plan b

[LAUNCH]

all of the machines are busted
gnr,simpsons,austin powers,pirates shitty huh. thought it was going to be cool to have another place with four games,but guess not

[ROM]

I heard they took our advice to fix the games, and are currently doing so. I'm under the impression that they are definitely making an effort to turn the place into a good spot for pinball. Don't give up hope!

A friend of mine's going there tomorrow, so I'll get a status update from him. And I'll post it here. If anyone else finds out anything, give it here.

[ROM]

[Qdub]

Line up is now Indiana Jones, G&R, Pirates, and Addams Family. Everything should be up and running although Indi's probably ready for a cleaning after being pumped so savagely.

[ROM]

Guns and Roses is due for a cleaning, too. Those pop bumpers barely work.

[bounceback]

lineup is now G&R, IJ4, LOTR, and MB.

but don't get excited-- only indy actually works well.

G&R is totally fucked. playfield lights but the DMD is dead, it will take quarters but it won't start a game. something is either disconnected inside or the alien came and spit acid on the motherboard, somehow missing the lighting matrix. right now it's a giant piggybank with lamps all over the playfield, but you can't play it. say goodbye to your money.

IJ4 feels good-- it's in that phase where it's nice and broken in, you don't get tons of wild bounces, but all the features still work. take note that now is the time to play it and get some huge scores on the board, because when it hits this level it's on its way down and probably not about to get cleaned and shopped any time soon.

LOTR, while in great overall shape, apparently properly shopped and so on, has some problems that you might as well learn to live with now-- the sword lock is fucked up, and triggers when the first switch is hit--this means if you do have a ball already locked in there, it drops out immediately, even if you don't make the ramp shot all the way. you end up with 2 balls on the playfield but as soon as one drains you're done. if you do make the ramp shot, even if you don't have KEEP lit, the lock triggers, stalling the ball. the other features mostly work (except for the common problem with the VUK from the mystery hole being weak and needing to take many tries to pop the ball back to the left habitrail,) but the flippers and coils are all so STRONG that huge airballs and crazy bounces abound. it's tough to trap because the rubbers are fresh, the flips are not subtle, and the slingshots blast anything that comes in contact with them into the next century. this isn't normally my complaint, and i'd rather live with this than flippers that won't clear a ramp, but be aware and adjust accordingly.

lastly poor Monster Bash. i'm almost positive this is the same MB that was at Tiny's on MLK when i moved to town 4 years ago (when they had 4 games in the front room and you could play first thing in the morning before billy ray's opened and times were good.) in a lot of respects the playfield is pretty smooth, despite being a bit worn and dirty. but the achilles heel is that the scoop ALWAYS kicks the ball SDTM, and often shoots an airball OVER the flippers to do so. this is exactly what the one at Tiny's did, so i stopped playing it and started playing LOTR, which was new. (perhaps they're together again now?) to compensate for the kickout, it seems, there is no tilt. so if your timing is good you can slide the machine 6 inches to one side or the other and make a save. you have to do this EVERY time you hit the scoop, unless you're running a multiball and use the balls on the field to deflect the kickout. this is a drag to say the least, and the wear and tear from this game having no tilt ensures that it's going to break down soon. also credit the lack of tilt for generally easy high scores. i played one game and put up a score, GC is around 900 mil? doable on a good table. this one could be the one, but it feels shitty to basically pick the thing up and dump the ball where you want it. DDT watched me playing last night and said it looked like hockey. it's true. bummer.

SO-- phil and co, if you're out there, could you please give this site some attention? ever since plan B opened, there's been a different string of fucked machines in there. people WANT to come and play there, the owners want people to come and play there, but rotating out the worst machines and putting in different machines until people realize those are broken too, is not solving the problem. most of the issues these games have had are not the most complex repairs in the world.

in case anyone wonders if this is worthwhile, i talked to cody at green dragon just before coming to plan B, and he thanked me and CFF profusely for convincing him to get more games and make the changes he's made. he said that they now get paid out onsite and don't have to wonder if the operator is paying them fairly, the games are kept up so people play more, and even though on many nights they have bands or quizzy and they close early, he's now making more money in 2 weeks on the pins than he was making in a month before. this is just one testament to the fact that we're not full of shit-- we really will go out of our way to play games that are kept up at locations that are responsive to our requests. i would love to be more of a plan B regular, but i go there for the games, and they never work well.

[sauce]

Guns And Roses, Twilight Zone, Sopranos, Family Guy.

I went to Plan B last night hoping to play some twilight zone after having some really fun games on it wednesday night, but it was shut off when I got there. Turned it on to do some poking around hit start with some credits already being in there and it seemed like no coils were getting any power. No flippers, no balls going to the shooter, nothing popping for a ball search. What a shame, cause it was playing pretty good the other night.

