Ground Kontrol

[GroundKontrol]

We've got a couple of new machines at GK: Attack From Mars and Scared Stiff. Both tables are exceptionally clean and playing really well at the moment.

To make room for these beauts, we took out Haunted House and Elvira & The Party Monsters. Don't worry, Haunted House will be back after its ghosts have been exorcised (blown CPU board, broken backglass, & weird playfield problems). As much as we'd like to have two Elvira machines, it seemed a little redundant. Sorry!

[autofire]

in my personal opinion I like party monsters better than scared stiff. just sayin

[bounceback]

is this a good place to report machine issues? last time i was in the POTC felt really wonky, and tortuga was malfunctioning-- it registered hits constantly, and stayed lit constantly; you could lock a ball right from the start, but then it would either get kicked out without giving you time to lock another ball, or if you did lock 2, it would kick the balls out, appear to start tortuga, then end it again at random, even with other balls on the field; you could then restart it, but with similarly weird reactions. it was inconsistent in how it was acting, but it was all wrong. other features (heart, kraken,) seemed to be doing ok. the whole "feel" of the game was funky though. i played it once and walked away from my replay.

[deathsave]

notes from yesterday...

dr. who reset on me.
ball was rattling out of clean shots to the khan playfield VUK on the shadow, resulting in a lot of SDTM.
flipper rubbers on whitewater need to be replaced. looks like a gerbil chewed off pieces from the flipper tips, this is making the center drain wider and resulting in odd bounces.
left gun on STTNG is stuck pointing all the way to the right and all jet bumpers are completely dead. great fun having the multiball jackpot stuck at 20m. uneven flippers.
weak flippers on spider-man.

this is all after getting sodomized by the twilight zone at silver dollar pizza: 700m and 3 EB's stacked on ball one, finished lost in the zone, then it shot about 10 balls in a row out of the secondary launcher before resetting. i guess not every visit can end on a high note.

[HornedGramma]

The Simpsons machine at Ground Kontrol has a problem with the right flipper; it flips wildly by itself sometimes for no reason, sometimes will start flipping whenever a pop is hit, sometimes gets stuck completely in the up position.

I've told the guys at GK about this the last FOUR times I was there. They gave me a handful of those quarters dipped in blue paint that the machines all choke on and said they'd fix it. More than two months now and it stil happens every damn time I play it.

In fact the state of the machines at Ground Kontrol is pretty pathetic at the moment. Revenge From Mars needs to be taken out, that thing is fucked. All the targets on the center shot are broken off and 3/4 of all shots don't register. There was a drop target that had broken off and was bouncing around the playfield on Batman Forever, and none of the flippers were strong enough to hit any of the ramps. ST:TNG and Haunted House have been turned off since before the beginning of the year.

I've told them, and even written emails, but most of the time they won't even power off the games that aren't working -- they just keep taking your quarters and replacing them with those goddamn ridiculous blue quarters. No way all those problems will be addressed before the tournament there.

[Dropshot]

bet you $50 bucks? Of course there are going to be issues, they have 26 machines and two part time techs do work on all the pinball machines and video games. All the games will be working, and the problems you listed had to have been recent issues, I am up there every week and haunted house was on and working TSPP was working just fine, RFM does have a few minor issues but they will all be ready for the tournament.

[HornedGramma]

That Simpsons flipper thing is NOT a recent issue. I've had four seperate conversations about that with them over the last two months, that's plenty of time to have done something about it.

[HornedGramma]

Dying father, huh. Well: having not insinuated myself into the life of GK's tech, I guess you showed me. Are my wasted quarters going to dialysis, or what?

Look, all I know is I go there about once a week and I am consistently frustrated. I got fired from a job for going to the funeral of both of my dad's parents, and none of my customers gave a shit. But if I say something about the same problem over and over again, I expect it to be fixed, not more useless quarters.

We cool, mustache man, but don't talk to me like you know better than I do. Please.

[ROM]

QUARTERS!

Relax, man.

Personally, I've played ST:TNG and Haunted House this year, therefore your entire argument about Ground Kontrol and Simpsons and everything is shit.

[Dropshot]

we're cool, i've just been getting mad when people have been talking down about GK lately because I don't want people to come on here or hear word there games suck and then not show up to the tourney. I have invested way to much time and money into it. I know some of their games are worse than others but they know what is going on in a few weeks and everything will be dialed in.

