WHAT

YOU DIDNT KNOW

I haven't played it yet either but I'd like to check it out

Also, I'm pretty sure SN's pads have gotten crappy.

Their SN sucks.  Pump Pro is victory.

I highly recommend Pump Pro.

yes, Supernova costs a dollar now, the pads have gotten shitty, AND IT'S STILL NOT PATCHED.

Trying to go from Pump Pro, where pretty much every song is synced wonderfully, to pre-patch Supernova, is... not a fun experience.

But going from Pre-patch SNOVA to Pump Pro is like going from Chuck E. Cheese to Tilt!.

Any updates for this location?

Big Al's has Guitar Hero Arcade and Pump It Up Jump now, in addition to Pump It Up Pro. Pump It Up Jump is 50 cents for 1 song and distributes tokens. I'm not sure how much Guitar Hero costs because I've never played it. DDR SuperNOVA and Pump Pro are $1.10 for 3 songs, or $0.95 for 3 songs with a Big Al's VIP card (you get one after spending $500 with one card).

Let's all pump it up~!

Who's goin with me?

I might consider it.  Won't buy a card for myself again since my last one expired with $25 on it, but I'll reimburse anyone who wants to let my games contribute to their VIP status ;]

Date?

Whenever is clever. Been meaning to actually make it up on a half price wednesday so maybe then? I have a new phone number: 503 686 4955.

*looks under username* I won a tournament? sweet.

Oh and here I didn't say anything 'cause I thought it was a same-day interest check.  I've never been to Big Al's yet and I occasionally get the PIU itch

How about next Wednesday then?  I'll try to get some friends to go too.

Also, you won Kumoricon 2008   Remember?  The one where Ethan won every match on every song until the last three songs against you

I could go Wednesday right after work, but that means I'll be traveling 26 and I-5 during rush hour traffic.  Could take me an hour just to get to Big Al's ;A;

You should probably hit me up today if you still want to go tomorrow, I was thinking of going before rush hour and just spending the entire afternoon up there.

As noted elsewhere, Big Al's now has a ReRave arcade machine. $1.00 for 2 songs.

(seriously, why is 2 songs apparently the default? ridiculous)

I wish big al's would put it to 3.
Though you can fail out your first song and keep going so you always get 2 songs no matter what.

no posts in this thread for a couple years... well here's an update...

Schlagwerk and I stopped by here last weekend, and good grief, what happened to this place? The Pump it Up Infinity was downright unplayable, 1P side had a center arrow that kept sticking and then UL would randomly start sticking too, and 2P side was even worse with the sticking arrows. Not to mention the volume was kinda low.

ReRave Plus was here at one point but apparently went to Idaho or something. Now they have regular ReRave again and it's $1.50/$1.27 for 3 songs, and there's no network support (presumably the network was taken down in favor of Plus?)

Pump it Up Jump is still there, walking by it I saw Chuck E Cheese in the how to play attract mode. Huh?

Beaverton Big Al's > Vancouver Big Al's

Yeah, it's a real shame. Big Al's, Vancouver has really fallen from how great it used to be. ;_;

I actually went to Big Al's, Vancouver a month or two ago with a friend of mine and with the arcade manager's permission we fixed the pad issues as best we could.  A lot of the preliminary issues had to do with the fact that the sensor holders weren't adhered to the inside of the pad at all (as they should be), they were just free to bounce around as people played!

Even with the work that we did, I think the pads were about an 8.5/10.  The P1 down-right arrow was a big problem because it has a screw that's stripped inside of the pad and that means that that entire arrow just can't be accessed or fixed at all.

Now the pads are in a sorry state again.  Last time I was there I noticed the state of the pads and told the arcade tech that the P1 bottom-right arrow still needs to be drilled out and have a replacement screw put in, and that the pads as a whole could use a good 16-20 new sensors.

I could go out there again and fix the pads up somewhat, but I'm betting they'd only last a week or two and quite honestly I don't have the time, energy or motivation, considering:

1. I can go play Pump at Clackamas D&B and the machine is still in fairly good shape
2. Big Al's Vancouver is going to get PRO2 again at the end of this month (no idea if it's coming from Beaverton or Idaho)

Oh damn, is that a TX (bracketless) stage? Stripping one of those really is a one way trip to screw extractor land.

It is bracketless.  I was simplifying earlier when I said the screw was stripped. What actually happened is that the interior corner plastic (yes plastic...not metal) that the screw screws into cracked.  This means that when you turn the screw, the underlying plastic just rotates around with the screw and so only 3 corners of the panel can be raised (but not raised high enough to reach the bad plastic/screw).

From photos, I had assumed that those screw receptacles were metal. That is pretty lame.

I've been trying to figure out whether to buy them from Andamiro to upgrade my stage (they're way overpriced) or make my own. That might be tipping me towards the latter.

yeah sorry to say this place is pretty bad. It needs a whole new set of sensors, currently most of them are over sensitive but even then Infinity didn't turn out to be that great of a pump game in the first place so it's kind of a lost cause. Big Al's Beaverton is much better because the pads for SN2 and Pro2 are in pretty good condition, my only complaint is that the Pro2 has a pretty bad visual offset because of the replaced monitor. Also both cabs are pretty low in the volume department, Pro2 has it much worse being surrounded by tons of other noisy games.

I talked to one of the guys who works at the Beaverton location (Craig), and he said that they were indeed swapping the Pro 2 and the Infinity machines between the Beaverton and Vancouver locations. It's supposed to happen around September 8th, I think. Kinda sad to see Beaverton losing the Pro 2 because it's been a fixture of the place ever since they opened up 5 years ago, and Pro 2 was literally brand new and one of the first units to hit any arcade. But then again, seeing how I currently live within walking distance of the Beaverton location, I'm pretty bored of Pro 2 and being able to play some Infinity songs would be a nice change of pace. I made sure to point out that they're gonna have to do a LOT of work on that Infinity machine to make it playable.


The volume isn't deafening but I've never really had too many problems with the volume at Beaverton. What I do hate is that bright-ass prize redemption game to the left of Pro 2, and that giant bright-ass ball dropping redemption shit to the right of Supernova 2 and the 1P side being shoved up against the wall). But Craig also said that they're going to be moving games around soon too, so.... we'll see how that goes.

I rarely post here but figured I'd comment on it.  Interesting you say that because Pump Infinity has partially been one of the reasons for the downfall of music game interest in the Big Al's Vancouver WA location.  I recently spoke to them about this in regards to something unrelated.

They had originally obtained Infinity by request from several of the players (because it was something new)  However, since the arrival of Infinity at Vancouver the earnings and interest of Pump has gone down so much that it contributed to the loss of music game consideration. I'm guessing because the combination of: 1) People requesting it (then not playing as much), 2) technical problems, and 3) The usual non user friendly pump interface that Pro/Pro2 is usually much better at.  

I also often hear the same type of thing from a few arcade operators/managers who email me asking about how they can obtain Pump Pro / Pump Pro2 software kits - because it performed much better (sometimes 6:1 earnings) in comparison to the other pump versions.  Sadly, overall Pump isn't known to earn money very well in terms of arcade "business" and it's typically why most places do not upgrade or prioritize anything pump related.  It's probably why you won't see anything like Pump Prime at Big Al's in the near future as well.

In this case, Al's does game swaps to try to change-up the game atmosphere as it often helps recapture some earnings as the different locations appear to have new games and that contributes to increased earnings.  It's funny how changing the location of a game - sometimes in the same building, can make such a significant impact!  :-)