Dream Pinball 3D Contest Winners?

I have been waiting for an official release from the website for Dream Pinball 3D about the competition winners of the contest for $10,000 that ended August 31, 2006. The top three scores posted on the website are: LAREN out of Poland has 472,677,021,840; ELLI out of Germany has 349,860,670,760; and PJ out of Germany has 337,235,188,540 though there has been no official announcement about the contest results. I hate to say it but those numbers make me look like an amateur (I am) and a complete noob (not). I could not seem to break the two billion mark on the competition table. Some other people I know who played only averaged around the two billion mark. I am amazed at the top scores on this game, in awe even. Hats off to the winner of this competition, whoever you may be. With a high score over one hundred billion points more than the second place, you deserve to be the Dream Pinball 3D Wizard. I will of course post when the official announcement is made.

Also, on this topic, I received an email from the Zuxxez Team, Quote:

"We hope you have had fun playing the free demo version of "Dream Pinball 3D". If you would like to play more - you don’t have to wait very long! The complete version of "Dream Pinball 3D" is available on 4th September and contains, besides the "Two Worlds" table, five more exciting tables: "Knight Tournament", "Monsters", "Aquatic", "Dino Wars" and "Spinning Rotors". Each table has an individual gameplay mode and different features which provide endless fun. Moreover you can choose between four different difficulties and naturally all of the acquainted features like balls of various materials are in the game. In addition, every table will be able to record their high score at www.dream-pinball.com."

So it seems the full version is supposed to be available but I noticed on their website clicking the buy it link takes you to a pre-order form. I will post more as I hear news.

No Texas Pinball Festival for 2006

Last years Texas Pinball Festival was in October. This year, no word has been posted on when this event would take place. Well, after emailing them, I have found out the following. Quote:

Hi tijir,

Thanks for your interest in the Texas Pinball Festival. Yes! There will be another one however we are right now in the works for looking for a new location to host our show. Tentatively we are planning it for Spring 2007. Please stay tuned to our web site: www.texaspinball.com as we'll be updating it shortly with all the information on our next event.

Regards,
Craig Hassell
Co-Organizer Texas Pinball Festival

So, it looks as if there will be no Texas Pinball Festival 2006, they are skipping to Texas Pinball Festival 2007. This is all I have found out, when I find out more information, I will post it. I am disappointed, I was looking forward to a weekend of pinball this October or November. I will have to do some digging around on the Internet to find a place having a pinball event during that time. If you know of an event coming up, leave a comment and let me know about it.

Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball Review Part 2 of 4

The second part the the Pirates of the Caribbean pinball review has been published. This part covers a lot of stuff including game play, music, rules, and much more. Plenty of photos and a lot of walk-through information. Check it out: Pinball News - Pirates of the Caribbean Review Part 2 of 4

PAPA 9 World Pinball Championships August 17-20

The next Professional Amateurs Pinball Association World Pinball Championships, PAPA 9, will be held August the 17-20, 2006 in Scott Township, Pennsylvania at the PAPA Headquarters. PAPA 9 is the only major pinball event in the USA dedicated to competitive tournament play. This year prizes are valued at $33,250 total, first prize in division A is $10,000. The reigning World Pinball Champion, winner of the PAPA 8 A Division, is Bowen Kerins. Players of all skill levels are welcome and are eligible to win. To read more about it, check it out here: PAPA 9 World Pinball Championships
Unfortunately I will not be able to attend. I wish all the competitors luck. If you end up as one of the winners, remember where you heard about it!

Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball Review Part 1 of 4

Pinball News has a great four part review of Stern's new Pirates of the Caribbean pinball table. The review has been broken up into four parts, probably because of all the awesome things this table has to offer. This review is very in depth and goes into the pros and cons of parts that were used on Stern's latest release. In this first part they talk about the display, lighting, the playfield features, and much more. A ton of pictures of both the playfield and inside the cabinet are included with the article. A very interesting read and definitely worth a read. I will blog the links to all four parts of the review as they become available. Check out part one here: Pinball News - Pirates of the Caribbean

Dream Pinball 3D servers back up!

