 11M, which was 4th best score today.


Having played all the games I was past the cut line easily, but since the 4 best got one bye, that's where I wanted to be. Metallica and Wrestlemania were good enough and there was no easy points to collect. Kiss could have used little more love, but I was out of entries. Scared Stiff had only 4 points up for grabs, so I concentrated my efforts on Avatar, with a target score of 60M.

Not sure if there's much main objectives in the game, but to combo the Link and Ampsuit multiballs and cross your fingers, I got 27M on my first and 30M on my second attempt, barely taking me to 4th position in the qualification.

As the qualifying round was coming to an end, TMA managed to squeeze himself past me, which meant I'd be starting from the round 1 in playoffs with players from positions 5-12.



Playoffs, splits

Despite the screw-up in qualification, team XPS made it to playoffs, which was played head to head against another team, one game knockout style.

We went against the arcade owner himself and his buddy, Team W&R. 

No Fear was picked and while we had a proven strategy for it, we were pretty quickly and unceremoniously beaten, as we only got one multiball running, and didn't collect any jackpots. This meant we were out of the tournament.


Playoffs, single player, round 1

Playoffs were played best 3 out of 5, with me starting from the round 1.

Looks like me and SAM get to play often against each other in Orivesi. We started off with Metallica, on which we went neck to neck until on 3rd ball SAM was leading me at the the end of his ball 22.1M to my 19M. I had nothing but half way done Sparky lit, so I very carefully bashed the poor Sparky into oblivion, starting the Sparky multiball, then Coffin multiball and eventually Grave Marker as well. I finished the ball off with Crank it up's Sparky bashing mode, having 60M+ after my last ball.

Next we drew No Fear, with me as player 1. This time I really found both lock shots, grinding away jackpots and got the super jackpot twice finishing off with a pretty successful Payback time on my last ball. SAM started with two short balls, and finally got his game going on his last ball, but couldn't catch my lead at that point any more.

Concentrating on No Fear against SAM

Our 3rd game was possibly deciding one and was played on Kiss. Neither of us got off to a good start, I pulled a slight lead by playing the Love gun multiball, but couldn't get the locks lit for the main multiball. I had bit over 8M on my 2nd ball, which SAM as player 1 couldn't catch on his 3rd ball, which let me to play my last ball just for fun. For the record, I still find Love gun multiball way safer to start from the STAR scoop than the damn steep ramp.



Playoffs, single player, round 2

The arcade owner, TMA had played a last minute entry to knock me off my 4th position and one bye. Now I was where I would have been should that have not happened.

"Oh shit, it's Maverick"

I groaned inside when Maverick was drawn as our first game. I think I put on a valiant attempt, but somehow didn't manage to score that much even when I did get the multiball going, TMA beat my 360M with his 510M. I'm still not sure if I should just ignore the jackpots altogether and just combo multiball with super pops like in Guns 'n Roses.

I don't think I've ever played Champion Pub in a tournament before. Kind of shame, as despite it's limitations and repetitive game play, I wouldn't mind owning it some day. I started the first fight from the get go, and lost it to a center drain as the post went down way before I expected it to. TMA didn't have it any better and in the end I barely won the game.

Next up was Metallica. I was pretty confident on this one, but totally goofed up my first ball, spent the second catching TMA and then finally ended the third ball at 10.3M to TMA's 8M. TMA switched to extremely careful playing, started Sparky and went past me, ending with 14.7M. Oh well.

Our last game was Avatar and there's not much to say about that round. I really needed 2 more wins to continue, but after completely wasting stacked multiballs and ending up with 4.6M TMA totally deserved to win the whole round with this 18.5M ending. This also meant I was out.



Playoffs, single player, positions 5-8 game

TJM, JHQ, ELP and yours truly found themselves on a less serious game for those eliminated just before the semi finals. A single game, Hurricane was drawn, and it would decide our final positions. Since not everyone knew the game, I briefly explained the main features of the game.

The game was so merciless and random that we could only laugh at it. In the end ELP won, being 5th in the whole tournament, me being 6th, JHQ 7th and TJM 8th. 



