My Scared Stiff Pinball table

I really love pinball.

I love old pinball tables through the ages that were more like bagatelle with flippers for a bit of a 2nd chance. I love new pinball with ramps, video screens, speech, missions, maybe even holograms. I love video pinball where the ball gets sliced in half or temporarily defies gravity or gets up and walks away.

Video pinball has been what I mostly rely on. I think Zen make the best current pinball games - raptr says I've played 114 hours of Pinball FX2 and that doesn't seem nearly enough. Silverball Studios (formerly Fuse Games) are also really good, the "Crush Pinball" series, Pokemon Pinball (they should make a new one of these!) and I really like Kirby's Pinball on Gameboy.

On the rare occasions I visit an amusement arcade (seaside resorts, shopping malls), the first thing I look for is pinball. Then arcade machines. It's very rare I can see a pinball machine and not decide to play it.

I never really thought I would own a pinball table. It was just one of those things that you think "ah, maybe one day I will own".

And yet...

This is sitting in my house. It's mine! It's mine! There were 4028 of these tables made in the entire world, and this one is mine. And it plays beautifully.

For years now I have thought "if I was going to own a pinball machine, it would be that Elvira one". I had vague fond memories of having played an Elvira table with googly rubber monsters and a spinning feature at the back. I think it was while holidaying at Hemsby, near the back of an arcade called "The Dunes". It's not even called that anymore. It was years later when I could identify this table by name. "Scared Stiff".

This machine has everything I'd want. It is fairly easy to play and do well. It has various missions to complete, so there's progression in the gameplay. The playfield is nice and varied, and the spinner in the back box is a cool feature, and really beautifully executed with 3 layers of artwork surrounding it. It has a sexy / funny theme, doesn't take itself seriously at all, and features full voicing by Elvira. It's got little cheesy monster finger puppets and plastic frogs. All the replacement parts for this machine are still obtainable. It's a good one to own.

Read the story of how we got it by following this "Read More" link:

Pokemon Black and White - UK events

Here's the list of remaining events for Pokemon Black and White in the UK:

Pokemon UK Black & White events

26/02/2011 - 27/02/2011:

Glasgow Fort - 285 Provan Walk, Glasgow Fort Shopping Centre, Junction 10 - M8, Glasgow, G34 9DY
Brighton - 43-44 Western Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 2EB
Preston - Unit 8, Fishergate Centre, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8HJ
London Hamleys - 188-196 Regent Street, , London, , W1B 5BT
Reading - Unit 18, Oracle Shopping Centre Reading, Berkshire, RG1 2AQ

I went to one at a branch of GAME in Meadowhall, Sheffield last weekend. Mainly because everyone who brought along their DS and a recent pokemon game could download a free celebi. I got three of them - one for HeartGold, one for SoulSilver and one for Diamond. :)

This celebi unlocks a cool story event in HG and SS. Also, when a player transfers this celebi and the three shiny HG/SS legendaries to whichever version they choose of the new game, some kind of special event happens. I wish I could store more than 3 Wonder Cards. I've currently got one for Mew, one for Jirachi and one for Celebi, and it seems a pity to have to delete one just for the Johto trio. :/

There were four pokemon Black & White demo machines available. They weren't demonstrating the game on Nintendo 3DS, but on DS lites. (Though they had one in the store and the games have special features that are enabled on 3DS). The demo cartridges were unusually long!

I played the demo of Black (it was too crowded to choose which to play). The demo was quite short; you are a trainer with a level 25 [starter pokemon]. All the menus seemed to be disabled except for one that detected other B & W players nearby. You battle someone, someone else, and go to Dragonspiral Tower to see the legendary of the game. It says "The legendary pokemon have appeared at last. What could they want? A new adventure awaits!" and fades to black, and restarts itself with a different random trainer and starter pokemon.

I didn't learn much from the demo other than there are new pokemon, new legendaries, new setting.

But is there really anything more you could want in a pokemon demo? :)

There was also a special pokemon artist at the event who was painting pictures of the new game starters on people. She was really really good! I didn't ask for one to be painted on me, though!

The only shop I have seen in the UK selling Pokemon Black and White with preorder bonuses is Toys R Us (online), so I have preordered a copy of each game from them. It's just an accessory pack, but that might be good. :)

Way Of The Samurai 3 - out in the UK, free artbook PDF

Way Of The Samurai 3 on PS3 is out here in the UK today.

I have enjoyed the previous Way Of The Samurai games for the ability to free roam and get involved with the game world, finding your way to what you consider to be the best conclusion to the events that unfold. I've had an import copy for a while (I got it as a Christmas present!), but I haven't actually started playing it yet.

If you would like the PDF of the artbook for Way Of The Samurai 3, sign up with Rising Star Games (the UK publisher for the game), and you can download it for free.

That's a 6MB PDF at low quality, or a whopping 240MB PDF at high quality.

There's also exclusive art and a guide. It's nice of them to give this away, I thought.

http://www.risingstargames.com/games/way-of-the-samurai-3-ps3.html

Zavvi closing down sale tomorrow?

The UK entertainment retail chain Zavvi (which took over from Virgin Megastore just a few months ago) are in administration at the moment. They will be closing loads of branches from tomorrow, and for the ones that are left, they'll cut the prices of everything to 50% from tomorrow. I'd say it's worth a look! See what bargains are up for grabs.

