Starting today and running through October 1st is the only time you will be able to register to participate in this years Cascadia Pinball Cup.

The event is being held on November 7th at Slabtown
starting at 12:00 Noon.

You have two choices: (1) register for Cascadia Pinball Cup or
(2) register for Cascadia Pinball Cup and pre-order a t-shirt.

This is your best chance to get a shirt, possibly the only time. We will try to have a few the day of but they may cost even more then. So get them now! Please list your shirt size in the space provided if you decide to order one.

Registration/T-shirt Order

Cascadia Pinball Cup Entry $42.00 Cascadia Pinball Cup Entry plus (1) T-shirt $62.00

T-Shirt Size

Already Registered:

Fred Franken
Aaron Nelson
James Edes

Stern’s next machine, Avatar, is coming out soon. Avatar is already known among some circles (namely, the circle made up of me and my cat) as one of the most pixelated pinball games ever made. Take a look at this screenshot for an example:

It’s like freaking Monet met up with Buzz Aldrin and they had a baby together. And then they smashed the baby onto the playfield and then cranked up the pixels. Amirite?!

But wait, there’s more! Now’s your chance to finally see the pinball machine in person.

Quarterworld is being rad enough to let some top ballers get an early taste of the machine. To be granted access, all you have to do is hold a GC or #1 score on one of the two machine at the Langano Lounge by the tournament’s end.

Check out Qdub’s post about the tournament.

And here are some additional details:

Casual Span: Aug. 20 - Sept. 12.
Casual Loc: Langano Lounge. 1435 Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.
Casual Crush: The Simpsons Pinball Party, Indiana Jones (Stern)
Casual Flow Rating: 5/5 (due to length of the tournament)

There is the potential for four people to win this tournament. So don’t fret! You have a chance. And if you win, it would be cool if you could use the message board to give us fans and early review!

Apparently after being open for 18 months, the city decided to come along and enforce this crazy old law. Think about it, someone from the city came along and insisted upon enforcing this law on the arcade nearly two years after being open, what a douche of a person. In my opinion it is some crotchety old fart who has nothing better to do that to hate on stuff. I’m guessing this law is merely the vehicle for a much darker hate that is rooted in the City of Beacon.

Probably the best thing that we can do to get Fred back in business is to write or call Beacon city council and mayors office.
http://www.cityofbeacon.org/departments

There’s a facebook group that even has a nice form letter to send in.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=139564602749976

If the city does not allow the Retro Arcade to operate in the next few days. I think then we will have to up our efforts to this cause, and I do have some very creative and effective ideas in store for that. Let’s hope that some calls and letters will do the trick first.

Check out this video about the issue on CNN

58 people competed in the Open tournament, and 49 in the Classics tournament. Strong turn-out! And folks really put a lot of work into their qualifying entries. You had to put up some hot scores in order to make it into the final rounds.

And then once the final round started, oh man, things got shaken up fast. Some big names got eliminated in the first round of the finals.

And through it all Robert Gagno emerged victorious in - get this - not one, but BOTH tournaments! He swept it! No easy feat. He played great throughout the tournament. And when crunchtime came, in the final rounds, he pulled it off like a champ. He came down with this parents, Kathy and Maurizio, and they all basically operated as a team throughout the weekend. Team Gagno. (On a personal note: I got 2nd place in the Open, and while I felt like I played pretty well, I’m not sad! It was totally cool to watch Robert sweep the event. Major props.)

Nice showing by Portland players in the event. All our constant playing and competing must be paying off… with DIVIDENDS! Whatever that means. Nice showing by the core CFF contingent, too. But there were some notable absences (Replay!).

Here are photos taken by Robert’s dad of the winners line-ups. Check out their flickr page for a lot more great pictures.

Classics Division Winners. l-r: James Edes (4th), Cayle George (2nd), Robert Gagno (1st), Aaron “Dropshot” Nelson (3rd).

Open Division Winners. l-r: Fred “Fred” Franken (4th), Robert Gagno (1st), Steve Lampros (3rd), Ryan “ROM” Gratzer (2th).

Eden Stamm was top qualifier in the Open. Cayle George was the top qualifier in the Classics. Zoe “Legs” Vrabel was the top female qualifier, and she also won the PBR skateboard in a mini-tourney (thanks PBR!).

Big thanks to Aaron, Jake (Revtest), Fred, Eric, and Noah for organizing the event. And thanks to Slabtown for providing a rad venue. Mega thanks to Ricochet for their tight tournament machines, and for their really awesome mini-game machines. Here’s a video of Jeri from Ricochet showing off the NES Light Gun game.

