Atomic Pinball Collection 2016

In March of 2015 we attended the Texas Pinball Festival in Frisco, but the day before the show opened we headed 250 miles south to visit Dan Ferguson who runs the Lone Star Pinball Association and owns the most amazing collection of pinball machines, pinball memorabilia, promotional items, coin-op games, beer trays, trade stimulators, and much more.

NeilI got one of these, Limited Edition, from Pinball Heaven; (I also have MMr) it arrived just before Christmas as promised. The game is beautifully made with bright green armour and superb build quality. To some this is an old game, to me its new, having not played Attack from Mars much at all. I was pleased to find that CGC had taken a classic and made it a modern classic, a huge fantastic LCD colour screen that has beautifully re-rendered and updated animations, matched with uprated speakers that are also lit up to match the colours on the game.

The game play is fast and frenetic; Brian Eddy the designer of the game, made three pinballs and all of the smash hits, on this game he has a fan layout but with some really tough shots, then a set of modes that you have to line up together to get big points. Its fun but tough; huge humour in the call outs of the game especially from the martians, and strobe multi ball is the coolest thing on the planet! But the to top it, is the wonderful topper that the LE gets, easily the best topper in pinball and makes the LE really stand out. Its animated and is always a cause for discussion when it starts going. Updated lights, neon lit saucers and built in protection for the playfield means this game will last the test of time. The other thing that stands out for me is the music and call outs which are fantastic.

No time for tea – blast those martians! NeilThis really is a special machine with hassle-free super smooth supply via Pinball Heaven.

The brainchild of Scott Danesi, who not only designed the machine, but did the music and programming of the game’s code also! Spooky Pinball took Scott’s design and put together a pinball that combines the simple raw addictiveness of early solid state games, with contemporary lightning, sound and mechanisms with a totally stomping soundtrack.

Fast play and a gameplay style with purpose is the order of the day with Total Nuclear Annihilation. Knock out 9 reactors, sounds easy; its anything but. As a reward you get some fantastic music and a light-show that makes Blackpool look more Black-out! Add in fantastic multiplayer modes, co-op modes and co-op versus modes and you’ve got a game that just keeps giving. The machine has beautiful bright artwork, fantastic build quality and a superb subwoofer design that blows bass out of the back of the machine!

TURN IT UP!Watch out though! This game is addictive and as Arnie say’s “you’ll be back” and back and back again.

There is nothing quite like it. Davidbishop1982Bought a D.I LE from Pinball Heaven.About the game, well a lot has been said in the comments above that I 100% agree with.The game has vibrant colours and the hand drawn artwork is reminiscent of a 90’s pinball. This game is however all 21st century. Colour monitor in the back with great animations and a Camera that the player interacts with during gameplay.Bluetooth so you can actually play the game with your phone!The toys on the playfield are cool, with magnets, trapdoors, a “Quantum Theatre” which adds visuals and also acts as other toys that aren’t physically there, kind of like virtual pinball.Designed by legend Pat Lawlor who designed all time classics Addams Family, Twilight Zone, Earthshaker.Pinball heavens service and support is legend, They will look after you with phone/email support and great extended warranty.

DavidrdoddsThis is the best Pinball machine produced in the last 20 years, and by a big margin. ErdincThe Hobbit Smaug Gold edition is packed with features, including InvisiglassTM, shaker motor, a talking dragon and popup monsters.The build and quality of the components in this machine is excellent. It’s heavy – there’s a lot of steel in it, and the laser cut font on the ramps is a nice touch. The gold paint on the legs is so thick that it looks like glass.It was very well packaged with unboxing instructions on the outside.Game pace mirrors that of the films, I played this halfway through the first film for the experience, no VR required.Family and friends played this over Christmas and they all loved it, this game is suitable for those of all skill levels. NeilTwo things to say here:1: I bought the premium version and its absolutely amazing, latest code on it and its a pinball players game. Very challenging and a ruleset that pays over and over again.

