Posted: May 5th, 2010 by ROM
Just like what happened when the last latest Stern machine erupted onto the scene - which was that operator Quarterworld held a two day “Casual Flow” tournament on it for $100 - that same deal is going down right now to welcome in the even laterest machine, Iron Man.
The tournament is happening at:
Slingshot Lounge
5532 SE Center (right off of Foster)
Portland, OR, 97206
(503) 445-6649
I was at Slingshot last Saturday with DDT, and I ate a Deluxe Garden Burger that was so freaking delicious you don’t even know!
The tournament ends tomorrow (5/6). The winner gets $100. Come check out the new game! And then go see the movie!! Discuss the tournastuff here.
Posted: April 26th, 2010 by Legs
If you don’t feel like reading farther than the first sentence of this post, know this: Portland Pinbrawl 2010 was EPIC and it lasted until 1:30 a.m. and Jeff “Deathsave” Gagnon added a second Johnny Mnemonic to his half-working pinball machine line-up back in Ye Olde Seattle and I learned how to spell the word “mnemonic.” But if you were looking for something deeper than one run-on sentence, read on, wise baller, read on:
At last year’s inaugural Pinbrawl, 120 people showed up, about half of them the registering on-site the day of. This year, the tourney was capped at 128 participants, and 127!!! of them pre-registered. Brett Erickson was the lucky 128th soul, preventing J.D. Yeager from being the only participant with a bye. Sorry, J.D.!
photo from sachiko-no!'s flickr
The bracket was a force to be reckoned with. For one thing, it was huge, sizewise. And for another, dayum, were the players good. Keith Elwin, #2 pinballer in the world, graced us with his presence, knocking many ballers to the curb and, I’m sure, drinking all the IPAs in the Northwest while he was at it. He started off the tournament facing down Danny Backglass on The Simpsons Pinball Party. And if you want anyone battling the #1 player in the US, it’s DannyB wearing his CFF vest and whaling on a Ground Kontrol machine. He loves that shit! Keith won the first match, but not by much, and DB managed to force him to game three. But eventually even the most hardened pinball gangsters can fall to Keith Elwin’s flipper skills.
Other notable early matches: Replay and Deathsave met on the Shadow right off the bat; ROM beat Dropshot in round 2, knocking last year’s second place winner to the losers bracket way earlier than expected; VRPA was pitted against itself in the form of Eden Stamm vs. Robert Gagno, a pretty low-scoring couple of games on Roadshow where Robert came out on top (in a twist of fate, the two of them would meet again later on in the evening, in the losers bracket); and Cayle George, last year’s Pinbrawl winner, also the champion of multiple consecutive Shorty’s tournaments, lost against William Brown in the second round, sending him to the losers bracket as well.
photo from sachiko-no!'s flickr
It was barely afternoon, but you could tell this Pinbrawl was getting intense. Also around this time I discovered the delicious faux-meatball sub at Backspace (I went 0-2, trading in my pinballing for meatballing and PBR) so some stuff happened that I wasn’t aware of. DannyB was hacking his way through the losers bracket, hoping to stay in it long enough to get his revenge against Keith. He knocked Bounceback out before moving on to Dropshot. According to a confidential source, “I buttfucked dropshot at simpsons. Just made him look like a fruit salad. And, he cried a little. 2-0.” My computer pretty much doesn’t recognize any of the words in that first sentence, but I’d never edit or censor DannyB. And he just kept going. Edmund Nash, Elijah Nelson, Mark Mahoney, Dave Dimoff, Jason Kickback America…not bad players, but they all fell in the face of DannyB’s pinball wrath.
Over in the winners bracket, Keith defeated Robert Gagno (probably the youngest competitor at the ‘Brawl…if any young 21ers want to take issue with that statement, bring it on, I don’t factcheck, I bodycheck) on Bride of Pinbot and moved on to Star Trek, where Mr. Russ Wallis, aka Skillshot, surfacing out of semi-pinball-retirement (aka fatherhood), was waiting to take him on. And take him on he did; Russ knocked Keith to the losers bracket, where he had to play Cayle. It went to 3 games on Scared Stiff for these two huge competitors. On the third game, Cayle was miles ahead of Keith when a game malfunction left them playing their third game on Spiderman. Cayle walked away victorious, knocking Keith out of the tournament entirely. Russ had to play Deathsave in the winners bracket and was unable to sustain his high (Skillshot’s tournament advice: get three hours of sleep the night before, apparently it works wonders), getting knocked out by Mahaffey in the losers bracket; Mahaffey also knocked out Robert Gagno, who beat Eden for the second time in one tournament before losing to Mike.
