Lansing Pinball League

League night #6 of 8.  Games played: Ghostbusters, Lord of the Rings, Fish Tales, Attack from Mars, Junk Yard.

Adam playing the new Ghostbusters LE. Photo by Sam.

The big news for last league night was the arrival of a Ghostbusters LE at the Avenue, taking the former spot of World Cup Soccer, which has moved upstairs.  While everyone loves seeing a new game go in, it does feel a bit too ironic that we have gotten such a fancy new machine while several other games remain unplayable for league.  On this occasion, Jack-Bot’s right eye saucer was not registering.  Demolition Man and Austin Powers continue to steal quarters at an alarming rate.  Terminator 3’s right ramp does not register (or doesn’t register reliably; there’s some disagreement about this point).  Monster Bash has long been excluded from league play due to a straight-down-the-middle scoop kickout.  As a result, we have been playing many of the same games (the more reliable ones) repeatedly.  I joined the league when there were only 5 games present, period, so it doesn’t bother me quite as much; still, with all the variety we now have available (in theory), it would be nice to be able to change out games more often.

Ghostbusters gets mixed reviews from the league.  Some people like it, some people want to like it, others are quite vocal in their dislike.  I don’t mind the Pro that I play elsewhere so much, but the LE at the Avenue makes very unpleasant use of the so-called “magnetic slings.”  During my league game, I was in the process of getting the ball in hand for a jackpot shot when it suddenly froze dead center between the flippers and then dropped right down the middle.  It isn’t just me, either; others reported the same phenomenon.  I’m not a fan of magnets on the playfield in general and this is a particularly bad example.

A rare league photo of me, taken by Sam. He made me sit in the empty refrigerator that appeared in the alcove.

Strangely, a refrigerator has appeared where Joust and Dig Dug briefly stood (it was empty yet turned on), and the video games have been moved out to the area near the back door.  At one point Sam outright insisted that I get inside the refrigerator for a photo, which he borrowed my camera to take.  I couldn’t get both of my legs in safely so he fortunately could not shut the door on me (but he tried).  Afterward he ran around with my camera for a few minutes and took some of the best shots of the night.  The reason his photos are so good is that he completely ignored etiquette and took shots of people playing up close (to be fair, they weren’t playing league games), which I am too timid or too polite (your choice) to do.  He also shot from the hip, not literally but close to it, so he got some of those great serendipitous shots that are made possible by not trying too hard.  All the photos in this entry were taken by Sam.

Photo by Sam of Jake and Danny. I wasn’t sure which orientation he wanted, but I thought portrait was a stronger composition.

One of the surprises of the night was the return of Danny after at least a season’s absence.  We did have some advance notice that he’d been around by the fact that Ghostbusters already had DMCs all over the high score table.  Danny was in my group, and one of the stranger events of the night that I witnessed involved his game of Lord of the Rings.  On ball 3, he drained with a pretty low score (especially by his standards).  I went to take down the score and found that it wasn’t ending his ball.  After some confusion, we discovered that his ball was back in the shooter lane.  He confirmed that his ball definitely drained between the flippers.  It wasn’t an extra ball, either; everything was acting as though his ball was still in progress.  The rest of us told him to go ahead and play it.  After all, the game said his ball was in play.  He shrugged, went back to work, and put up a monster score.  (I’ve had that happen to me at least one other time on LotR, though not on a league game.  I don’t know what causes it.)

Tonight we’re going to be playing our seventh meeting of the season (out of eight).  Some of the positions have really narrowed a lot (see the standings for more details).  I know my 7th place is in danger and I need to keep my nose above the 8th place water mark to ensure playing in A division again.  I’ll see you soon – I hope!

Portrait of Russell by Sam. The lens I had on takes really nice close portrait shots.

P.S. Don’t forget to check the photo gallery for more photos (I took quite a few this time, as well as Sam), and to save the date for the Nov. 9 post-election hangover tourney, Fear and Trembling.

League Night #5 of 8, Season 7

Games played: Junk Yard, Metallica, Iron Man, The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings.

The State News photographer talks to Aaron and Derienne.