It has one more go feeling like no other machine.2: The service from Pinball Heaven is simply outstanding – having sourced a machine from another retailed I can honestly say, don’t do that, the only place to go for a Pinball Machine is Pinball Heaven, Phil and the gang are superb. And trust me I’m a pain in the arse sort of customer! 🙂 Super Double Jackpot! AhuftonWell to follow my previous review, with a nice part exchange deal from Phil and a nice deal, I worked out I could afford it, so I ordered the Smaug special edition.It arrived 19th December.WOW, what a game! In a home environment it is amazing, the sound and visuals are fantastic, the build quality is superb and it is still as pleasing to look at as it is to play!It has loads of modes but is surprising how quickly you learn what to do, the light show in some is just mind blowing!I always leave the game with a smile on my face, amazed how the whole package has been put together.Yes it is a lot of money but worth every penny.

I have some top games in my collection but this one out shines them all! JimThis game is one of Sterns Best to date. Everything about it is just stunning and it marks a long awaited return to decent hand drawn artwork. I purchased the Pro model and the playfield is one of the most packed i’ve seen for awhile with loads of features to go for. Being a big fan of the films from back in the day the game really does them justice and you really feel like your part of the team, catching ghosts in New York.

The music and sound is top notch from the new Spike system. Its also a hit with my kids who like playing it because of the new film franchise and also me telling them about the classic ones! There’s plenty for novices to go for and plenty to keep old pinheads like me coming back for more. Video of me playing mine here –. Whitfield126Simply fantastic! My first ever NIB and I wouldn’t ever think about going elsewhere since my buying experience will Phil / Pinball Heaven.At first I was disappointed as the code was lacklustre.

However, since last year the code has simply made this game one of the best out there. I mean really brutal.

Not a game that will let you get away with lazy shots. Lights / call out etc are all first class. It’s extremely addictive.

Jumbline 2 supports phones, tablets, touch screens and physical keyboards; it beautifully adjusts to fit any device size and screen orientation thrown into the mix. Jumbline 2 is ideal for fans of. Meet Jumbline 2, the most addictive word game on Google Play market. Scramble and twist your brain to make words from jumbled lines of letters. Simply rearrange the scrambled letters into words and underline them with your finger to score points. Find and underline the largest word and you advance to the next level. Play in a relaxing untimed mode or put your skills up against the clock in. Jumbline 2 for computer. Jumbline 2 includes two additional games: Cloud Pop and Star Tower. In Cloud Pop, your goal is to pop as many clouds as possible, by spelling words out of the letters carried in each cloud. In Star Tower, your task is to build the tallest tower you can, before it sinks into the ground, by making and staking words out of an infinitely jumbled line of letters.

I’ve got nowhere near “last man standing” so can’t imagine completing it.My only gripe is that it really does need the shaker motor installed. It’s coded for one and it makes a massive difference to the feel of the game but you’ll need to buy it in addition to the machine.Phil’s aftersales service is great (as always).

My machine developed a problems with the lights almost a year after I bought it. Phil sorted it out for me, no questions asked. Which again proves why you should by here rather than try to save a few pounds importing from Europe. Whitfield126Bit slow of the mark here with the review.

Phil / Pinball Heaven delivered this beauty in January. Looks fantastic, plays really well. Very happy with it overall.

If you know pinball you’ll probably be familiar with the game anyway, it’s #1 on so many list for good reasons. The castle is a great toy. It’s an easy game for novices to play. It’s obvious what to aim for.Why not 5/5?

The DMD screen “tearing” issue still hasn’t be solved by CGC/PPS. I know the software is in the pipeline and the new colour screen shots look fantastic but it still hasn’t come out yet. Fingers crossed it will be out in the very near future.The price tag is pretty hefty! However, if you are going to buy a machine then buy it from Phil/Pinball Heaven. His aftersales service is 2nd to none.

Jrawlinson2000This machine is simply awesome. Playing it reminds me why this is the number 1 rated machine of all time. LordHolmesI have a rather used version of FUNHOUSE, and it is one of the best machines to play. Always a challenge to get a high score for those “in the know” yet easy to play for the first time pin-er. The constant chat from Rudy (the head on the playfield) is great fun as he will call you a new name ever time you play.If this restored unit is top notch (which I suspect it is) then you will have a fab machine that will keep you trying to put Rudy to sleep for far too many hours than you should. Don’t buy it if you value your sleep as YOU will be up all night until the FUNHOUSE closes.