The outcome

I was 5th in the qualification and qualified without bye.

I was eliminated on 2nd round of playoffs, being 6th out of 26 players in the whole tournament.

Team XPS qualified in splits tournament, and was eliminated on 1st round of playoffs. Our final ranking was not made available by the arcade owner.

Singles winning trio

Splits winning teams


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IFPA world championship 13 - PAPA HQ, Pittsburgh, PA, USA - 12-14/04/2016

PAPA HQ in all its glory!

So, this was it. IFPA13. With the whole WPPR 5 thing killing my interest in hosting my own tournaments and participating tournaments for just collecting ranking points, I anticipated I'd be out of Finland's TOP-10 by 2015. Much to my surprise my excursions into other countries kept me floating up there and when it was time to see who goes to IFPA13, I found myself being 3rd in Finland, just behind JSZ. JSZ however declined the invitation, so it was passed onto me. I couldn't say no to another trip to the US, so here we are again.

I was way more unconfident when it came to playing IFPA at the PAPA HQ than with earlier IFPAs I've played in. In 2014 Denver IFPA11 the venue wasn't exactly an arcade and the whole line-up was more of mix and match of several contributor's machines. IFPA12 in Sweden again served me well as I was very familiar with Inken's line-up and that ultimately gave me my best ever tournament with actually getting to IFPA playoffs. IFPA13 again would be the very polar opposite of this - although I've visited PAPA HQ earlier, virtually everyone else here would be more familiar with the PAPA HQ's unforgiving game setups. This was also one reason why I opted to play in PAPA19 last weekend.

But before we get to playing, there was one thing that became really clear to me when playing PAPA19: either I'd have to buy a new pair of Crocs or my feet would totally give up half-way the games. I still remember the times when I was a heretic, trying to play with ordinary outdoor shoes. Getting sleep the next night was usually a mission impossible with all the cramps and just plain sore feet. Then I got those clone Crocs I've had for ages now, and never, ever suffered from that problem again. In addition to forgetting my official Hopeakuula shirt back home, I also forgot my clone Crocs. I guess it was about time to get myself proper Crocs anyway, so we headed out to see what they had in store for us. We actually found a Crocs store, with nothing but Crocs products. But what really caught my attention was the Realtree camo Crocs, sold in hunting department in a sporting goods store. I don't know if I'd wear Crocs when hunting, but I'm pretty sure this is the type of Crocs I won't be seeing in Finland any time soon!

I've heard rumors that I might have some kind of fixation for
anything camo or yellow/black striped. This is no exception.
Oh, and my socks aren't mismatched, it's the light or something!

Now that the ever-important shoe-business is out of the way, let's focus on pinball. On Monday 11th we got to play all the games during the official practice run. As with last years, the place was crowded with the 63 other players, but I got some games in. My immediate though on many games was that the setup was so hard that often games could be won or lost by skillshot score alone. In games like Cirqus voltaire and such I only practiced skillshotting and wrote down the needed plunger force if I found a repeatable skillshotting setting. Then there were some games that I had absolutely no tournament strategy for, like the Last Action Hero. I felt most confident with EM and early SS games, as they often had one or two worthwhile shots, and knowing them was more than often a sure way to win.


Another thing I did was to follow some big name players, especially checking out what they were doing. Seeing them try full plunge at ball start was often all I needed to see, and it was really enlightening to see what they did on games unfamiliar to me.


Day 1

Man, it's been a while since I've been this excited about something. Me and OMO hit the Starbucks for a decent caffeine overload before arriving at the scene. Naturally we had the mandatory late player as well (damn you, Denmark!) before getting to the opening speech and finally starting our first game.


