x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: farris@cig.mot.com (Dan Farris) Subject: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: 13 Jun 1995 01:57:11 GMT Well, I had fun! :-) The Minnesota State Championship was a really nicely run tournament. There were 32 brand new or nearly new games set up. Baywatch, No Fear, Dirty Harry, Theatre of Magic, Shadow and Big Hurt comprised the lineup. Of course all of the events ran pretty long, but fortunately the bar hosting the event had a 1 am closing time, so we weren't there all night! As it was, the Friday night Luck of the Draw tournament didn't actually end until Sunday am! There were the usual minor setup problems and some minor mechanical problems, but there were two incidents that merit special discussion. One was with Dirty Harry. On several occasions, right in the middle of the game, everything would go black for a couple of seconds, then the startup display would be shown. Instant game over! The bizzarre thing was that this happened on more than one of the machines, so it has all the earmarks of a software problem (L-2, I think.) From my observations, the three times it happened during matches that I was involved in, the player had just reached the 500 million mark. This may have been coincidence, because not every game reset when somebody scored that high. It was pretty strange, though! We were speculating that perhaps some unusual combinations of adjustments made to accommodate the tournament was the reason. I know that one of the games we changed the adjustments on didn't have any more problems. The second issue will no doubt be a sore spot for several people. The new Premier game, Big Hurt, had a software bug that turned out to be extremely rapeable^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H exploitable. I won't go into the exact details, but suffice it to say that there is a shot on the game that is worth 1 billion points. Under the right circumstances, it can be abused like you would not believe. Fortunately, the shot is not that easy and you have to do quite a bit of work to get to the point where you can set up for the kill. This brings up another thought. While playing doubles against us, Paul Madison had done a nice job of racking up 6.5 billion using this strategy. On Big Hurt, you can collect trading cards and then trade them in for various awards, depending on the number of cards you've got, like most recent Gottlieb games. If you have exactly 16 cards, no more or no less, you can trade them in for "Double your score". It so happens that he had 16 cards and had shot the two stand up targets to enable the hole for "Trade Cards". While he was lining up his shot for the kill, I was speculating if this could be the most points riding on a single shot in pinball history. He was holding the ball looking at a 6.5 billion shot! The only time I could recall anything close was doubling my score on Teed Off with a single shot, with maybe 3 or 4 billion riding on it. Has anyone collected more on a single shot? Lyman? Oh, by the way Paul's shot rimmed out and immediately drained! -- Dan Farris Motorola, Inc. farris@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group +1-708-632-3103 1501 W. Shure Drive Arlington Heights, IL 60004 x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: jenk0025@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Andrew R Jenkins) Subject: Minn. Tourney... first tournament. Date: 13 Jun 1995 10:04:22 -0500 Well, I went. I had a great time... that's what i wanted when i decided to go. I'm not sure if I could have asked for more. I had never been to a pinball tournament before, so my responses can't be compared to some past tourney. I'm pretty sure there is always room for improvement though. I thought Micheal Tate promoted a great tournament. I felt it was a good idea to have the Friday night Luck of the Draw. It gave some of us the opportunity to see the machines before the singles... needless to say I had never seen a D*rty H*rry, B*yw*tch, or Big Hurt. It was nice. I got to meet some cool people before going into the singles on Saturday too. It was exciting to watch new players play, Chicagoen's in specific. I had never seen anyone get so close to a machine until I saw certain players rub noses with the glass *grin*. It was interesting how much better the players from Chicago were. Paul Madison was great to watch, but I really enjoyed watching Dae Hegge kick other machines *grin*, or Rick Miller kick my ass in Big Hurt. Rick was nice to talk to, and nice to play against. I was undefeated up until I got to him.... if I would have one, maybe I would have gotten the third place instead