I just wanted to give my now annual shout out of thanks to the Northwest Pinball and Gameroom show crew for once again running a great show!

The new venue was great in my eyes, there was actually room to move around. The only negatives I could spout is it was really loud (like having your head stuck in a jet engine) and the bottled water cost more than a side of fries . The former is just par for the course when you have 400 games hopping... the latter is not the organizer's issue.

The tournaments were well run, and the formats chosen seemed fair in terms of both price and time commitment. Compared to the zoo that last year's tournament's seemed to be (I stayed away, it was looking like it was going to take forever just to get through a single round of qualifying...) this year's tournaments were awesome. 5 rounds in about 2 hours? Yeah, I'll take that and have me some fun.

It was a pleasure watching Cayle George demolishing us on ball one of a MM where the rest of us were having trouble even hitting the castle during our "blink and you missed it" turns . Getting 50+ million on ball one where the rest of the scores are coming mainly from the 5x bonus count is some good.

Mini game impressions:

WoZ:
- beautiful as always
- when I was at Dorky's it apparently developed an issue (blank monitor, seized playfield lights(?) and had to be rebooted or something. All I know is when I went to play it was clearly broken, and when I wandered back 20 minutes later it was working.
- No gimmie "stuff" for noobs at this point. Considering the attempt to draw in new fans, not having a gimmie mode or multiball seems foolish.
- Rescue playfield does not seem very fun to play; I can see new people just bashing at the door and not knowing why it does nothing other than open and scoop their ball... it seems confusing.
- Call outs are embarrasingly horrendous as always, sound effects generally okay, I especially like the balloon pop bumper effects for some reason.\
- I could make the ramp all day every day; woot for advancing the yellow brick road for ? reason... it certainly did not pay off for me aside from when I was locking balls or started a "switch frenzy" mode.
- Yeah, I started one mode and one multiball in 4-5 games, and I have way more of an idea of what to do than a total noob would. Houston, we have a problem.
-edit: the blind feed to the mid-upper right flipper seemed like a problem if there was anything worth shooting for from it. If not, it seems like a waste of a flipper if you don't have enough of a heads up to actually aim with it. There looked to be a magnet in this area to slow the ball down, maybe it will be used when there is something valuable enough to shoot from here?

Metallica:
- Fun, a Stern rampy fanfest. No real surprises in my few games.
- Not sure of the inline drop targets resetting will be a source of irritation for players. I was a single hit away from starting multiball, then my ball drained. Starting over again? Not friendly.

X-Men
- I only had a few games on this. Fun to shoot, but seemed relatively easy to just rock at least two multiballs every game with little effort.
- Voicework was bad, but at the show and Dorky's I couldn't really hear them, so score?

Avengers:
- I spent a decent amount of time playing the one at Full Tilt Ice cream in West Seattle. I had low expectations, and playing this particular example was not very fun.
- Visibility issues? Check. Black Widow ramp reject-a-thon? Check. Just overall a very junky feeling game, I did not really get a huge sense or excitement even on the games where I was doing relatively well.
- No issues with Hulk ball hangups, at least in the games I played!

Predator:
- Was broken every time I went to play it, artwork did not look as bad in person as I thought when first seeing the playfield image online.

Tacoma:
- fun stuff to do for the family (spent most of my time doing stuff with the wife and kids, did not spend as much time at the show though due to this). Huge ass playground whose name I can't remember, Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, Glass Museum...
- downtown Tacoma is almost deserted at night? Or maybe just the few streets I drove down...
- Dorky's was well worth the 15-20 minute round trip for me for even just an hour of play... the games were clean and worked very well!

I am sure I am forgetting some stuff, but that is my half remembered account of how awesome the last weekend was...

I wouldn't say I am a beginner, and do the inline targets have anything to do with bonus multipliers on Metallica? There is likely an example where inlines have been used for multiball starts (Fathom, Centaur?) but it does seem to be a bit of a junk punch when you almost make it and have to start from the beginning.

Put it this way... starting the grave marker multiball does not seem like the most viable tournament strategy. If it goes your way, great. If not, you have NOTHING to show for it as far as I can tell from my limited plays.

It is not something that wrecks the game, I just found it surprising in comparison to any multiball start procedure I can think of for any Stern. You don't have to lower the moving 3 bank on Tron every ball etc...

Cool thank you for posting!

I forgot to add a shot out to Markmon for bringing his awesome looking MM! I also need to add another WoZ comment above....

Fair enough; I feel your drop target resetting pain as well. I did not choose this path during my single tourney entry... but in my limited playtime during the show I had wanted to start this multiball and failed.

Is this something that would keep me coming back for more at home or on route? Yes. Is this something that would piss off my wife and be inaccessible to my daughter? Yes. It will be interesting how the players who have never played an inline drop game in their life react to this...

Sorry I misinterpreted your earlier statement. I am personally convinced that there is a decent population of newer players/collectors that have never played a game with inline drops in their life. They might not like it because it is harder/less forgiving than basically anything I can think of in modern pinball games.

Same goes for WoZ... in that is a whole game of having to "spell everything" to get a crumb of a reward back at this point. Some games let you qualify the first time by spotting the target next to the one you flailed into if you hit an already lit target. WoZ does not seem to have these bits of hand holding at this time.

To me I don't care... I will play my Firepower 2, trying to hit drops and make the orbit and have fun. A person completely new to pinball might walk up to a game where it is almost impossible for them to qualify and start for anything and come to the conclusion "pinball sucks". Especially at a quarter a ball, and having their ball only last ~15 seconds each.

I guess WoZ may be all kinds of awesome to many people, but at this point I imagine it has trouble communicating with players other than "lookee, I haz the best flashy lights".