Round 1

Pins: Party Zone, The Shadow, Ali
Opponents: Trent Augenstein (USA), Michael Trepp (THA), Adam McKinnie (USA)


Our group started out with Bally's Party Zone. PZ is one of my guilty pleasure games, and it was also one of the rare games I had the chance to play a full game during the practice run on Monday. Multiball was the only thing I was after (save the ever-important 1M+ door prize from skillshot), but it turned out to be just has hard as during the practice run. The lock hole rejected the ball on most cases, sending it back to where it came from, which inconveniently was often way too close of being between the flippers. I got the multiball running on the last ball, and being player 1 I led the game briefly, until both Trent and Adam went past me. Michael again got virtually nothing but the normal skillshots.

The Shadow was just as punishing. I had the Khan multiball lit from the ball one, but I never managed to collect it. I got the main multiball going, but did very little with it, ending up somewhere around 40M. Doing 3 skillshots would have scored more, but the left ramp skillshot was really unforgiving without ball save, so I didn't even bother trying. Trent and Adam were in a league of their own, while Michael got another really crappy start and ended up being last.

I've played Ali before, but had no clear tournament strategy for it. The spinner at the back loop was probably the only worthwhile thing I knew of, so I concentrated my efforts there. It was a tight shot, but it was pretty much what the others had on their menu as well. This was probably the toughest game for everyone, and save Adam's 424k score, we others stayed within 100k range, me being last with 103k. 

I guess I could have opened the IFPA13 with a bit stronger round than with a 7 pointer, but then again, I still have never gotten a 1-1-1 round and I surely wasn't going to start now!

Round points: 3-3-1


Round 2

Pins: Time Fantasy, X-Men, Harlem Globetrotters
Opponents: Nick Zendejas (USA), Bob Matthews (USA), Jim Belsito (USA)

Time Fantasy is a prime example why you shouldn't do drugs and design a pinball machine. Besides its trippy graphics, the game rules are equally trippy. The main objective is to score time for a final mode that's played after last ball, pretty much everything else is just for show. I wasn't the only one going after this, but as far as I know, none of us actually made it. We ended up withing 120-180k range, me being 3rd.

X-men was another kind of a beast. I played as player 2, and couldn't do jack with the game. By the ball 3 I was way behind everyone else and I just couldn't make the last lock for the main multiball. Wolverine shot was surprisingly doable, so I opted to just bash the poor old Wolverine until I got the second multiball out of that. It lasted literally seconds, and ended in a double drain. Highly frustrated I walked away with hung head. When I reached the other players, they were frantically pointing at the machine. I turned around only to see the machine autoplunge one ball, and as I ran towards the machine I saw the ball bumping between the flippers and draining just before I managed to give it a good slap. FUCK! My headphones were a little bit too efficient in cancelling the game sounds, and while I was still 9M behind Nick, I could have tried going for the last Magneto lock. I deserved that 1 point game. 


Funny thing, over the years I've learned that my mood is everything when it comes to playing. With completely deflated feeling I have absolutely no fighting spirit left in me and playing becomes more of a chore than something fun to do. It wasn't until recent years when I started listening to music while playing to compensate for this. Being an epitome for highly reserved Finn, I consider it kind of funny finding myself just jamming to the soundtrack out in the public, with often being able to recover pretty fast from a total failure.

Our last game was the Harlem Globetrotters. I originally didn't think much of it, but these days I might even consider buying this game should the opportunity raise. Jim totally owned this round with 800k score, I barely beat Nick's 160k, being 3rd.

With a 5-3-1 this round was better than what I began with, but I could have used at least couple of 15 point rounds to start with.

Round points: 5-3-1


Round 3

Pins: The Shadow, Hokus Pokus, Super Orbit
Opponents: Jörgen Holm (SWE), Donavan Stepp (USA), Michael Trepp (THA)

After the lunch break we continued with round 3. Starting with The Shadow, I was glad I could play a little better than last time. I was expecting Jörgen to completely dominate the game, but I see even the great ones get a raw deal at times. This was another round of frustration for Michael as well, although this time we all actually got to play the multiball.

I had never played Hokus Pokus before, and it turned out to be a real magic trick as I easily won the game, this being the first 7 point game in this tournament so far. Being an EM game the bonus played a big part and I noticed double bonus was pretty easy to get by constantly shooting the left orbit.

