DPO 2014 thoughts...

[Moonraker]

Another excellent Dutch Pinball Open... really settling in the new location in Drunen. Lots of machines on the main floor, with Steve Ritchie as one of the guests they (supposedly) managed to achieve a full line up of his machine designs past and present including Airborne Avenger and Superman (not sure where T3 and 24 were though).

Jersey Jack was there showcasing the Hobbit, TBL (complete with rug) was available for people to try with the early game code. Timeshock looked fantastic despite the playfield being whitewood and most plastics being 3D printed a solid white colour. MMr was there to play - most people not realising it wasn't a older Williams one. TWD with most up to date game code looking good.

So what was good?

The tournament area out on it's on in another building on site.

Getting to play lots of rare games such as:
Punk! http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1877
Gladiators http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1011
Bad Girls (alternate translite) http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=128
Spring Break (alternate translite) http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=128

Timeshock.

Bowling on TBL (when it worked properly).

Greg @robotgreg making the final of the classics.

Skywalker @Lukasz Romanowski getting 220M and Grand Champion on STLE admittedly on 5 balls with extra balls but it was still almost double the previous highest.

Lots of TV coverage!

Flying in from Stansted.

What was bad?

Hobbit - sorry guys but this looks like one big snooze fest, so much so that after 10 mins of watching one ball (same ball) I gave up waiting for a go (almost unheard of) Although the film images and game progress / scoring on the large backbox screen were very impressive.

TBL - maybe it's the very early prototype code but wasn't impressed with game play apart from the bowling alley (which might grow old quick for some people). Loved the LCD display though.

No Brits in the top 10 of the main comp.

Plane back being delayed 30 mins (at 10pm) after it was discovered that it had hit a bird when landing.

 

[roadshow16]

Great to hear Peter, really wish I could have made it, thanks for the review.

What was it about TBL that you didn't like? From all the videos the layout and overall package looks great, do you think with decent code it could be a great game?

From all the videos of TH it looks really slow, similar to WOZ I would say, what was the overall perception? Did anyone love it?

Shame to hear about the Brits not up to much in the main tournament, what were the final positions? How did Luckasz fair, did he make it? Great news on Greg in the classics though, fantastic result.

Thanks for doing this, like I said, really wish I could have made it, one day I will get to a DPO,

Cheers, Craig

 

[johnwhitfield]

Thanks for the review.

The hobbit really doesn't seem to be getting much love at the moment. Was it the same code as in the US a few weeks ago? I would of hoped they would have learnt from the release of WOZ and only shown it when it was ready rather than trying to rush it out. Still want to play it though.....

 

[robotgreg]

Yeah, DPO was great. Brits did OK in main comp with 4 through qualifying, @Lukasz Romanowski (in 4th!), Martin, David and me. Lucasz and Martin met in loser bracket later on and Martin had a fab game of over 2B on Roadshow but then went on to meet Roy Wils who put 30M on Whirlwind on ball 1! So Lucasz and Martin would have been somewhere 10-14th. I was 20th= and David 40th=

Got to agree with Peter's thoughts on both Hobbit and TBL. Didn't play Hobbit but looked a bore fest, was very slow and although video looked great, don't like the disjointed images in 4 areas of the screen.

Similarly disappointed with TBL although before playing, it did look much more interesting and fun, with IMO the much better LCD screen in right place and right size, but when playing needs some serious sorting out yet: bowling game was constantly failing with no rerack of pins, both ramps very steep so either needs stronger flippers or requires a perfect shot. Also didn't like the Jersey Jack esque inserts with small coloured round letters like on Woz.

Seeing these pins makes you realise and appreciate what a great job Stern do with their games and although TBL looks a good effort, to me really lacked fun when playing and music also became very quickly repetitive and annoying.

 

[Moonraker]

Thanks for the review.

The hobbit really doesn't seem to be getting much love at the moment. Was it the same code as in the US a few weeks ago? I would of hoped they would have learnt from the release of WOZ and only shown it when it was ready rather than trying to rush it out. Still want to play it though.....

