Lansing Pinball League

Before I start the recap for July 12, I need to recount a story I had forgotten to put in the previous recap, and that is something that happened at the very end of the night when a few of us were still hanging around playing Avengers. I was trying to do some Calculus homework at a table nearby, and suddenly I heard Mike and Allen taking turns rattling off lists of very random-seeming words that started with “A.” I got up and asked them what they heck they were doing and learned that Josh had bet Mike and Allen $500 that they could not guess his middle name. He added that even if they could guess it, they wouldn’t be able to pronounce it. Due to his pinball initials, JAB, they knew it started with an A. I made two guesses and got it on the second one. Josh got a look on his face like I had just thrown a snake on him. Unfortunately, he says that he specifically did not extend the bet to me or Joseph. The actual middle name is left as an exercise for the reader.

Now on to the current recap. It was Night 5, and we started a new rotation of the banks called Athena and Hades. We had a couple of fluke occurrences, one of them being that Derik came to me to say that his group had their game of Cactus Canyon reset when a little kid came up and hit the start button. I’m surprised that happened, since I think it would have required holding the button down for several seconds, but that’s as much as I know about the situation. The other is that Allen played out of turn at one point, forcing me to rule a DQ for him on one game. Since that got entered as a zero machine score, I told him that he was definitely “in the running” for the Worst Score Award for Season 16. He said, “In the running? You mean someone’s going to do worse than zero?” I said, “Well, someone could tie it.” His reply was, “What do we do then? A one-ball plunge off to break the tie?” Everyone loved that idea and someone else added on the idea that the plunge off should be on The Flip Side, which I use for tiebreakers in my charity tournaments.

Speaking of charity tournaments, the week following last league night (in other words, as of this writing, last week), was the summer charity tournament, Rocket Robin. Ever since the first one I have been reusing a piece of art I drew for the original poster, which I was very proud of. The art depicts a robin saluting, wearing a cap with a logo on it, standing in front of a retro-futuristic spaceship. My inspiration for this art was the 1950s TV show Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, which was a favorite of my father’s growing up. As a result I saw it on VHS a lot as a kid. The robin’s cap and the spaceship are both taken from Rocky Jones. The reason I point this out is that near the end of league night, Joseph asked if I noticed what was showing on The Avenue’s TV. I looked down from the mezzanine and to my surprise it was Rocky Jones. I thought this seemed auspicious for the success of my upcoming tournament and said so.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was played on the brand new Guns N’ Roses game. Allen already knows the game inside and out and was freely offering advice. No one was surprised when Allen got the A division medal (which I drew a rose on). Tim won the B division game on Indiana Jones. Tim has a lot of good luck in the B division, or as he calls it, the Best Devision. He had a walk-off Ball 3 win, but since the tournament was over he went ahead and played the rest of his game after I took the winners’ photo, and set the Grand Champion score.

At the end of the night, Joseph and I played Guns N’ Roses with Jason, who also knows the game very well and was teaching it to us. To be honest, it’s so complicated I could only retain one or two things he told me. I’m not the greatest with modern rulesets. I did get to play a song, though, and of course being a Paul McCartney fan I picked “Live and Let Die.” The game puts on an impressive light show and is very fun and exciting to play, especially when you get the song multiball going.

That’s all for last time’s recap, just in time as usual for our league night tonight at 7. We’ll be playing the rest of the Bank 5/6 rotation.

June 28 was the end of the first half of Season 16, with groups finishing their tour of banks Poseidon and Hermes. A couple of people also still needed to play makeups on Lord of the Rings from the week that it was down: Brian because he was absent last league night, and Allen because he just plain forgot. I still had the sheet we had used to write scores down for the makeup, and left it out for Brian when we went to play. Since I arrived with plenty of time before league, I was able to watch most of Brian’s game. When I did my makeup, I had an excellent (for me) game in which I destroyed the ring for the first time ever. When Joseph wrote my score down, he also drew a little picture of a ring and put an X next to it, to indicate “destroyed the ring.” Well, as I watched, Brian also destroyed the ring, and beat my (not very good) ring champion time too, so I drew a little ring-and-X icon to match the one Joseph did.

I’m very sorry to say that league came to the end and I realized I had not taken any photos, so all my photos of the night are of the Smackdown winners and then some hanging around and playing Avengers: Infinity Quest afterward. I don’t have too much to report; it was a pretty ordinary league night, fortunately without any games needing to be switched out this time. Biff once again dropped in to visit and play a qualifying Smackdown game, although he did not stick around for finals.

Speaking of the Smackdown, it was Elvira’s House of Horrors, which is why the Smackdown medalists can see that I drew a spooooooky ghost on the medals. The A division (won by Allen) actually finished before the B division, which got them some razzing. The B division game was on Guardians of the Galaxy. Mike won and humblebragged that it was his first B division Smackdown medal.

