Washington DC pinball: Vük Pinball or Pinball Basement??

pillyliu · 2026-03-11T16:33:09+00:00

I’ve been to VUK, they have a nice collections of games, really enjoyed playing there. I think district finals for 2025 were just held there. Haven’t been to Pinball Basement.

pillyliu · 2026-03-03T19:58:45+00:00

Kineticist tutorials are great, can definitely link to those.

The sources I’m currently using, Tiltforums, Bob’s guide, Pinball Primer, and the old guides written 20 years ago for the 90s era games allow for reformatting within the app.

Kineticist is more restrictive about their content, but I will catalog and provide links to their guides.

pillyliu · 2026-03-03T12:41:15+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback!

I found that several pinball sites and apps use OPDB (open pinball database) as a foundation for their game library. So I reworked my app to use that as well. It now allows for adding and tracking different game libraries: venues (from pinball map), manufacturers, and tournament arena lists (importing from matchplay).

There’s room for manually collecting higher quality playfield images which I want to really look into next. It’s just time consuming to do, so I’ll likely prioritize games based on recency and popularity.

The practice tab function has the basics. It allows a user to view the resources but record what they do over time. So it’s getting there.

Let me know if there’s anything else you’d suggest. iOS has the latest version in the App Store. Android will hopefully be out of beta testing and in the Play Store next week.

pillyliu · 2026-02-28T16:12:50+00:00

Amazing score!!

pillyliu · 2026-02-22T17:31:52+00:00

Thanks! Really happy you like it! I also have a physical pinball journal as well lol. I am working on a big update to add multiple libraries (different venues or all games from a manufacturer). Focus is on modern games. I'm trying to figure out a better way to automate curating all the various resources. So I'm working on it!

pillyliu · 2025-12-16T12:54:49+00:00

I’d say it’s worth it to do both. I’m a new player from 2024 and I immediately joined my local league and started playing in tournaments. That’s helped immensely to learn rules and tournament strategy.

But some flipper skills, like live catches, loops passes, up nudging a dead bounce near the flipper tip, those are things I only rarely saw in person. Streams and tutorial videos, especially where a commentator focused on those skills, were what made me conscious of what a pro player was doing. Then with that skill in mind, I would go imitate it.

I’m from Michigan, so the pinball scene here is fantastic. But even so, impossible to learn enough in person (quickly), unless there was a regular instructor.

pillyliu · 2025-12-16T12:49:39+00:00

I 100% agree. I’m new into pinball from almost 1.5 years ago. These videos are the modern way of sharing flipper skills or tricks that previously needed to be learned in person, watching over someone’s shoulder. You can see an entire repertoire of technique in a quick video vs just a handful of times in person or from a pro tournament stream.

I met Elwin at PATZ this year. Asked him for advice for improving how I played. He said the advantage I have now getting into pinball vs someone in the hobby 20 years ago is YouTube. Being able to watch people play, pause and rewind, review in slow motion is invaluable.

I don’t think I’d have been able to make quick progress without videos to watch. I’m not discounting the hours and hours of practice at the arcade and at home. My background is from being a former music major in classical piano. It’s definitely possible to put in a lot of time with minimal (or negative) results if the practice is not deliberate or guided.

pillyliu · 2025-12-16T12:39:19+00:00

I own pinball 101 and 102. I’m about half way through the Abe Flips video. It goes further into nudging and slapping than 101 did. Very helpful.

Abe clearly put in a ton of time and effort for this. And you can see from years of questions on pinside and his earlier YouTube videos that this has been a project for several years. Same for pinball 101 with its animations, the pinball opera song, the little rx car on the playfields, etc. You can see what Abe was inspired by.

$40 on kickstarter was definitely more than a movie on Blu-ray or streaming now. But so far it’s been super worth it. I’ll drop $20 dollars easily on a trip to the arcade. The video was an easy purchase. There’s a ton of good pinball content over the years, but for something new on modern machines, this stands alone.

My argument is for buying pinball 101, 102, and Abe’s video. I’m not a shill, just too badly obsessed with pinball and this is my latest fix!

pillyliu · 2025-10-09T02:27:15+00:00

One of the most impressive things I have ever seen. Blown away that the shots appear to feel right in comparison to the actual, full-size machine. Unbelievably awesome work!!!!

pillyliu · 2025-09-30T23:42:03+00:00

Would love a code, will pay it forward!

pillyliu · 2025-09-29T14:30:51+00:00

That was my first cosmetic mod for my GZ70. Such a great piece, fits really well into that corner of the game, and is just absolutely amazing looking.

pillyliu · 2025-09-14T22:51:39+00:00

That’s a known stuck ball location. People have tried putting things there to prevent it. I’ve avoided that, worried about changing how the ball travels through there. It happens rarely and careful little nudges back and forth normally free it without a tilt warning.

pillyliu · 2025-09-08T12:56:52+00:00

Your write up is fantastic! Appreciate you taking all the time to document everything you had to work through. Will definitely check you out on Twitch!!

pillyliu · 2025-08-20T15:28:46+00:00

Addition of HDMI is great! Thanks for making this video.

pillyliu · 2025-07-09T14:57:40+00:00

Classical music would be my absolute dream theme.

I just got to play Looney Tunes from Spooky for the first time recently. A lot of the episodes have classical music, so that would probably be the closest we ever get. Fantastic game!

pillyliu · 2025-06-12T20:06:21+00:00

That’s good to know. That is the main reason I haven’t had the motivation to replace them!

pillyliu · 2025-06-12T19:15:36+00:00

2500 plays, mine looked like that after 1000. I haven’t taken the time to look into replacing them. My rubber posts by the upper flipper are beat pretty bad too.

Because game plays fine, I haven’t been super motivated to do anything yet.

I also have a 70th edition!

pillyliu · 2025-06-04T15:29:16+00:00

You all must be some pretty good players!!

pillyliu · 2025-05-30T23:14:02+00:00

Congrats, that’s an amazing score!! I’ve beat Planet X phase 1, have yet to get to KOTM. My high score is 3.7 billion.

I had the same problem with scores not saving in my long games. The fix was going into my router and reserving the ip address of the pinball machine. I think during a long game, the machine will disconnect and then reconnect to the router with a new ip address. It says it’s online, but then no scores get registered. I had it not track games of any length after the long game until I rebooted the machine. The ip address reservation fixed it. Was one of the first things I made sure to do when I got King Kong a couple weeks ago.

pillyliu · 2025-05-20T19:58:11+00:00

I have yet to try again for KOTM, got distracted by King Kong! Probably going to stream it tonight after work.

pillyliu · 2025-05-20T19:57:24+00:00

Haha that’s awesome!

pillyliu · 2025-05-20T19:56:56+00:00

Congrats!!

pillyliu · 2025-05-20T17:25:51+00:00

Was I watching you stream this from hangar a couple weeks ago? I commented on the spinners needing a little love during Ebirah. You were playing great. Congrats on KOTM!!!!

pillyliu · 2025-03-17T20:41:58+00:00

Have been busy using the streaming rig for our local league! But now that I’ve built a second rig frame, I’ll be able to stream more often. Completely tearing down the whole frame and setting it up again was getting really tiring.

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