Disclaimer: This turned out to be a pretty scatterbrained update, mainly because it was written in bits and pieces over the last week or so. Hopefully the next one will be a bit more coherent.
So I’m back on my Guns N’ Roses Pinball kick again. To be fair – I never really stopped being on a Guns N’ Roses Pinball kick. A week or so ago I asked people to email me if they knew the location of any GNR Pinball machines. This was so I could begin work on the Ultimate GNR Pinball Location Guide. Unfortunately, I’ve only had three submissions, so it’s not exactly the ‘Ultimate’ GNR Pinball Location Guide yet. Click here for what I’ve got so far.
Then there’s the wealth of extremely trivial GNR pinball information I unearthed, presented in descending order of interest. Found on a Slash fan site (More on this later):
Question from Jeff of Portland OR:
My question is regarding the GNR pinball machine. There are several GNR songs on there; however, there are other songs on there that are not on any GNR album. For example, the “SLASH solo guitar feature” or the song played on the “extra ball feature”. Did you actually record these songs for the pinball machine? I’ve also heard that there are other unreleased tracks on the machine. Is this true?SLASH replies:
There are eight different original GNR recordings which were taken off the masters. An unreleased song is “Ain’t Goin’ Down” with no lyrics. If you see the Viper pinball game which I also did the music for, you’ll find “Speed Parade” there. It’s the sound the car makes.
Here‘s a meticulously detailed document that covers the scoring and gameplay functions of the machine. This is probably only mildly interesting if you’ve played the game. A sample quotation:
“Match sequence: The animation shows a woman pulling her shirt off over her head. The picture then scrolls down, and she’s covering herself with a big card (on which is displayed the match number). If you don’t match, you get the very neat quote, “aww, dude!” If you do match, WAIT!!! You should know by now that you have to wait until the match animation finishes before the credit is actually awarded. This delay seems very long, compared to other recent DE pins.
There is an option in the menus called “Modesty Option.” Switching this OFF changes the match animation. The girl still pulls her shirt off, but when the picture scrolls down, she’s not covering herself, and one match digit appears on each breast.”
Photos of most of the playing field and moving parts can be found here. This is noteworthy because the artwork is fucking hilarious.
Here‘s a meticulously detailed document that covers the repair of Data East pinball machines. This is only interesting if you are a very big nerd.
While digging up all this GNR pinball info, I stumbled across the funniest websites in the world. The first one is a collection of video clips of GNR’s slash, featuring the most hilarious descriptions ever. They make Slash seem like a puppet, under the control of the author of the website or something. In the following excerpt, please note that the capitol letters are as they appear on the site.
Bang Your Head, SLASH!
Sing, SLASH!
LET ME STAND NEXT TO YOUR FIRE!
ROCK THOSE REPTILES!
Introduce Blues Ball, SLASH!
Bring It On Home, SLASH!
Play Us A Smooth Solo, SLASH!
Play That Steeler Fight Song, SLASH!
Show Them How to Rock, SLASH!
..and so on.
Also from the same author: The Official Photos of Slash Relaxing Page.
Rachel Leigh Cook pretending to sing lead in a faux pop-punk version of the Archie comics spin off Josie and the pussycats. I have not the words. Click here to see a video.
So there’s this Japanese film that probably won’t ever see the light of day over here, called Battle Royale. The plot is basically a sadistic mutation of Survivor: A junior high school class (42 students) is sent to an island and given a set amount of time to trim the crop down to one winner. If more than one student is still alive at the end of the allotted time, they are all killed. Obviously this would be perfect fodder for the new presidential administration, and no studio in their right mind is going to touch it with a ten foot pole. AICN‘s Harry Knowles (Do the grammar and spelling oversights on AICN ever bug anyone else? because they sure do bug the shit out of me.) makes quite a case for the film’s merit in this article.
Did you know Weird Al is getting married? So I guess there’s hope for everyone.