Ingenious Minds: The pinball savant

Someone on the New England Pinball group on Facebook shared this the other day, and I thought it was well worth passing along:




I especially thought the science part was interesting. One of my friends looked up the latest status, and said that Robert is currently ranked at number 10 in the world. Awesome!

Pinball Magazine launches

In another piece of news that indicates pinball is alive and well, a new pinball magazine, aptly named Pinball Magazine, has just launched this month.  This magazine includes a 56-page interview.  Even if that were the ONLY thing in it, that's no magazine, that's a VOLUME! 

FYI, Roger Sharpe has been an illustrious member of the pinball illuminati for ages, and there's a really cool bonus segment on TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball that talks about how he demonstrated before the New York City council how pinball is a game of skill, and not purely chance.  This caused a repeal of the banning of pinball machines as gambling devices.  Did you even know they WERE banned?  That's a whole other story, but suffice it to say, Roger is a big deal.  He's also written a book about pinball that I have been meaning to order.

I've pre-ordered this of course, and will post a big old review once I get it, but in the meantime if you're interested in ordering a copy (and you should be), go to http://www.pinball-magazine.com/.

I should be writing about pinball

Yeah, pinball.  I think about it day and night now, and when I'm not having awesome zombie apocalypse dreams brought on by this video, I'm probably dreaming about it too.



So yeah, I should start writing some articles here about pinball.  Expect those soon.

The Devil Went Down to Pelham

This week The Devil Went Down to Georgia by The Charlie Daniels Band came on the radio. It inspired me to write this version, taking place at the Pinball Wizard in Pelham, NH.  At this point, having gone through the process of purchasing our own machine, I know just enough about the hobby to be dangerous. :)



The Devil Went Down to Pelham

The Devil went down to Pelham
He was lookin' for a game of skill
He was in a bind, arcades were hard to find
And 100 tokens was quite a deal

Then he saw this middle-ager
on Twilight Zone and playin' it hot
And the Devil leaned on Spider-Man
And said, "Sir, let me tell you what"

I guess you didn't know it
But I'm a pinball player too
And if you care to take a dare
I'll play a match with you

Now you play pretty good EM, boy
And rock the Devil's Dare too
I'll bet an LE of gold against your soul
Cos' I skill-shot better than you

The man said, "My name's Tommy
And I play by sense of smell
I've got Aurcade ranks in solid-states
And I'm gonna give you hell"

Tommy limber up your hands and flip those flippers hard
Cause hell's broke loose in Pelham and good nudging is an art
And if you win your man cave gets an LE made of gold
But if you tilt, the Devil gets your soul

The Devil reached in his coin cup
And he said, "I'll start tonight's show"
And fire from the magic trunk
Set the ramp shot lights aglow

And soon the second ball was locked
And it made an evil hiss
One more shot triggered multiball
And the flippers didn't miss

When DVL was finished
Tommy said, "well you're pretty good old son
But I've played this one on iPad
Let me show you how it's done"

Shadow's coming, mongols run!
Mars Kneads Women, just for fun
Shoot the castle gate and the pop-up trolls
Granny did your ball drain? No child, no

The Devil cursed and muttered
Because he'd lost his brand new Stern
So he made that call to NAVL
To arrange the shipping terms

Tommy said, "Devil, I gotta go
Though much fun this has been
Gonna trade my soul to Jersey Jack
in exchange for that sweet WOZ pin"

Shadow's coming, mongols run!
Mars Kneads Women, just for fun
Shoot the castle gate and the pop-up trolls
Granny did your ball drain? No child, no

Three gamers and a friend

You know, I'm not a feminist. I didn't care about being in the 1% of female gamers 10, 20 years ago. I just liked to game.


Besides, times have changed, right? I grew up as a weird edge case, but these days, loads of girls play video games. Right? Like if there was a series specifically about youths playing video games, it would probably not make a big show of girls being ditzy bimbos in training, cheesy in their attempts to be "nerds", or lesser than male gamers. In this day and age. Right?





This show didn't really bother me at first, aside from the fact that it's dopey. It seemed like they had this girl doing some gaming, and who cares anyway, right? But with repeated exposure to the "three gamers and a friend" as they literally put it, it is starting to get on my nerves. No, they didn't HAVE to have a girl gamer in there, but since there's only one female lead in the show, why not make her a gamer too? Wouldn't it have been just as funny and showing a little bit of balls to make her a really killer badass gamer? Oh, and she can even still be ditzy if that's your thing, Cartoon Network. But no, they "stress, not exactly a GAMER..." Has anyone with any influence on this show ever set foot on PAX in full swing?