Danny Backglass won the Time Machine reverse-flipper tourney, and Mike Smith won both the Tommy Bad Cats and the Star Trek NES Zapper tourneys. Way to go! Also, thanks to Quality Entertainment for their machine. Thanks to Chris Rhodes for bringing in Aztec, and for everyone who brought in their sweet machines. The line-ups were nice. Very well-rounded and interesting.

Check out this page on the message board for the full results.

Lastly, some pictures:

Grandmaster Danny Backglass watches, approves

Eden and Cayle in the Classics finals

More classics action

Eden rocking some Royal Flush

DDT rocking the Frontier

Robert in game 1 of the final round.

ROM in the final round

See you next year!

There’s a lot to go over right now. And I do not think I will be able to cover it all, late as it is. But I will try to note the things that pop into my head. First off, Eden Stamm arrived today from Canada and succeeded in posting a slew of big scores in the Open division, thus securing his 1st place qualifying position. He was solid all the way through. And in the Classics division, Cayle George ended the night on top.

There was a very strong turnout in both tournaments. It was busy all day, but the final few hours were especially crammed with contenders jockeying for qualifying positions. Mega thanks go out to Sara, Nhu, and Katrina for managing the scoring in the final hours. It looked really hectic, and you all really took care of business. Also thanks to Emma for her superlong day shift. Plus thx to Isaac, Noah, DannyB, Jake, Dennis, and EVERYONE who helped out and/or took a scoring shift (I am missing many in that list).

Here are the leaderboards:

Open leaderboard (top 16 qualifies)

Classics leaderboard (top 8 qualifies)

And the individual machine scores:

Open:
Simpsons
Demolition Man
Whirlwind
Terminator 2
Frontier
Seawitch

Classics:
Royal Flush
Aces and Kings
Aztec
Solar City

Okay, I am super tired. Here are a bunch of pictures I took today! Click each image for full size. The pictures cover some afternoon action, mini-games (NES Gun Flippers, Reverse-Flippers, and Tommy mode), Classics set-up, and more.

And here’s a video I took with my camera of some Classics action! That’s Eric Hill, one of the event organizers, in the foreground playing Aztec.

So! The Classics finale matches start tomorrow, Sunday, at noon! If you’re in the top 8, ya gotta be there on time. This is IT!

And during the classics matches, there will be the side-battle for the PBR longboard. This battle will be with the 17th-20th place finishers in the Open Division (but it also depends on how they qualified in the Classics…?? I don’t get it, really - JUST BE THERE OKAY!), and will be starting at noon.

Then, around 2:30pm, the Open division final matches will begin. If you qualified in the top 16, be there earlier than 2:30pm. Don’t be lame (looking at you OOO).

The Ricochet mini-games! In the fourth picture above, you can see Jeri Ellsworth, one half (with Trish) of the inventive minds behind the fun set-ups, using the NES laser Gun to play Star Trek. As far as I know, Dave (10th picture) has the current high score on that machine - around 34 million. And Danny B (7th picture) has the current high score on the reverse-flippered Time Machines (around 4.2 million). I’m not sure who has the high on Tommy Bad Cats - but I’ve heard it’s around 25 million.

Alright, I’ll have another round-up tomorrow once it’s all over. I hope you found this post informative, and I hope I didn’t anything crucial out. See you tomorrow!!

Open Leaderboard

Basically:
Robert Gagno - 1st
Cayle George - 2nd
Danny Backglass - 3rd
Romulanx - 4th

and etc.

Open division machine scores:

Simpsons
Demolition Man
Whirlwind
Terminator 2
Frontier
Seawitch

And the Classics Division Leaderboard

Royal Flush
Aces and Kings
Aztec
Solar City

Nice turn-out tonight. It felt busy. We’re showing 40 entries so far. Even stronger than last year at this point. A lot of the weekly regulars have shown up (though not all! what up), as well as some fresh faces, plus there’s a solid contingent from Seattle, and from British Columbia. And more of them to arrive tomorrow. Action starts tomorrow at noon. And there’s, no doubt, gonna be a lot of shifts in the leaderboard.

Ricochet has set up some rad side-games. Get this! They have a Data East Star Trek machine with flippers that you activate using an NES Gun! There are sensors at the bottom of the playfield, and you shoot the gun at the left or right sensors, accordingly. Its really difficult! But I was definitely improving with each try. Whosoever has the high score by the end of the tournament wins half the coin box. 25 cents to play.

Plus, they set up Bad Cats Tommy Style - with the bottom foot of the playfield covered up in black tape, so you can’t see the flippers!

And - third side-game machine - Time Machine is set with reverse flippers. The right button triggers the left flipper, the left button triggers the right. Super challenging. Top score on any of these machine by the end of the tourney wins half the respective cashbox. They are really fun, unusual, and creative side-games to be running during the tournament. Fun ways to step away from the qualifying machines and just get wild!

