The machines I (RE)played on, during my Winter Vacation!

If you've read Drop Target #1, you know that Jon and I live in a tiny town in Vermont.  For Christmas I went home to Seattle, which means that I had to stop over in an in-between city, to catch my flight.  For various reasons, I chose to fly out of New York City.  And while there, you know what I did!

My first stop was at Reciprocal Skate Shop on the Lower East Side (402 E. 11th St. - by the corner of 1st Ave).  Jon discovered this place over Thanksgiving break and it was everything he said it would be.  The proprietor, John, is a super pinball fanatic, and he's got four machines crammed into his tiny storefront (when I was there it was The Getaway, Creature From the Black Lagoon, World Cup Soccer and Dr. Who).  He said he had another 15 or so machines in his apartment and in another space and he often swaps them out.  He was super friendly and loved talking pinball.  This shop is just a short walk from the 1st Ave stop on the L train, or from Union Square.  Swing by next time you are in New York!

That night, me and my buddy Gabe wandered around Brooklyn playing pinball.  Our first stop was Enid's, but alas, their Addam's Family was out of order!  Next we hit Muggs which had the new Iron Man pinball machine, which was actually pretty fun.  After a few games Gabe and I both got replays, which I soon found out would be a THEME for me on this trip...  That night we ended up at the Satellite Lounge, which is easily the best pinball bar in Brooklyn, with 6 or 7 machines.  I staggered in drunk and instantly had the best game of Monster Bash I've ever had, easily passing the replay score.  At that point, I decided to start taking photos of every machine I got a replay on:

As you can see here, I also got a replay on Stern's 2008 Indiana Jones machine.  I must say, I had more fun playing Indy and Iron Man than I have ever had playing other Stern machines.  I opened the Ark of the Covenant at one point, which dumped FOUR balls onto the playfield, which was intense!  I only regret that I left the bar without playing their Sega Starship Troopers.

The next morning I flew home to Seattle, where I had a very relaxing Christmas with my entire family.  The day AFTER Christmas, I headed to the pinball mecca, Portland, Oregon for a super quick trip (less than 24 hours!)  After a lengthy meeting, my pal Greg and I went to Ground Kontrol, which was in a new temporary location across the street while they were remodeling their main space.  They didn't have quite as many games, but still more than was possible to play in the two hours we spent in there!  Here are the ones I got replays on:

T2 was no big deal, as I live above a pizza place that has that machine, so I know all the shots.  It was my first replay on Addam's Family though.  I played a TON of new machines, but the two I spent the most time on were Cirqus Voltaire, which was SUUUUUPER crazy and fun, and Tales of the Arabian Nights which I became totally obsessed with.   Both of those games have some really innovative playfield parts and awesome ramp shots.  Every machine I played at Ground Kontrol was in perfect condition.  Their dedicated repair person was working on machines as I was playing and I thanked him for keeping the machines in such great order.  Hands down, this is the best place to play pinball in Portland, if not the entire West Coast.

That night I ended up at Slabtown with Gabe (back in Portland for Christmas with HIS family) and Grizzo.  Sadly, the change machine was broken, and at about midnight the bartender said he couldn't give us any more quarters.  It was Sunday night, the day after Christmas, so Grizzo had little luck getting a roll of quarters from a few other neighboring businesses.  Also, about half the machines were either broken or so filthy they were not really fun to play.  It was sort of a bummer ending to my Portland Pinball Playing, but I was not done yet for this trip to the Pacific Northwest!

Nope, on my last day in Seattle I swung by Shorty's for a few last hours of Pinball.  They had the newest pinball machine, Avatar, which I did NOT enjoy playing (too many toys, not enough ramps, weird elongated flippers).  I played a lot more Arabian Nights, some 1993 Indiana Jones, and then Monster Bash, where I had my best game of the entire trip.  I collected all six monsters and their instruments, thus starting the Monster Bash, where every shot was worth 2 Million.  I ended up with 122 Million, which was a #3 High Score.  Putting up a score in a real pinball bar like Shorty's felt like quite an accomplishment!

Sorry if this reads like me bragging about my scores, it's just really satisfying to see myself getting better and better at pinball.  Each time I go out and play "in the wild" I can see a marked difference from the last time I played.  At first I couldn't get a replay at all, and then a few months later I could get a replay on games I had played a lot.  And now, I feel like I can get a replay on almost any machine if I play it half a dozen times.  I know I still have so much more to learn, so all I can do is keep practicing!  