[GroundKontrol]

Yes, our maintenance hasn't been up to snuff lately. As someone mentioned, our tech's been out of town a lot. Compounding matters, our backup tech's been filling in for his brother at the guitar shop while his brother's on tour. We have great employees and we cut them slack when they need it. Great employees are a lot harder to find than customers with 'tudes. Thanks for having our back, Drop Shot & ROM - much appreciated!

We are working overtime to get ready for the tourney. We're currently putting together a huge parts order, and hope to take care of a lot of the niggling pin problems, like the habitrail on BK2K, the "Inner Sanctum" target on The Shadow, etc. And we plan to have 2 techs and several owners around for emergency repairs during the tourney, because we want everything to be 100%!

JD

[GroundKontrol]

[HornedGramma]

Damn dude. That's a really good point, and I hadn't thought about that at all. I apologize, seriously.

ROM also makes an excellent point. I used the word 'quarters' like seven times over three paragraphs. This is too many times. Even for a pinball forum.

Ground Kontrol is the shit, and DropShot is also the shit for bustin his hump to put this thing together, even if you did plan it on my wedding anniversary and we have to decide to keep our plans or stay in town for the tourney.

I was kind of punchy last night; my 20 year old sister called from Utah (where this sort of thing is the status quo) to tell me that she's engaged to some dude she's known for a month and a half, who I've never met but looks like Jeremy, the Nowhere Man in Yellow Submarine. So it goes.

[Dropshot]

What better way to celebrate your anniversary? I think Rev-test's girlfriend has a birthday that happens to fall on the 19th as well. Good luck with that one buddy!

[bounceback]

no-brainer.

god, that tech's brother sounds like a flaky asshole though...

i for one have been seeing specific machine issues get fixed faster than in the past-- last week fishtails was doing bizarre stuff like turning itself off mid-game, resetting during multiball, running video mode while in multiball, draining all balls, and then ending ball... i'd have no idea where to start diagnosing that, but this week it's fixed. feels like there's some funny spin/lean, but could even be advantageous if you can adjust. and the flippers are much stronger.

it's pretty amazing the amount of issues GK has to try to resolve, quickly, daily. some machines seem more nightmarish than others (stargate's, STTNG, and others have had problems more often than not over the years,) but it seems like it's improving to me. it's going to be very hard for things to be perfect, but for a first-time tournament to try to rival something like shorty's, GK will make us proud-- the shorty's machines were, some of them, totally fucked, but that doesn't keep people from coming in greater numbers each year. plus it sounds like there's been a lot more planning put into this to make it convenient and fun for people, and we should plan some kind of special thank you for GK, dropshot, and the rest who've helped...

[GroundKontrol]

We just added an absolutely gorgeous Cirqus Voltaire as well as a nice-looking The Machine: Bride of Pinbot. Current lineup:

* The Addams Family
* Attack From Mars
* Batman Forever
* Black Knight 2000
* Cirqus Voltaire
* Demolition Man
* Doctor Who
* Fish Tales
* Haunted House
* Independence Day
* King Pin
* Lord Of The Rings
* The Machine: Bride Of Pinbot
* No Fear
* Pirates of the Caribbean
* Red & Ted's Road Show
* Revenge From Mars
* Roller Coaster Tycoon
* Scared Stiff
* The Shadow
* Simpsons Pinball Party
* South Park
* Spider-Man
* Stargate
* Star Trek: The Next Generation
* T2: Judgment Day
* Theatre of Magic
* White Water

And if you get tired of those (ha!), just around the corner at Backspace they've got High Speed and Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

[Dropshot]

Are you guys still planning on expanding the upstairs prior to Pinbrawl '10 like previously hinted at? Nice job on the CV and BOP!

[bounceback]

no doubt, great acquisitions. now you just need a monster bash, TZ, medieval, TOTAN, creature, and a couple more weird late 80s-mid-90s bally/williams games no one has, and you'll be the best arcade on the planet. i mean you might be already... but you could solidify it by having a little whiskey dispenser attached to each machine like those water bottles on gerbil cages. i'd just give you my wallet right now.

[sauce]

I cant wait to JOIN THE CIRQUS!

[ROM]

Dang, both Circus Voltaire and Bride of Pinbot are a lot of fun. I finally played them yesterday. Great additions!