Sorry, I did not take pictures of anything tonight. I’ll take and post some pics tomorrow. And I’ll also post another status report after the qualifying rounds ends, midnight tomorrow. Good luck tomorrow, everyone. Let’s see some sick scores!

Check out the Showdown page for more details, plus some stuff about the rules.

And read the message board thread for some hot discussions!

This style of tournament, though different from Portland’s weekly tournaments and from the Ground Kontrol Pinbrawl, has a strong focus on an individual’s skill and strategy. While you are trying to beat other people’s scores, you’re also allowed the time and space to do your best without having to worry about being eliminated after just a couple bad games. Two days of casual flow qualifying on Friday and Saturday! Hang out, watch the players, watch your placement go up and down, and have fun!

But then on Sunday, things change! Once it’s down to 16, you’ll be matched up against the other players, playing three 4-player games, and then advancing (or not) from there.

A lot of people will be entering this tournament. It’s a good way to check out the scene, get sorta serious about your game, TRY HARD, and maybe win some money!

Here’s an overview:

Slabtown
1033 NW 16th
Portland, OR

Open Tournament will be held on 6 machines and qualifying will be held from:
Friday, July 30 3:00-Midnight
Saturday, July 31 12:00-Midnight

Finals will be held on: Sunday, August 1 following Classics finals

Classics Tournament will be held on 4 machines and qualifying will be held from:
Friday, July 30 3:00-Midnight
Saturday, July 31 12:00-Midnight

Finals will be held on:
Sunday, August 1 at 12:00pm

1 ticket=1 game
1 ticket- $3
4 tickets- $10

Open tournament machines:
Seawitch
Frontier
Whirlwind
Demolition Man
The Simpson’s Pinball Party
Terminator: II

Classic tournament machines:
Aces and Kings
Royal Flush
Solar City
Aztec

Machines are provided by Quality Entertainment, Ricochet Pinball, and some individuals. Thank you to all y’all, and to the organizers, and Slabtown! It should be a lot of fun. There are two big pinball tournaments in Portland each year, and this is one of them!

In the meantime, read our excellent (live)blogging coverage from last year’s Showdown:
Showdown at Slabtown - Updates
Top 16 announced
Showdown at Slabtown wrap-up

And like last year, we’ll try to keep this blog up to date with the latest qualifying scores (daily round-up).

As most pinballers in Portland know, the Portland Pinball Map serves this city well as the go-to source for locating pins in town. The map has an army of pals, many of them unknown and unacknowledged (until now: thank you), keeping the data up to date. When you stop into a spot and notice a machine has been swapped out, it’s only a matter of moments until *click click BAM* the website is updated. Easy as that. And with the next version of the iPhone app coming at ya shortly, users will be able add/remove machines and stuff straight from their phone. Plus what’s more, the Android app is shaping up curvaceously, and will be available sooooooon!

So, as I’ve pointed out, the map works well here because we have 1) a ton of machines, 2) hot data, 3) a really user-friendly website, and 4) an active user base that helps keep everything up to date.

But there are some other cities around the country with a bunch of public machines, too. And they wanted a map like ours - So! the Portland Pinball Map has expanded to cover other cities. First up are British Columbia (aka Vancouver, BC), and Seattle, WA. Their maps are basically separate sites, all under one domain. And it’s easy to switch from one to the next. See:

British Columbia

Seattle

The new link for the site is http://pinballmap.com (though http://portlandpinballmap.com still works, too).

If you already have the iPhone app, the next version will have these regions added to it. And any additional regions we add will be automatically added to the apps (no updating necessary).

We’re excited about these new regions. VRPA is managing the BC data, and they’re surely going to be on the ball with keeping things up to date. But for both regions we need to get the word out! If you live in either of these areas, please start using these maps! The cool thing about these is that you don’t have to send machine updates to someone, and then wait for the updates to be made live - you can do all the updates yourself. Cut out the middleman!

And we’re always adding more features to the maps. If you have suggestions, sock ‘em to us.

Trackie!!!! Day, the most beloved of holidays, where fashion meets Fathom, where velour meets Viking, where DDT’s bare chest meets your eyeballs, occured on Mothers’ Day weekend, so those of us who prefer pinball to parents met up at the lovely and quant Ship Ahoy tavern for some meat and cheese (there was, natch, no love for the vegans at this fest) and dollar games on WCS.