I've added some of these bars to our "Pinhalls" side menu, so check them out if you are in the areas I mentioned.  And like Jon said in his last post, Happy New Year!  Let's make 2011 a year filled with all kinds of pinball fun.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!  Does everybody have a good New Year Resolution?  Does it involve PINBALL?!  I used to think that New Year Resolutions were a joke and a half, but a couple of years ago I made one and totally stuck to it.  It's doable.  My big pinball plan for 2011 is to finish shopping out my Jurassic Park machine and have it ready to trade / sell / show at the new pinball festival in Pennsylvania.  Also, Alec and I plan to have another issue of DTZ out sometime in the spring.  Keep your wrist-radios tuned to this channel, pinballers!

In somewhat related news, yours truely is going to be going to Las Vegas in a week and a half (!?!)  My girlfriend and I decided to go on a trip as a x-mas gift to each other and Las Vegas is:

a) Warmer than Vermont

b) A criminally cheep trip

Also, it's no secret that the Pinball Hall of Fame is located in Las Vegas!  Needless to say, I CAN'T WAIT. 

I have some REALLY killer pinball illos I've done lines up for the next couple weeks!  Be forewarned, though, some of them are WEIRD.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

 

Happy Holidays everybody!  Anyone that flips the ole silverball with me can tell you that I LOVE THE HOLIDAYS.  I love the food, the music, the snow; EVERYTHING.  I'm actually not terribly keen on the actual day, but all the days leading up to Christmas are awesome.  Gentle readers, what is it that YOU want for the holidays? 

I was visiting some friends in Burlington Vermont this weekend and two cool pinball things happened.  First, I need to preface this story with the fact that there are NO PINBALL MACHINES, AT ALL, in all of Chittenden county (a large chunk of VT that includes Burlington, Colchester, Winooski, Essex, and my hometown of Essex Junction).

1) This quote from a friend of mine who had visited me in WRJ and played the machines that Alec and I have (he isn't a pinhead, but he might be now!)

"Guys, Jon and his friend have two pinball machines that they maintain, and I've played them, and it's the best thing ever.  They're LITERALLY living our childhood dream.  Remember the old Aladdin's Castle arcade in the U-Mall?  Remember how we used to run out of quarters?  Well, remember how much fun that place was, but then imagine NEVER RUNNING OUT OF QUARTERS."

It was just one of those awesome, I-love-pinball, kind of moments.

2) A friend of mine that works in the Essex Outlet Cinema told me that he urged his boss into getting a pinball machine for the lobby!!!  Apparently, it's a Sega South Park, which I've played before.  It's a pretty fun machine!  I can't wait to give it a whirl.  It's a pinball oasis in an otherwise pin-barren sea.

Well, that's all I've got for you true believers over here at Jon Chad HQ.  Stay warm and have a great week!

More memmories

 

Just another image from what was going on in my mind's eye when I was fixing my Jurassic Park's circuit board.  It was probably the most stressful thing I've ever done.  The relief / satisfaction that coursed through my youthful veins when I turned on the machine and realized I hadn't f***ed up th machine was beyond articulation.

Hey!  Hey!  Did you guys hear that the Allentown show was shut down?!  I was super bummed because Alec and I were so gun-ho on attending.  Almost IMMEDIATELY, though, someone else bravely picked up the reins and decided that the show must go on!  So, I think the show is now called PinFestival.  It's going to be held around the same time in May that Allentown was held and in pretty much the same area.  I think it's safe to say that the Pinheads here at Drop Target HQ are pretty pumped about going!

Since I didn't put up an image last week, here's another one:

 

Alec and I joke ALL THE TIME about how the backbox of the machine is the "brain".  This probably contributed to my paralyzing fear of fiddling around with the circuit board.  I really liked how this one turned out.  Go play some pinball, y'all.

Microcosm now carries Drop Target #1!

Hey everyone, just a quick update to let you know that Microcosm Publishing is now carrying Drop Target #1!  So now you can either order Drop Target #1 directly from us, or lump it in with a BUNCH of awesome zines and minicomics from Microcosm.

We are slowly but surely getting our plans together for Drop Target #2, which we are still hoping will be out this spring.  There's a lot more on the way, so we'll keep you posted!

THIS IS THE COOLEST

Quick post!

