This feed contains the most recent stories posted by Pinsider robin. http://pinside.com/pinball/community/pinsiders/robin/stories Copyright 2010 Pinside.com http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/fun-facts http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/fun-facts http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/fun-facts#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:47:51 GMT As our pinball forum is getting busier each day, some people step forward with excellent ideas. One of these plans found its way to both the Pinside homepage and the archive page today! I'm talking about drbond's idea to show fun facts containing little trivia and cool stuff that you probably didn't know about a game.  Well, we decided that it would be best to build this feature on top of the existing information in our archive, for example here's Twilight Zone's details page. We are pulling the trivia directly from the "comments" section of each machine. But not all comments are as interesting to ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-three-slots http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-three-slots http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-three-slots#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:00:17 GMT Anyone who's ever been to the Vegas strip knows it's not easy winning on slots. In pinball that's really not different, although modern games will do their best to give you just the award you need. But let's not go ahead of this story and start at the beginning of this part three of our series in "Gambling and pinball". In our previous story we looked at poker and pinball and in part one we had an overview of games featuring roulette wheels. All good and well, but we saved the best for last: what about a fully working slot machine in a pinball game? But is it not with mixed feelings that I look at ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/machines-now-need-8-ratings-to-enter-the-top-100 http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/machines-now-need-8-ratings-to-enter-the-top-100 http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/machines-now-need-8-ratings-to-enter-the-top-100#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:15:40 GMT I did a bit of poking around in our ratings database tonight, and concluded that I can increase the number of ratings required for a machine to appear in the top 100 to a minimum of 8 ratings. This means that a game will now need 8 approved ratings before it is eligible for our Top 100. The number was previously set to a value of 6 minimum votes beause we simpy didn't have enough ratings. With our current ratings count of 13,225 approved ratings, this is no longer the case and the number can be upped to 8 minimum ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-releases-big-buck-hunter http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-releases-big-buck-hunter http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-releases-big-buck-hunter#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:12:45 GMT Update: The following video was just posted to the Stern channel: Today, Stern has announced their new game "Big Buck Hunter" - Below you find the press release: "Pinball is sure to challenge new hunters, as well as seasoned marksmen". Big Buck Hunter® PRO Pinball by Stern Pinball, Inc. (www.sternpinball.com) is a hunting game that delivers a hot new quarry of no-limit fun to players everywhere. Big Buck Hunter® PRO Pinball is based on the hugely successful Big Buck Hunter® Arcade Video Game series by Raw Thrills, Inc. and Play Mechanix, Inc. Eugene Jarvis, George Petro, and Mark Ritchie of Raw Thrills/Play Mechanix assisted the staff at Stern Pinball with ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/10000-machine-ratings-and-the-top-200 http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/10000-machine-ratings-and-the-top-200 http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/10000-machine-ratings-and-the-top-200#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 17:53:49 GMT After last months milestone of going over 10,000 approved rating, today we have reached another milestone. We now have 200 machines that have passed the 6 votes treshold! What does that mean? Well, as you may know, for a game to be in the Pinside Top 100, it should have at least 6 validated ratings. All ratings are manually validated against our rating guidelines by one of the Pinside admins. We check for "troll votes" to make sure that ratings are serious and not just there to (dis)credit a particular machine.  When a game has reached 6 validated ratings, it may be included ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-announces-new-nba-machine http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-announces-new-nba-machine http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-announces-new-nba-machine#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 13:02:22 GMT Stern has just announced their latest game: "NBA", a licensed theme featuring USA basketball. For basketball fans -and there are quite a lot, according to the Stern press release, it was about time for another game of basket-pinball. After all, it's been over 8 years since the last basketball-themed pin rolled of the Chicago factory lines. And while many of you now probably think of one of Bally's last games, the 1997 "NBA Fastbreak", I'm actually referring to that other 1997 game: "Space Jam". Apparently, NBA will bear close resemblance to the layout of the Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny pin. An early preview from Pinballnews calls the ... http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/koog-competitie-ronde-6 http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/koog-competitie-ronde-6 