We finished the round with Super Orbit, which turned out to be the Lame Orbit for me. Apparently the others knew something I didn't.

Still, I gladly took the 11 points from this round.

Round points: 3-7-1


Round 4

Pins: Attack From Mars, Algar, Funhouse Surf N' Safari
Opponents: Sean Grant (USA), Philippe Bocquet (FRA), Andreas Harre (GER)

Oh dear $deity, we got to start with Attack from Mars. AFM is one of my least favorite games in tournaments, as I rarely get a good game going on even when I claim to know the rules pretty well. Apparently it wasn't so much fun for any other players in the group either, as less than 5 second balls were more of a norm than exception. We went neck to neck until the last ball, when I finally got the main multiball running, then right after it the Martian multiball. With others scoring less than 700M, my 2.3B score brought me an easy, much needed 7 point game!


Still being super stoked about the AFM, I got a total ass whooping from Algar. Not much to say about it.


No panic, we still had the Gottlieb System 3 gem(?), Surf N' Safari which replaced the Funhouse that had started to act up during last round. Oh boy was that like not fun at all! I played literally 3 balls in a row, where I plunged the ball, see it hit couple of random targets and go out in a manner where not amount of nudging or slapping did any good. My frustration was shared with the fellow players and we agreed it was also a diploma worth achievement!

Round points: 7-1-1


Round 5

Pins: Metallica, Space Race, Mousin' Around
Opponents: Bjørn Erlend Hellem (NOR), Peter Blakemore (UK), Mark van der Gugten (NED)

Metallica has never been among my tournament favorites, and this one was even more unforgiving than usual. I started Sparky multiball with an idea of progressing the other multiballs, but damn was it hard to control. The multiball didn't last that long, but I easily stayed with others' pace. Mark got to 14M on his last ball and I was at round 11M. I had had the extra ball lit since ball 2, but I find the right side hole rather dangerous shot to make. With the extra ball being worth 2.5M, I just concentrated on making the shot, and I did it! I somehow managed to keep the ball in control, until I was at close to 13-14M, and drained to get 15.1M after the bonus. Much to my surprise it was enough to win the game and get another 7 pointer!

Space Race was pretty even game for all of us. With all players finishing within 100k of each other, I was lucky to be 2nd and get 5 points.

My system 11 favorite, Mousin' Around was a real lesson on humility and I ended the game with just 700k. I couldn't make any of the shots I wanted and most of my score was skill shots. Then again, Peter won the game with 1.3M, which probably tells you something about how difficult this thing was!

Round points: 7-5-1

Round 6

Pins: Last Action Hero, Wizard, Taxi
Opponents: Tatsunori Naruke (JPN), Mark van der Gugten (NED), Jochen Ludwig (GER)

Day 1 at the PAPA HQ was coming to an end, and I certainly felt like having played all day long! We started with Last Action Hero, which was a total frustration from ball one. The others were way ahead of me when the ball 3 started, but I had the multiball lit. While the ball save is turned off, LAH has a phantom ball saver in the skillshot: if you make an attempt at the skillshot and it lands to right outlane, you get a free ball. This happened to me, but the ball made couple of extra bounces over the in/outlane divider, thus my skillshot turned into skillshit and a drained ball.

We proceeded to Wizard, which was rather even game for us, with me taking 3rd position.

Our last game was Taxi, on which we could get absolutely nothing done. Multiball was lit from the very first ball by Jochen, but the left ramp was just impossibly hard shot to make. It wasn't until my 3rd ball when I finally started the multiball, which lasted around 2 or 3 seconds, but still prompted cheers from my fellow players. We all landed within 1M - 1.2M area, so every bumper was meaningful in the end. Oh well.

This round was the last round for today and we opted to just return to our home base to get some shut eye.

Round points: 1-3-3


Day 2

I had serious trouble getting up in the morning. I was dead tired with my wrists and legs crying for mercy. After a quick visit to the local Starbucks we turned the Chrysler towards Carnegie.