My dad is a patent and copyright lawyer, so I've always had a real fascination with inventions.  He turned me onto the quick-and-dirty patent confirmation tool known as Google Patent.  It's pretty self-explanatory.  I was thinking that there must be some pretty rad PINBALL inventions documented there, and then I found THIS:

Patent for Linkable Pinball Machine

!!?!?!?!??  Designed by George Gomez?!  Connect multiple pinball machine together for cooperative gameplay!?!  Why have I NEVER heard of this!?!  Can you even imagine how amazingly cool that would be!?  Discuss!!

The breath of life!

 

Man, oh man, another horrendous pinball fate that I wouldn't wish on ANYONE; having your quarters eaten by the machine.  Drawing the mouth on the pinball machine was probably the best thing ever.  I thought about having wires, coils, and 555s coming out of its mouth, but with a game named "Evil Eye," there's much more sinister stuff going on under the glass. 

So, the big news that I wanted to write about today was that I have brought my Jurassic Park machine back from the grave!

"But Jon Chad?" I hear you cry "I never even knew that the JP machine was down?"

Yes, unfortunately, three weeks ago, I went into the backbox to try and figure out what was causing my game to randomly reset.  It used to happen once in a blue moon, but it had started happening constantly.  I couldn't get through a whole game without it rebooting and running the T Rex diagnosis.  So, I had read on the This Old Pinball Data East guide that one of the common causes of game reboots was contact between the sound board and the metal mounting plate.  I removed the sound board and found nothing wrong.  On further inspection of the boards, though, I found that the CN1 and CN8 power connectors on the Power Supply board were completely fried.  I removed both plugs to inspect the damage.  When I plugged them back in and turned on the machine, the thing went completely dead.  Nothing.  Nada.

 

"The culprits."

NO WORRIES, though.  I decided that I needed to rise to the challenge and fix my baby!  I poured my heart and soul into electrical diagrams and figured out how circuit boards work.

 

 "A genius at work."

So, last Saturday, I very nervously opened up my machine, removed the power supply and CPU boards, and replaced the faulty components.  It was honestly the scariest thing I have ever done in my life.  Well, I was super duper nervous in any case.  After all was said and done, and the machine was put back together, I held my breath as I turned it back on. 

IT WORKED PERFECTLY!  

There were absolutely no problems with the machine.  No random resets, no sound cutting out, and the T Rex moved its head just like it should; diligently searching for the ball.  I can't tell you how exciting it was to take a machine and breathe life back into it.  I know that there are probably some pinball mechanics out there thinking, "hmph, all that Jon Chad kid did was replace a Molex power connector and a couple transistors?  YAWN.  Par for the course!"  Well, to me, it was the most exhilarating and rewarding thing ever.  I LOVE PINBALL!

The Story of the Pacific Pinball Museum

My illustrator friend Rosemary Travale sent me this great video about the Pacific Pinball Museum (aka "Lucky Juju's")  This is one of my favorite places to play pinball.  It's $15 at the door and they have three rooms full of pinball machines, from all different eras, all set to free play.  You can actually play pre-flipper machines, a wide range of EM machines and a whole room full of the best solid-state machines from the 80s and 90s.  They also have juke boxes with era-specific music in each room, which are also set on free play.  If you are ever in the bay area, you NEED to check it out.  Anyway, check out this great video to learn more about this important pinhall!

Dave Marston!

Last weekend we had a visit here at Drop Target headquarters from a real pillar of the pinball community: Dave Marston, long-time contributor to PinGame Journal.  He traded me a photocopied stack of his "Pinball on Record" articles for another copy of Drop Target #1 for his archives.  We also played some pinball and spent an hour or so chatting about the current state of pinball and our plans for future issues of Drop Target!  Coolest of all, he rolled into town in a van big enough to haul some pinball machines, with a very special license plate...  :)  Thanks for swinging by Dave.  Hopefully we'll see you again soon!

Pin Treats

 

So, this might seem like a departure from the normal collection of pinball illustrations I've been doing, but actually, it's extremely appropriate.  Anybody who has seen me get 100% in the pinball zone knows that there's only one snack that will satisfy spur me on to higher scores: Tootsie Roll Pops.  I'm a sucker (no pun intended) for hard candy, and Tootsie Roll Pops are pretty much the best.  I know that this isn't exactly a pinball illustration, so here's some more:

First Game Ever

A few weeks ago, I ran into my colleague, Jason Lutes walking down the street with his two children, Clementine and Max.  He told me they were heading to go check out my pinball machine for the first time, so I decided to tag along.