The Lansing Pinball League saw its first media visit, as a reporter and from the State News (MSU’s student newspaper) spent several hours interviewing and league members for a profile of the league.  She brought along a photographer, too, which is more than the Detroit Free Press writer did when he came to the Avenue to write a profile of a “pinball wizard” (read: Chris) earlier this year; he just made do with cell phone pictures.  So in the matter of Avenue pinball articles, I’m going with State News 1, Free Press 0.  Real press deserves real cameras!

The timing of their visit was somewhat unfortunate, as the Grand Rapids crew (Adam, Jake, and Sam) were all absent, and this was generally a very low-attendance night.  On the plus side, we had a new member, Derienne, who got to spend part of her first-ever league night being interviewed.  She ended up being quoted in the article, probably because she was one of the only MSU students present.  Many of the rest of the league are alumni (this writer included), and Russell is a professor at MSU, but of the people present that night, I believe only Matt and Derienne are current students.

A State News photographer takes a picture of Aaron playing Lord of the Rings.  Speaking of photos, for more photos of league night, you can always check our photo gallery.

Two other bits of attendance-related news concern Aaron and Jason.  Aaron was present for the first time this season due to his work schedule, but told me that he will probably be able to come more often in the future.  Jason, on the other hand, will be unable to attend for the rest of the season due to a change in his work schedule, and will be playing all his games as makeups from here on out.  He does expect to be able to attend finals.

A nattily-dressed band played for an equally nattily-dressed audience while league was going on. It appeared that they were doing a video shoot.

Junk Yard behaved itself and continued not slam tilting, so that is evidently not going to be a problem anymore thanks to Derrick finally fixing the slam tilt switch.  It gave us no trouble for a change, but, sadly, I cannot say the same for Lord of the Rings, which has a problem with the ring-destroying switch.  If someone starts Destroy the Ring, it cannot be finished, and no more points can be scored until the ball drains.  Strangely, the switch that destroys the ring has no other function in the game (a different sensor starts modes when the ball is hit into the ring), but when it stops working, it really messes things up for those unfortunate enough to encounter it.

The Avenue has received a new game, Ghostbusters LE, replacing World Cup Soccer.  (We are hoping WCS ’94 is going to be shopped and returned, because Derrick had mentioned trying to obtain a new ramp for it.)  It’s the usual league custom to play a new game at the next league night, and indeed, Matt has said we will be playing Ghostbusters at the next league night (Tuesday, September 27, at 7 p.m.).  New members are always welcome, so if you have been too shy to come to the league, please don’t be.  We would love to have you!

Our last league night (the fourth of the season) had somewhat light attendance, though we did have a rare visit from long-timer Greg and were joined by a new member, John, who works at The Avenue.  But the most notable appearance of the night was Derrick, the pinball technician who services Pinball Pete’s games at The Avenue.  I had heard his name for years, ever since I joined in 2013, but had never actually seen him before, so he was a semi-mythic figure to me.  But there he was, with a game open and Chris peering into it alongside him.

Dr. Tabaka offers Derrick a consultation.

Mike S., Chris, Joseph, and I proceeded to run around pointing at all the most bothersome problems in the games, while Derrick obligingly tried to troubleshoot them.  Finally, Mike wanted him to look at “just one more thing”… the infamous Junk Yard slam tilt problem.  Derrick said that he had received our notes complaining about the touchy slam switch, but he was perplexed.  He opened the coin door to show us: the switch was bent as far apart as it could go.  He couldn’t see how it could possibly be slam tilting.

Due to a tragedy at Pinburgh involving a questionable slam tilt, Mike knew exactly how it might be happening: games can have more than one slam tilt switch.  He suspected that it might be on the left side, since hitting the left of the game is more likely to trigger it.  He and Derrick together looked around and – eureka!  They found a switch in the left side of the cabinet that was so close together that just touching it would cause a “slam tilt stuck closed” message.  Derrick bent it apart for us and afterward we tested the game.  Joy of joys, for the first time since we got it, it no longer has a slam tilt problem!  Junk Yard is once again tournament ready!  … More or less.

Due to a combination of the late start and some long games, league night ran quite late, at least for some groups.  Half of my group actually left before I finished the final ball of the final game (and the one person who did stay was, well, Joseph).  Some of us did still go to Theio’s afterward for our usual midnight “breakfast,” but it was a small group.