ThetykeIf you’ve been on the fence about buying Stern’s latest pinball machine, let me tell you this game is a whole new level of fun! The PRO is super fast with the great Steve Ritchie flow you expect from him. There is tons to shoot for and very little to hold the ball up to make a hugely exciting game. The code for a new game is very mature and is already turning into a deep and rewarding rule set.

Stern have launched this machine with a “Casual Mode” which allows beginners to jump straight in to one of the easier modes straight from the bat. Those wanting to have the full challenge can turn this option off or select one of the other starting houses to play to their style and tactics. The animated dragon is a great toy to have on the play field and it has a killer kickback feature which fires the ball back fast.Build quality is very good and I love the simple design to the metal cased back box and security bolts. The single PCB Spike system behind the back glass is low maintenance and its very easy to install game code updates to enhance your game.

If like me you get stuck finding the on/off switch you will find it on the right-hand side of the back box underneath, just stick your hand under to flick the switch.I was really torn about buying the PRO or waiting for the premium version. If you want this game now and want a fast and furious game the PRO is the model to go for. Pinball heaven once again delivered a game to me on time and with their usual top customer service. You cant fault Phil and his team! ThanksThere is no doubt in my mind this will be another Stern classic in the same league as my other favourites from them such as TRON and Lord of the Rings. Grab one whilst you can now, new in box, there is nothing like having a new game for xmas 🙂.

Martin.smithThe Walking Dead (LE) is a good looking machine with great game play. The sounds and lighting on the LE are exceptional and really add to the mood of the theme. Can be quite difficult with the drains but the high scores out there prove that it can be tamed with practice and it definitely has that “one more go” appeal. I’ve only had it a couple of days but can’t wait to really get stuck in to it to find out all it has to offer. Fans of the Walking Dead will love this as will casual fans, but maybe not suited to a household with small children. My first pinball machine and definitely a keeper!

Julian.rawlinsonI played a Wonka over at a friends and immediately I was sold on the idea of getting one from Pinball Heaven.The layout, shots and clever way the whole game has been put-together and laid-out really is nothing short of genius.There are so many ways to play the game so many hidden things to find, it really is perfect for the home environment as any JJP games are.JJP really have got better and better each game.Just wait until you experience oompa loompa multiball!It will make you want to play again and again so you can experience it multiple times.Just love this machine. ACDC Addams Family & Gold Arabian Nights Attack from Mars Banzai Run Batman (Stern) Batman Forever Big Guns Black Knight 2000 Black Rose Bride of Pinbot Bugs Bunny Cactus Canyon Centaur Champion Pub Circus Voltaire Comet Congo Corvette Creatures. Black Lagoon Cyclone Demolition Man Dirty Harry Dr Dude Dr Who Dracula Earthshaker Eight Ball Deluxe Elvira Elvis F-14 Tomcat Family Guy Firepower Fish Tales Flint Stones Funhouse Getaway Gilligans Island Guns 'n' Roses Harley Davidson High Speed Hook Hurricane Indiana Jones (1993) Indianapolis 500 Jackbot Johnny Mnemonic Jokerz! Judge Dredd Junk Yard Jurassic Park KISS Last Action Hero Lethal Weapon 3 Lord of the Rings Lost World (Bally 1978) Medieval Madness Metallica Monopoly Monster Bash NBA Fastbreak No Fear No Good Gofers Other games.

If you’re looking for literary companions to you should start with David Halberstam’s “Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made” and Roland Lazenby’s “Blood on the Horns.” Both writers logged time with the regulars covering the 1997-98 Bulls season, knowing it would be a historic run. You can’t go wrong with either. Halberstam, one of the great journalists of his generation, takes on not just basketball but much of what it touches in business, culture and beyond. Lazenby covers some of the same territory but with more of a sports writer’s bent.