We set Clementine up on a stool and she could just barely reach both flippers.  At first she just started flipping the flippers as fast as she could.  But then we explained that she should try to hit the ball, and all in an instant she GOT IT.  She started waiting for the ball to near the flipper and then she would carefully push the button and send the pinball back up the playfield.  It was really amazing to see someone play their very first game of pinball, especially someone so young.  It made me realize just how intuitive pinball is.  It's such a simple interface, anyone can play!

TROLLS!!

As we all know, Alec has a Medieval Madness machine and I have a Jurassic Park machine.  When Alec came with me to come get my machine, I drew this for him as a present.  Here's a colored version. 

Out of all the awesome stuff on Medieval Madness, my favorite is probably the trolls.  I love everything about them; how they announce themselves, the dot matrix animations, their voices, etc.  We even went so far as to name the trolls (because, as far as we know, they don't have names...).  The one on the left is named Herman, and the one on the right is named Pee Wee.  Ha ha, get it?  The best part is that Pee Wee is kinda a wuss and if you even hit him from behind, he'll count it as a hit sometimes.

The really magical thing about the trolls is thinking about the what the ball represents, in this case.  I've heard this question come up again and again when talking about certain game: "What is the ball supposed to represent?  Is the player the ball?"  On games that have distinct narratives, it's easy to try and project oneself onto the ball.  Overall on a game, that can get confusing.  I try to think of it, mode to mode, what am I trying to achieve, and what is the ball representing at that moment, or geez...WHUTEVAH.

I love to think about how you're this knight in Medieval Madness and you're:
a) tossing iron balls into the face of a troll
b) punching a troll in the face

Both of which are ideal situations.

Also, these pictures are AWESOME:

 

 

Max's Dad's Old Pinball Machine

Jon and I both work at The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.  Each year CCS has a fellow, and last year it was the Belgian cartoonist Max de Radiguès.  Max appears a few times in Drop Target #1, and played pinball with us almost every day last year.

Max would often mention an old pinball machine that his Dad owned, and a few weeks ago Max visited his father in the south of France and he took a few pictures of it, which he forwarded to me and Jon.  It appears to be a 1935 Par Golf which is a pre-flipper machine.  Thanks Max!

Belated Happy Halloween

Aww man, talk about dropping the ball on this one!  I finished this thing, no kidding, like, three weeks ago.  "Good time management, Jonch" I thought to myself, "Now all that's left is to just sit back and post this on SUNDAY, which just so happens to be HALLOWEEN!"  

Man oh man, dropping the ball.  The shot was all set up for me, and I let it drain right down the middle.

This image is horrifying, btw.  All I could think about as I was drawing / coloring it was how I would have died from a heart attack on the spot if this happened to me.  I'd like to think that you could tilt him away.

Pinball on The Road

This October I have been on the road A LOT.  At the beginning of the month, I had to drive from Vermont down to Connecticut to pick up my friend Aaron.  On the way back, we found this Lord of the Rings machine at a gas station in upstate New York.  It was well maintained and played like a dream.  We put in two dollars for 5 games, and on the last game I got a replay, which we left on the machine for the next road warrior who passed through.  

Later that same week, Jon and I drove down to Boston to pick up his Jurassic Park pin, which he mentioned in his last post.  I got my Medieval Madness machine in Boston too, so the trip felt very familiar.  Same car, same guys, heck, we even stopped at the same sandwich place on the way home.  I've got to say, there is something very special about driving home with a pinball machine in the back of your car.  I think that's about as close as you can get to living the American dream.

Lastly, Claire and I just drove cross country (from San Francisco back to Vermont).  The only pinball machine we saw on the road was a Pirates of the Caribbean at an Ohio Turnpike travel center.  All these rest stops are built with the same layout, so I can only hope that there is a pinball machine at every stop in Ohio!  We made it safely back home to Vermont, and when we arrived I found that "Foggy" (my Medieval Madness machine) had a new friend!

Lastly, This morning Jon and I received an email from AJ over at Syndicate Product, who wrote the first review of Drop Target #1.  Good news, she liked it!  

DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'!!

Sorry this is late.  Well, I know that I never SAID when I would put up pinball illustrations, but I meant for them to go up on Sunday.

Anyway, HERE IT IS, the BIG news....

I am not the PROUD OWNER of a 1993 DATA EAST JURASSIC PARK MACHINE!!!!