Cayle and Opto were on Funhouse and this was about the time I had a free second to watch and also was feeling my beers (you can trace my drinking habits based on how legible the paper bracket is; check it out at Dropshot’s house. The bracket is a fucking work of art if I do say so myself), but it was a ridiculous match! It went three games, and the whole time I was freaking out and clutching Slamtilt’s arm (oh, Slam was still in it at this point, too, but I neglected to watch any of his matches so they’re not really documented here) but OptoNoah came out on top, winning games 2 and 3 pretty handily. He also managed to beat Mahaffey, and the final three matches were played out on the stage.
photo from sachiko-no!'s flickr
Decided beforehand, the winners final was on Viking, the losers final was on Flash, and the final final was on the prize machine, Johnny MNEMONIC (sorry, really excited about being able to spell this word now). The winners final was Deathsave vs. Steve; Steve’s a tilty motherfucker and I was interested to see how these older machines would treat him. Jeffsave made some intense saves; in one ball, he had two times where he got the ball back onto the playfield from the bumper in the left outlane (not technically a bangback, who knew?), and he ended up knocking Steve into the losers bracket to play Noah. They played on Noah’s home Flash machine, but hey, them’s the breaks. During Game 2, Steve tilted his own ball and Noah’s next ball, automatically forfeiting the game. It would have been tough to come back from that, and he didn’t, so it was an all-CFF final. John “Tilt” Wray was in fine and belligerent form, heckling from the audience, and the final was pretty ridiculous. Noah had to win two best-2-of-3 matches against Jeff. He won the first one 2-0, yikes, so everyone was pretty on edge to see how it would all turn out. The second game went 3 games before Jeff finally pulled out of his (whiskey-induced?) slump and defeated Noah to win himself a duplicate of a game he already owns.
So the machine didn’t go to a native Portlander, but from what I hear it’s still in town. CFF had 8 of the final 16, a vast improvement over last year’s 4. Everyone had a lot of fun. I assume GK sold a lot of Pabst. And I did just as well as I did last year, when I didn’t show up. Except at least this time I got drunk, so you can blame Pabst for any errors in this blog post, as well as the fact that Noah won a PBR mini-fridge he doesn’t need. This tournament was, to put it simply, a blast. Next up is the Slabtown Showdown on July 30-August 1st, and it’s gonna be sweet. So see you then, or at the Slabtown tourney in November, or at Shorty’s, or at next year’s 3rd Annual Pinbrawl. And always remember, CFF TIL DEATH.
Posted: April 25th, 2010 by dropshot
Deathsave Beat Opto to claim this years pinhead at Portland PinBrawl!
Where did Johnny go anyways?
Current date: 4/25/10
Posted: March 15th, 2010 by ROM
WE ARE CURRENTLY AT 127 REGISTRATIONS.
REGISTER HERE AT: http://groundkontrol.com/wordpress/?cat=12
The time is nearly nigh for the 2nd Annual Portland Pinbrawl. So, bone up on your skills - your pinball skills, your pre-registration skills, and your metaphor skills - because soon you’ll be punching suckas in the face left and right, via your scores being higher than theirs.
Details:
Ground Kontrol - 511 NW Couch St.
Sunday April 18, 2010
11am til death
$20 for entry
Machines: There are a lot lot of them. Check the GK site or the Portland Pinball Map for the list.
I don’t have my datapad in front of me, but last year there were like 120 people (128?). This year’ll be about the same, except that shit’s being capped! 128 en toto. Pre-registration is open now, so you better pre-registrate now or die forever, okay? As of this writing there are 61 pre-registered. Still over a month away and it’s nearly half full? That should tell you something right there…
Note that this year it’s going to start a little earlier. 11am SHARP. Very sharp.
