Subject: Crazy Games (Was Re: Top speeds in foosball) (EDITED) Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 19:23:30 -0400 From: Bruce Nardoci Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Newsgroups: rec.sport.table-soccer Bruce Nardoci wrote: OOPSULOST wrote: > > >Subject: Re: Top speeds in foosball > >From: big270@aol.com (BIG270) > >Date: Wed, 23 June 1999 07:08 AM EDT > > > >If this can be tested, I would like to know how to do it. A friend told me > >that 31 mph was the top speed. I find that to be a little slow, but I would > >love to see how fast ours is going. > > I wonder if would be easier to test the decibel level coming out of the goal. > There may be slight differences in construction that would make one table > louder than another, but it'd be fun to get a decibel meter from Radio Shack, > hang a small mike about a half an inch down from the top of the goal and have a > "Top Gun" contest. > > It'd also be cool to plug the mike into an amp leading to a subwoofer(mine has > a built in 2700 watt amp). Then paint the men and balls white, turn off all > the lights put some Zeppelin and a black light on.... COSMIC FOOS! > > Has anyone ever played foos with just a strobe light on? I played ping-pong > one time at a party like that, never laughed so hard in my life. > > Kevin "If you remember the seventies, you weren't really there" Munro > Yeah, I did that back in the early '70s. We used to invent a lot of crazy games on Rene Pierre tables back then. One of them was playing in the dark with a black light on and the ball painted with a fluorescent paint that glowed under the black light - eerie! Another was called "tilto". What we do is unlock the table and open it up and put a Coke can in each corner between the lower part of the cabinet and the top part, so the playfield is kept at an angle. You have to constantly fight the tendency of the ball to fall to the low side of the playfield (via keeping it pinned except for very brief intervals, balancing it on the side of the man to do a push kick, etc.). This is fun, and allows for some interesting "curve" shots if you don't hit the ball real hard. I'm not sure if it would be possible to play on a Tornado since the ball is less grippy and therefore it's be hard to pin it to get it off the lower wall when it falls there. We also had some other games like "aerial assault" (nothing but air-ball shots allowed, from any bar), and "meatball" (which later came to be known as "oneball" on Tornado tables). Meatball is a game where the entire match is just ONE point - the first one to score wins. Since having the serve would be too much of an advantage in a situation like that, the serve can't be decided by a coin flip or the like, so the ball is served by holding the two 5 bars horizontal to the table and balancing the ball between the feet of the two center 5 men. When the judge says "1 2 3 go", or just "go" or whatever, the players can attempt to control the balanced ball by dropping their 5 bar quicker than their opponent does, causing the ball to fall to their 5 bar. Another option is to raise, rather than lower, your 5 man when the judge says "go", lobbing the ball to your 3 bar. There are also other options (such as a "drop kick" into the goal :-). The game was invented (at least it's the first I ever heard of it - in fact, I may have been the one to make it up, I can't remember anymore its been so long) on Rene Pierre tables in the early 70's, and was originally called "meatball". I told Charles Macintosh about it a long time ago, and he had it at one of his Tornado tournaments in NC, and from there it spread to other Tornado tournaments.