 

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL!?!  It's pretty much the coolest thing ever.  The game plays incredibly fast, and the flippers are unbelievably responsive.  There are a lot of moves that Keith Elwin shows off in the Pinball 101 DVD that I haven't been able to pull off regularly on most machines, but this bad boy is more than up to the task.  There are so many modes to start up.  There's a 6-ball multiball, and a giant T-Rex head that eats up the ball!  IT'S THE COOLEST!!!

Originally, the illustration I was going to post was going to be me triumphantly high-fiving my new machine over an exploding volcano, but I chose the fixing-up one because that has been the theme of my first week of pinball-ownership: fixing.  I got this machine for a really sweet deal, but it came from an operator's route, so I new it wasn't going to be perfect.  THAT WAS WHAT I WAS HOPING FOR, THOUGH!  Tinkering and fixing up Alec's Medieval Madness machine with him has been a blast, and when I was scouring the globe (er...New England) for my own machine, I was partially looking for a project machine to shop out.  All of the fixes have so far been minor, save for the laft flipper being deader than disco.  Turns out that there was a bad soulder on the grounding wire and I just needed to re-soulder it.  I've been refering to THIS online manual A LOT lately, and it's been an AMAZING resource!

This whole pinball machine ownership has taken everything to a whole new level.  It's going to be a really amazing adventure.  I'll keep you all updated on what's going on.  Ha ha, also, MY APOLOGIES TO MY GIRLFRIEND!

Well, I don't want to bog you all down with blog.  BLOGBOG.  I'll have some fun Halloween stuff for ya.

We ALL know how THIS feels.

*Sign* Well, just another day in pinballdom.  Sometimes it feels like the machine is programmed for pure evil and every loving, encouraging nudge you give it just throws a danger-danger-tilt back in your face.  I know that we should all be exercising a quantity of restraint.  In all seriousness, though, I don't tilt that often 'cause I'm too shy to put a little bit of the oom pah pah on a machine.  My girlfriend Colleen tilts more than me 'cause she's so pumped about the ball hitting around in the bumper pit.  It's cute.

I have some AMAZING news to share with you guys, once I can get a glorious enough picture!  Stay tuned!

Also, I saw this on a show report on Pinball News from 2 years ago.  IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY!

IF ONLY!

I know that this is pretty much impossible, but, hey, A GUY CAN DREAM, right?!  Speaking of quarters / coins / etc, I've noticed that they've been issuing new pennies.  Also, I've seen new nickles and new silver dollars.  I don't get what's up with this nearly perpetual reissuing of our different units of currency.  It makes me wonder how coin doors even work.  Is it based on the size and weight of the coin inserted?  It seems like American and Canadian quarters must weigh the same but somehow the coin door knows that they're not legit.  It's crazy...

Also, I'm probably not revealing hot, breaking news with this one, but THIS is super-duper cool!



This is the Visible Pinball machine that Micheal Schiess built.  It seems like it would be super-duper distracting to play, because I'd be looking underneath the playfield and back box too much!  I heard it was at PPE4 this year!  Just another reason I have to get out to the west coast to play!

More Pinball Down Under

Claire has continued to find more pinball machines in Australia.  Here is a pretty sweet bank of them at Luna Park in Sydney!  Also, it looks like I was wrong in my earlier post, where I said Claire found a 1976 Star Ship pin, it was Star Trek!  Thanks to Vicki for taking all these awesome photos.

The Good Pin Samaritan

 

First of all, that image above pretty much illustrates the dream.  Now, I have a really awesome girlfriend, but the idea of playing pinball SO GOOD that some girl starts getting interested in you is incredible.  I've been doing a lot of color pinball spot illustrations lately, and I'll be posting them up from time to time. 

I was biking around West Lebanon, NH today and I decided to take in a game of pinball at a pizza place, Lui Lui's.  They have exactly one pin, Twilight Zone.  The machine's condition could be described as "shoddy" at best.  Both the gumball machine and the clock are completely dead, and the playfield is just filthy filthy filthy.  Now, all of this is on a GOOD day.  Today was a new low.  THREE balls were jammed in various places around the playfield, and the machine was continually shooting off solenoids in an attempt to free the balls.  The sounds of this poor machine shooting off it's coils again and again broke my heart.  It was pleading for help, and I was powerless.  What about the poor people in that restaurant just wanting to enjoy their pizza in peace and quiet?  They probably left thinking, "pinball, ugh, WHAT A RACKET!"