There will be two mini-tournaments happening during the main event, run by your favorite hometown heroes, CFF! The mini-tournos will be a split-flipper tournament, and a one-handed tournament. The split-flipper will be on Viking. The one-handed will be on Dr. Who.
There will be a food cart nearby for tasteful all-day grub.
The format for the main event is 1 on 1, best 2 of 3, double elimination.
The grand prize is a Johnny Mnemonic DVD Pinball Machine!
Stay up to date with Ground Kontrol’s Pinbrawl blog posts. Also, click that link to pre-register.
Okay then, see you then! Don’t forget to try your hardest!
Posted: March 12th, 2010 by ROM
And now, some brain-exploding words from our favorite Portland-based pinball locator service:
Have you ever thought about how in the future you could have a big list of nearby pinball machines… listed on your phone? Good - glad you’ve thought that. It’s a great thought to have. Well, ladies and everyone, that future is technically NOW. Introducing the next step in advanced technology: the Portland Pinball Map iPhone App.
Art by Drew! UI by Isaac!! Consultation fees and extensive kickbacks awarded to ROM and SSW!!! Yea!!!!
Features:
- Tracks 340+ pinball machines in 170+ locations all over Portland (and Vancouver too!)
- Find locations by proximity (an iPhone app exclusive feature!)
- Filter locations by those having four or more machines
- Stay up to date on your favorite spots, or find new favorites
- iPhone and iPod Touch 3.0 compatible
It costs .99 galleons.
Updates will be rolled out. Feedback is encouraged.
GO HERE FOR MORE INFO (INCLUDING SCREENSHOTS), AND TO ACCESS THE APPLE ITUNES STORE.
Posted: February 16th, 2010 by ROM
Howdy partners!
Remember how much you used to like Bambi when you were a little kiddo? Wasn’t he so fuzzy and cute, and he had those little animals friends who bounced around the magical forest with him and cracked jokes and stuff?? And don’t forget! That back then while you were young and didn’t know much about what life had to offer, what you did know was that you wanted to hug him and be his best friend 4 life??? I remember that, too. That ruled.
But then remember how you grew up a couple years and watched it again, and at the part when Bambi’s mama got shot up and killed by that heroic hunter the whole thing stopped being sad and was instead totally funny? I don’t know about you, but that part made me go, “FUCK YES!” And it was at that seminal point in my life (after I got grounded for swearing) where I decided for forever that the best animal is a dead animal, and that deer in particular can kiss my butt.
In that respect! Local pinball operator Quarterworld has delivered to Portland the newest pinball machine from Stern: Big Buck Hunter Pro. And to kick off the launch of this new bloody beast, Quarterworld and the Bar of the Gods (BOG) has set up a sweet two-day tournament on it.
Details straight from Qdub:
When: 2-16-10 to 2-17-10
Where: Bar of the Gods
4801 SE Hawthorne
503-232-2037
Rules: They are quite simple. You have two days to Grand Champ the table. Who ever is the GC at midnight on Wednesday wins.
What do you win… a cool $100.
#1 score walks away with $50, and yes you can win both GC and #1 score.
If you put up a top score at any point tell the bartender. He’ll get your info so we can get ahold of you. Just in case you’re not there on wed. at midnight. Oh yes, and there’s NO entry fee.
He also noted that the scores on the machine will start out at a measly 1 million or something. So, somebody is going to get the GC - guaranteed!
Now, go shoot the shit out of some motherbucking bucks.
Posted: December 29th, 2009 by ROM
Hey gang, and stars, and everyone in between - I thought I’d share an image of this super rad glow-in-the-dark-in-my-brain CFF keychain! It was made by pinball maven extraordinaires, Jeri Ellsworth and Trish of Ricochet Pinball. They presented them to us at the most recent Voodoo Too Classic Cup… so if you’re a member and you weren’t there, then your only chance of getting one is to be the first one to don a comfy sweater and then tell me how right I am about… I dunno, maybe about how colorful and crazy images of elaborate combo shots are enhancing the substance of this website like 2x-3x. Or, better yet! Design your own combo image and submit it. Because I have an extra keychain, and I’m willing to give it away!
