Full Throttle Official Launch

On Friday I attended the Heighway Pinball Full Throttle Launch Party at the Pipeline Bar, which is located in the East End of London - not far from Liverpool Street Station.

Heighway Pinball is the UK's first major pinball machine manufacturer and Full Throttle is their first highly anticipated game, expected to go into production very soon. This is something worth celebrating!

The Pipeline - good music, drinks and games

The crowd downstairs in Pipeline for the Heighway Launch, great turnout - everyone wanted to have a shot

One of the two machines set to free play on the night

The underside of the third machine playfield - showing off the modular system. Romain Fontaine (Technical Director) and Sandor Orosz (Prototype technician) kindly gave me a tour of the different components

Full Throttle High Score Tournament

Revving up, using the left flipper button for the skill shot

Players were queuing up to take a shot in the high score tournament

Janos Kiss of Heighway Pinball watching on during gameplay

Game Over - the high score being recorded

Due to connecting travel back to Bristol I left around 9pm. After this the party and tournament continued along with a performance by the band Redline, who appear on the the soundtrack for the Full Throttle game.

The Pipeline
A bit on the bar itself as this is the first time I have been there; as well as being a great bar there is a number of games, including pinball. As I've found it's so rare to see pinball machines in public, but the Pipeline currently have 6 great machines available to play, a good mix of different games including some of my favorites I've played to date - AC/DC and Twilight Zone. I also managed to get a not bad score on Indy 500, which I'm kinda happy about!

A few of the pinball players attending the party told me about the London league meets, which occasionally happen in Pipeline. I will have to keep a look out for these as really like the bar and games.

Twilight Zone, Fish Tales, Indianapolis 500

Twilight Zone playfield. This is one of the top rated games, so no surprise it's looking a bit dirty - it will be well played!

Pirates of the Caribbean, World Cup Soccer, AC/DC