// // No Comments » // News, Pinball, Tournaments
October 11-14, 2007
The PAPA X World Championships were held once again at Scott Township, PA a suburb of Pittsburgh. I decided to try the A Division once again. To my surprise, there were actually non-DMD machines in the A-Division. The machines used for qualifying, were Judge Dredd, FunHouse, JackBot, Whirlwind, WhiteWater, Shadow, Spider-Man, Cirqus Voltaire, Indianapolis 500, and The Addams Family, a pretty great line-up of games. Anyway, the games were set as with as high as possible of an incline [rear legs all the up, front legs all the way down] so the ball moved fast unless you controlled it well, or made your shots consistently. I ended up finishing 37th out of 50 places but I did take a first place score on Cirqus Voltaire which was nice. Jorian Englebrekkston eventually won the championship. I’m glad the next PAPA will once again be in August, which separates it better from Pinbrawl/Pinball Expo. This year, players could compete in sanctioned matches that were rated. These ratings are kind of like the way chess players are rated. Anyone can be rated if they play some matches and submit the results to the PAPA PARS rating system. I’m working on submitting the results from our league: The Jersey Pinball Association, so the all of our players can have updated PARS ratings. So far our league commissioner, Koi M. [KOI], has loaned to me the results from the 1999-2002 Leagues. I hope to get the rest of the results after I have submitted these.
October 24-28 2007
Pinbrawl/Pinball Expo is a test of pinball endurance [yes, I used the words pinball and endurance in the same sentence, competitive pinball is a sport, dammit! 
]. Four solid days (and nights!) of pinball action, tournaments, and fun! Add to that the opportunity to go to seminars and meet pinball luminaries and a trip to the STERN factory, and you have a big weekend of pinball.
Flying Sux
If you are a frequent flier, I don’t know how you do it. No matter how big the plane itself is, your seats are always going to be the same (small) size. I left on an Airbus A319 and returned in a Boeing 757, and it was “sardine city” both ways. United’s Quick Check-in even had the nerve to suggest I upgrade to their Economy Plus, which gives 5 more inches of leg room [ WOW 
] for $29.00. That almost $6.00 per inch! And it defaults to YES so you have to make sure you select DECLINE before you continue. Anyway, being on that plane made me tired. I wasn’t even sleepy before I got on the plane but, when I sat down in that seat, I was wiped out. At least that made the flight to Chicago faster.
Wyndham Shuttle Sux
What’s a Wyndham you say? Well, Wyndham O’Hare Hotel is the place I stayed for the Expo as it was held there. Why does the shuttle suck? Well when one finally came at the pick up point after we landed (one of my Pinbrawl teammates, Sanjay S. [SBS] met me at O’Hare), it filled up and the driver said another one would be here in 10 minutes. LIAR! Apparently 10 Chicago-minutes equals 45 reality-minutes and yes, it was knee-shivering cold out there while we waited.
Wyndham Hotel Sux not as much but it was close…
When we finally got there I had to wait for my room for a half an hour before I could go to it even though I had a reservation. At that point I just wanted to go to sleep so I could be ready for the STERN factory tour tomorrow morning. The hotel did give me two breakfast buffet vouchers for waiting which I took full advantage of.
STERN Factory Tour
Bright and early Thursday morning, it was time to board the cheese buses [yellow buses, whatever ] to go to the STERN factory. When we arrived, Jack from Pinball Sales was there to give out some Pinball Sales T-Shirts (nice bonus!). The factory was a bustle of activity. Employees were feverishly working on the next big STERN release, Wheel of Fortune. We met some of the workers as they demonstrated parts of the machine and how they worked. BTW, STERN is still making lots of Pirates of the Caribbean and of course Spider-Man pins. We also got to meet the man himself, Gary Stern at the end of the tour.
Flipout 2007
The qualifying games used for the Flipout Tournament were Meteor, Pirates of the Caribbean, Family Guy and Spider-man. All of the games were is superb condition. I believe the POTC, FG and S-M were new from the factory. The Meteor pins played like new. Again these we set very steep [rear legs all the up, front legs all the way down]. I wasn’t able to qualify for the playoffs, but it was still very fun to compete. Congratulations to Andy [AND] Rosa who won the Flipout A-division title. See the video here for his final championship-winning ball.
Pinbrawl
Pinbrawl is a pinball marathon. Teams of four players each play four players matches against each other. Two players from your team play against two players from the other team. 1st place in a game gets 7 points for the team, 2nd gets 5 points, 3rd gets 3 points and 4th gets you 1 point. Whichever team is ahead after three games wins. If you lose, you are eliminated from winning the tournament but you are not done competing because, at Pinbrawl, all finishing positions are significant. Using our team, the JPA Crushers as an example, we won our first match against the Kung-Fu Gophers and amassed enough points to make the A division [gulp!].
[These are the Team T-Shirts we were supposed to wear to Pinbrawl but the order didn't arrive in time, so I made some heat press mock-up versions.]
There are 8 teams in each division A through E for a total of 40 teams. By doing so well in our first match, the worst we could finish was 8th place overall. We then lost our next match against “Wicked Shimmy” in the A division. Even though we were eliminated we still played on to see where we would finish and to see how many match points each player could get along the way. These points are called MVP points because the player with the most points is awarded the MVP trophy for their division. MVP points also translate to WPPR points as well, so it’s important to play well all the way to the end of the tournament. Anyway, since we lost that match to “Wicked Shimmy”, the best we could finish was 5th place. We won our next match to put us in the battle for 5th/6th against the FSPA. We were defeated by the FSPA and finished 6th out of 40 total teams.
Overall, it was an extremely fun event and I can’t wait to compete next year. John [KOZ] Kosmal and Josh [JLS] Sharpe ran a superb tournament and I’m glad I was able to make it out to this great event.
FWB | SSB | SM | NLP | SG
Sonic and Knuckles on XBLA with LOCK ON Bonuses!
More racing with sonic mascots
Bowen wins again!