of him *grin*. I did manage to leave with a trophy though. This will probably be my only moment of pinball fame... unless I go to the next tournament. Me and my luck of the draw partner managed to win the Saturday Night Luck of the Draw. It was fun. Got a little scary though when the Hocus Pocus magnet grabbed the ball from 3 inches down the left outlane of ToM. Needles to say the guy was rockin and rollin and catching up on us fast. He didn't know to rock the machine back and forth to change the direction. It dropped back the outlane when the magnet shut off. Whew..... I sure do look forward to seeing the new game from Gamestar... thanks for the tip rick... *grin* it's going to be cool. Hopefully *grin*. Well, I've rambled again.... Thinking about going to PAPA 6... maybe actually talk to Paul Madison this time. For some reason he made me nervous. P.S. Anyone that was at the tournament, do you know who this guy was?... Tall, thin blond mustache, fairly skinny with straight hair... wore a denim blue long sleeve shirt on Saturday... was doubles with Yvonne on the Friday night Luck of the Draw? Anyone? -- AndRew 'Monkeyboy' Jenkins ART ROCK FOREVER. x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: Greg Dunlap Subject: Re: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: 13 Jun 1995 05:37:12 GMT farris@cig.mot.com (Dan Farris) wrote: >Well, I had fun! :-) The Minnesota State Championship was a really >nicely run tournament. There were 32 brand new or nearly new games >set up. Baywatch, No Fear, Dirty Harry, Theatre of Magic, Shadow >and Big Hurt comprised the lineup. Of course all of the events ran >pretty long, but fortunately the bar hosting the event had a 1 am >closing time, so we weren't there all night! As it was, the Friday >night Luck of the Draw tournament didn't actually end until Sunday >am! Yes, this was a very smoothly running tournament. The organziers were very organized for a change, and they were very accommodating to the players when situations occurred. Only problems I haerd about were a couple of times when balls got stuck, a tech would remove it and drop it in the drain!!! "What, did you need that?" DUH! Dave Hegge made the very true point that this was the best food he had ever eaten at a pinball tournament. While pricey, the food at this bar was excellent. There was also an excellent tournout. Quite a lot of people came out, many from out of state. >The second issue will no doubt be a sore spot for several people. >The new Premier game, Big Hurt, had a software bug that turned out >to be extremely rapeable^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H exploitable. I won't go >into the exact details, but suffice it to say that there is a shot >on the game that is worth 1 billion points. Under the right >circumstances, it can be abused like you would not believe. >Fortunately, the shot is not that easy and you have to do quite a >bit of work to get to the point where you can set up for the kill. Well, I WILL go into the exact details if no no other reason than that I don't want anyone else to end up in the same situation a lot of people were in when this whole thing came out. In Big Hurt, there is a spiral which awards increasing values for a timed period. 500 thousand, 5M, 50M, 500M, 1B. During normal play, these value time out very very quickly. It would be very hard to hit any of the major awards. HOWEVER there are two modes which are started at various points wherein THE VALUES DO NOT TIME OUT. One is 7th Inning Stretch, started when you increase your innings to 7 (there are a variety of ways to do this) and the other is Grand Slam Derby, started when you spell Grand Slam through one of any assorted means. The worst part about this is both of these are multiball modes! I;m sure you can picture the scenario. Jason Werdrick is playing Rick Miller in singles competition, and Jason starts this mode, holds two balls on the left flipper, and starts looping this shot. Final Score: 14B. Of course once the secret was out everyone started in on the act, and the games would come down to who could set up the shot and hit it the most times. It was totally and utterly ludicrous. I can only pray that this is a software bug because if it isn't...it's a pretty ridiculous thing and makes the game utterly useless in a tournament setting. Finally towards the end of Saturday night, everyone was asked not to play the game anymore since the games were taking way too long to play and it was going way too late. Sound familiair? Other thoughts - at one time there was a three-way tie for doubles. Only two teams could advance. So what was done? A six-player game of Baywatch! Low score