I had a couple awesome moments that spring to mind from last weekend.
On Junkyard, I made a shot, bricked and drained. Ball save on many machines are off, and after having watched other players do the same thing as me I was expecting the bonus count. As I turn around to walk away I see the “he’s got a ball save but I shouldn’t say anything” look, turned around just in time to flip it and start crane hurry-up multiball. That hurry up multiball really saved me, too. Everyone was having lots of trouble starting the regular one.
On Hurricane, ball 3, player 4 I had to overcome 12 or so million points for first. I start multiball, and try to get the balls under control. I trap one on each flipper, and the third ball finds itself at rest on the inlane/outlane post on the left side. I thought that was hilarious and ask someone to take a picture since my hands were full. I forgot to ask them to send that to me, doh! After that I nudge the ball into the inlane and start crushing the Hurricane ramp until I won.
My personal highlight was finally getting to play TSPP in a Pinburgh bank; we don’t really have any on location around here so I rarely get to play it competitively. Managed to successfully complete Alien Invasion which felt awesome to do on a PAPA machine
Runner up moment was playing Batman (Dark Knight) as my final game on Friday night and blowing it up. Felt like a good omen since I put up a total turd on that game in A finals 2 years ago but alas my finals performance was just about as bad this time around
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it always boggles me: WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE WHO LIKE AND/OR CAN PLAY TSPP??? I am hard pressed to think of another game I want to like and actually just completely despise. If you were to add the ball times of every game of TSPP I’ve ever played together, it would not break 10 minutes.
I kinda feel the same way. I like it, in that I like the Simpsons and think it’s pretty fun, but I am consistently horrendous on it in competition nad never seem to improve significantly.
It’s a game with a lot of subtleties that require situational decision making so being familiar with all the rules makes a huge difference IMO. My basic advice is to always shoot for the lowest hanging fruit (ie, don’t go out of your way to grind out a specific feature/MB when there’s another one only 2 shots away) and to always re-light mystery when you’re on the upper playfield~
Now that there’s been one on location near me in excellent condition, I’ve started to really enjoy it. For the longest time, it seems like every TSPP I had played on location was cursed with some major problem in one way or another (usually a useless upper right flipper).
After doing horrible on Day 2 and finding out I wasn’t going to qualify- I felt a huge weight off my shoulders in round 10.
I woke up Saturday feeling pretty good. I didn’t feel stressed out about Intergalactic because I knew how hard it would be to qualify. Last year I qualified and finished 20th. This year I was the 6th highest qualifier and finished 11th. I managed to flip the switch from day 2 to day 3 and played really well. Playing on the stage with other great players on Sunday was so much fun.
I like TSPP - for me, the depth of rules gives it a unique feel over a long game, and I love the stacking ability. In the beginning you’re working to stack as many modes as you can with the couple multiballs, but as the game progresses you gain the ability to stack some of the wizard modes together with the regular features or even with other wizard modes. Getting SMS and Scratchy’s Revenge can be incredibly lucrative, but also very hard to set up. So many ways to score once you get past the beginning. Set EB to points and stack Crazy EB with a multiball, etc. Crazy EB, SMS, Alien Invasion are all very unique and fun modes to play. Great use of Simpsons quotes throughout as well.
Loosen, rotate the UR flipper on the UPF about 5 degrees clockwise and re-clamp, will make that couch shot much harder and nerf this strategy. Conversely, if no one is making the lock on your home or location game, rotating that flipper a little counterclockwise puts the sweet spot close to the couch ramp entrance.
Set the garage door to ex hard as well to discourage trips to the UPF.
I love TSPP. The One Timer To Rule Them All is brilliant, and you’re pretty much always within two shots of restarting that timer. Victory Laps rule is great. The playfield layout is very unique. Great theming/callouts if you like The Simpsons (and who doesn’t?). One of the more played games in my collection.
I’ve never played a TSPP that worked well, so I feel like I’ve never played it at all. I will say that it’s a game that is terrible when it’s in disrepair. If the flippers can’t reliably make the garage on a backhand, the game is just a bummer.
It’s a shame I didn’t make time to play one at Pinburgh/Replay! Next year!
It was 2015, my first ever Pinburgh, first ever round, and I was first up…
I was completely unseeded (there was no IFPA player number identification before the comp began back in 2015, but even so, I would have been way down there), so my first round was against some top seeds, like … only Andrei Massenkoff!! Julie Schober was a name I also knew well from reputation too. Mark Carvey I didn’t know, but soon realised is no slouch either. Baptism by fire it is then I thought.
And then when I started playing I fairly quickly managed to get settled and play some decent games. Everyone was friendly, chit chatting between balls. Andrei gave us a breakdown of how to play Cosmic Gunfight before we got started. Very relaxed atmosphere and exactly what I needed to settle the nerves.
And before I know it, the round is over, someone totted up the scores, and … “you came out top, well done”. Not every day you come out top over a world champion. Those are the kind of things that only happened at Pinburgh, and I’m delighted to have experienced it a handful of times, but anguished that the chance might not come up again.
