Lansing Pinball League

Games played: Junk Yard, Getaway, The Addams Family, Tales of the Arabian Nights, The Walking Dead.

July 26 was the second night of Season 7, but the first night for me and Joseph.  We had missed the first night due to a family vacation, and did makeup games when we got back. For me, Season 7 got off to an unusual start, as Matt asked me to run league night while he was on vacation himself.  It was my first time running the league by myself!  I would need to be very organized and do everything just right to impress all my friends.

Russell warming up on the new Metallica.

Well – not all my friends.  I knew that a lot of people would be missing league night because they would be traveling to Pittsburgh the next day for Pinburgh, and didn’t want to have too much pinball fun.  Joseph and I would be off to Pinburgh too, but we understand that others may not be as tour ready as we are.  So several people, we already knew, would not be coming.  We were expecting a light crowd.  We were not expecting only four people, but that’s how many people were there at 7 p.m.  I began wondering if this would be the first ever night with only one group.

I had arrived early to start checking whether the games Matt had selected would be playable.  We had to scratch a series of games.  T3 wasn’t registering the right ramp.  The newly-arrived Demo Man (which I still have not played) played fine for about 30 seconds until a ball ended up in the Retina Scan saucer and would not kick out.  Indiana Jones was resetting almost every game.  Monster Bash’s scoop was still kicking out straight down the middle.  I ended up using a random number generator to fill out the card with games that seemed to be working well enough.  One of the games it selected was Junk Yard.  I felt an ominous shiver, but shrugged it off.  At Matt’s direction, we would be playing five games regardless of how many people showed up.

Photo taken prior to one of the two slam tilts of the night on Junk Yard.

We had a couple of new members (new to me at least), Tim and Steve.  (No, a different Steve from the Steve who played last season.)  Steve was in my group, and he let me know that he discovered the league by seeing the flyers at Pinball Pete’s.  That’s how Joseph and I first learned about the league too, except in our case, we saw the flyers at Pete’s in Ann Arbor, which is en entirely sensible way of learning about something that happens a couple of blocks from my house in Lansing.

I decided to stall and see if anyone else showed up, and finally at about 7:15 four more people rolled in more or less at the same time, so we divided into two groups.  League went by very fast because I made sure the groups started a couple of machines apart, and so there was never any waiting for machines.  At one point the other group sent an emissary to ask me for a ruling.  Someone had, of course, slam tilted Junk Yard.  (I heard later that it was Tim.)  I ruled that the perpetrator would receive zero and everyone else would get however many more balls were affected, as compensation.  (I was reminded later that Matt usually allows people the choice of compensation balls or restarting the entire game.  I had forgotten this, and having to make a decision in the moment, I defaulted to the rules that I use for my Avenue tournaments.)

Joseph demonstrating his usual method for freeing the ball from the sewer.  So, you know, typical Junk Yard maintenance.

Then my group got to Junk Yard.  Russell was having an awful game.  The machine just was not cutting him any breaks.  His third ball drained (he was player 1 or 2, I forget which) and he grabbed hold of the machine and went to rage-tilt.  Imagine this next part in slow motion for best effect.  I lunged forward yelling “Russell, don’t…!” but it was too late.  The screen blanked and the game reset.  Russell took a moment to register what happened, while I glumly informed him that he slam tilted.  The rest of us got compensation balls, but in Junk Yard that’s pretty painful, since the bonus is very cumulative.  Joseph had been having an outstanding game by the end of Ball 2 and while he wasn’t sorry with his overall score, he wasn’t able to do much with his compensation ball.

When people finished, things dried up pretty quickly and we went home to pack for Pinburgh.  It really didn’t feel like a normal league night, with so many regulars missing and so few people attending in general.  The results aren’t available yet, between the delay in my getting the notebooks to Matt (when I got back from Pinburgh he left on another trip before I could give him the results, so he just got them last night) and the fact that so many people still need to do makeups.  There are a few more photos in the gallery.

Here’s hoping that we see a great turnout for tonight’s league!  Just don’t expect to play Demolition Man.  Last night it stole four out of five quarters Joseph and I tried feeding it, so we shut it off in disgust.

League Night #8 of 8

Games played: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Indiana Jones, Medieval Madness, Lord of the Rings

Go on, Adam. Give it a good hard shove. You know you want to!

League Night #8 of Season 6 will no doubt go down in history as the longest league night to date.  Despite the fact that we played only 4 games (instead of 5 as had become more common this season), the night did not come to an end until after 10 p.m., as the final ball of the final game for the final group was played, by me, on Lord of the Rings.  I stood nearly alone, accompanied only by my loyal second Joseph, as everyone else had fled as soon as their ball was over.

We were scheduled to play The Simpsons Pinball Party, but just as I had a good game starting to open up after a terrible ball 1, my multiball was interrupted by the right flipper sticking in the upward position and refusing to come down.  Matt pointed out that if it lasted four hours, we would need to call for medical assistance.  Naturally the one time Simpsons doesn’t screw me one way, it screws me another.  The game was taken out of commission and replaced with Tales of the Arabian Nights.

“What are you supposed to do in Medieval Madness again?  Shoot the catapult?  Or was it the damsel ramp?” “I think you’re supposed to shoot the giant plastic castle.” “Oh… that makes sense.”

Meanwhile, Medieval Madness was playable but playing very long, because the drawbridge was staying in the upward position, making for a much safer than usual shot at the castle.  It’s a long playing game anyway and certain parties were dreading playing it for that reason; this made it even worse, and the average score skewed very high.  Lord of the Rings had some very long playing games that night too, not because of any malfunction but just because it’s Lord of the Rings.  The only saving grace is that Indiana Jones didn’t have any problems with the idol lock.

Unfortunately, the long playing games came on a night when, unusually for a league night, The Avenue had a show booked.  When the band started up, the opening cymbal hit was so loud that I thought someone had dropped a huge tray of dishes.  Everyone else was equally startled and several people jumped.  Matt did us all a great favor by running back to his house and getting earplugs, without which I don’t think I could have finished my game of Lord of the Rings.  Unfortunately, those not interested in the music had a strong incentive to leave as soon as they finished their games, which is part of why I was mostly on my own by the time I finished my long, long night.

“Forget it, Mike. It’s Castletown.”

On the up side, Rich from Nomad Kitchen once again brought back the Burger Challenge.  Everyone gets one try to put up the highest score on a game of Rich’s choice (this time, Getaway), and the winner gets a burger and fries from the kitchen.  Chris put up a huge score and left instructions that if he won, he wanted the second place person to get the burger unless it was Adam.  He did indeed win, his second victory in the Nomad Challenge, and Adam came in second (he has also previously won a Nomad Challenge), so according to Chris’s instructions, third place winner Mike got the burger IOU.

In just an hour or two, the final playoff tournament will be starting.  The point totals from Season 6 will be used to seed the A and B division tournaments.  Will Chris remain the undefeated victor?  Come by The Avenue tonight at 7 and find out!