I didn't know if I had any chance to make it to the playoffs any more. I didn't want to know either, I was now playing just for the fun of it. Checking out the scores, I noticed OMO was doing a lot better and was probably going to make the cut.


Round 7

Pins: Avatar, Volley, Mousin' Around
Opponents: Robert Macauley (AUS), Henning Lescher (DEN), Gabriel Ortiz (SPN)

So, day started out with Avatar. It was just as fun as I had expected magnet enabled machine to be without ball save. I VERY carefully made the link lock, then then started the Ampsuit multiball on my 2nd ball, getting closer to 9.5M. The last ball was pretty much useless, but I got to 10.8M, which was good enough for 2nd place.

I've played Volley somewhere, can't remember where. But I do remember that it's imperative to make all the top lane shots to make the drop targets score 5k instead of 500, and then hope to get them all so you can continue flailing for easy 5k points per drop. I managed to get the last one on my last ball and for a moment there I thought I'd roll the game, but ended in 90k, which also ended up with 5 points and second place.

Last it was again time for Mousin' Around. I completely gave up with the conventional strategy and started looping left orbit instead. Remembering my previous attempt at it, I was somewhat happy with the 2M I got that way, especially when Robert was the only one to beat my score with his 2.4M, leaving me to 2nd place and another 5 points.

This was pretty steady round and if I'm not mistaken, best so far with 15 points total.

Round points: 5-5-5


Round 8

Pins: Cirqus Voltaire, Eight Ball, Medusa Flash Gordon
Opponents: Michael Trepp (THA), Gabriel Ortiz (SPN), Robert Macauley (AUS)

This was is, IFPA13's last round. Yesterday starting all this it felt like there was endless amount of games ahead, and now we were down to three.

Our first game of the round was Cirqus Voltaire. Wow, good thing I practiced that skillshot, as this was one of those frustration all around games. We were pretty even until the end except for Robert, who got all the insta-drain balls. Michael was leading the game after his 3rd ball, with yours truly as 4th player. I wasn't that much behind his 5M score, but I didn't have that much ball time for my last ball. Good thing my bonus was enough to take me to the lead and win this one.

I've only recently started to appreciate Eight ball, but I've gotten way too little time on the machine to hone my skills on it. Still, I fumbled myself onto winning it with 350k. It took only one ball, where I got the spinner lit, and I kept banging it over and over again. Man it felt great to watch that fucker spin from a perfectly executed shot!

And then there we were, down to the very last game of IFPA13 qualification: Flash Gordon. I played first, getting 246k on it. I didn't think much of it and went to watch other groups play while the two other players in our group finished their entries in a two player game. Much to my surprise only Gabriel beat my score, he scored more than all of us others combined.

In case you're wondering about the score sheet, Eight Ball's scores were accidentally filled into Flash Gordon's place.

I didn't think I had anything more to give this morning, being tired as hell. But somehow I managed to squeeze two record breaking rounds right there in the end.

Round points: 7-7-5



After rather nerve wrecking wait, the final results were out. At that point I knew I had 90 points, and surprisingly was tied with OMO. The cutoff-line was finally announced to be at 94 points, which meant 7 way tie-breaker game for the 32th place!


I can't help speculating all those places that could have turned 1 point into 3, two of those and I would have made it. Still, I'm glad to see I still got it and wasn't sent home with 8 1-1-1 rounds and "Persona non grata" stamped passport.

Outcome

I was eliminated in qualification, with a shared 46th of 64 position with my countryman.

I love the IFPA format and hope I get to play again at IFPA some day in the future. Oh, and this was the first day during the whole 1,5 week trip so far when it wasn't raining or otherwise crappy weather!


With OMO staying at the PAPA HQ to watch the playoffs, I took the car and drove from Pittsburgh to Niagara Falls, as it was something I really, REALLY wanted to do last time we were around. So, here's some bonus pics of that.






Bonus spoiler pic - Wizard of Oz after killing the Wicked Witch!


P.S. milkshakes under 1.5 liters are for kids.



Until the next time.

