Full Tilt Ice Cream - Seattle, WA

Back in April I passed through Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con.  I went out to dinner with my family in the Columbia City neighborhood and then afterwards they took me to Full Tilt Ice Cream.  Their front sign says it all: Fresh Ice Cream / Old School Arcade!

They had a great lineup of machines, as you can see here:

I felt a bit pressed for time (family waiting) so I just played a two-player game of Creature From the Black Lagoon with my father (neither of us could get the multiball) and then I played a solo game of Jurassic Park.  The "A" switch was not working, making it impossible to start modes, so it was kind of a fruitless game, but I was happy to add another great locations to my list of Seattle pinhalls.  I will definitely play here again!

New Zine on the block! Slam Tilt!

Last Fall, I got a really charming email from Jeremy Wilson from Australia.  He took the time out of his day to tell me how much he enjoyed DTZ, and how it really fired him up to make his own zine!  So cool!  I was so pumped to see what he came up with!  Then, two weeks ago, I got another email from Jeremy telling me that the zine was done!  I got it in the mail this week, and am absolutely loving it.

First of all, look at this amazing risograph cover!  The zine is really smartly laid out, and has a great variety of articles.  The thing that resonates with me the most about this zine is that Jeremy goes out to interview not only people that are directly involved in the pinball community, but also artists that are influenced by pinball.  One interview in the issue is with operator Mike Kalinowski (who also runs homepin.com).  In this article, Mike and Jeremy talk about pinball maintenance, and some of the custom electronics and parts that Mike has invented.

There are a number of artists interviewed about their work, and how pinball intersects it.  The interview with Justice Yeldham, the stage name of sound artist Lucas Abela was the most interesting to me.  Abela has dome some really fascinating stuff with records and styluses, but has also done some interesting installation pieces that draw inspiration from pinball machines.  Check out this first one, Pinball Pianola, where the keys of the pianola control a plethora of flippers, which send the ball at the strings of the pianola.

LOOK AT THIS MONSTER!  I've seen dual-headed pinball machines (like Joust), and I have seen a custom three-headed machine, but I have never seen anything like Balls for Cthulhu.  Five heads?  Triangular playfields that are lined with guitars?!  So cool.  In the interview, Abela shows that he's not only a master of sound, but also has a great understanding of electronics.  He explains that his custom machines have so many flippers that he had to figure out a way to deliver more power to individual flippers.


There's a tips and tricks section, as well as a guide of where to play in Australia.  A MUST HAVE for the pinball player down under!  There's some great illustrations throughout, by a plethora of artists like Kyle Fernandes, Imogen Rene Rose, and Sanchez.

All-in-all, this is a great zine!  I remember when Alec and I had that moment where we looked at each other and decided that we need to write a zine.  Getting to see that in someone else, and then see the tremendous results, warms my heart!  I've been corresponding with Jeremy, and he has indicated that he might do another issue!  Fingers crossed!!!

Go check out the Slam Tilt website: http://www.slamtiltzine.com/

Presidio Bowling Center - San Francisco, CA

Back in March, my cousin Read and his wife Maggie held a birthday party for their son at Presidio Bowling Center in San Francisco.  Here is Maggie teaching the kids how to bowl:

Imagine my delight when I found four pinball machines tucked in the corner of their game area.  If memory serves they were 75¢ a credit, but you got five balls instead of three!  Indiana Jones (Williams), World Cup Soccer, Avatar, and South Park?  Pretty sweet lineup!

I started going down the line, playing each machine, and a few of the kids came over to watch.  I let them each play a ball (probably their first game of pinball!) and then they took off to keep bowling.  When I got to South Park, I was very surprised to see this:

Somehow, the machine had a Harley Davidson dot matrix display!  All the sounds were still South Park, but absolutely nothing corresponded to the animations and points that were being scored.  It was pretty surreal!

Like, you'd hit a shot that was supposed to start multiball, but instead it would just give you points. It was pretty weird - a sort of pinball mashup.  It would be cool to do this with different machines and see what kind of combinations you could get.  Anyway, I was very proud of the fact that I was able to start multiball (somehow!) and that I also earned a replay before my game was over.

This was the only weird thing about these machines.  Everything else played great!  So if you ever find yourself in the Presidio, definitely swing by and play a few games!

New Drop Target second printings!

I have been on the road a lot this year, promoting my new graphic novel Basewood which is out now!  At each of these shows I have also been selling issues of Drop Target, which has caused the first printing of both issue 4 and issue 5 to sell out!

Back when Drop Target issue 1 and issue 2 went into their second printings, we gave them white covers, so that they would look very different from the screen-printed first printing covers.  They also don't have the full-color center spread, so we knocked the cover price down by a dollar.

DTZ #1 second printing - white cover

At shows however, I noticed that people were having a hard time distinguishing #1 and #2 from each other because they both had white covers.  So from now on, all second printings will be on their original color covers, just with black and white printing (no screen-printing).  They also have a grayscale version of the original center spread, and a cover price of $4.  

DTZ #1 second printing - red cover

All back issues are currently available!  There are only about 50 copies left of Drop Target issue 3 and then everything will be in second printings.

In other news, there was a big overhaul over on the Stern website and Jon and I decided that it was a good time to scale back our blogging efforts over there.  We want to stay focused on finishing off the last two issues of Drop Target.  There are only so many hours in the day, and we are busy guys, so any time we can divert to the zine will ensure that it will get done faster.  Right now we are aiming to have issue #6 done for SPX in September.  Fingers crossed!

Future Player

Happy Monday!  This illustration was on the Stern Blog back in November (I think), but it is too good to not share here.  This comes from an old joke that Alec and I have about arm fatigue after playing pinball for too long.  If ONLY there was some sort of solution to this problem!  If ONLY there was a way to use on-the-fly geometry to level up your game to the nth lever!!

Europe Pinball Recap: Part 4

For the last leg of my trip in Europe I went up to Brussels in Belgium to do a few signings with Joe Lambert and Charles Forsman.  At one point we were wandering around downtown, seeing the sights before our signing and I steered us to a café where I had played pinball before.  The Tron machine was gone and they now had an ACDC:

It was pretty funny, this young couple was cuddled up RIGHT next to the pinball machine (you can see a bit of them on the left in the photo below) and they jumped about a FOOT when I got a replay and the machine chirped.  

Max reminded me that last time I was in Belgium we found out about a guy that had a big private collection.  I should have thought ahead and emailed him to see if we could have met up with him, but this was already a whirlwind trip, so I'm not sure we would have had time for it anyway.  Oh well, I'm still glad I got to squeeze in a few games of pinball while I was overseas!