is out. I thought this was pretty great, probably the first time the six-player feature was put to a good use. For myself, I did relatively well. The higlight of the weekend had to be during a doubles round when Joel Iott and myself beat Dan and Dave Hegge in a game of The Shadow. I got 700M, decisively stomping Dave's 250M. This was quite a triumph for me since Dave had swept me in three games in a best of five earlier on. So overall it was an excellent flipping weekend. Hopefully this will become an annual event. I'll be there next time! GDD x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: sigma@MCS.COM (Kevin Martin) Subject: Re: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: 13 Jun 1995 12:05:08 -0500 farris@cig.mot.com (Dan Farris) writes: >He was holding the ball looking at a 6.5 billion shot! > >The only time I could recall anything close was doubling my score >on Teed Off with a single shot, with maybe 3 or 4 billion riding on >it. Has anyone collected more on a single shot? Lyman? On the more recent ST:TNG ROM revisions, you get 1B for each complete set of artifacts you have, up to a maximum of 10B. And 100M per Artifact. I think Lyman's started FF with 5 or 6 complete sets. 5 complete sets would be immediately worth 7B, 6 sets would be 8.4B. Just for flipping the ball into Start Mission. >Oh, by the way Paul's shot rimmed out and immediately drained! Well, of course ;) It's probably just as well - do we have any reason to believe that Premier games can handle over 10B these days? -- Kevin Martin sigma@mcs.com Pinball Archive: ftp.mcs.com(192.160.127.87):/mcsnet.users/sigma/pinball You have new mail. x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: joeli@centaur-e.eurpd.csg.mot.com (Joel Iott) Subject: Re: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: 14 Jun 1995 18:45:14 -0500 Newsflash about the Big Hurt billion bug (from some people in the know): It was a real bug, and Premier had shipped new ROMs to Minneapolis but they were not installed in the games. I would have to agree with some other comments in this thread that the Big Hurt scoring was too random. But, that could be considered part of the rules. No one's announced any of the winners yet, so here's what I know: Open Singles: 1st place: Dave Hegge 2nd place: Dan Farris Open Doubles: 1st place: Paul Madison & Fred Richardson 2nd place: Dave Hegge & Dan Farris Friday Night Luck-of-the-draw: 1st place: Paul Madison & Fred Richardson 2nd place: Dave Hegge & Joel Iott (My first trophy! yeah!) 3rd place: Dan Farris & Noel Steere As observant readers will note, the visiting Chicagoans did quite well. It does seem a bit odd to have non-Minnesota players at the "Minnesota State pinball championships", but nobody seemed to mind and everybody seemed to have a good time! >For myself, I did relatively well. The higlight of the weekend had to be >during a doubles round when Joel Iott and myself beat Dan and Dave Hegge >in a game of The Shadow. I got 700M, decisively stomping Dave's 250M. >This was quite a triumph for me since Dave had swept me in three games in >a best of five earlier on. My highlight of the tournament was on Saturday night for the first/second place match of Friday night L-o-t-Draw. Dave and myself won on No Fear against Paul & Fred. Then Dave had to leave to play for singles champion, so we decided that I would play BOTH slots against Paul & Fred. I don't think Paul & Fred took me very seriously, so that really got me motivated to kick butt on Theatre of Magic. By the third ball, my two games had a combined score of about 1.5 billion while they had about 800 million. This machine was getting balls stuck in the Vanish area so it was possible to have one ball multiballs. On Paul's last ball, he got a little more serious and managed to start one-ball Tiger Saw Multiball and get over 10 Tiger Saw Jackpots. This put their team at a combined score of 3.2 billion. I was the last player and had about 1.5 billion. I got a ball in the Vanish lock, and had one-ball regular multiball going. Unfortunately, I could not equal Paul's score and ended up with about 2 billion. But it was really exciting making the PAPA champion sweat a little bit! Hope that story wasn't too boring, but I thought it gives a good idea of what competitive pinball is all about. I also managed to get on TV! KARE had a 15 second or so blurb on Sunday on the tournament and they filmed me playing Theatre of Magic. Extreme closeup!!! If I knew, I would have shaved! Paul Madison was interviewed Friday Night on another channel. Also fun was watching Dave Hegge get jump loop after jump loop on No Fear. It was really fun hearing the Skull scream "Aaaaaaaah!". I only wished he would scream more often (the Skull, not Dave). Some Baywatch comments: I really hate how those long, long, LONG modes don't let you start multiball. The games' rules mean that for top scores the only thing worth going for is multiball. The shark flipper is pretty useless. Most times I just let the ball go by instead of flipping since the flipper gave the ball too much side-to-side motion. -- Joel Iott joeli@eurpd.csg.mot.com x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: jenk0025@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Andrew R Jenkins) Subject: Re: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: 15 Jun 1995 08:18:16 -0500 >Friday Night Luck-of-the-draw: >1st place: Paul Madison & Fred Richardson >2nd place: Dave Hegge & Joel Iott (My first trophy! yeah!) >3rd place: Dan Farris & Noel Steere You can't forget Saturday's night luck of the draw which was rather easier in scope. The tournament heads wouldn't let anyone in the Friday's tourney compete in Saturday's if they were still playing in the Friday nights. Unfortunately I don't know the names of everyone for the Saturday's LOTD, but hey... I know one for sure (self congratulating grin...) 1st place: Andrew Jenkins & Eric Z. (Never new hi last name) 2nd place: ? & ? (They played awesome, and scared the sh*t out of me on their last game) 3rd place: Yvonne & ? (Yvonne sure is fun to watch play, and she's pretty nice) >As observant readers will note, the visiting Chicagoans did quite well. >It does seem a bit odd to have non-Minnesota players at the "Minnesota >State pinball championships", but nobody seemed to mind and everybody >seemed to have a good time! It was kind of weird for them to be there, but they sure brought out the best in me. I got to play Joel and Dave on Big Hurt on Friday night. It was fun... particularily when Dave would tilt other machines instead of the Big Hurt. Thanks for the game... >Also fun was watching Dave Hegge get jump loop after jump loop on No >Fear. It was really fun hearing the Skull scream "Aaaaaaaah!". I only >wished he would scream more often (the Skull, not Dave). Can someone tell me how many you have to do before it starts screaming at you. Rick Miller (3rd place in Singles) had about 5 in a row, but I never heard it scream. Just curious! See ya next year Joel? (you probably don't remember me, but I had on the good ol horn rim glasses *grin*) -- AndRew 'Monkeyboy' Jenkins ART ROCK FOREVER. x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: farris@cig.mot.com (Dan Farris) Subject: Re: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: 15 Jun 1995 18:19:36 GMT In article <9506142344.AA03737@eurpd.csg.mot.com>, joeli@centaur-e.eurpd.csg.mot.com (Joel Iott) writes: |> Newsflash about the Big Hurt billion bug (from some people in the know): |> It was a real bug, and Premier had shipped new ROMs to Minneapolis but |> they were not installed in the games. That's typical. Do ANY field upgrades ever get installed? |> No one's announced any of the winners yet, so here's what I know: |> |> Open Singles: |> 1st place: Dave Hegge |> 2nd place: Dan Farris 3rd place: Rick Miller The three of us all travelled together, too. We barely had room for all of the trophies. :-) |> As observant readers will note, the visiting Chicagoans did quite well. |> It does seem a bit odd to have non-Minnesota players at the "Minnesota |> State pinball championships", but nobody seemed to mind and everybody |> seemed to have a good time! Of course if you believe that Harris character from PAPA, the Chicago folks have way too much of advantage and shouldn't be allowed to play. |> I also managed to get on TV! KARE had a 15 second or so blurb on Sunday on |> the tournament and they filmed me playing Theatre of Magic. Extreme |> closeup!!! If I knew, I would have shaved! Paul Madison was interviewed |> Friday Night on another channel. Right in the middle of my dinner, too. There on a 10 foot big screen is the extreme closeup of Joel playing Theatre. |> Also fun was watching Dave Hegge get jump loop after jump loop on No |> Fear. It was really fun hearing the Skull scream "Aaaaaaaah!". I only |> wished he would scream more often (the Skull, not Dave). Are you sure that wasn't me, when I saw your face on the big screen? :-) |> Some Baywatch comments: I really hate how those long, long, LONG modes |> don't let you start multiball. The games' rules mean that for top scores |> the only thing worth going for is multiball. Yeah, especially the helicopter mode. I inadvertently started that mode on my last ball of the tournament. I was going to just wait it out, when I heard some whining behind