Guns and roses still has no display. Sopranos works well, but has some odd angles, but I had some good games on it. Only complaint about Family guy is that the mini game had some weak flippers, but other than that it is good working order and was fun to play.

[HornedGramma]

The G n' R display has had that same problem for more than 18 months. Annoying.

And its a shame about TZ; its the nicest one it town by a wide margin.

And while that's true about the Stewie flippers on Family Guy, it just makes you work for it a little harder. I played the best ball of my life on that machine the other night. TWO Stewie Multiballs for more than 100mil and a #1 score, on my first ball.*

*EDIT: Which may be small cheese to some of you, but by the time that ball drained I felt like Dennis Hopper in 'Blue Velvet' after he's been hittin' the gas.

I'LL FUCK ANYTHING THAT MOVES!

[sauce]

Went there last night and TZ was fixed and working well. Guns and Roses was gone and replaced with a Who Dunnit (how does this shit happen?) which was playing pretty nice.

One of the owners was talking to me about pinball and was saying they might pull sopranos and replace it with Creature. I would be into that. Probably heading there tonight to get some time in on TZ.

[replay]

TZ kept spitting out 2 balls, Indy has a completely dead left flipper. I left a message with the barkeep.

[Qdub]

G&R is back. So its Who Dunnit, TZ, Indi Adventure, and G&R. I think I worked out all the kinks. Left flipper on Indi MUCH better now. I hadn't heard a peep out of them for a long time, I should've figured something would have been f-ed up. I increased the pitch on TZ and Indi. Pat the bartender(manager?) said there were a few spots where balls were getting stuck on TZ. Indi seemed a bit sluggish. Hopefully this helps. Let me know how they play.

[sauce]

Did you replace the lock bar on Indy? It was broken and sliding off the machine last wednesday.

[Qdub]

not good. I'll take care of that. that's a new one for me...

[sauce]

Im not sure if there is anyway of saying this without coming off like an asshole but Im actually curious, here goes: When you check up on a location do you play all the games?

[Qdub]

No worries. I always play all of the games when I do scheduled preventative maintenance. I do not always play all the games when I run by to check up on a specific issue... just not feasible if I'm trying to work a 40 hour week. I noticed the glass lockbar was a bit wobbly but apparently it didn't come un-welded until I'd left (its been replaced, btw). BUT if the intent of your question is to suggest that I should play all the games when I'm on location... I hear you.

[sauce]

Understandable. Thanks for the response.

[DDT]

I'm friendly with Heather there, in fact I told her a wide body collection would be super sweet there. Roadshow next?
In all seriousness, I would love to chat with you sometime about that TZ. Being one of two or three in town I have a real soft spot for it. And have been frustrated by some simple fix quircks. It's little shit that only us dorky pin geeks notice but it's pretty major in my mind.
I cannot convey how cool it is to talk to the people with the keys. We appreciate your work on all it's levels and speaking for myself respect the machines and try to help keep them in working order.

[HornedGramma]

I second Road Show. I don't think there's one anywhere in SE.

[Qdub]

DDT, lemme hear it! I know people are appreciative of a solid TZ. Besides the display going, whatchyoo got? We don't have a Roadshow. I'll check it out.

[bounceback]

i had a problem with TZ having a ball stick when you make the skillshot, almost every time-- something's wrong with the rollover, if you take a light plunge it doesn't naturally roll up and back down, but clanks down to orange, whereas if you actually just make the yellow (ideal skillshot) the ball gets stuck. i had that same problem over and over, having to really shake the machine to get the ball free. the tilt has loosened up, so i was able to shimmy the ball out of there a couple of times, but most of the time i tilted. i started just skipping the skillshot altogether.

other than that i thought it was playing great as of last night, but i don't know TZ that well. i managed to replay a lot but never broke a billion. post pass from the right was more difficult than the left. upper flipper shot is different on that game than other TZs, but i got the hang of it most of the time.

indiana jones has some problems-- mainly with so many lights out on the upper playfield that you couldn't see the rollovers at all and it was very hard to play the game in a dark room. the flippers also seem like they're not calibrated properly, they sit at a weird angle and it changes the shots. i think it was also on indy that it felt like the flippers were a bit slow. i could be remembering twilight zone, but i think it was indy-- it felt like the return springs were worn out or something, when you released a flipper it would take longer than usual (by a fraction of a second, but enough to be noticeable) for the flipper to drop back to the starting position. also, the path upper playfield was almost totally unresponsive-- it would move, a little bit, when you hit the flipper buttons, but nowhere near fast enough to be able to actually play those modes.

didn't play G&R but looked like the display was fixed and the whodunnit seemed to be working fine.