If Moe Berg weren’t a real person, you would take him for an improbable bit of fiction. A White Sox infielder and catcher for five of his 15 seasons in the majors, Berg was also a brilliant scholar with degrees from Princeton and Columbia Law School. Fluency in a dozen languages led Berg to post-baseball work gathering intelligence during World War II for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. Berg was instrumental in sussing out critical information about how far along Hitler’s scientists were in developing an atomic bomb.

Sadly, things don’t always end well for great minds. Former Bulls coach Phil Jackson writes of his fraying relationship with general manager Jerry Krause at the start of “The Last Dance,” his chapter on the 1997-98 championship that brought down the curtain on the Michael Jordan era in Chicago: “Looking back, I think my struggle with Jerry taught me things about myself that I couldn’t have learned any other way. The Dalai Lama calls it ‘the enemy’s gift.’ From a Buddhist perspective, battling with enemies can help you develop greater compassion for and tolerance of others.” So, yeah, this is good stuff even if Jackson clarifies that Krause wasn’t really an enemy. Jackson doesn’t just talk about the 11 NBA championships he won as a coach; he reflects on his life and the philosophies that helped him live and manage. Speaking of Bob Verdi, one of the sweetest columns he ever wrote, a 1987 piece about the International Special Olympics in South Bend, Ind., is in this wonderful collection of Chicago sports writing.

There’s Arch Ward writing about baseball’s first All-Star Game, which he organized, while James Crusinberry airs manager Kid Gleason’s puzzlement at the World Series play of his 1919 White Sox. You get David Israel on Bill Veeck, John Schulian on boxer Tony Zale, David Condon on Nellie Fox, Ray Sons on Gale Sayers, Mike Royko’s review of a book by Keith Hernandez, Taylor Bell on the tragedy of Ben Wilson and Wendell Smith decrying conditions for players of color almost 14 years after Jackie Robinson integrated baseball. Almost everyone and everything you expect is in here — and a few surprises such as Richard Roeper on Andy the Clown. It’s a history and appreciation all in one, a trip down memory lane even if you don’t remember it all yourself.

Dick Allen, the 1972 American League MVP and home-run leader for the White Sox, was one of the most exciting ballplayers ever to play on the South Side. He swung a big bat and made things happen. The guy should be in the Hall of Fame.

But he got a bum rap with the Phillies as a divisive clubhouse presence en route to winning National League Rookie of the Year honors in 1964. He was a man who stood up for himself and didn’t take kindly to racial epithets. This was a time when wanting to be called Dick rather than Richie was cast in some quarters as an act of defiance. Mitchell Nathanson’s reporting and relating of Allen’s complex story makes you appreciate him all the more. Everyone always knew Michael Jordan was a competitor.

But his commercial image smoothed off the edges, so few knew just how his drive and determination to be the best played out behind the scenes until this book came out in 1992. Sam Smith, then with the Tribune, pulled back the curtain and let the world see a much more complete picture of the superstar. While controversial at the time, “The Jordan Rules” is an invaluable portrait of an artist, his temperament and its effect on everyone in his orbit. A 20th-anniversary e-book edition includes a foreword in which Smith reflects on how the book came to be and the reaction to it, which is entertaining in and of itself. Ernie Banks was another Chicago superstar far more complex than his public image. Unlike Michael Jordan, it took almost four years after Banks’ 2015 death for former Sun-Times columnist Ron Rapoport’s “Let’s Play Two” to fill in the shadings of the famously sunny ballplayer that prove he was human.

The book was a byproduct of an abandoned autobiography on which Banks once planned to collaborate with Rapoport, but that material is complemented by a raft of interviews, in-depth research and Rapoport’s knack for storytelling. “Let’s Play Two” does a terrific job of both jogging memories and opening eyes.

Adults may not be thrilled by this one, but young people like to read too. Former Sun-Times reporter Sean Jensen’s “Middle School Rules” books target readers age 9 to 14 by telling them what sports stars were like at their age. Jensen opened the series with. This one centers on another former Bear, who was born in Chicago and grew up in Louisiana. The story is laced with life lessons such as play hard, be reverent, look out for your family, be open-minded and willing to try new things.