A few lucky people got their CFF keychains in mirror color (like, it’s a mirror). So, if you’re like Danny Backglass, you can whip out the mirrored keychain while waiting for modes to start so that you can quickly check up on your carefully cropped bangs.
Thanks Ricochet! You guys are not only circuit board whizzes, and also not only righteous operators, but also good people. Sorry about complaining about machines when I lose. And sorry that I failed to restrain Danny when he kicked Road Show multiple times in front of you after I beat him in that tournament. I’m supposed to be his mentor in all things chill.
Posted: December 12th, 2009 by dropshot
Well I got sick of seeing something about Seattle on the front of our page. So I took initiative to do something about it. Like Sir Snuggles of Tower Multiball has done here with Dexter Evil Genius looking on. You know many times in your life you have wished you could flush Rom down the toilet and take his quarters from him. Sorry if this reminds you of middle school Rom. On another note about Rom, he recently won the last Standard tournament, nicely done. Well I don’t have much to say, just trying to fill some space here. We will be having a split-flipper tournament coming up soon, so start thinking of who you want your partner to be. Ground Kontrol is in the works, the date is going to be April 18th. Also, I have heard word there may be an event thrown in the S.F. area in mid-late Feb. I’m not sure if it is going to be a bigger event or not but we should go down there and win it. Have a good day!
Posted: November 16th, 2009 by dropshot
Once again we drank, we ate dogs and we played pinball. However, this year we seemed to be better at the latter. The event was kicked off (set-up weeks in advance) with our own Deathsave against good friend Carlos on Medieval Madness. Jeff maintained his confidence, even though Carlos dropped twenty credits into the machine as the doors opened, and took his first win with Strongbow in hand. Looking back now I probably should not have told everyone in the joint I wanted Cayle round 1 on TOTAN. Well I got my wish, kinda. We played TAF and let’s just say he hit 65+ bear kicks, toured the mansion 7+ times to put his score around 1.8 Bil and never even looked at ball 3. Those numbers may actually be a little low considering I had found myself more interested in the heated battle between CAP and some dude on Fathom next to me. And like most matches PDX pulled through. There weren’t too many games on day 1, I think only 3-4 hours was how long it lasted. Fred had the unfortunate fate of playing 3 matches, 2 of them back to back while others only played 1 match. Sadly, he did not survive. Neither did Kickback or Emma, to my knowledge. So with day 1 over at 7:00pm we all headed to Deathsave’s for his half working line-up, including Flash Gordon, Centaur, Johnny Mnemonic, Firepower and Medusa. The rest of the night gets hazy for some while others dozed off, some drank all night, some ate acid, some ate cheeseburgers, and I heard Mortal Kombat was even busted out.
Come Sunday morning with fresh donuts in our bellies (thanks Davis’s’s’ss’) and even more Strongbow in others our confidence was high. Jake, Noah and myself all felt we had a long day ahead of us knocking people to the curb before we would fall fate to that which would happen to us all. But for the most part we were unscathed: Soundcard, Videomode, Rob “just call me JT” Timberlake, Slam Tilt, Zoe, Deathsave, Sauce, Eric and DannyB wer all still on the winners side. Early in the day Zoe put a hurting on this guy 2-0 who may have seemed a little to confident on Speakeasy. And when I mean a hurting I am talking doubling the score and if you remember those funky little outlanes she was nudging those draining balls back into play. About this time the battle of the giants was taking place on TAF, however this time we weren’t so fortunate as Todd MacCulloch took down Autofire. There was also some questionable play on IJ4 between Sauce and Eric. The culprit was those pesky bangbacks, there was no mention nor was it written that they were illegal and I witnessed Trent use a few as well. Sauce prevailed. Later in the day DannyB and Zoe both had monster wins on IJ4 as well. Trent Augenstein knocked out the youngest and one of the strongest players in the event, Robert Gagno on IJ4 too. Those matches were well into the 2, 3, 400 mil range.