13m behind on Vegas after 2 crappy balls and the prospect of taking a zero. Did the only thing any sane person would… soft plunged to the right flipper, then I somehow managed to shoot 26 consecutive left orbits without missing to crawl my way out of that deficit into a 3.
I also almost managed to get a perfectly “average” second day in A… 6-6-6-6… and 7.
Also 2017 - just the fact that I, ranked about 500-600 or so at the time, managed just to make A playoffs on what was my very first Pinburgh.
Posted this to a FB thread talking about the same stuff.
2019 was my second Pinburgh (2017 was the first). I have lots of fond memories of both, but 2019 was great as I got to meet a lot of people I had never met in person before as well as catch up with others I hadn’t seen since 2017.
But 2019 I played much much better and was sitting 8th after day one. That set up day 2 to get to play with the tippy top players and it was awesome. My favorite group had Stephanie T (One IPod One Pinball), @ericwag, and Todd Macculloch. After the group was done (I think it was a close match between a few of us), we had a break, and I got to sit down with Todd and some of his friends.
I always have a bunch of beer on me, so we sat and talked and had beers for the whole next break. Bullshitted mostly about pinball but got to know each other in other ways too.
I’ll never forget that. Moments like those are what make that event so special. Yeah we came for the pinball, but I’d like to think most all of us stay for the people and come back because of the people. At least that’s how I am.
Also I think this round was the bank with the mean Demoman. Haha
I started going to Pinburgh in 2013. I had no idea what competitive pinball was at the time and seen there was this competitive tournament in Pittsburgh. I had always played pinball when I was young and felt I had a pretty good game at that time so figured I would put this on my bucket list and purchased a ticket and flew out for my first pinball tournament ever. I had no contacts, no one I knew but when I was downstairs for breakfast I recognized a guy on one of the videos I had watched his name turned out to be Bowen. Had a nice chat with him and then proceeded to get into the shuttle to go to the old PAPA facility. On the way there there was a person behind me and I introduced myself and asked where he was from and he said Edmonton Alberta, Canada I said no shit I am from there too. It is funny that one of the first people I ended up talking too came all the way to the same tournament. Turns out we were the only two that came from Edmonton at the time so was pretty ironic us meeting. That tournament set the stage for me to get motivated to grow the scene in my city as there was nothing at all. Over time was able to bring together a number of collectors and we had PinNights over the next two years until I decided to start an official league Die Hard Pinball. That has morphed into now a strong pinball scene in Edmonton and Calgary in our province and we also have a major international show that we run YEGPIN. It is amazing what a small pinball tournament can do and feel very lucky that I took that chance and jumped on the plane to Pittsburgh.
Fast forward to 2016, where I finished in 11th overall had to be the biggest highlight on my entire career, really felt at that time that I had the game that could compete with the best in the world. Almost forgot to get into the finals that year I had to play in a tiebreaker the top 3 of 9 made it, the game we played was Quicksilver, never actually played the game before that day and managed to kill it with 1.2M in front of a huge crowd that had nothing to do but to see who was going to advance.
And in 2019, where I was travelling with a buddy and our plane got cancelled in New York and we thought our Pinburgh dream was over. It was 10:30pm and all of the rental cars were booked at LaGuardia Airport and we didn’t have time to mess around so I quickly booked a SUV at Winchester Airport. So we took a one hour $150 cab ride to their just got their in time before they closed at Midnight and picked up the SUV and then drove straight to Pittsburgh to try and make it for registration at 8:00am. Well I drove all night and actually made it on time at 7:00am we dropped off the rental took a cab downtown and made to hotel for check in and ran to event to make it for 8:00am, on top of it all I made it through the day not sleeping for 38 hours straight and even got a perfect round in my first round lol… Pinburgh I will never forget you and many thanks to all of the folks that made this great event happen. I can honestly say that I would have never gotten to meet so many great people or been a part of so many great memories over the last 7 years without it.
Pinburgh 2003 on top of a hotel in Pittsburgh. My friend John who I met at a pinball league around Philly told me about this big tournament in Pittsburgh. I knew next to nothing about tournaments having only competed in a small league at the time. He introduced me to his friend Andrei from California. Took me about thirty seconds of watching Andrei play that realize he was phenomenal.
If my memory serves me right, Pinburgh was PAPA style qualifying at that point. I qualified for the B division playoffs, along with Andrei. Faced him in the semifinals, along with another guy who obviously knew how to play. I managed to win a game of AFM in the semis, had to chase down the other guys 5.7B. I managed to walk away with 5.9B. My friend than tells me that my opponents dad had saved pinball back in the 70’s and he was pretty much expected to win B.
I failed to advance to the finals, losing a tiebreaker on FH, 6M- 11M against Adam McKinney. Zack Sharpe did win B that year. Andrei has also won a few things since than.
