Month: July 2018

We’re making every shot count at the following link.

Gonna warn you up front, there’s about thirty minutes of pinball talk here on a specific table and a visual aid if you happen to see this on YouTube. I had a hell of a run on a table the other night and I always get asked about my high scores. So, I wanted to see how well I could explain it since the idiot that I am didn’t record the session even though I have the ability to. I promise, next time I do this, I will totally record it so I can show the actual session happen. Even then, it might be a little confusing to figure out what’s happening and why.

Pinball is a game of points and those just don’t happen by knocking the ball around the table. Think of it maybe like cooking a meal. A few (or a lot of) things have to be done to get the meal ready. Same in pinball. Steps have to be taken to open up the playfield to bigger points. Lock balls (usually 3) start a multi-ball which opens up the chance at jackpots. Jackpots are where the majority of big point scores in pinball come from. But in order to lock the ball you usually have to trigger something on the table. It’s all about repetition to trigger events to make other events happen.

This is a really horrible explanation but one I hope I did better on the show.

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We’re way too thrilled for JULY FOURTEENTH at the following link.

I can’t really remember the last time I spent money on what’s called a “micro-transaction”. That’s a fun marketing word to get people to think they are only spending a tiny bit of money on something. You’ll find it in a LOT of games – mostly mobile games, but they show up in regular games as well.

“Fortnight” is a game that costs nothing to play. It’s free. Play all you want. There’s things in the game you can spend actual money on and that’s how they make money off the game. Apparently, there’s enough need of whatever is actually for sale in that game that people have spent over a billion dollars on it. That kinda blows my mind. Takes me back to the phone/tablet days of when you’d hear of parents getting massive bills cause their kids kept buying things because the app made it easy (or tricky). I don’t know if we’re there yet with a game like “Fortnight”. It’s on pretty much every available platform, but when a game that cost nothing to play pulls in that kind of money, it makes you wonder. It also turns on just about that many lightbulbs in the minds of executives who want to hop on that gravy train.

As much as I’d hoped this whole battle royale mechanic of gaming was going to stay in it’s own circle, this tells me otherwise. Unfortunately, it’s just getting started.

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We’re way too thrilled for JULY FOURTEENTH at the following link.

In gaming, whenever you find something new (it’s actually not very new at all) and it’s a lot of fun you really want to tell people about it. Especially when it seems like no one else knows anything about it. That’s where I am right now with DropMix.

It’s also tickling the collector side of me. A side I didn’t think I had given my experience with other collectible card games. Yet, here I am looking at checklist spreadsheets, promo cards that have long since become easily available and looking for ways to complete a collection. It was easy enough to get started what with the base game having a huge 70 percent discount, but stores don’t put things on clearance for no reason. The community seems to think this game has legs enough for a new round of cards coming soon, but in stores it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like it’s dying. Some card packs were exclusive to Toys R Us and that isn’t really helping the feeling of things just going south with this game.

The game also has to contend with the fact that I just found out about it and I really like it. I have a history of jumping on things at their dying breath. TV Shows, electronics/gadgets, and yeah, even video games.

Good luck with that curse, Harmonix.

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We’re not horsing around at the following link.

Begun, the cross play war has.

Not so much a war, really. But there’s a whole lot of people who wish Sony would give in and just make it happen. Five years ago and I’d have told you to keep dreaming on cross play of ANY kind, but a lot can happen in five years, I guess. Especially since we’re at the point that Sony is the ONLY one who is holding out. Originally, with Destiny, I was advocating for cross play, but it was something I had never expected – that’s about 5 years ago, actually. And that eventually turned into just wanting them to let me cross save my characters. Now, something I never thought was possible seems like it might actually happen at some point. Maybe.

Sony isn’t letting go of this. They won’t budge, not until they have to, and even then I’m not so sure. Last fall we were all talking about the evil of loot boxes and now, we’re at the cross play talk. I’m almost sure that if this holds out through the year, Microsoft will hit the cross play tick points with every single game they can – at least with the multiplats.

Again, assuming Sony doesn’t bend on the issue.

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We’re cutting it rather close at the following link.

I sure do love pinball! Look, for the first 30 minutes of this episode we talk about what the others guys played during the week, then for the second 30 minutes, I take it all over just trying to say I played 3 games. Except, one of those was pinball and it sparked a long tangent of talk – all about pinball.

For a good while growing up, there was a pinball machine in my house. And I played it from time to time. But that’s not when I got hooked. It wasn’t until sometime in the early 90s. I was on a trip with my parents to Knoxville, TN. We’d stopped for the night in Helen, GA. Helen’s one of the nicer tourist traps that I can remember. Anyway, just across the street from the motel was a miniature golf place, if I remember right, and inside was a single pinball machine. That’s when it started for me. The machine was called FUNHOUSE. And it hooked me.

What hooked you? When did it happen? Was it a particular game, or a genre? What’s your “pinball” story?

It’s something I think we’ll talk about in the next episode and we’d love to tell your story.

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