$10,000 contest still going! For some reason the official Dream Pinball 3D Website moved. The link in my earlier article is no longer valid. I apologize for my broken link and I am glad to have found a good one that leads to the download. So, go download that table and get started, you only have till August 31st to beat, 23,978,197,830. That is one large score to beat! The website url is http://www.dream-pinball.com/en/index.html

**EDIT**
The broken link in the earlier article was my fault I believe. I apologize for being a little fast at running off to play pinball and not double checking my links. Both this and the last blog post are probably wrong, I just butchered the link.

Dream Pinball 3D servers down.

The Dream Pinball 3D website is down, more than likely due to more people trying to download the program than their servers can handle. Here's hoping they fix it soon, last I checked, the top score was near 20 billion. Oh well, at least I got it in time to play, so back to my chance at $10,000 I go. Happy pinballin'!

$10,000 3D Video Pinball Competition!

As reported over at Pinball News - First and Free, the German game publisher Zuxxez is offering ten thousand doallars for first prize in their promotion of the up and coming game release "Dream Pinball 3D". Amongst the prizes of the competition, the first place winner, most points in a single game, gets $10,000 and will be crowned Cyber Pinball World Cup 2006 wizard. Second and third places also win "cool prizes". The table for the competition can be downloaded at the Official Dream Pinball 3D Website. If nothing else, it is a download of an awesome 3D video pinball table. Screen shot and article courtesy of Pinball News - First and Free. Competition ends August 31, 2006 so don't wait to long to get started, it usually takes me a couple of days t get the feel of a table down and another couple of weeks to begin to master it. Of course, this is video pinball, so getting a feel for the table could be a problem. The current high score is around 20 billion, it is attainable...
Check out these screen shots!




Excerpt from the web order page: "Are you having fun playing in the Cyber Pinball World Cup 2006 and want more - no problem. "Dream Pinball 3D", the ultimate pinball simulation, will be released this summer for 24, 99 Euro and will include 5 new amazing tables on top of more pinball challenges. So if you want to add 4 more degrees of difficultly to the existing demo and hours of pinball ecstasy - please fill out the form below for your pre-order of Dream Pinball 3D!
Get 10% off when you pre-order, "Dream Pinball 3D" (offer expires upon retail release)"

Speaking of Pinball News articles, check out this story, Shipping Out about how several buyers of Pinball Manufacturing Inc's remake of Big Bang Bar got a shock message recently. Their games had been built, shipped and were ready for collection. Surprising since I believe I read somewhere "Big Bang Bar" never made it into production originally...

Toy Pinball tables grow up.

Over at Pinball News they have an article about a line of toy pinball tables coming out. Using real wood tables, the company Zizzle plans to bring the feel of real pinball to the living room. These tables are made like the originals and are designed by John Popadiuk, Jr. With two tables coming to market, Marvel Heroes & Villains and Pirates Of The Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest, they are 3/4 sized tables with full electronics, LED screen, lights, flippers, ball, etc, with working sound and score keeping system. This should be an exciting gift for any enthusiast to give to their children, passing the pinball legacy on to another generation. If you have no children these tables would make excellent addition to the living room, would you not agree?

Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball Photos

Pinball News has coverage of the latest Stern table Pirates of the Caribbean. Go on over and check it out, some great pictures of the table as well as some descriptions. They do not have a link to the video I posted last week though. I will, of course post more news as I come across it.

UltraPin / Pinball Legends prototype test video!

I deleted this video, the table makers asked me to take it down. They have promised to try to get a new video soon, if they send it out, I will post it here.


An "in action" video of an up and coming product called UltraPin / Pinball Legends. I found this video after a long search through a lot of forums and now post it here for everyone to share. This video is about 9 months old I believe, though it could well be a year. To find out more about this check out the forums on VPforums.com and several commercial video game vendor sites.
There is a lot to this story and I will post more on it as I get more information. I have no first hand knowledge of any of this, everything I know I found through search and forums. The last site I saw had a release date of 4th Quarter 2006. I am hoping they make it out this year, this project was announced over a year ago and they already had three years invested. The original release date was supposed to be 4th Quarter 2005.
The great thing is, all the tables coming in this game are from VPforums.com made from builders in the community who work hard to produce great authentic play tables. Hats off to all the table builders and everyone on this project who tried to keep the community informed.

