The Rolling Stones Launch and Pinball R Us mancave.

[andrew (nob)]

Wednesday night Dana (Silverballfever) and I went to a launch of the new Stern Rolling Stones machine at Pinballs R Us in Chatswood.
Pinballs R Us are a dealer who set up about a year ago and promote their 'man cave' salesroom.
(www.pinballsrus.com.au)

Entry to the Launch was $25 and included free pinball from 6.30-9.30pm (well actually we left at 10.10pm and people were still playing).
It also included free beer - Stella. So about 20 games of pinball and 6 Stellas for $25 is not a bad deal in the end.

The mancave had about 30 machines, so was quite impressive. A reasonable number of new sterns, as well as a range of WPC machines and a couple of Data-Easts.

I had fun playing Monster Bash which I havent played since I was in London in 2001.

They are looking at having a 'players club' of similar events. I'll definitely be wanting to go again.

Onto the Stones - it was a fun fast machine with good flow. great ramp and orbit shots. The moving jagger was pretty well implemented. it would occasionally block feature shots deliberately (not just random moving like the crane on batman). My biggest gripe on the machine was a very badly done fake british accent as an announcer telling you what shots to go for. This i think is enough of a deal breaker on me buying a NIB machine. I'd play it on location and may look out for a second hand one in about 5 years time. Steve (and Lyman) returning to Stern also wants me to wait and see what they come up with before I get my first ever NIB machine.

I was much more impressed with TRS than i was with TDK. I've only played one (bad) game on IM, but it did feel 'sparse' to me.

In the 2nd 1/2 of the evening they had a competition where everyone could get one game on Rolling Stones and the winner got a free weekend rental (which they normally charge $350 for) of a new Stern.

The winning score was just under 75k - grand champion was 75k.
Second score was about 45k.
Third was about 20k.
Dana got  around 10k
Most people got under 10k

Reading some of the review of TRS on RGP, this 75K was a pretty good score this early into the machine. As far as I could tell by the couple of games I played the secret to high scores is to stack modes.

[Dirty daz]

nice write up , too bad ther's nothing like this in melb

[Caveoftreasures]

A good report. 

One thing in the story made me cringe. $350 to rent a STERN for a weekend.   

Thanks for the info Andrew.

[Richyrich]

I played The Rolling Stones at Bumper,in Melb
I really enjoyed playing it,good flow,good tunes.
The voice telling you what shots to make,like Harley Davidson,is lame and very annoying
I wonder if the L E ,which has different software,will still have this feature
I hope not

[howzat]

Hi
Last time I was in Sydney I went to pin are us  and was impressed .I was able to play what ever game I liked and had a great time .  I thought Elvis was fun  ITs good to have some where to go for a game and the staff was very friendly

                                                                                             Howzat

[RGR]

lol TRS was sooooo baddd that I would not have it in my house for free... Deadset if someone needed to go overseas and have me look after their TRS then the game would be in the garage. Likely to be the worst, most boring pinball ever made since DMDs were introduced.

As for Pinballs R US, alot of their games that they had for sale were not working 100%. Switches out, lights out etc etc. Tilt settings were not set up, machines not level. The music they had that night was too loud... I could not hear TRS when I was playing it. There was no tilt on those games either...

The high scores on TRS were millions not K btw :)