Fueling up on Visos before hitting the streets. (credit: Scoop)

Mystery checks out his pinball skillz (credit: Isaac Ruiz)

Invisorated, we headed onward in our van of sin and destruction, blowing smoke in the faces of our enemies (or, I guess, Opto’s car, which was following us). Next stop was Apex, a pretty new bar on 12th and Division that you should check out. First off, they have a TV dedicated soley to the type/name/brewery/ABV% of their tap list (word to the wise: beer/cider only, folks. Also, cash only! Act accordingly)! Also, a separate pinball alley that houses Theater of Magic, LOTR, IJ4, and Ripley’s! Thirdly, a bank of mirrors on the wall above the machines, serving both your rabid spectators and yourself, should you choose to look up. 

See? (credit: ipdb.org, Heather, and my sweet MSPaint prowess)

So obviously we had to have a mini-tourney to test our mirror-pinball chops. It was on ToM. ROM won, possibly because his name is very similar to the name of the game. We also discovered that I am actually the girl on the Xenon backglass (see right). Next on the list was GK, because what kind of pincrawl (meh, I’m ambivalent about that word) doesn’t stop by the largest pinball destination in Portland? There, we did a one-handed mini-tourney on Demo Man (if I remember correctly, you had to use the handles, not the flipper buttons), which DDT won one-handily. (Ha!) We stayed there until the bar opened, so that those of us ammenable to the notion could slam a Pabst before we started off toward Slabtown. Slabtown’s challenge of choice was sit-down Party Zone. Scoop kicked ass with 30+ million.

Then, we were hungry, so we went to Opto’s Parlor of Pins, a private venue also know as the Davii household. We ate pizza and drank beer.  DDT and Dropshot both GCed Centaur on the same game (DDT exceeded the original GC as Player 1, Dropshit went above and beyond to re-GC it:

yowza! (credit: do i have to credit myself?)

We also met the youngest tracksuit!  His name is Vinnie and, according to him, he’s “four and a half.  But I’m still shy!!!!”  Those were the only two sentences he said to me before grabbing the juice I poured him and running away.  I’d hate him if he hadn’t inherited his dad’s dashing good looks:

the PatC legacy. (credit: PatC; also I still rule at MSPaint)

Isaac took some cool pictures in Noah’s garage, but it took me like half an hour to make that Pat and Vinnie thing happen so I’m gonna cool off on the nÜ media for a while (also, oh my Lord, I hate PCs).  I’m just gonna cut to the chase instead, because this is already a month late and I think my boss may fire me if I don’t start doing my actual job instead of writing in my pinball journal.  After Noah’s we went to the Standard.  Mini-tourney: straight-up highest score on Black Rose.  Prize: a super cute piece of Shell Bell’s homemade jewelry.  Kickback won, and his lovely ladyfriend got some pinball-related bling.

We finished it off, 12 hours later, across the street from whence we started.  At C-Bar, there was a battle between the winners of the four mini-tourneys (to refresh your memories, I know I’m long-winded and parenthetical: ROM, DDT, Scoop, Kickback) on Indiana Jones.  ROM was victorious and got some sort of lightsaber thing that you’ll see in the final picture if I ever post this.  Emma was also spotted with a pinball lamp of some kind, I don’t remember why.  The whole PatC family got some schwag for being a family of trackies!!!!  And Sauce won worst tracksuit.

Okay, that was Trackie!!!! Day.  We’ll do it again next year.  Stay tuned for ROM’s much more timely Portland Pinball Map announcement.  Here, have a picture:

TRACKIE!!!! DAY! (credit: Scoop)

And now tomorrow’s the day when we do it all again! So, pump up your shoes and step into a lifestyle of comfort and leisure. (Personally, I think of tracksuits as like stylish pajamas that are acceptable to wear outside…)

The day starts off at Ship Ahoy at 1pm. We’ll play there some, and then move on to the next spot, and after that the next spot, etc. DDT (pictured above) has planned all kinds of cool shit. Such as! Mini-games, like skillshot tests and various other styles of casual tournament play. So bring dollars ($$) to wager against your fellow tracksuiter. There will also be open casual play, if that’s all you’re feeling. But the real fun comes from betting! And trust me, there will be some fun and unusual mini-tournamos.

And there will be prizes!! We’ll have shwag and stuff, plus a load of VISO to fuel us along the way! The good folks at VISO have supplied us with goods to keep us fired up for the whole day. Attentive readers will remember about a year ago when we created a fake VISO logo and put it on this site for a couple months in order to pretend that we were sponsored or something (pictured right). Most of us drink a ton of the stuff, and we wanted to show our support for the local brand. Well, now they’re giving us stuff for real! Thanks, VISO!

If you don’t plan to be at Ship Ahoy at 1pm, but you still want to catch up with the group at some point, I will make a point of twittering our current location on the Portland Pinball tweetertweet. So, check that for the latest loc.

Also, bring cameras!

This is gonna be a rad day. See you tomorrow.