We are now halfway through the league season, so the heat is going to start turning up.  To see where you (and others) stand, check out the results page.  Our next meeting is tomorrow at 7, and we will be joined by a reporter from The State News who is working on a story about the league.  So put on your favorite pinball shirt, slick your hair back, and get over to the Avenue for League Night #5!

Games played: Getaway, Metallica, Medieval Madness, Iron Man, Theater of Magic.

The league night of August 9th was the third of the season, but only the second I’d been able to attend, so I kept getting mixed up about whether it was the second or third night and having to be straightened out on that.  It was a disorienting kind of night for me.  I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 17 years now, and just can’t get used to the sudden vanishing of most of the 2000 block of Michigan Avenue (across from our league venue). The demolition of the block happened between the second and third league meeting, so this was the first time many league members got to see the empty hole in the landscape.  I used to buy comics in that building, sometimes; I used to eat dinner with my parents on special occasions in that building; more often, I used to stand in front of that building waiting for a bus to take me to campus for grad school.  I know it (knew it) like I know my house.  And now it’s gone, just to remind me that I am old and grad school was a long time ago.

The 2000 block, or perhaps I should call it the minus-2000 block.

But I digress.  Pinball, right?

Some pinball was, most certainly, played.  Matt had to come late again due to work and had me and Mike organize the start of things.  (That will be happening at tonight’s league meeting, too, and seems to be the new normal.)   The night began with Jason’s group being put on Metallica.  Jason, who said he had not played Metallica before, played a blockbuster game, something in the high 200 millions if I remember correctly.  Joseph was in Jason’s group too, and had his best ever game on Metallica, which would have been more impressive had it not been something like a third of Jason’s score.  Between the two of them, their game lasted so long that my group ended up having to skip past them and come back later.

Chris tears up Medieval Madness while Jason tears up Metallica.

Speaking of tearing up games, Chris ended up battling for the kingdom in his game of Medieval Madness, though unsuccessfully.  I’m sure he didn’t go home crying over his score, in any case.

For some reason the random number generator decided we should play Getaway too.  This seems to be the season of Getaway.  At least we won’t be playing it again tonight – probably.

We were supposed to play Addams Family, but apparently something catastrophically broke on it while the first group was playing (I don’t recall what).  I wanted to declare that we’d play T3 instead, since it has never been played in league since being installed, but the right ramp was registering only about 50% of the time.  I thought it was still “good enough” by league standards, but Mike insisted he didn’t want the league to play something that was known to be defective.  I agreed to do a random draw between three games Mike thought were working fine.  One of them was Theater of Magic.  I had in the back of my mind that something was wrong with ToM but couldn’t remember what, and when I mentioned that, no one else seemed to remember anything wrong with it.  So we did the random drawing and Theater of Magic ended up being selected.

When my group got upstairs to play it, it all came back to me.  The left flipper was permanently slightly raised, meaning that the two flippers were not even close to even and it was nearly impossible to shoot anything on the right side of the playfield.  More importantly for me (and many others), it made shooting the center ramp extremely difficult.  I ended up bombing out with a score of under 100 million.  When I went back downstairs to complain, Adam said he didn’t see what my problem was, since he and Chris both scored over a billion.  I was dumbfounded until I remembered that the pros just shoot the left loop over and over.  In response I can only attempt to claim the moral high ground in that I was trying to play the game as intended.  That said, we are scheduled to play ToM again tonight and I may not be quite so wedded to “how it was intended” this time.

After this grueling night of long-playing and cockeyed games, we all agreed that we were in no shape to go to Theio’s, and we all went straight home to bed.  If you believe that, I have a vacant lot on Michigan Avenue to sell you.  Actually, several of the Theio’s regulars went over there as usual.  If you haven’t been coming with us on our Theio’s forays, you should!  Just ask Mike or me after league if you’d like to tag along, because we just about always go.

See you all tonight at 7, I hope!  Oh right, this is the part where I’m supposed to link to the photo gallery (though I don’t actually have any additional photos this time) and the results for the night.