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PAPA19 - PAPA HQ, Pittsburgh, PA, USA - 7-10/04/2016


Some of you folks might remember my less enthusiastic take on PAPA18 from last year, and I really can't say I would have participated if I wasn't already in the area for IFPA13. The whole PAPA format rubs me the wrong way; virtually unlimited entries, which naturally cost money combined with frustratingly unforgiving machine configurations just spell throwing money into the can every time you got a shitty start for your entry. I seriously considered on driving somewhere else, but then again not playing the machines meant the people playing against me in IFPA would have extra time to practice, plus many of my pinball buddies were around just for this tournament. So I ultimately decided to participate just for the laughs.

But before we get to PAPA, there's this trip's mandatory payload ahead! Last year I was more than bummed not getting to visit New York city, so this time I made sure we took 3 days off just to check the place out. Among first things, after checking out the Statue of liberty, I got to visit the Sunshine Laundromat!


I've heard so much about this place, but stepping in I felt a bit underwhelmed. They had about 5 pins and about a dozen washing machines there. However, walking past the entrance we found a door, which led to what could only be described as barcade, with around 20+ machines in 3 neat lines. But what really got my attention was the Big Bang Bar! I've been wanting to play one for ages and now there was one just couple of quarters away!


Me and OMO got ourselves pints and started to grind away. BBB however soon developed a plunger problem and we couldn't play it for more than couple of rounds. Still, I'd say it was one of the better Capcoms that I've played.


Some time later people started to gather and it turned out they had a league game starting there. We also met ZEN, whom I had met on my last trip to Pittsburgh. With the league game taking most of the games, we decided to move on. Although not before ZEN had us taste some of his extra spicy kale pizza!

Next we roamed to Jackbar, which according to the pinlocator had Jersey Jack's latest creation: The Hobbit. And surely enough, we found The Hobbit and a bar full of classic Williams games, plus couple of newer Sterns, including Game of Thrones LE.


I wish we had had more time with the Hobbit, but we managed to break the game on our third try. One of the Medieval Madness troll-like targets got a ball stuck, blocking the left ramp and making starting modes impossible. Oh well, I'll have to get back to this game later on.

After couple of tourist-y days in NY we hopped on a (rather beaten up) Bombardier mini-jet and flew to Pittsburgh. After settling into our accommodation, we went to check out what was brewing at PAPA HQ. We arrived a day before the PAPA tournament to see the circuit finals being played. I'm not much of a spectator sports fan, so I went to try out what the PAPA HQ had to offer, only to be joined by Danielle and Jochen! After an evening of playing just for the fun it was finally time to get serious.

After a night of drinking relaxing at Jukka's place, it was time to see what PAPA19 had in store for us!

I needed some doping to get the
morning started.

Qualification, division B


Like last year, I opted to go with division B, that was classified as intermediate division. It also had the handicap of not awarding WPPR points, so playing in it was just for the laughs and glory.


The lineup was: Demolition man, Flash Gordon, Dracula, The Simpsons pinball party, Terminator 3, Genesis, Corvette, X-men, Attack from Mars and Robocop.

My quick analysis was to immediately ditch Demolition man, Dracula and Attack from Mars from any serious attempts after getting some reads on them. Demoman's right ramp seemed pretty harsh with apparently weak flippers, Dracula had an average balltime of "where did it go? Oh... bonus count" and Attack from Mars rarely works for me. Then again, Dracula was so hard that virtually getting ANYTHING done on it guaranteed at least some points.

My first entry was Genesis, Robocop, Flash Gordon, Dracula and T3. Genesis turned out to be a bad call from the first ball. It had really weak flippers and making the all-important ramp shots was virtually impossible. Robocop again played pretty well and it was my first ever PAPA game that didn't completely frustrate me. This may or may not be public knowledge, but I've found Robo's spinner to be the most valuable thing in the game. Multiball is sketchy at best and I wouldn't base my game on the random 1M ramp shot either. But get all the 3 locks lit and it adds 3k to each spinner spin. This specific Robo had really powerful flippers, so grinding away the spinner with controlled shots seemed like a good approach to it. Rest of the games weren't anything to write home about, T3 was okayish, although turned out to be a one ball wonder.