So, in hopes that I could restore even one shred of dignity to this noble pin, I found the operator's sticker and called them!  I mean, THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO, RIGHT!?  The operator picked up and actually seemed happy that I was calling from Lui Lui's, like I was breaking some long duration of enforced incommunicado.  When I told him that I didn't work for the restaurant, he seemed disappointed and told me that an employee would have to place the service call.  When I tried to relay that to a manager that I caught that wasn't busy, he DID NOT want to hear about it.  I even tried to coax him with, "You know, there's a bunch of us in town that really love pinball, and we'd be really excited about a working Twilight Zone game..."  but this guy was flat out IGNORING me.  

I don't get it, I really don't!  I'm pretty much telling this guy that I want to give him business, and all he has to do is pick up the phone and ask for something that he is ENTITLED to through his relationship to an operator; a clean, well-working game.  It's crazy!  I feel like I did the right thing in calling, but to no avail...

Oh well, in the long run, there are a good amount of pins to play in the area, and being down one isn't the end of the world.  In happier news, I found this archive of images squirrled away on the interweb of a warehouse raid.  Look at all the pinball machines all stacked on each other!  It's pretty much the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!  HERE is the link.

Also, there's this:

This really never fails to cheer me up.  It's the ultimate tag team pinball experience.  It's, like, CROSSFIRE, on speed.  It's awesome awesome awesome.

Foggy's 13th Birthday!

On the back of my Medieval Madness pinball machine, there is a stamp, from the day it left the factory:  September 29th, 1997.

This means that "Foggy" (as we like to call her) turned 13 years old a few days ago!  To celebrate, Jon and I had a pinball night at the school, where we watched TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball, and then we put the machine on Free Play for anyone who wanted to play.  Here's a shot of the action, which went until almost 1am!

Beth Hetland even made a little birthday crown for Foggy!  It was a special night.

  

Bobo Loves Pinball

In my mind, Bobo Backslack has been playing this game for, like, an hour, and he's either lucky enough (or good enough) to keep getting match after match.  That guy behind him just wants to give it a whirl, but Bobo's having the game of his life, and he's not ready to give up them hawt little flippers!

Also:

I thought this sort of thing was only possible on older machines!

Pinball Down Under!

My girlfriend Claire is in Australia for a few weeks and today I got my first letter from Down Under.  In Melbourne alone, Claire has spotted pinball machines in a few different diners, a record shop and a bowling alley.  Machines included a Star Ship, Guns and Roses, and Creature From the Black Lagoon.  Claire writes, "I played The Creature From the Black Lagoon pinball.  ALL the middle lights in the face were out.  I got a match at the end, so I got a free game."

Drop Target #1 is now available for ordering!

Now available in the Drop Target Zine shop!

DROP TARGET #1 - The Introduction Issue

52 pages - 5.5" x 8.5" - B&W printing
First Printing: 8.5" x 14" full-color centerfold, screenprinted cover

FEATURING:
- Pinball Glossary
- TILT TALK: Interview with Multiball editors Brinda Coleman and Sam Soule
- THE REPLAY REVIEW: Star Wars: Episode I (pin2k)
- DREAM MACHINES: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Lawrence of Arabia
- PINHALLS: White River Junction, VT
- VIDEO MODE: Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball
- From Zeros to Heroes: Part 1 - OBSESSION

Drop Target Issue #1 is ready to rock!

Okay you guys, Jon and I have been working super hard over the last two weeks, and today we finally finished printing up 400 copies of Drop Target #1!  It's 52 pages, with a screen printed cover and a full-color center spread.  It's pretty deluxe!  Easily the coolest zine I have ever made.

We're going to debut the book this weekend at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland.  If you are in the area, please swing by!  Once we get back to Vermont, we will put up PayPal links so people can order copies from anywhere.  Trust me, if you're into pinball, you're going to love this zine!

Drop Target #1 at SPX!

We are hard at work putting the finishing touches on Drop Target #1, The Introduction Issue, which will be debuting this weekend at The Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland. If you are in the area, please swing by and pick up a copy! Here's a picture of Jon Chad screenprinting the covers!

Announcing: Drop Target Zine!

Well, Jon Chad and I have officially started working on Drop Target Zine #1, which will hopefully be out for SPX in September. If you can't tell from the title, this will be a pinball fanzine. More to come!