http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/koog-competitie-ronde-6#comments Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:21:25 GMT Je hebt van die avonden dat alles lukt. De bal loopt goed, alle schoten gaan raak, de jokerpotten worden je door iedereen aangeboden (omdat je misschien in voorgaande ronden wat minder goed speelde) en het bier smaakt voortreffelijk. Onze trouwe bezoeker Marcel had het avondje wel! Hij speelde maar liefst 7 jokerpotten (Pieter en Nico waren de enigen die verstandig waren om Marcel niet uit te dagen en de eerste pot is natuurlijk nooit met jokers) en won in totaal 9 keer. Alleen neef Arno wist nog een beetje te intimideren en een jokerpotje te pakken. Maar zelf met die ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-announces-24-pinball-machine http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-announces-24-pinball-machine http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/stern-announces-24-pinball-machine#comments Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:43:46 GMT UPDATE: As user Swissorcapin kindly points out in the comments, "24" has just received a fantastic software update! - Wizard Mode ("Master Agent") - "Save the President" (comes after all 3 MB's where started) - Escape - Skill Shot (ok, a very simple one) - Shaker motor code Jack Bauer is back, but this time in Stern Pinball’s new 24 pinball machine.  Designed by Steve Ritchie (Designer of some of the greatest games of all time like Black Knight, Terminator 2, Star Trek: TNG and last year's Spiderman) and Stern’s engineering team, Stern Pinball takes FOX’s hit television show and turns it into one ... http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/uitslagen-koog-competitie-2009-ronde-4 http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/uitslagen-koog-competitie-2009-ronde-4 http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/uitslagen-koog-competitie-2009-ronde-4#comments Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:20:39 GMT Vrijdag 6 februari - vanwege de voorjaarsvakantie weer eens op de eerste van de maand - op de bekende lokatie en dit keer gezellig druk (13 deelnemers): Ronde 4 van de Koog competitie! Vanavond was voor mij extra spannend want voor het eerst in tijden had ik weer eens iets aan de software veranderd - het systeem met de laptop wat we al weer een jaar of vijf gebruiken. Ik vond al een tijdje dat er iets moest worden bedacht zodat je in principe op een avond 10 verschillende kasten zou krijgen, en niet een aantal machines dubbel moest spelen. Van de ... http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/koog-competitie-2009-stand-na-3-ronden http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/koog-competitie-2009-stand-na-3-ronden http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/koog-competitie-2009-stand-na-3-ronden#comments Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:44:46 GMT Na weer een heftig avondje flipperen was het vanavond  eindelijk weer eens een echt goede avond voor Helen! Haar beste avond in tijden en dan maar meteen met een monsterscore. Hier volgen de uitslagen (gespeeld - gewonnen - verloren - totaal): Helen De Haan 10 7 3 453 Pieter Put 10 8 2 404 Pascal Visser 10 5 5 343 Robin van Mourik 10 6 4 308 Marcel van Tol 10 3 7 293 Alex Duin 10 6 4 271 Udo Jansen 10 4 6 235 Oscar Van Baten 10 3 7 205 Arno van Tol 10 4 6 198 Jacob Put 10 4 6 175 Martijn van Mourik 10 4 6 161 Pascal gaat aan kop, op de voet gevolgd door Helen. Op kleine afstand Pieter en Robin! Let op: Je mag 1 avond missen, dus het gaat om de laatste kolom (totaal minus slechtste). Tot volgende maand! Speler Nov Dec Jan Totaal Totaal minus slechtste 1 Pascal Visser 281 441 343 1065 784 2 Helen de Haan 307 283 453 1043 760 3 Pieter Put 317 305 404 1026 721 4 Robin v Mourik 292 391 308 991 699 5 Arno ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/new-stern-machine-csi http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/new-stern-machine-csi http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/new-stern-machine-csi#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:46:55 GMT Update: Two weeks after publishing our initial CSI story, Stern has now released an offical press statement about Crime Scene Investigation. Possibly going slighly over the top this time, calling Gary Stern the "Godfather of Pinball" and stating that 'mystery'-based pinball is the story telling mechanism of the future, but who reads these press releases anyway? ;-) Stern aims at another great license and they sure got one with CSI, the U.S. most popular TV show! November 11, 2008 -- Stern Pinball, Inc. solves another mystery with the new CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION pinball machine.  Designed by Pat Lawlor Design and ... http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/over-de-koog-collectie http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/over-de-koog-collectie http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/over-de-koog-collectie#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:12:36 GMT De collectie van onze gameroom is een altijd veranderend landschap geweest van -vooral moderne- flipperkasten. Sinds het bijeenbrengen van de collecties van Martijn, Egbert en mij (ergens in 2000, denk ik dat het was) en de daaropvolgende opening van "de Koog" met de eerste Friday Night Pinball hebben al vele mensen kennis gemaakt met de Koog collectie. Hier een terugblik... Voor Martijn en Robin begon de collectie met een Doctor Who, een Whirlwind en de Twilight Zone. Egbert bracht als eerste een Firepower maar ook al snel een topper die er nog altijd staat, Corvette. Egbert had toen nog een auto ... http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/welkom-in-de-koog http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/welkom-in-de-koog