Assembly took one beer and an hour and a half. Basically you screw four legs on the bottom of the table and assemble the back box. It’s not very complex and the instructions are easy to read and follow. I’m not strong at putting things together and I had zero issues assembling.
We have another virtual pinball table coming from AtGames that we also preordered in November 2020. This one also cost $599 + shipping. The Star Wars Pinball costs $601 and some change with delivery included, so the AtGames Legends Pinball is a little more expensive.
Also, recently — guess we’re in the videogame mode at the moment — Walmart had a crazy good deal on the AtGames Legends Pro controller for $99, when it regularly sells for $249.
AtGames Legends Pro Gamer is on the two gaming stools. The AtGames Legends Ultimate arcade is showing in the corner of the room
My son and I picked up four of those (two each). Another nice thing about these is they fit into the AtGames Legends Ultimate arcade unit as a replacement control panel and they are wireless so you can take with you and play the same games on TVs anywhere.
We’ve also scheduled three trips to the local arcade — one each month — for the next three months.
Typing this post as we’re waiting to enter the AMC movie theater for Sunday movie night at the theater. This will be our 14th movie seen in theaters in 2021. We’re seeing The Courier [FIRST LOOK] tonight. A review of that will be posted here in the not too distant future.. We also watched the Snyder Cut of Justice League. Wish they had gone the miniseries or two-part route (a la Kill Bill) there, but won’t say much else. You can read the Snyder Cut non-spoiler review at Letterboxd.
What have you all been up to? Spring cleaning? Watch any great movies lately you want to name drop recommend in the comments? Please do!
Like a ragtag group of Rebels taking on a Death Star, angry Star Wars fans who are furious at Disney / Lucasfilm over the firing of Gina Carano from The Mandalorian are absolutely thrashing the official Star Wars YouTube channel.
Nearly every new video posted to the Star Wars YouTube channel is met with a massive amount of downvotes and comments expressing support for Carano.
Am not a fan of the term “toxic fandom” but will admit that obsession over anything is problematic. At the same time, I agree that The Last Jedi was a terrible movie and wish Disney would have found some other way to deal with Gina Carano than cutting off all business contact with her (Disney Has Had Enough – Gina Carino Out From The Mandalorian over Social Media Activity). It is a terrible optic, regardless whether you agree or not with Carano’s political beliefs, especially when Disney took the extra step of stopping Hasbro from making Cara Dune toys, Am not sure I agree with Carano that she was bullied (see: Gina Carano Tells Her Side, Claiming Disney Bullying, in Interview With Ben Shapiro) but do see how reasonable people could come to that conclusion.
What should Disney have done if they didn’t want to work with Gina Carano any longer? The answer is obvious. Don’t offer her a contract for more TV show appearances as the character. Behind the scenes, it sounds like they’d already done that. But they didn’t need to come out with a public statement distancing themselves from Carano. I think this last PR move poured salt in the wound.
As previously stated, I wasn’t that excited about Cara Dune, the character. She might have been popular for more hardened Star Wars fans but she was to me at best a very minor character in The Mandalorian. If she never appeared in the series again, that wouldn’t have been something I found disappointing. Will she appear in The Mandalorian pinball game? I don’t know, but if she’s there or not, I’m cool with it.
I’m not going to Disney’s official Star Wars channel to downvote the video. The number of videos I’ve downvoted on YouTube can probably be counted on both hands. That’s since YouTube first started many years ago. I would rather promote than downvote, so I will thumbs up videos I like more than actively downvote those disliked. If I dislike something, I don’t engage with it, stop following, stop paying attention to it.
This brings back Star Wars Pinball. I bought that table because I love playing the Zen Studios FX3 pinball tables and liked the design of that table. This was before Gina Carano’s fallout with Disney. When the table comes I’m going to setup and play. The only thing that’s going to impact how often that is played is how much fun the games are on the table.
Not going to tell Star Wars fans how to spend their time, so if they want to spend those minutes of their life downvoting videos on Disney’s official Star Wars channel have at it. That seems to be important for some (many?) of them right now. Disney is the enemy for distancing themselves from Carano, I get it. My guess is in time this Carano situation will blow over. Is it reminiscent of what happened to Luke Skywalker’s character in The Last Jedi? I don’t think so. The comparison is being made, but Cara Dune was never Luke Skywalker.