On my second entry I kept Robo, Dracula and T3, adding Demolition man and Corvette. Corvette sucked harder than a vacuum cleaner and Demolition man was just as useless as I had expected after getting some reads on it.

With $15 a pop, I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep on playing this random games. After quick consultation and some serious persuasion from fellow players, I caved in bought two more entries.

I went all out with frustration and picked The Simpsons, Robocop, Genesis, X-men and Attack from Mars. The Robocop was my go-to game for steady scores, and it worked this time as well. The Simpsons turned out to be worse than I had expected and I barely got a multiball going on my last ball. Sure, it was better than for many that didn't even get that, but I can't say I was too happy with it. Genesis wasn't much better than with my first try, and X-men was pretty much the same. Attack from Mars surprised me with both main and Martian multiball, and may have been one of my best games so far.

For my last try I went with X-men, Robocop, Simpsons, T3 and Attack from Mars. Against the odds the first 4 games weren't half bad! It wasn't until Attack from Mars when I knew this entry was doomed, when I failed to get the multiball running. Still, this entry got me to 18th position at that point. Since this was still early in the tournament I knew I'd be happy not to be the last.

Qualification, Classics I

I didn't take part in the classics last year and I wasn't planning to do it this year either, but be that a mistake or some perk of being a foreigner, for some reason I had 2 paid classics entries on my account. Where the main game qualification lasted for 3 days, each day had their own, complete classics tournament with the playoffs being played at the end of each day. 

I found myself liking the classics way more than I had anticipated. With the main game the (virtually) unlimited time meant even my best could be dropped by other players with more money to throw away entries that started out bad. With classics you had to line up for the machines, which with this amount of players meant you often had time for 2-3 entries during the whole day. This made the whole thing a way more interesting. I also like the classics in the sense that most games have pretty clear goal with single shots being way more valuable than in the modern games.

I had time only for one classics entry for the day, so I picked Seawitch, Fast Draw, Super orbit and Hulk. Turns out the Seawitch played very well and I racked up almost 800k points on it. Fast Draw wasn't that fast after all, but it was still the weakest game in this entry. Super Orbit again turned out to be a monster game for me and I ended up with over 1M points on it, prompting some encouraging words from the people waiting to play.

It wasn't until that point when I realized this could be an entry that could get me in the playoffs!  It was all hanging from the last game: Hulk. And O-M-F-G! Hulk played better than I expected. My goal was 500k on it, and I ended my first ball with 300k! After the first ball I took a step back, switched to a less energetic playlist and plunged the ball. Watching the ball go up I noticed the flippers weren't working! Did it tilt it? No, the fucker crashed! It was also noticed by the players waiting for their turn and it was ruled to be played again. My 2nd attempt naturally was a total disaster, ending with 100k points, screw you-th position and I was out of the tournament. Fuck-a-doodle-doo.


Qualification, Classics II

After yesterday's close call I was sold on PAPA's classics. I got myself 2 extra entries in addition the one I still had as I only had time for one entry yesterday.


Walking the area I instantly noticed Snow Derby, which must my one of my all time favorite EM games with 2" flippers. Black Jack again was one of my era's Bally favorites, which meant I had to pick two random games to fill my entry. I picked Miss-o and Volley.

Snow Derby played beautifully, with spectator engaging score of over 6k! Blackjack again was a bit so-and-so and both Miss-o and Volley were total disasters.

I kept Snow Derby and Blackjack, but added Algar and Star Race to the combo. I started out with Algar, scoring jack and shit. But then Blackjack - every single shot just sank right where I needed them. It was so deeply satisfying to beat the dealer again, again and again. For a second there I was preparing to ask the spectators to note my score as I was about to roll the machine! I ended up with 800k+ and in the end it was the 2nd best score on that game in the whole qualification. Snow Derby was okayish with 4k score, but Star Race wrecked my entry with a mediocre score. Still, this was to be my best entry in Classics II.

