Topic: Tornado Storm 2 Coin-Op

[snake eyes]

Jim or Sumner, I have a coin-op Storm 2 table in my home I purchased from a gaming wholesaler. My question is the newer Storm 2 tables have plastic stripping on each side of the playing field in (white) My table has metal stripping on the sides, i swear my table feels alot faster than the bar models we play tournaments on are you familiar with the year of production? The table has approxamately 23,000 games played on it and is in great condition other than replacing some bent rods and bearings. It just seems like the walls and the field are live wired!!

[SumnerH]

Jim or Sumner, I have a coin-op Storm 2 table in my home I purchased from a gaming wholesaler. My question is the newer Storm 2 tables have plastic stripping on each side of the playing field in (white) My table has metal stripping on the sides, i swear my table feels alot faster than the bar models we play tournaments on are you familiar with the year of production? The table has approxamately 23,000 games played on it and is in great condition other than replacing some bent rods and bearings. It just seems like the walls and the field are live wired!!

Jim might know when they switched the side strips.
The surfaces have changed a lot through the years; some are faster, some are grippier, some are more prone to warping, etc.  It's not consistent one way through the years (ie it's not like they keep getting slower, or slicker, or whatever--it can go up and down year to year)  Congrats on getting one you like!

[JimWaterman]

Sounds like an "older Tornado Coin Op"  say about... 1985 or earlier....  We bought our first Tornado used coin ops in about in about 1987... and they had better than 20,000 games on the counters.

They had the metal field trims.... the "round" bearing nut (instead of the hex nut) on newer tables.  Hmmm.. they also had a very small maybe... 2" diameter leg leveller on the bottom of the "longer legs".    These tables also had the older "smoother feet" on the men.   The new coin ops we bought about 1988 had the new bearings, bigger leg levellers, white non-metal field trims.

I do recall the older tables being a bit more solid.... especially with the balls bouncing off the side and end walls....  there have been a lot of production batches since then.. .and there always seems to be a little different nuances to some of the different production runs.   Happy Foosing... Jim

[snake eyes]

Jim, thanx for writing back, you know actually this table resembles exactly the bar models we play on, it has the split hex bearings, the legs are the same 4x4 the use now but an interesting note on the leg levelers is where they screw in to the bottom, the flange is very small there but splays out to aprrox. 5in on the bottom and are metal. The playing field is where i see the difference. The metal side stripping and it is harder for me to set up a rollover on because the surface seems to be "harder" than the newer models. I have moved both my home table and the bar tables around (it seems like my table weighs alot more) breaking my back!!!!! Wish i was a passionate about my job as i was about foosball (life would be snap)

[JimWaterman]

I recall the 5" diameter "metal" leg levellers.... (versus teh 4" diameter plastic ones).    Before the 5" metal ones on your table... the actual table leg was a bit longer and there was a 1.5" dinky leveller screwed into the bottom of that longer leg.     My memory failed me in that i thought they metal field trims dated back to before the 5" leg leveller.   May bad.    As for your experience with different feel / surface / weight...  you are not crazy...  these changes are real.... and do affect play.     It's a tough call to advise you to sell the old quality table and update to a new one .. but that's the typical answer if you want your home table to play closest to what is on tour or in most more current public locations.

[SumnerH]

I recall the 5" diameter "metal" leg levellers.... (versus teh 4" diameter plastic ones).    Before the 5" metal ones on your table... the actual table leg was a bit longer and there was a 1.5" dinky leveller screwed into the bottom of that longer leg.     My memory failed me in that i thought they metal field trims dated back to before the 5" leg leveller.   May bad.    As for your experience with different feel / surface / weight...  you are not crazy...  these changes are real.... and do affect play.     It's a tough call to advise you to sell the old quality table and update to a new one .. but that's the typical answer if you want your home table to play closest to what is on tour or in most more current public locations.

I'll say this, if you don't already play on tour then older tornados are "close enough" to practice on up to at least a semipro level.  Basically, if you don't already know why you're replacing it then it's not worth it.  If you play a lot on tour or a lot of local tournaments, you'll figure out the differences enough to come to that decision yourself.

Since you already noted the differences, it's up to you to decide if they're big enough to warrant a table change.  I dunno what your level is, but if you're still just figuring out how to brush-pass, shoot good square longs, etc then you're probably fine with what you have; if you're doing all that stuff fine at home but having problems when you head out, you might want to consider a change.