http://pinside.com/pinball/koog/articles/welkom-in-de-koog#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:36:24 GMT De Koog is de naam van de Gameroom (op een industrieterrein in Alkmaar) waar wij, de Pinsiders, ons wekelijks portie pinball krijgen! Door onze voorkeur voor de wat modernere flipperkasten vind je bij ons voornamelijk kasten van na 1990. We hebben een wisselende collectie van plusminus 20 machines (Klik hier voor een overzicht van de huidige collectie). Hoewel onze gameroom alleen op uitnodiging toegankelijk is, is in principe iedere flippergek (of eenieder die dat wil worden) van harte welkom! In tegenstelling tot wat sommige mensen denken, ben je ook als je nog voor geen meter kan flipperen van harte welkom bij ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/the-pinsidecom-marketwatch http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/the-pinsidecom-marketwatch http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/the-pinsidecom-marketwatch#comments Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:24:09 GMT Pinside.com announces a cool new feature for all Pinball collectors out there: The Pinside.com Marketwatch. The Pinside Market Watch monitors classifieds ads on the internet and notifies you when machines on your wishlist are spotted. This allows you to be among the first to bid on those items and to get your hand on those hard to get pinball machines before someone else does. For now, we have started with Ebay and of course the ads from our own Pinside Marketplace but we may add other ad sites in the future. To get the right notifications, you'll need to set up your ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/rating-comments http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/rating-comments http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/rating-comments#comments Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:12:43 GMT Just a quick blog to let you know that I have introduced a new feature on the site: Rating Comments! From now on, anyone rating a machine can leave a comment along with their rating. Tell people why you rated the machine like you have and climb on the soapbox to tell anyone why a particular machine is great - or not so great - and why they should or should not consider buying one! So go ahead, jump to your favourite machines ratings page and click on the 'Change my rating' (or add rating if you hadn't done so already). Scroll ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/big-change-weekend-for-internet-explorer-users http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/big-change-weekend-for-internet-explorer-users http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/big-change-weekend-for-internet-explorer-users#comments Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:19:09 GMT Ah, this weekend finally gave me some time for mayor bug-shooting operations on the Pinside! Bug shooting? Well, yeah, you know... Computer bugs. Errors in the code. Even a great site like the Pinside has some of these microscopic creatures (ahem, quite a lot of 'em to be honest). You see, ever since the launch of our new site, back in May of this year, we have added a little contact button in the header of each page. We didn't expect to get much people to actually use it, but boy, we were wrong. Quite a lot of you take the ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/the-new-pinsidecom-logo http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/the-new-pinsidecom-logo http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/the-new-pinsidecom-logo#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:51:46 GMT After weeks of moving pixels around, we are proud to present our new logo! The new logo needed to have some ties to the old one: we wanted to have a fat typeface, like the old logo and which is quite common in pinball design. We wanted to keep our blue-and-yellow ball as it is already so recognisable and it has served us so well these past eight years.  We wanted flippers. Huh? Yeah, haven't you spotted them yet? We also had some tough decisions to make. We decided to ditched the "dot com" from the logo entirely. We also added a ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-two-poker http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-two-poker http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-two-poker#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:42:18 GMT In this second story in our series about gambling and pinball (here is the first one), Pinside.com will tell you why you won't need to learn poker strategy to play a poker themed pinball machine. We'll have a look at poker in general, the poker community and the popularity of the poker theme in Pinball. In the last four decades, starting in the mid-seventies, the game of poker  went through a series of developments which lead to poker becoming far more popular than it previously was. Mind you, the game of poker has been around since the 15th century, but it took 400 years ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/to-mod-or-not-to-mod http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/to-mod-or-not-to-mod http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/to-mod-or-not-to-mod#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:42:35 GMT Ah, pinball mods! We see them all the time on Ebay, in other people's gamerooms, maybe even in your machine? There are the well-known  Twilight Zone lamp-, slot- and rocket mods. We've seen backbox toppers, LED kits, puppets and much more! For our upcoming story about pinball modding, we want to find out what the coolest mods are and wether modding your machine will really make you the coolest kid on the block. In fact, the coolest kid will win our brand new Pinside.com T-Shirt! That's the question! Send us pictures(*) of your favorite