Once again, you knocked it out of the park with ideas. Thanks so much for this! We’ll definitely use some of these in the future. I love it.
By the way, I just got back from LA last week and really enjoyed 82. Blipsey was a bit of a rude awakening. I seem to have kept a much nicer memory of them in my head from when they were the only gig in town. Didn’t make it to Button Mashers, but I did play some in San Diego too. Thanks for all your input!
And with that, here’s episode 24, now with more Bowen.
Gosh, you named so many but here’s a few movie machines I think (??) you missed, which is understandable because I’d love to forget most of these films:
-Johnny Mnemonic
-Lost In Space
-Apollo 13
-Independence Day
-Congo
-The Flintstones
-Waterworld
-Rocky
-Total Recall (sort of, haha)
-Richie Rich (really REALLY sort of)
Wizard! was the one that I was screaming at the podcast player. The very first one
Y’all also missed a bunch of stern/sega/DE licenses. I think at least two if not three distinct movie tie-in Batman movies were skipped. (BDK, & the DE Batman with mini-DMD)
Oh man, I bet there are even more that aren’t mentioned here. It’s hard under pressure! Seems like you guys like this game a bit more than Name that Pin. I kinda do too. Pinball trivia would be a fun one some time. Hmm.
Here’s another episode for you all to scream at when I get answers wrong and give up! I thought of plenty other pins that fit this Last Pin Standing after the fact, so feel free to throw those answers in here too.
It’s that time again: a new Skill Shot Pincast is upon us. In this episode, we sit down with our friend Andy Burton and talk about the Hobbitses, getting in the zone, and how to maximise your quarter on location.
I was expressing my dislike for a rule that Dave Stewart talked about adding to tournaments:
If a player in a game goes on a tear and has a high scoring breakout game, at some point they will be asked to stop playing and end their game automatically, thus being awarded a win for their match/group. (so say in papa format, 4 points).
If another player in the group happens to come back and attain that same very high score, they will tie the other player and also receive max points (so, 4,4,1,0 in a papa group for example).
Not sure if this was expected to be applied to head to head match play.
Oh yeah, we recorded that one over a month ago so I didn’t have a clue what you were referring to.
I get why he wants that rule after the tournament went over time at NWPAS last year. Some kind of change had to happen. But yeah, what is the arbitrary threshold “run away” score and who decides it? I remember not liking the sound of that too much when we recorded. And wouldn’t it make it much easier to tie if a bunch of people got that score? Might as well be playing pin-golf at that point. Pinball tournaments exist because of the love of the game and a desire to be good at it. This rule takes a lot of that away.
That tends to get murky though since almost all the scores attained on that machine were done so before making it tournament ready (i.e. removing rubbers, tightening tilt, extending outlanes).
Yeah, I would make the tournament shorter by sticking with one of the many time-proven formats that already exist and don’t require a flowchart (not even exaggerating, go look at the NWPAS site) to explain to new players. Losing the ability to “beat” your opponent means we might as well just not have a tournament.
the flow chart may look complicated but to be franked it’s simple enough once you play. Like most tournament format, it all comes down to “if you suck, you lose…”.
While the runaway score rule isn’t ideal, it depends on how it’d be applied, and like others commented, there’s no way to specify in the rules exactly when a “runaway” situation was achieved. If it gets used on average ~once per tournament, or possibly less, not that big of a deal.
I think it’s important to note: the alternative to this rule is probably every machine gets set up insanely hard to prevent long games. I’d probably rather have a tourney with slightly fairer games with this rule in place than a tourney without the rule and much harder set up games.
Like DHS mentioned, the GC being the threshold for a game would make sense (as long as it was used in qualifying), and take TD’s discretion out of play, which seems like a good thing.
For a regional tournament this seems like a fine rule. For a bigger tourney that draws more top talent, seems like it’d take away from some great/memorable tourney moments. Of course, the Seattle area has enough top players to have these kinds of events, though.
At least the rule is applied the “right” way. Had a TD once ask if I’d take a loss against KCB when he was in a runaway situation on ball 2 or something. I just laughed and said I’d let him end the match if he gave neither of us a strike, or KCB the strike :). I think brakelope won’t let you resolve a match with neither getting a strike, though.
“Time-proven formats” were also once new formats. If no one ever tries anything new there would never have been the tournament format that you personally like the most.
That being said I don’t particularly care for a “runaway score” rule either.
I thought of plenty other pins that fit this Last Pin Standing after the fact, so feel free to throw those answers in here too.