Stern Pinball's Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball Machine Video!

Video footage of a PRE-PRODUCTION Stern pinball machine, Pirates of the Caribbean based on the movie From the video it looks to be a fun table. I hope to be able to play it once it is released, though it is tough to find good tables in East Texas much less find brand new ones.

VpinMame 1.53 released

VpinMame has an update available. Great to see a new release. This update fixes some issues with sounds among other things. The problem is that it wipes out the high scores for Williams tables. This really is annoying, some of those scores I spent to past 10 months earning. There is a fix but I am not a coder and figuring out a hex editor to delete part of the nvram file seems to be beyond me at the moment. highscores mentioned on the forums that he will work on a batch file to help fix these files. Here is hoping he doesn't take too long. A big thanks go out to everyone who worked on this. Amazing job, good work! I will update this blog as more news becomes available. For the update, go to pinmame.com. Read more about this update at VPForums.com

Champion Pub 1.1 Review

Champion Pub (Midway 1998) is a PinMame table, version 1.1 from VP Forums by UncleReamus, Destruk, TomB, and Scapino on 03-21-06.
The IPD listing can be found here.

You advance through the game by building your health jumping rope, hitting the heavy bag, or hitting the speed bag, which earns you gems. Once your health is full you are able to start a fight, the heavy bag rotates revealing a boxer. You have to hit the boxer until either his health is gone, your health is gone, you loose the ball, or using the the scoops you can activate the KO and knock the fighter out. It takes 5 fights to become Pub Champ. This table even tracks how many times you are the champ. Once you have become the champ, you fight challengers as you build your health and start fights.
There are officially 5 different types of multiball in the game, Standard Multibrawl - is a standard 3 ball lock on right loop of the table, which starts "Multibrawl", Fisticuffs Multiball - hitting the heavy bag in the center of the table so many times will start a 2 ball multiball and a fight with a drunk, Raid Multiball - after the 3rd fight win 3 ball Raid multiball starts, Champion Multiball - after you get club champ a 3 ball Champion multiball starts, Ultimate Challenge Multiball - Never done this one but you have to collect all the gems and be champion to get it started, and Concurrent Multiballs - 4 ball multiball for getting a multiball while in multiball (Starting Fisticuffs MB during Multibrawl MB), though this is not considered a separate multiball.
This software version does this table justice. It plays a lot like the real thing, even frustrates me on the jump rope like the original did. There are a couple of buggy thing I have seen in this version, though they do not mess with gameplay too much, one of the worst is, when in multiball sometimes the balls get moving real fast and I have seen them go through the flippers. I think the problem is with VP and not the table as I have this problem with a few other tables but I thought I would mention it.
Overall this is a pretty fast paced game with some true comical moments, the drunk you fight throws out some great one-liners as do a lot of the fighters. This table has a lot more to offer than what I mention here. I will not go through a complete walkthrough or rules sheet since they are already available elsewhere. I have not done everything in the game yet, though I have earned Pub Champ a few times. If you are looking for a good pin with good humor, I would definitely recommend Champion Pub. I played this table in my younger days and would like to play it again, the computer versions are good and they are definately worth the time, I just like to play the real thing when possible, so if you know of a table, post a comment and let us know where it is located.

I love this table, one of my all time favorites, I give it an 8.5 out of 10. Next time, I will do my best to bring a good review of another great table.

tijir

Welcome!

Welcome to VP Review, where I, the Mighty Pinball Wizard that I am (serious sarcasm here), will post about new VP tables as I play them. I will post a screen shot and a short review on how they play, quirks, creator, etc. I will do my best to make things simple and entertaining. To the right on this page are links to Visual Pinball, VP Forums, and other pinball sites around the net, I will add more links in the future. Anyhow, enough about this place, I will start posting reviews within a few days. Thanks for checking things out!