Perpetuating the ditzy girl non-gamer stereotype is just lazy. Do something cooler, and this show might not suck. I absolutely adore Cartoon Network for Regular Show and Adventure time, but Level Up can die in a fire. Or maybe I'm over-reacting. Besides, this rant is eating into my Skyrim time...

Revisiting the Sims 2 for the first time

I don't know how it happened, really, but this week I've found myself playing The Sims 2.  I'd tried part 3 a while back, and it just didn't do it for me.  It wasn't enough "Sims 1-ish" for me, I guess.  A friend at work recently clued me in to www.gog.com, a site that carries a lot of older (i.e., from the 90s, cripes, are we calling that "older" now?) PC game titles like Sacrifice, Fallout, and Arcanum.  It's really pretty neat, you should check it out.

Anyway, so I was playing Creatures 2 via that, and my 5 year old son was watching.  I noticed he was really digging it, but sadly the UI of Creatures is really not that intuitive, and I was having a tough time getting back into it.  I think that's what reminded me of the Sims, that and anticipation for the next SimCity game coming in 2013.  And so I chose The Sims 2.

This turned out to be a really fun family activity.  Naturally I duplicated our family, but both kids were just fascinated to watch our family go through their daily routines, and figure out what the little speech bubbles over their heads meant.  And of course they delighted in seeing their sim-selves get into arguments, and steal seating from each other, and get naked to take a shower.  They also thought it was hilarious that I had to sell my son's bed to order pizza the first night, because I'd spent all our money and everyone was yelling about being hungry.

It was an interesting moment when the sim-social worker came.  All the family happened to be watching when she took our kids away.  I had a sense of dread for a moment there, figuring they'd both be reduced to tears.  They asked a lot of questions about where they'd gone, and when they were coming back.  I explained it as best I could.  I certainly hope they don't develop a phobia of being taken away out of this, but they seem fine.  I don't know if I CAN get them back, but I started a new family in a new town the next night ("very Simpsonesque move" a friend remarked).  This time we're much more focused on getting homework done every night and making sure there's food in the fridge.

I'm not sure how long this will be interesting to them (and me) but right now it's fun.  And once we get tired of it, The Sims Medieval is waiting...

Revisiting Oblivion, Part 1

Rediscovering the wonder of Oblivion through the eyes of children

To tide me over between now and Skyrim, last week I started playing Oblivion through for the second time. My two kids, Colin (4) and Maddy (5) were in the room when I started, so I told them it was the coolest game ever, and started through the tutorial. They were paying attention (rare) so I started reading my dialog choices out loud to them, so the responses would make sense.

That was the start of something. Two observations about the magic of this game; first, it's just as captivating the second time around (I wasn't sure it would be) and second, it is not lost on children. It wasn't long before I came to Kvatch, still a level 1. I was struggling to beat a single scamp at a time, but I went in there because my little cheerleading section demanded it.

The final path to the sigil stone was causing me total frustration; I had no business being there as a level 1 noob, after all, and I was ready to quit, but had one crazy thought. "Alright, guys" I said, "I'm going to try something. I'm just going to RUN."

So I did. I ran up the central spiral corridor, into the final hall, up the bone stairs, all the while gaining a larger and larger train of enemies, and my health fast-dwindling. I barreled toward the sigil stone like that Uruk-hai in the Helm's Deep siege, and grabbed it. As the room started to shake and everything started to go nuclear, I ran around like a panicked chicken, still taking hits and inches from death. And then the loading screen popped up. I cheered, I fist-pumped, and high-fived both the kids. It was fantastic.

What a moment. And they've been with me since then, getting more involved. I've been reading off the dialog choices and letting them decide. I've even been letting them play with the controls a bit. They're PopCap app junkies, and pretty darned good at Ragdoll Blaster, but this is big-league gaming. And they are digging it. My daughter's favorite thing so far is to make fun of my character's hairstyle every time I take my helmet off. Colin's favorite thing has been when I sneak up on something and "give em a WHACK!"



What's cool about playing the game this time through is that I'm sharing it with them. I had no idea how neat that'd be.