Unfortunately DannyB lost to Robert Gagno’s mother Kathy (who is a solid player) on Evel Knievel, eliminating him completely. At about this same time Soundcard was facing Lonnie Langford on TAF. On this particular TAF the GC was 6.6 Bil with LWL right beside it. Oh and Mike hates this game, so he’s fucked right, especially since Lonnie put up 400 mil to take game one. Well you’re dead wrong, Soundcard won, call it luck, call it skill give the cred to the intimidation of the colors but CFFs own Soundcard has moved on to be one of the only 8 still undefeated. Rev-Tests untimely departure came at the hands of Noah on TOTAN. It was a well fought 3 game series but the mighty Rev struck out. And I lost a friendly fiver on it. Actually the next few big matches all happen on TOTAN as well, Zoe fought hard and lost to some dude from Australia. If she had only skipped the skill-shot and went straight for the lamp like she did on her battle against Sauce 3 matches later she too could have been primed for the top 8 in the winners circle. But prior to Sauce and Zoe, Slam Tilt, Deathsave and Cayle were mowing down the field. Rob was next to face one of Seattle’s favorites Lonnie on Fathom, after splitting the first 2 games and a malfunction on game 3 it was moved to Surf Champ. Once again PDX prevailed and another big hitter was eliminated from the tourney by our own hands alone. Soon after Rob faced Kathy Gagno on TOTAN. At the same time Zoe was playing IJ4. Both being in the losers bracket at this point and both being the only females left made this a huge match. Zoe won 2-0 and Rob battled it out and won the 3rd game to clinch the top female prize to Portland’s own Zoe Vrabel.
We were getting down to the nitty gritty, Mike played STTNG and at one point he looked frustrated but upon looking at the score and watching him make 7 straight shots and easily clinch the victory I was able to walk away to watch the big match-up going on between Trent and Eden on Fathom. Trent won game one, Eden won game two and Trent put up 4+ mil on game three to seal the deal. Maka was next on the list, and he still owes Soundcard and myself lots and lots of drinks for setting this one up. For some reason (only a few still know why) he got to play Trent on Evel Knievel which everyone thought had been removed from the tourney but now was somehow back in. Well, Maka is a machine, and what do machines do? They produce! At this point I would like to apologize to Trent’s wife, Karen I believe it is, on behalf of Seattle from Portland. It’s a shame and disgusting that amongst all our very friendly battles for the title there was a thief that rummaged her purse leaving things everywhere with no wallet to be found. Her ID’s and credit cards were found later under a booth and I am hoping her flight was not missed because of this.
Zoe’s strong(bow) run finally came to an end on TAF, she won game 1, lost game 2 by a 4 mil bonus with scores in the 80 mils. Very hard loss, and on game 3 Andy Pettersson got 2 EB’s and was just to much. Soundcard played Elijah on TOTAN which was described by both as ugly ugly pinball, well more ugly for Seattle than Portland. So Soundcard’s next opponent was either going to be Deathsave or Cayle. Slam Tilt beat the guy who owns the Tiger Lounge on Champ Pub to make it to the finals and on game 3 Deathsave was playing split flipper with Cayle on his EB’s on Monster Bash. So it was Soundcard and Deathsave on Champ Pub, very bad draw for Sound. He conceded the second game to fellow CFFer stating the only money he had ever put in to CP was the 4 quarters to play those two games. Also at this time Slam was getting beat by Cayle on MM.
And then there were 4. Deathsave and Andy on Speakeasy could be arguably the closest game of the tournament. It came down to game 3, Deathsave got screwed by subtract-a-ball but then got 4 jokers to get it back but then lost it again. He was up 400 thous to under 200. Only Andy had 2 balls to his 0, Andy also got an add-a-ball and on his final ball he drained 48 thousand short and with 36 thousand bonus….but….he drained down the outlane and that means a free spin which landed him 15 thou and gave him a 3 thousand point win. So next up Andy v Slam on Surf Champ. Slam won game one and Andy won game two on his 5th ball double bonus. It all came down to game 3, after ball 3 Slam had a strong lead, I told Fred all he needed was to get it up to 30 thou and he got it to 40 thou. And two balls later the place went nuts. CFF had finally made it to the finals at Shortys and we had our shot to take down Cayle once again. Everyone got a beer and a smoke and after 5 we all gathered up front around Barracora. It was going to be a single game match, which means Slam still had to beat Cayle twice. Cayle opted to go second and watch how it played first. After ball 1 Cayle had Slam 65 to 52 thousand. After ball 2 even more bad news Cayle had him 364 to 113. But just to refresh your memory, it is a 5 ball game.