I tried again, still keeping Snow Derby and Blackjack, but adding Lizard and X's and O's. I might have been more entertained by folding a $10 note into a little ship and watch it getting flushed down the toilet instead. Now that I think of it, yeah, that'd been way more entertaining.

In the end I didn't qualify in Classics II, but still I was 100 times more entertained than with the division B crapfest of a tournament.


Qualification, Split flipper

With David Peck in da house, it meant Team Almost Neighbours was there again! For those who haven't read about our earlier adventures, we teamed up in IFPA12 in Sweden and our underdog team beat many of the household names in splits.

I knew we were on the right track when the receptionist explained us the rules, ending with "it's like you two are married for this event, swapping splits partners is now allowed", which instantly prompted everything from a sausage fest to mutual admiration of each other's beards and so forth, until the receptionist just stared us with a bright red face.

Splits tournament was played on shared games with division C qualifiers and junior+senior qualifications, so the place was pretty crowded. Walking the lineup we immediately decided on having Target alpha and possibly Taxi on our entries, the rest we'd just have to try out.

First few entries were pretty hopeless, although we had our moment when we rolled Target alpha! We also had the marvelous idea of trying to get some easy points off Derby day, but that turned out to be rather futile attempt in that entry.


In our very final entry we played an okayish game of Skateball for 221k, mediocre round of Target alpha for 74k, Taxi 1.2M and Car Hop 5.8M. That Car Hop was a damn good game for us. We had tried it earlier, barely getting 1M on it. Then we decided to resort to industrial espionage and see what the Japanese guys were doing on it. And behold, there was one mode which lit the center captive ball for 1M. It was a very brief mode, but we hit it 4 very satisfying times out of 4 shots! Much to our surprise after that entry we were around positions 5 or 6, out of 8 qualifying.


I kept hitting the reload all night long, watching us to fall to 8th position, then 9th, back 8th and by the next morning we were still on 8th position, until the very last 30 minutes when we finally sank past the cutoff line. Still, being 9th out of the 60 world class teams, I think Team Almost Neighbours had absolutely no reason to sulk!

Except we could have been in the playoffs. Dammit.

Qualification, Classics III

Classics III was probably the hardest of them for me. I had only one sure pick game, the Alien Poker, the rest I would have to try out and see. 

I had time for 3 entries, and I tried games like Target pool, Meteor, Nitro Groundshaker, El Toro, Space Race and Old Coney Island. Turns out the Old Coney Island played pretty well and combined to a tolerable game of El Toro and Alien Poker it almost was enough. Then there was naturally the black sheep - Space Race that sank my otherwise pretty good round. Oh and in case you're wondering, the score sheet says Casanova instead of El Toro as Casanova was pulled from the lineup just minutes before the round started.


The outcome

Division B wasn't my thing and I didn't bother to play past the 4 futile attempts. I was 84/94.


Team Almost Neighbours was 9/60.

Talking to OMO later on, turns out the division A games were in pretty nice condition, unlike B's which often left much to hope for, especially when dropping $15 per entry on them. I'm considering on returning to PAPA next year only to play the classics, or maybe try an entry or two in division A.

Oh, and best of wishes to our latest pinball couple, Mr. Postman and Ms. Sweden <3

Until next week with IFPA13!

I ain't afraid of no ghost!

One more thing, the 3rd new pin I got to play during the PAPA tourney was Stern's Ghost Busters!


Say what you will, but I think this game totally owns its theme from the cabinet art to the DMD graphics and sounds!






The fist ever game on this newly unboxed machine. I was player #2.
The new game drew a lot of spectators when it was being set up, and we speculated on how narrow all the shots and ramps were. But in the end it played so damn well and had the Ghostbusters's spirit in it. We'll see how the software matures, but having been there when the Avengers was first unboxed, this felt like one of the most mature software for a long time.

The main ramp was a bit odd, as you can shoot it from two different points. A small gate half-way up however feeds the ball always the same way out. The saucer on the right mid playfield is rather entertaining and Slimer looked good when we played it with dimmed main lights.

Well, that's my 2cnt on the game.
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