If people want to be mad as Star Wars fan, it’s more understandable being upset about Luke Skywalker than what happened with Cara Dune. The character Cara Dune didn’t have anything negative happen except the actress that plays her won’t be Gina Carano (according to Disney as of this moment in time, but who knows what the future holds?) could still be recast and maybe will in future shows. Luke Skywalker’s character arc is pretty much ruined, unless they go all Star Trek and parallel universe or retcon what happened to him in The Last Jedi.
If you love a franchise, whether it be Star Wars, Jurassic Park, etc, you don’t have to love everything involved with it. That’s what I’m taking from this. It’s not blind loyalty to the franchise. I don’t like everything Star Trek has done, in fact most of the newer Star Trek by Alex Kurtzman hasn’t been to my liking. Have voted with my feet. Not watching it. Maybe I’ll give it another chance someday. Maybe I’ll like something new Kurtzman does with Star Trek, but so far his record is abysmal with me.
How wrapped up as a fan do you get in something you like? What do you think Disney should have done if they didn’t want to do business with Gina Carano any longer?
Downtown on Fremont street in Las Vegas in Binions casino. They feature several skill-based slot machines, that allow you to play pinball or classic arcade games like Asteroids.
Searched YouTube and a video of the Cleopatra Pinball bonus game has been documented and shared. It was made in 2018, so just shows these machines aren’t that new.
Skill-based slot machines sound good in theory, but wonder how mathematically they can work? If a machine is programmed to mathematically pay back at 93%+, what if you have this super skilled videogame player? The answer is the “random” part of the game will be randomly worse, so this will overcompensate for the skilled player part. Does this player cash out after doing so well at the skill-based part, only to leave the next players of the machine to come along and lose at the random slot portion of the game? Yes.
Don’t know how these games actually work, so this is pure speculation, but it seems logical to suggest that if one player does well, then future players will do worse. This is how the machine can pay back at least at a certain percentage.
Will you play skill-based slot machines? Have you tried any? What do you think of this idea?
Please note: this isn’t a sponsored post, I’m just passing along to interested readers.
In addition to being Valentine’s Day 2021. It’s also the AtGames NOD – National Owner’s Day from 9am – 9pm PT (GMT-8). There are multiple different contests happening during this time only, each with a chance to win the new Legends Pinball table (pictured above), a $600+ value ($599+shipping). They are also giving away license packs for the Zaccaria pinball games and ArcadeNet subscriptions.
If you haven’t bought anything yet from AtGames, you have a chance to get in on some killer deals during this event, including a new Pinball controller, a limited edition Tetris-themed mini ALU, wave 4 preorder for the Legends Pinball (we prepordered wave 2 already, still waiting on ours, but they promise to fulfill all existing wave 1-3 orders by March 1).
One of the contests during NOD is the highest combined scores of retrogames: Burgertime, Space Invaders and Tetris. I’m not good at any of these games, but will be giving it my best today during the event. Here are the current AtGames leaderboard top scores as of this post:
Burgertime highest score: 600,600 — my 3,950 looks pretty abysmal by comparison8,160 on Space Invaders is the top spot, I haven’t registered a score yet — but will today during the eventTetris: 158,161 — no score submitted from me here yet, either
The 5 contests involved are as follows:
LEGENDS FAMILY NETWORKING: Add 10 friends to your AtGames ecosystem leaderboard system, submit a score on any game to the leaderboards (that will work with contest #1 mentioned above) or enter an active game in the lobby. So, fairly easy to get this one.
LEGENDS MAIL CONNECTION – Answer an ingame message on any of your AtGames connected device (ALU, mini, pro, core, pinball, etc).
LEADERBOARD PARTIES – the Burgertime, Space Invaders and Tetris contest mentioned above, also play Junkyard Cats on the Global pinball games and these three ArcadeNet pinball games: Black Hole, Teed’ Off (highest score during the event only) and Haunted House
SHOP NOW, WIN BIG – make any single reservation ($20 USD) during the event and earn entry. Multiple purchases do not earn additional entries, it’s one per customer max. We’re planning on getting gamepads ($35, $30 each during event only, $20 reservation), the Control Panel for Pinball ($100, regularly $200, only $20 reservation required) and at least 1 license of the 4 Zaccaria Pinball Packs ($100, regularly $200, with $20 reservation required). So, going to cost $80 at least today.
