Bumper City - Down at The Arcade

OK SO today is my birthday and I have a gift for you!



Please enjoy Bumper City's Down at The Arcade! It is a podcast mix of pinball arcade soundscapes and music to play pinball to!

The music mix is an assortment of new wave, space disko and synth. I even snuck in a little bit of Lou Reed! The pinball sounds you will hear feature all sorts of machines, everything from Theatre of Magic to Time Machine.

Speaking of Time Machine, this very table made an appearance, at least in sound form, on my other project, The Surfphony of Derstruction 2000. Now, if I may shamelessly plug my projects, the Surfphony of Derstruction is a music podcast featuring my alter ego, Derk Brigante (number 1). On the show, I play all sorts of surf and instrumental music, new and old and always cool! In the latest episodes, Derk Brigante is trapped in a nuclear wasteland and is on the search for an arcade... That arcade being Bumper City! Could it be the very same one featured in this podcast?! IT IS! If you listen closely to Down at The Arcade, you will definitely hear the exact same Time Machine that Derk Brigante is in search of. Just don't tell him it's a pinball machine; he thinks otherwise.

OK enough of the shameless plug and back to Down at The Arcade. Spend the day at the arcade playing pinball. When you first get there, take a look at all the machines! It's pretty busy so you will have to wait your turn. Later on, things start winding down and only a few people are still hanging around and playing pinball. Before you know it, it's closing time but you gotta get one more game in!

Please enjoy and have a good time down at the arcade!

Ottawa Pinball Expo 2013 Part III

Yeah, yeah, I know it's now 2014 and the Ottawa Pinball Expo was several months ago but wait! I still have some pictures and notes to share with you!

Before we dive into Part 3 of the Ottawa Pinball Expo, let's get you up to speed on what has already been covered on Bumper City. During Part 1 of my trip report, I gave a general look at the event with a bit of a focus on some of the System-11 tables, especially Williams' Roller Games.

In Part 2, I took a closer look at some of the tables there, especially many of the licensed tables like Dr. Who and Elvira & The Party Monsters.

I have mentioned a few times that the lineup at Ottawa Pinball Expo was more eclectic than what I have usually seen. Not to say that's a bad thing though; no way, it was awesome! Instead of seeing the usual perennial favorites, I got to check out a lot more obscure tables that don't often come to mind. Among the lineup were a couple of late model Premier tables that I've never seen before, let alone heard about, like Gladiators!

This table was released in the 90's, a little while after Gottlieb became Premier when their company assets were bought from their previous owner, The Coca-Cola Company.  During this time, the quality of their tables was really hit-or-miss. Sometimes you would get stinkers like Tee'd Off but also some gems like Stargate, which is considered one of Premier's top-of-the-line tables. Gladiators is a very underrated table that often gets passed up when talking about Premier, conversations often tending to focus on the lack of quality that many of Premiers releases were burdened with.

The neat thing about Gladiators is that instead of there being a particular ball lock shot, you must light the word MULTI by hitting different shots in order. I like it because the game encourages you to slow down and focus on your shots instead of shooting hapharzardly. The one issue I did have, in particular with this table, is that late-model Gottlieb flippers become weaker over time and the flippers on this table weren't the strongest. This made it very difficult to hit the M shot which is the left-most ramp as it is quite long and the ball can't build up enough speed to make it the entire way around without a little nudgin'.

Ford Mustang Pro... REVEAL!

Big news today from Stern! They released the details of the Mustang Pro model and pictures as well!

Dang, that is a nice looking table! Continuing with the new tradition ushered in by Star Trek Pro, Mustang will be entirely outfitted with LEDs. The news is that Camilo Pardo, the individual who designed the GT-40, actually only did the backglass and cabinet art and not the playfield. Despite that, the artwork is really pretty. The playfield still has the Stern standard of photoshop playfield artwork but what can ya do? It's not a make-or-break for me. What I'm really interested in is the playfield.