Ottawa Pinball Expo 2013 Part II

Even though the Ottawa Pinball Expo was more than a month ago, there is still a lot I want to talk about and show you! You should catch up on the first look at the Expo if you haven't already!

In the last post, I gave a general view of the entire Ottawa Pinball Expo and talked a bit at length about Williams' System 11 tables, many of which were present there. There was one particular System 11 table that I omitted for a special reason. I figured since Halloween is coming up very soon, I could hold off on speaking about this table until the time was right. Well, I would say it is quite right so why don't we kick this off with an...

What better time of the season than Halloween to take a peek at Elvira and The Party Monsters! Based off of the late-night TV character, Elvira, Mistress of The Dark, the table is packed to the gills with puns and sex appeal. If you're familiar with Elvira at all, you know that is her schtick...

And I gotta say, it makes for a helluva pinball table! The strongest point of this table has to be its art package. The artist, Greg Freres, has a comic-book influenced style, especially with the use of red and blue to highlight Elvira's hair as well as the bright and bold colours throughout the table. It just came to me that I often mention the "bright and bold" colours of pinball tables and that is true, I do that but pinball tables are meant to have eye-popping visuals and I tend to notice these tables moreso than others. For example, if you look at really any Bally or Williams table, they tend to have the bright colours and bold black outlines on many of their tables which really make them pop. Even some Data East tables have standout artwork like Tommy.

Pinball Update for October

There has been quite a bit of shakeup to the pinball lineup here in Toronto so I think it is time to get around to an update!

Stern's latest table is Star Trek, I spoke about it in a post when the table was first announced.

The first of the Pro tables have been shipped out and a few Star Trek tables have been reported in the wild around North America. I would also like to report that I've located a Star Trek table right here in the city!

DANG DOES THAT THING GLOW OR WHAT? Star Trek is the first table where the Pro version is completely outfitted with LEDs and boy is it beautiful! Another innovation by Stern is that the backglass is somewhat tilted as to reduce the glare on the playfield from the backglass. I like it most because it makes taking pictures that much easier!

Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention where this table is located. OK it is now residing at California Sandwiches! That's on Claremont just off of Dundas West. The table was recently placed on location and is in near-new condition. Go check it out!

Not only is Star Trek now at California Sandwiches, The Sopranos has taken the place of Batman! I had a strange feeling about this table when I returned to California Sandwiches and saw the new line-up. I got a bit of deja vu... that's because this table used to be at Leisure Lanes in Whitby!

I was hoping that since the table got shuffled, it was going to get fixed up but it's the same as it was when it was back at Leisure Lanes; the saucer hole that is for the mystery award, extra ball and episode mode is still as finicky as before and rarely activates, the playfield is still pretty dirty and the safe sometimes doesn't acknowledge hits... All that and MJS is the Grand Champion. Shane and I have a feeling it is just MJB with different initials but who knows.
 
During my trip to California Sandwiches to grab some photos of Star Trek, I happened to catch sight of these two tables sitting in a bar on Dundas West....

YEP! Stern's TRON Legacy and Duotron have taken up residence at Mây!

Pinball Crawl Trip Report

This past weekend I went on my very first pinball crawl! BIG THANKS to Kensington Brewery and 3030 for putting on this great event. I had a blast, met many great people and played some serious pinball! There were seven locations in all throughout the west end of Toronto that we had to venture between and obtain the highest scores we could muster on their pinball machines.
 

The crawl started at 4 PM at Handlebar in Kensington Market. A Gottlieb Pro Football was brought in for a one-time appearance at Handlebar to kick off the crawl.

3030 Dundas West's Pinball Crawl!

I recently got to visit the Junction and the bar 3030 Dundas to check out their pinball line-up.

During my visit to 3030 Dundas, I spoke with one of the fellas that worked there. We talked a lot about pinball in the city, where our favorite machines are, what are some good places to play and shared some knowledge of pinball locations. During our conversation, he mentioned to me that 3030 was going to be putting on a special pinball event that would span the city. I just caught official word of this on their Facebook page. Dig it!

Just as the picture says, follow 3030 Dundas online for any further updates! I think there's gonna be a lot of cool things coming up!

There isn't much news right now besides this map but there was a comment stating this is only one side of the map... I'm excited to see what else pops up on the map. I provided the guy with the name of my pinball map, Pinballin' in The Big City, which I have been keen on updating lately! Maybe we'll see some of the tables I've found on the pinball crawl map and maybe we'll see some that I'm not aware of...

If you're wondering what "A TILT at Handle Bar" is, TILT is Kensington Brewery's latest beer, obviously named after the dreaded pinball term. I'm no beer connoisseur but I believe it is an IPA. I had a can of it this past weekend and it was pretty tasty! I'm not the biggest fan of IPA's, little too hoppy for me, but this one was pretty decent. It had a cleaner taste than most IPA's I've had... but enough beer review, I'm supposed to be reviewing pinball!

Ottawa Pinball Expo 2013

On the weekend of September 13th, I headed out to my first Canadian pinball expo, the Ottawa Pinball Expo!

All the way out in Ottawa... Actually it was in Gatineau... Actually, it was in a little town called Alymer that is a part of Gatineau. I'm not quite familiar with the area and thankfully my buddy Penstone was able to successfully navigate us to the centre that the Ottawa Pinball Expo was being held at.

The event ran for two days on Saturday, September 14th, and Sunday, September 15th. We decided to go on the Sunday as Saturday was the day of the tournament and several machines would be used for tournament play only. I figured that going on Sunday, all machines would be free-play and there would be more available to play. It was kind of a good idea... and a bad idea. Good in the sense that there were many machines available for free play, bad in the sense that some machines were being moved out or had been sold so they were not available for play. I was sad to see a Who Dunnit? machine available for about 5 minutes when I first stepped in to the Expo then get packed up and hauled off. It was not all that bad though because there was still plenty of great tables to play!

STERN'S LATEST ANNOUNCEMENT: STAR TREK

Rumors have been floating around that Steve Ritchie has been assigned to design the latest playfield for Stern, coming off the heels of John Borg's very well-received Metallica. Stern released some BIG NEWS this week, announcing the latest table in their line-up! Here is the teaser video that Stern released for... STAR TREK!

Pinball Update: The Junction

I always like to say that I know of nearly every pinball machine in Toronto. I don't say I know of every single one because I know there are still a bunch out there I've yet to find. There's so much of the city to explore and I bet a few pinball machines to still find as well!

This past Friday, I ventured out to the Junction, a neighborhood of Toronto that gets its namesake from the four railway lines in the area. I heard a lot about 3030 Dundas West, a cool bar with some sweet beers on tap and a couple of vintage pinball machines. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. 3030 had a really good collection of old school Electro-Mechanical and Solid-State tables from the 70's and 80's. Dig this line-up!

So, you have there Gottlieb's Sure Shot, Bally's Mata Hari, Williams' Comet and Blackout and Gottlieb's Strange World. It's really cool to see a line-up of all vintage tables when most of the selection in the city are late-model Stern tables.