pinball mod installed in your machine and tell us what's so cool ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/small-design-changes http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/small-design-changes http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/small-design-changes#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:08:55 GMT If you're the watchful type, you'll probably have gathered that something has changed about the site. Something feels different? What is it? Well for starters, let's just say that I got a bit tired of the background image. It was a bit to busy the way it was, and so I decided to replace it with a very subtle striped gradient. Another thing that was bothering me was the dotted lines everywhere. They were a remnant of the old Pinside, but since that site is long gone now I decided to get rid of most of the dotted lines as well. The homepage ... http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/batman-the-dark-knight/stories/batman-plays-the-silverball-again http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/batman-the-dark-knight/stories/batman-plays-the-silverball-again http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/batman-the-dark-knight/stories/batman-plays-the-silverball-again#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:19:09 GMT Stern have just released information about their new game! Most of you probably already figured out what it'll be, but for the sake of completeness... Yep that's right, after the fabulous first batman machine (Data East 1991) and the pretty incredibly sophisticated second batman machine (Sega 1995) it's now time for Stern to make a pinball machine out of this superhero. But Batman (or Bat-Man as he was first called) has been around quite a bit longer than that! He first appeared as a comic in the late thirties of the previous century (almost 70 years ago) and has been going ... http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-one-roulette http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-one-roulette http://pinside.com/pinball/community/articles/gambling-and-pinball-part-one-roulette#comments Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:11:10 GMT In this first story of a series of three on "gambling and pinball", we take a look at roulette themed pinball machines. From the early electro-mechanics to the recent Sterns, the game of roulette has always been a hot theme in pinball. We'll study 5 machines from different times to look for their "roulette wheel coolness". Pinball and roulette are loosely related. This is not totally coincidental: although some of you may now flinch as I suggest this, I think there are loads of similarities between the two games, if you think about it: Both games revolve around a little ball, around luck, around skill, both ... http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/sponsors-wanted http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/sponsors-wanted http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/sponsors-wanted#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:43:27 GMT We're well into the fourth month now, after the great Pinside.com redesign of April 2008 and thinks have fallen a little silent on our end. Of course we have been monitoring the site and fixing small bugs (some of which have been reported by you, thanks for that!). But then, inevitably, other work came round and before we knew it we had not more than one hour, maybe two, per week to spend on the Pinside. You see, as much as wel love maintaining and building cool new features for the Pinside, money needs to be made as well. We can't ... http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/big-bang-bar/stories/the-end-of-capcom-pinball http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/big-bang-bar/stories/the-end-of-capcom-pinball http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/big-bang-bar/stories/the-end-of-capcom-pinball#comments Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:28:54 GMT It starts in early 1997. Two machines, "Big Bang Bar" and "Kingpin", were the last machines ever to see the light of day in the Capcom Pinball Factory. In prototype stage that is. Originally planned to have been produced in Capcoms usual production run of around 1000 machines, only 14 Big Bang Bars and 9 Kingpin prototypes were actually made. And then the Capcom pinball division went out of business. Now, most people who have played one of the Big Bang Bar prototypes seem to agree that this machine could have turned the tide for Capcom Pinball. Supposedly the machine has all that a pinball fan could wish for: ... http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/attack-from-mars/stories/reports-are-coming-in-from-all-over-the-world-the-earth-is-under-attack-an-attack-from-mars http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/attack-from-mars/stories/reports-are-coming-in-from-all-over-the-world-the-earth-is-under-attack-an-attack-from-mars http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/attack-from-mars/stories/reports-are-coming-in-from-all-over-the-world-the-earth-is-under-attack-an-attack-from-mars#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 13:32:39 GMT Pressing the start button of Bally's 1995 attack From Mars yields the above or one of various other unnerving quotes. Yes, it is true, the Martians have landed and they have rather nasty plans with our planet. The machine's theme looks to be affiliated with the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks!" (starring a bunch of Hollywood stars), but this is not the case. "It is in no way related", according to George Gomez, "Brian Eddy had the concept long before the movie and it is mere coincidence that they emerged on the market within a year of each other". Related or not, the theme has ...