Shoot one of the ramps in the middle feeds back to the flipper and repeat until multiball. Very little else to do. You could shoot the targets to the left or right of the ramps or the odd pop up troll (I know they're not trolls but MM got the pop up trolls in first). Very little to sling or rebound the ball out of play hence 10+ mins of play with one ball and resulting snooze fest. I understand Robin discussed the merits (!) of waxing a playfield before leaving the factory with JJ so that the game might actually play quicker...

There were 3 WOZ (standard, LE and 75th LE) which were all heavily played all weekend and I didn't get close to one to try out.

@roadshow16 - Martin was the top finisher defeating Lukasz before coming a cropper against Roy.

MMr should have played better but the flippers seemed weak and could only complete the ramps say 1 in 7 attempts. The colour screen went in to 1 colour default on the Sunday - those who own colour DMD's will know what I mean...! This could easily have been rectified by someone but wasn't.

 

[D-Type]

I thought TBL looked beautifully made, everything about it looks well executed. I had a couple of goes on it, I'm not sure yet about the layout, although I'm sure some tweaking will improve it.

TH was super dull. OK, it's nowhere near complete, but the playfield is more bare in the middle/bottom than my BH and it's also a widebody. Actually, got to play a WOZ at long last, I thought that was overall better than I expected.

I complained to Steve Ritchie about the all new Sterns since MET having too clinically white LEDs on them and he said "ST doesn't go have a look". He was right. "Careful with those LEDs, Eugene"

The DPO Expo was a great event, let down only by me ending up in a hotel far too far away (1hr 40 walk). The established association model to organise, provide machines and execute the event worked really well.

I came about 72nd'ish in the tournament out of about 170+ entrants, which, as I was doing some score taking and using my tried and tested "that machine's free, I'll try qualifying on it" method, was quite a good result.

I also watched the TBL film on the flight home, it's pretty good!

 

[dave]

Shoot one of the ramps in the middle feeds back to the flipper and repeat until multiball. Very little else to do. You could shoot the targets to the left or right of the ramps or the odd pop up troll (I know they're not trolls but MM got the pop up trolls in first). Very little to sling or rebound the ball out of play hence 10+ mins of play with one ball and resulting snooze fest. I understand Robin discussed the merits (!) of waxing a playfield before leaving the factory with JJ so that the game might actually play quicker...

Well I'm kind of glad I wasn't just blindly hating on the game, you could see it wasn't much fun from the expo vids.

I think the videos from Expo the table was also just set to one ball, that pretty much confirms to you the game is too easy & loooong. I know most of these games will end up in homes but they should still be made to take your money.

 

[mark9]

Can TH be saved with the improvements that are coming?

I'm not sure...I've no doubt that Jack will pull out all the stops to try and reverse the negativity seen so far, and the code obviously has a long way to go, but there's only so much that can be done, the playfield layout surely is finished.

How many are going to drop 6.5k+ on this when you can pick up better games for less than a sixth of the price?

And if the latest rumours about a LOTR Vault edition coming soon are true...

 

[jagman]

LOTR has to be one of the favorites to be re issued as it seems to be a much sought after pin, only seen TH on you tube etc, playfield just looks empty compared to WOZ i was hoping it would have had more effort in the playfield design, put those 2 pins side by side and you would think they came from different manufactures

 

[johnwhitfield]

Much as I love LOTR I'm not sure if a re-issue will be on the cards unless Jack misses the release date as I would have thought there would have been an exclusivity clause.

I'm sure there would still be some demand for a LOTR reissue though. Wonder what they would do about the figures? Probably just miss them off unless they stumble across a stash of them. I'm not a fan of plastic toys just stuck on the playfield but Gandalf does look cool.

 

[Matt Vince]

The DPO is a great show to go to, the venue is spacious and allows for separate rooms for comps (including a theatre where the finalists play on stage). They always have a varied mix of machines with many I had never come across, great fun all round.

The Hobbit has a different feel to the modern Stern's and really does remind of an old widebody game with modern features.

I loved the look, sound and theme of TBL and was very excited to get to play it. The software is at a very early stage which may be why there was a lack of flow to the game, not all diverters were in use and every shot just had a sound call. The bowling didn't work well mechanically, but was better than I expected when working.

MMr was nice, the flippers and coils were weak, I hope this isn't related to the new board system!

TWD I find boring and not one of Stern's best efforts, but the theme does nothing for me.