me about "ball time", so I just shot it and of course it hit something and drained. Oh well, can't complain about getting 2nd place against Paul & Fred. -- Dan Farris Motorola, Inc. farris@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group +1-708-632-3103 1501 W. Shure Drive Arlington Heights, IL 60004 x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: farris@cig.mot.com (Dan Farris) Subject: Re: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: 16 Jun 1995 01:46:52 GMT In article <3rpbuo$knm@maroon.tc.umn.edu>, jenk0025@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Andrew R Jenkins) writes: |> 1st place: Andrew Jenkins & Eric Z. (Never new hi last name) |> 2nd place: ? & ? (They played awesome, and scared the sh*t out of me on their |> last game) |> 3rd place: Yvonne & ? (Yvonne sure is fun to watch play, and she's pretty nice) Way to go, Andrew! |> >Also fun was watching Dave Hegge get jump loop after jump loop on No |> >Fear. It was really fun hearing the Skull scream "Aaaaaaaah!". I only |> >wished he would scream more often (the Skull, not Dave). |> |> Can someone tell me how many you have to do before it starts screaming |> at you. Rick Miller (3rd place in Singles) had about 5 in a row, but I never |> heard it scream. Just curious! I was thinking that it was 6, so that sounds about right. |> See ya next year Joel? |> (you probably don't remember me, but I had on the good ol horn rim glasses |> *grin*) EVERY tournament, PAPA included, should have nametags for every competitor. I met quite a few people, but darn if I can remember everyone's name. With nametags, though, I'd probably leave there knowing almost everyone. -- Dan Farris Motorola, Inc. farris@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group +1-708-632-3103 1501 W. Shure Drive Arlington Heights, IL 60004 x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: hindenbu@tellabs.com (Brian Hindenburg) Subject: Re: Minnesota tournament thoughts Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 17:07:23 GMT In article <3rqfgh$4ta@mojo.eng.umd.edu> dstewart@glue.umd.edu (David B. Stewart) writes: >Um, how in the world did Paul and Fred end up together in a luck-of-the >draw tournament???? Was it fixed??? :) :) Yeah, strange...also in the sranger-than-fiction category, in Saturday's luck-of-the-draw, I got paired with my Doubles and travelling partner, Matthew Ford. It was a good tune-up for Sunday's Doubles! >:) (Winning the pinball machine during that LOD didn't hurt, either!) :) +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Brian Hindenburg (hindenbu@tellabs.com)| dew-dappled daisies | |----------------------------------------| flitting monarch butterfly | | "When you believe in things that you | stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp| | don't understand, then you suffer." | | | --Stevie Wonder, _Superstition_ | --haiku from rec.arts.poems | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x* From: hindenbu@tellabs.com (Brian Hindenburg) Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 17:01:28 GMT In article <3rk9dm$mql@maroon.tc.umn.edu> jenk0025@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Andrew R Jenkins) writes: > It was exciting to watch new players play, Chicagoen's in specific. I guess I was wrong when I thought there wouldn't be too many of us (Chicagoans) there. :) >Thinking about going to PAPA 6... maybe actually talk to Paul Madison this >time. For some reason he made me nervous. You weren't the only one. He didn't seem to have too much to say to anyone, but just sat quietly. I spoke to him, but he either didn't hear me or chose to ignore me. *shrug* >P.S. Anyone that was at the tournament, do you know who this guy was?... >Tall, thin blond mustache, fairly skinny with straight hair... wore a >denim blue long sleeve shirt on Saturday... was doubles with Yvonne on the >Friday night Luck of the Draw? Anyone? Yeah. His name was either Kris or Kristian, I don't remember which. He wore Q101 (local Chicago radio station) shirts on other days...played VERY well. He and Yvonne took down me and my partner in Friday's LOD. They were our first match. *sigh* (Apologies--wasted bandwith for those who couldn't care less.) :) +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Brian Hindenburg (hindenbu@tellabs.com)| dew-dappled daisies | |----------------------------------------| flitting monarch butterfly | | "When you believe in things that you | stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp| | don't understand, then you suffer." | | | --Stevie Wonder, _Superstition_ | --haiku from rec.arts.poems | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+