Source: Metro

Quote: "Zavvi's remaining outlets are now set to slash the price of their products by a further 20% to 50% from tomorrow."

Further to this, the BBC have a list of branches which will be closing:

ZAVVI STORE CLOSURES
Ashford (Designer Outlet) (8 staff)
Ayr (5)
Bideford (Atlantic Village) (7)
Braintree (7)
Braintree (Freeport Village) (7)
Bridgend (Welsh Designer Outlet Village) (8)
Castleford Outlet (8)
Chatham (13)
Edinburgh (Cameron Toll) (4)
Hempstead Valley (9)
High Wycombe (Octagon) (8)
Huddersfield (7)
Liverpool (Clayton Square) (28)
Livingston (McArthur Glen Outlet) (5)
Manchester (Salford Quays) (5)
Mansfield (McArthur Glen Outlet) (6)
Newcastle (Royal Quays) (6)
Sterling Mills (10)
Street (Clarks Village) (7)
Swindon (Great Western Designer Outlet) (8)
Torquay (5)
York (McArthur Glen Outlet) (7)
Number of employees in brackets

Source: BBC news

So if there's a branch near you that isn't closed or closing, you may wish to pay them a visit.

EDIT 2009-01-11:
I went in on Friday and Saturday to look for bargains, and there was a sign saying "UP TO 50% OFF" outside the shop, but inside, things were mostly 20% or 30% off. 50% off vinyl records, yeah... but the thing is, none of the prices looked particularly good. Most of the prices were far more than you would normally see in shops - especially online shops - and even when you considered the discounts, the prices were still way above the average prices in amazon / play.com etc. This chain does not understand how to sell things! It cannot save itself! Shoppers were merely milling about in the shop, looking at things, probably trying to work out the discounts in their heads and thinking "this is still too much!". There were barely any people queuing to buy things.

UK videogame shopping

Well, the exchange rate is terrible at the moment, so buying imported videogames from US/Asia is very costly right now. So it's time to look at the UK market for bargains. Fortunately, the market downturn is producing a lot of bargains that are remarkably good for the last quarter of the year / run up to Christmas.

We still don't have Tales Of Vesperia - that comes out in June 2009, and we don't have Chrono Trigger DS or Castlevania Order Of Ecclesia either - they come out in February 2009 (from what I've seen). Square Enix will be publishing the European versions of Persona 4 (PS2) and Disgaea 3 (PS3) next year, though they're made by Atlus and Nippon Ichi.

But here are some bargains I found:

For XBOX 360:

Fallout 3 and Fable 2 were under £20 each on Amazon.co.uk recently, and in-store in branches of Gamestation, last week and the week before last - though the price has gone up again.

If you want a Square Enix RPG: Last Remnant was featured on a "Deal Of The Day" offer on play.com soon after it came out - at £17.99 but it's gone back up in price again now. It's under £25 on Amazon if you're impatient, but I think it'll drop to under £20. The Tri-Ace game Infinite Undiscovery - published by Square Enix - is currently £17.99 on play.com as well. They haven't received that good reviews but I do like Infinite Undiscovery (though the achievements are annoying). I haven't tried out Last Remnant.

Pure is currently £9.99 and that's a good deal, I bought it for twice that and it's a great game - a lot of fun racing dirt buggies and doing SSX style tricks on them.

Also for £17.99 on play.com at the moment are: Farcry 2, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Midnight Club: Los Angeles, if you're interested. I'm playing GTA4 at the moment and I like it a lot because I find it pretty funny, and a lot less buggy than the previous games (though this weekend I did manage to go for a date with a girl in the game, we got drunk in a bar so I thought I'd stand there waiting for us to sober up before leaving. Then all of a sudden she was lying dead on the floor, two barstools lying on her. I have no idea why, but I suspect a bug rather than natural causes).

Mirror's Edge was down to £19.99 on both Xbox 360 and PS3 over the weekend, but from the demo I played I wouldn't rate it as worth that much.

For PSP:

LocoRoco 2 and Star Ocean First Departure are £17.99 each on play.com - there haven't been very many other notable releases on the PSP for a while, IMHO.

For DS:

Some really terrible games are really popular on DS here in the UK; Brain Training and Nintendogs are still popular here, and you get DS ports of gameshows like Deal Or No Deal or Golden Balls, and board games that make no sense to play on a DS like Pass The Pigs. Wading through that, though, Dragon Quest Monsters Joker is £9.99 right now on play.com and the newest Dragon Quest Monsters game if you like those or Pokemon style collect-em-ups (I like the DQM games because you don't have to be gentle in catching monsters, so you don't have to keep anyone in your party deliberately weak just for recruiting monsters). Also, The World Ends With You is £14.99 and that's the RPG I've spent most time on this console; definitely worth it at that price, I think. Bangai-O Spirits is only £12.71 on Amazon if you want story-devoid frantic-but-intentionally-laggy shmup fun. Dragon Quest: The Chapters Of The Chosen (the remake of the 4th Dragon Quest game) is listed as £12.45 but I think it's 3rd party.

EDIT: If you're wondering why I'm listing old bargains that no longer exist, I'm just saying that even though the games are a few months - or sometimes a few weeks old, their price has halved, and it's worth checking daily for the best prices.