The Champion Pub (Pinball FX Table Review)

The Champion Pub
First Released April, 1998
Zen Build Released March 19, 2019
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Pinball FX 3
Based on a Concept by Pete Piotrowski
Conversion by Peter “Deep” Grafl
Set: Williams Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Links: Internet Pinball Database Listing – Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki

Champion Pub finished dead last among 100 tables in our review guide to The Pinball Arcade. Even Farsight’s god awful broken piece of sh*t Doctor Who: Master of Time didn’t play as bad as their version of The Champion Pub. For Pinball FX, while it’s near the bottom of MY rankings, that’s not unanimous anymore. Not even close. Champion Pub has emerged as the most polarizing Williams pin in the entire collection. Though, I will say that I found it telling that those who love it declined to defend it with a Kickback. Angela told me to put down “guilty pleasure” and not a word more.

Well, I suppose a celebration is in order. Champion Pub is no longer the worst table in a collection of pinball tables. While I rank Champion Pub second-to-last among the Williams pins, the gap between it and Safe Cracker is so big I’d need to create one or two extra tiers just to properly put it in context. At least Champion Pub, godawful as it is, has an unforgettable driver. It often doesn’t work, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, I guess. As a critic, I can’t look the other way on glitches and gameplay hangups, even if I sympathize with the historically difficult-to-port task given. Nobody has ever gotten this table right, including the people who originally made it. This build is probably the most stable I’ve seen, and it still has balls getting caught in the boxer, or vanishing and having to perform a soft reset, and shots on the boxer just plain not registering. This and Safe Cracker are the only Williams pins where I’d actually be okay with Zen redoing the mechanics to make more logical sense. Keep the original build for those who want to play it, of course. But, also create an entirely new version of Champion Pub that keeps the targets and scoring, but replaces the attempts at replicating real-life mechanisms with newer, more predictable digital targets. Why not? You own the license! Hell, Zen’s designers should already be making sequels to Williams pins anyway.

Signature Shot – The Boxer: Your enjoyment of The Champion Pub, or lack thereof, will come down to how much fun you have shooting Knuckles O’Brien. I personally don’t think it’s as satisfying as it probably should be. It doesn’t help that you never know what will register and what won’t. Sometimes a love tap scores a hit. And sometimes the ball flies off one of the curved ramps, pops the son of a bitch full-force in the jaw and nothing happens. Since hits slow down the rate your health depletes, even getting hosed out of one hit you earned could be very costly. The Champion Pub would have probably made a better Pinball 2000 release, and this concept would certainly work better as a modern digital exclusive that doesn’t have to try to replicate the mechanics of a toy that never worked all that great in the first place.

Sometimes the glitches benefit you. Like sometimes the drain post just jams and stays jammed for entire balls. This happened to each of the Vices, including twice for me, for a grand total of four stuck posts in about thirty or so full games. So, it’s a thing, and that means when you look at the online leaderboards, you can never know if the top scores were done with or without the benefit of that glitch. With that out of the way, my father and I agree that we’d rank a full-realized, glitch-free version of Pub THE PITS regardless. Pub has horrible scoring balance. It has miserable outlanes. It has dull ramps and loops. The best thing we can say about it is that it actually does play well in multiball, which is a good thing because the table is so heavy with them. Meanwhile, the jump rope and punching bag just feel harder than they should be. The Champion Pub is one of the most overrated tables ever made and I get that people love the idea behind it, but the reality is so putrid that I can’t even say “at least it’s different.” I literally can’t believe this got the votes to crawl out of the sewer and no longer be a 💩CERTIFIED TURD💩 In fact, it got three positive votes to go with the three original Pinball Chick team members (me, Oscar, and Jordi) sticking to our guns on Pub being one of the worst pins ever made.
Cathy: THE PITS (1 out of 5)
Angela: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Oscar: THE PITS
Jordi: BAD (2 out of 5)
Dash: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Sasha: BAD
Dave: GOOD (Pinball FX3)*
Elias: THE PITS (Pinball FX3)*
Overall Scoring Average: 2.125 – BAD
Primary Scoring Average: 2.16 – BAD
*Pinball FX3 plays different than Pinball FX
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.