Wisconsin Pinball

Heidi, Gene, and I are planning a trip over on either Friday after work or sometime Saturday to Schwoeglers.

Hit me up if you have a preference of when and we can try to allign.

Hilton wrote:Heidi, Gene, and I are planning a trip over on either Friday after work or sometime Saturday to Schwoeglers.

Hit me up if you have a preference of when and we can try to allign.

Bueller?

Hilton wrote:Bueller?

He's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend saw Ferris pass out at Pooley's last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

I'm unavailable tonight and pretty much all day Saturday, so won't be able to make it out for practice. Have fun!

I'll be heading over to Schwoegler's after work today. Should be there around 6ish, I have a few errands to run beforehand. Now that I hear that the DE Simpsons is up and running again I am hoping to be able to give that machine a shot. Feel free to say hi if you are around. Look for the bearded guy in a yellow jacket who is probably putting in quarters every 30 seconds or so.

I did have a question about "nudging", if I am using the correct terminology. The tournament rules say that using techniques like hitting the glass and such are not allowed and that machines have tilt sensors to prevent this kind of abuse, but does that mean no physical movement is allowed whatsoever? Last time I was at Schwoegler's I saw someone playing AC/DC and I noticed that he would gently rock the machine back and forth to keep the ball within the pop bumpers but not hard enough to set off the tilt warning, which appeared to be an effective technique. Are machines designed to take gentle movements that are not hard enough to set off the tilt sensors? I understand that these machine are on loan from local enthusiasts and I don't want to do anything that would cause damage to them. The last thing I would want to have happen while playing a machine is to have the legs suddenly snap off.

They are built for commercial play. As long as you are not tossing them around or smashing them out of frustration then you have no worries.

There is some great skill that goes into nudging properly (I still suck at it but am getting better slowly) and the tilt sensor is there to tell you when you are nudging to much for each particular game. We try to set our tilts so some nudging can be done but tight enough to prevent good nudggers from running on a game forever. All games should be set up for a standard 2 tilt warnings which are usually an audible sound and the display will tell you in some form. After your second warning then the game will tilt out and flippers will stop working so you lose the ball.

Nudge a bit and you will quickly learn on each game what is the safe amount.

Pinball last night was good times. I was able to check out the lower playfield on AC/DC by taking DeaconBlooze's advice, though I still suck at aiming the cannon. DE Simpsons is a pretty tough game. Out of half a dozen games, I was able to break a million once. I also found it odd that the pop bumpers weren't as sensitive as I would expect; they seemed to only fire when hit with the ball with a bit of speed. Not sure if this is an issue or just how the game plays. I noticed it specifically when you first launch a ball and it would drop down to the lower middle pop bumper and just roll off to the side. Tee'd Off is still my favorite and I did have a game where I broke 85 million. Granted that is nowhere near the high scores on the machine, but I did get multiball which I consider an achievement on any machine.

NoahK wrote:Pinball last night was good times. I was able to check out the lower playfield on AC/DC by taking DeaconBlooze's advice, though I still suck at aiming the cannon. DE Simpsons is a pretty tough game. Out of half a dozen games, I was able to break a million once. I also found it odd that the pop bumpers weren't as sensitive as I would expect; they seemed to only fire when hit with the ball with a bit of speed. Not sure if this is an issue or just how the game plays. I noticed it specifically when you first launch a ball and it would drop down to the lower middle pop bumper and just roll off to the side. Tee'd Off is still my favorite and I did have a game where I broke 85 million. Granted that is nowhere near the high scores on the machine, but I did get multiball which I consider an achievement on any machine.

DE games have a spoon mechanism that isn't quite as sensitive as other games from that era from different manufacturers. the pops tend to be a little less sensitive. Also, the pops are all on a one piece plastic base, so they aren't as powerful either.

If you really want to put up a decent score on Simpsons, learn the left ramp. Once you get millions rolling you can do some damage. My best on Simpsons is right around 42million. granted, I owned the game for 12 years, but an average game on simpsons will be 3-5 million once you start getting the hang of it.

Multiball isn't as lucrative on this game as others, but is fun to shoot for.

NoahK wrote:I noticed it specifically when you first launch a ball and it would drop down to the lower middle pop bumper and just roll off to the side.

I'm glad this was brought up. Unfortunately, there is a design flaw specific to Simpsons on that lower middle pop bumper. If you don't put something on the left side to guide the ball away, it will sit nicely behind the drop targets on the pop bumper and become completely stuck. This will literally happen every other game. The "fix" is to either put a post in there and run a rubber ring to block off the area entirely, or put in a wire\spring to try to allow some bounce. We went the wire route. It works, but the bumper is certainly affected by it as you and others have noticed. I'll see if I can adjust it to make it more sensitive.

Like Tim said, the DE pops are a little bit less sensitive as well. That lower bumper flaw makes it that much more noticeable.

So how was the first Schwoegler's tourney? Winners? Logistics? Sorry I couldn't make it but will when my schedule allows.

Ken wrote:So how was the first Schwoegler's tourney? Winners? Logistics? Sorry I couldn't make it but will when my schedule allows.

I think the first tourney went really well! Garreth was the winner, taking down his Dad down to do so (Ryan took 2nd)!! If you're going to win, may as well do it with style. Had a bunch of free drink and buy-one-get-one tokens for the winners and runners up in each bracket thanks to Schwoegler's.

Worked out really well as the tourney was between the glow bowling times so we just started as soon as the lights came back on. Plenty of room to hang out, chat, eat and drink and there wasn't a ton of people bowling so you could actually hear the machines. Had a few new participants stop out as well, which was awesome. Hope you and Alec can make it out soon as it'd be great to see you out there!

Glad to hear it went well. DYING to play that AC\DC!!!!! Alec and I will most definitely make it out sometime. Only my messed up schedule prevents us from making more events.

Happy (for Garreth) and sad (for Ryan) at the same time. But more happy that Garreth got his first(?) tourney win! Been there done that. No losers in the family that day. AND THAT'S FUN!! And that's what it's all about.