Great literature? But there’s value there. Bronislau Nagurski was. A legend who made a national name for himself at the University of Minnesota, Nagurski made opponents pay as both a fullback and tackle. Winning three NFL championships — two during a 1930-37 run with the Bears and one more as a battered old-timer in his one-season 1943 comeback during World War II after time off wrestling — he deserves to be in the discussion of. Nagurski was an inaugural member of both the college and pro football halls of fame in 1951 and 1963, respectively.

This is an imperfect biography, but Jim Dent knows how to tell a story and Nagurski definitely is someone Bears fans ought to know more about. Will we still be talking about the ’85 Bears in another 35 years the way we’re still talking about them today? But this 2013 oral history of that phenomenal team, season and moment in Chicago is recounted in a way that helps one understand why they’ve withstood the test of time.

Rich Cohen, an excellent writer who was a high school student in 1985, does an outstanding job recalling not only this team in all its glory, but also how it was embraced at the time and why. He also brings the perspective that comes only with the passage of time. There really were giants in those days (lowercase “g,” of course). Fly fishing is a sport, and Norman Maclean was a University of Chicago professor. Besides, there’s not nearly enough fiction on this list. Maclean’s semi-autobiographical novella about his family, life and death, growing up in Montana and fishing is a thing to behold.

As you’re swept up in its loose narrative, which flows like a river, you may marvel that Robert Redford managed to make a movie from it. But mostly you’ll be transported by prose that sometimes reads like poetry, including this bit quoted at the base of Michael Jordan’s United Center statue: “At that moment I knew, surely and clearly, that I was witnessing perfection. He stood before us, suspended above the earth, free from all its laws like a work of art, and I knew, just as surely and clearly, that life is not a work of art, and that the moment could not last.”.

While we’re on the subject of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the 1919 White Sox who conspired with gamblers, this is the novel that serves as the basis for the film “Field of Dreams.” In W.P. Kinsella’s original telling, the author Ray Kinsella seeks out to bring back home is an imagined version of the famously reclusive J.D.

Rather than risk a lawsuit, the character played by James Earl Jones in the movie was named Terrence Mann. For what it is worth, Salinger had a character named Ray Kinsella in his short story “A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All” and a Richard Kinsella in “The Catcher in the Rye.” If you like W.P. Kinsella’s work, you may want to seek out “The Last Pennant Before Armageddon,” his short story about a Cubs manager who is led to believe if he leads the team to a National League title, it would have dire consequences for the world.

To date, the list of great Bears quarterbacks, a Hall of Famer who led them to four NFL titles — 1940, ’41, ’43 and ’46 — during his 12 years with the team. (We’ll never forget the way they thrilled the nation with their T-formation.) R.D. Rosen tells the stories that went unpublicized in Luckman’s heyday and the reasons they went unpublicized. Imagine the coverage today if a charismatic football star’s dad had alleged mob ties and was sent with two others to prison for the murder of his brother-in-law. Bill Veeck designed the big scoreboard at Wrigley Field revered for its old-school qualities and introduced the “exploding” scoreboard at old Comiskey Park that gave rise to distractions now endemic in ballparks, stadiums and arenas. In other words, the maverick executive and entrepreneur who twice owned the White Sox isn’t as easy to pigeonhole in the ways his devotees and critics tend to do.

This autobiography shares some of his war stories, and there are plenty because mavericks are always running up against someone. When Ernest Hemingway was growing up in Oak Park, he wrote for his high school newspaper under the nom de plume Ring Lardner Jr.

For articles mimicking Lardner’s style. The actual Lardner wrote seven Tribune columns a week from 1913 to 1919 while also penning short stories and novels admired by Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This one is set up as a series of letters from White Sox pitcher Jack Keefe, an egotistical lunkhead, to his friend Al Blanchard back in Indiana. The dialect, misspellings and creative grammar take time to get used to, but the string of stories is peppered with real-life characters, funny and insightful. While today’s players are more polished, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envision an updated version of Jack Keefe in a modern-day clubhouse.