Oh yes, and Allen also played his Lord of the Rings makeup game after league. He more than doubled Brian’s and my scores (which were very close together) and, yeah, destroyed the ring. Thoroughly defeated, I drew the little picture on the score sheet one more time.

We started another two-bank rotation on June 14, which was the third night of Season 16. The banks for this one are named Poseidon for the god of the sea (and, oddly, also horses) and Hermes for the messenger of the gods. Most of the game choices in Poseidon are pretty self-explanatory. Hermes’ bank is a bit more mercurial (get it?) but it helps to know that in addition to being fast, he carried the caduceus, a staff entwined with serpents. I kind of had to stretch for some of the banks because the most important thing was balancing the game locations.

Joseph and I arrived early in order to play a makeup game of Lord of the Rings, which had unfortunately been down during League Night #2. Tim was the other early bird and he played with us. I am not normally very strong on LotR, which is evidenced by the fact that it’s been at the Avenue as long as I’ve been playing pinball there and yet I’ve never completed Destroy the Ring mode. I’ve started it a bunch of times, but I always get nervous with Frodo yelling at me and end up draining. It was the first wizard mode I ever saw, actually. My first ever league night I arrived to see a bunch of people clustered around watching a guy (it was Chris T., but I didn’t know him yet) destroy the ring. So even though it’s objectively not that hard to start and not that hard to complete, it still has this legendary status in my mind. Anyway, during my league makeup game, I somehow not only started it but actually finished it, despite getting so nervous for the last couple shots that I got the shaky hands.

I ended up grouped with Joseph (for the first time in quite a long time) and Donny for this week’s league games. Donny had his own moment of glory when he totally blew up Batman ’66 on ball 1. He then also blew up the first of the two extra balls he earned on ball 1, then sadly had to plunge off the second one, per league rules. The rest of his game didn’t measure up to that first ball, but who cares, when your first ball is that good?

Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Avengers: Infinity Quest, which actually should have been the Smackdown our first league night since it was the newest game then, but I forgot. We had a special guest appearance by Biff, who played in the league prior to the hiatus but had not returned since. He told me that he is too busy with family now. He did play in our Tuesday Night Smackdown and I finally got to tell him that I won a blue ribbon at the 2021 Calhoun County Fair with a photo of him at league that I took in 2019.

The Smackdown Champion was Jason, who set up the fun pose for his winners’ photo. Tim won the Undercard on The Munsters.

Finally, I want to extend a league welcome to our newest member, Kayl, whom I unfortunately seem not to have gotten any pictures of this time. Kayl is familiar to many due to being on the staff of The Avenue, and previously played in the March Hare Madness charity tournament.

‘Member league night 2?

Oh yeah, I ‘member! That was fantastic.

It’s been three weeks since our last league night on May 24 so it’s quite possible you don’t ‘member it. So here I am with the league night recap to jog your memberies, I mean memories.

If you ‘member even further back, you’ll recall that during League Night #1 we had to switch out two games due to malfunctions. This is no big deal when it happens during an odd-numbered league night. But now that we use a two-bank rotation scheme, having it happen during an even-numbered night causes problems. The game can’t just be switched because half the league would have played it already. And unfortunately, that’s what happened during League Night #2. The night got off on the wrong foot with the news that Lord of the Rings was down. Joseph broke it while practicing on it over the weekend. Thaaaaaaanks, Joseph. Just kidding – actually, the slingshot rubber broke while he was playing, which would have just happened during league otherwise. It was better to go into the night already knowing the game was out. As a result, half the league only played four games, making it a short night for many people. The people who weren’t able to play LotR that night will have to make it up before or after League Night #3.

Longtime league player and previous champion Danny C. missed League Night #1, and last season had been having more trouble getting work off for league, so I thought he might not play this season. He made a sudden late appearance as most of the league play had finished for the night (he was surprised that there were no groups for him to join in progress, but it was a fast-moving night), but well ahead of the new official cutoff for starting league play for the night. Due to several really late nights for me and Joseph last season trying to accommodate late starters, we made a new rule this season that league play can start late but must start by 10 pm, which is around when I’m normally starting the Smackdown tournament.

We had our Tuesday Night Smackdown tournament on the Avenue’s newest game, the Cactus Canyon remake. There were a lot of high scores in qualifying. One of the league’s newest players, Johnny, qualified to play in the B division, but disappeared while I was tabulating scores and missed out on playing finals. I had told him he was definitely qualified, but either he didn’t hear me or just plain needed to call it a night. In the A division, Allen took home another plastic medal/button, Joseph got second, Jason was third, and Brian was fourth. The B division played off on Star Trek. Tim dominated the field, already far in the lead when his walk-off ball three came around. I got second, Josh got third, and Dan N. got fourth.

Our next league night is in a few short hours and Joseph and I will be coming early to supervise Smackdown games and makeups on Lord of the Rings. It’s also not too late for new members to join! I hope to see you all tonight!