Tomorrow is the night we all look forward to, League Night! The competition starts at 7 p.m. Our beloved organizer Matt has announced that the games for this time will be Lord of the Rings, World Cup Soccer, Indiana Jones and Junk Yard. This is, as always, dependent on the machines behaving. Junk Yard, particularly, has developed a bad habit of loading two balls (the reason we had to abandon playing it last time) and if this is still going on we will have to pick something else. If so, I am hoping for anything but Simpsons or Getaway, both of which are unkind to me.
My highly inexpert game selection analysis:
- Lord of the Rings tends to be popular all around, so I don’t anticipate a lot of crying about that one. Well, except for the lack of a ball save on it, but we’ve all been crying about that so long that the tears have run dry. Russell needs to make his reappearance so he can show the rest of us how to make grooves in the floor with it.
- World Cup Soccer is a friendly game, treating most people pretty well. I anticipate a lot of high scoring games on this one (even adjusted for pinflation).
- Indiana Jones has its fans and its detractors in the league. You can count me among the latter. If you can’t manage to hit the mode start (which loves to just skip the ball right over the back on a dead aim shot) you get nothing. Having said that, though, I have seen people just go for the multiball before and do fine that way. That’s a harder way to get points (versus a fast grab on the video modes) but it can be done. Just, well, not by me.
- Junk Yard is generally well liked, or at least I don’t hear a lot of complaining about it (but that may be because we haven’t used it for league play in a while). But beware! Beware the right ball recycle! It does not recycle your ball but whisks it to a landfill never to be seen again. (Will this ever get fixed?) Prepare for some gnashing of teeth over unjustly lost balls.
Update: Matt has announced that, should Junk Yard still be running its ball loading two-for-one special, we will be playing Tales of the Arabian Nights.