Winners of the pinball tables will be announced on PDubs Arcade Loft show live at 6pm PT, via a message to the AtGames Discord channel:
Good luck to all those participating in this fun videogame event today, February 14, 2021!
A lot of businesses are suffering now. I’m not sure videogame physical stores when so much is about digital and subscription these days makes much sense. Me? I personally like to shop in person when possible, but there is no denying convenience online and with the added safety requirements, it’s putting a tremendous strain on businesses like Gamestop.
GameStop, the largest video game retailer in the world, is headed for some serious trouble. After a years-long downward spiral into debt, the company announced in a Dec. 8 presentation to investors that it will close more than 1,000 stores by the end of its fiscal year in March. This comes after the company already closed over 783 stores over the previous two years.
Arcade1UP suffered production and manufacturing delays which has led to pushing back the December 14, 2020 ship date for the Star Wars pinball machines. We received an email from Gamestop and they didn’t even have the right pinball machine listed in the email, saying our “Marvel Pinball machine” would be delayed. Um, no, I replied, we have a receipt for the Star Wars machine. They replied and apologized, oh yeah, that.
Umm, is this how their customer service works? They don’t even know what you order?
We ordered two gaming stools from them and never did see on their website that the order was fulfilled, however, the stools arrived a week later. We paid a couple extra dollars for expediated shipping, but it still took a week for the stools to arrive. They were in good condition and no issues otherwise, but Gamestop’s website and order confirmation page is lacking.
This leads me to believe that maybe Gamestop should go out of business if they can’t get online orders right and people aren’t shopping in their retail stores in significant numbers.
I still like Gamestop, despite our own issues with them. They aren’t Amazon as a shopping experience. Maybe that’s the biggest problem for them.
No idea if this is how the table will really look, but if it’s close to the real thing and costs less than $1,000, we’ll be buying one when it’s released
It’s been awhile since we’ve talked any serious videogaming here, but the Star Wars virtual pinball game sounds extremely cool. It’s got the tech, the Arcade1Up reasonable pricing (or so we hope), yet faithful arcade experience and it has Zen’s pinball wizardry programming, how can it now be good?
But this cool tech is also being used to bring Zen’s virtual pinball to life like never before. “We’re really optimizing the games with the hardware. We’re doing custom mapping, working on the controls, making sure the buttons feel right, and that the response on the accelerometers feels right. It’s going to feel like a brand-new game.,” shares an enthusiastic Kirk.
We already have bought a lot of the Zen Pinball tables, including the Nintendo Switch Star Wars tables (see: Star Wars Pinball for Nintendo Switch) a year ag.
Those tables are the real deal. And a ton of fun.
This new pinball table sounds like a cross between a real pinball table and videogame pinball. Now, whether or not it’s as cool as it sounds, I hope the price is right so we can buy one and put it in our entertainment room alongside the Arcade1Up NBA Jam that I’ve been wanting to buy.
This table is similar in design to the Marvel pinball table and that one is said to be priced between $500-600 (see: Arcade1Up Reveals Price Point for Marvel Pinball), which is inline with their arcade cabinets.
Star Wars Pinball on the Nintendo Switch ($29.99 as of 10/3/2019)
When it comes to games, pinball is our favorite together. Whenever we go to the arcade we usually play pinball. As far as video pinball goes, Zen Studios makes some of the most entertaining pinball games. We’ve played across multiple platforms, but I was delighted to learn recently that the Star Wars pinball games have become available to play on the Nintendo Switch. For whatever, reason they were part of the Pinball FX2 tables offered.
There are 19 different Star Wars themed pinball tables to choose from as well as the option to choose from playing the Light or Dark side (most seem to choose the Light side):
Which side would you choose: Light or Dark?
The tables look great and are fun to play. Tons of easy lanes to hit through and some challenging spots to reach and trigger many, many bonus rounds.
Return of the Jedi themed table. Ewoks!!!
One bonus game is like Galaga.
Watch out for for asteroids, shoot the enemy TIE fighters
And then there are more tables …
Go get ’em, Darth Vader!
This game is going to provide many hours of fun when not watching movies! Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker hits theaters December 20, 2019
Movies, Movies, Movies 