On ball 3 I witnessed some of the finest 2 ball multiball flipper skills in my life. Slam was slaying and he brought his score up to 783,000 by the end of it. With 2 balls left Cayle fought back and made it close. Going into Cayle’s 5th and final ball Slam was at 1.3mil to his 1.0 and when the bonus settled Cayle came up short with his 1.2 mil. Which could mean only one thing. Cayle’s veins turned to ice. He chose to go first on this match and tilted his first ball, so things were looking good. However, I later thought about it and am assuming he tried to tilt it to see what he could get away with. I also forgot to mention during game one Cayle was slowly mastering the game. He found the way to lock 1 ball and if his newly plunged ball drained the locked ball would be released essentially giving him an EB. Oh and mentioning EB’s he figured that one out too. Slam had no chance. Not even a lucky pecan was going to stop Cayle. At 3.4mil on ball 2 with the ability to get an EB on every ball, not to mention locking 1 or even 2 to get the 3 ball multiball, the question of whether he would roll it or not was circling the room. However, to many cheers and some boos, including from myself (for not rolling the machine,) Cayle won his unheard of 3rd straight Shorty’s Annual Pinball Tournament. Congratulations to Cayle, you truly are a Pinball Wizard. There were many prizes given out. Zoe won $50 plus a shirt or something. Noah also got a shirt along with Soundcard who took 5th (one spot shy of cash) Deathsave took 4th and won a roll of quarters and a hat/shirt. Andy/birthday boy won something and a shirt but I can’t remember, I think it was $50 though. Slam Tilt who battled so hard to come up just short won a pair of long john underwear. For second place. What a joke! Oh wait it was, he also received $100 and a PBR snowboard. The long johns are just to keep those skinny little legs warm this winter. And of course the grand prize.
So in short recap CFF had 3 in the top 5. PDX probably had 8-10 in the top 25 or 30. Strongbow is good. Kitty burgers should never be eaten. Cayle will beat you. Eden still has lightning bolt burns AND failed to bring me Molson. For how much we all bitch about Shorty’s and said we will not go back next year, you all know we will. And if you are 135 yards out, use an 8 iron!
Posted: November 14th, 2009 by ROM
If our sponsor was me… which, in a way, maybe it is?
Howdy Gangsters,
The best and the brightest are off at Shorty’s this weekend (I got a little tipsy last night, and totally failed to join with the ride that was available to me at like 7am this morning). Hopefully we’ll get some news from the front, to see how it’s going. But in the meantime, let’s reflect a little bit on some stuff that’s been hurting my brain to think about (full disclosure: thinking about anything hurts my brain). Shall we?
When playing pinball, whether you’re competing against the other initials on the board, or against the replay score, or against player 2 in a heated $competition$, or just against your inner demony things, you ARE competing. It’s difficult to remove that factor when playing pinball. If you care at all about how you play, then somewhere in you is a competitive drive. During the last year, we booted up the laptop and harnessed that drive. Nearly every week we’ve had around 20 people compete against one another at one of Portland’s many great pinball venues. Many of us have had shiny moments where we did well; ALL of us have had crappy moments where we totally flailed. But however we fared - it’s always in good fun. We respect one another as players, we accept newcomers to the fray, we keep egos in check, and we learn from mistakes. I have little doubt that all this organized play has allowed us to progress as players. And it’s also helped to strengthen the pinball community in Portland.
So I hope you represent well in Seattle!
Anyway, I totally forgot to post this winner’s picture from the Slabtown weekly that was a few weeks ago.
But it’s an awesome picture! And worth sharing, even if it’s late. l-r: Emma (3rd), Steve (1st), Videomode (2nd).
That was a fun tournament. Good turn-out. We played on some fresh machines - Dr Who, Swords of Fury, and F-14 (in addition to all the others that were already there). Congrats to Steve for winning. I believe he’s now off in Hawaii, soaking it up at a 5 star resort.
This just in: News from the front!! Cayle vs Dropshot in the first round at Shorty’s. Holy cow!
