March 8 was the final regular night for Season 15, and so it would determine the final standings for the playoffs on March 22. As a result, the competition was really heated, especially for the top seed positions in A division. I had been allowing anyone who came late to still play their league games provided they arrived before Joseph and I left for the night. This night pushed that to an extreme, as both Mike and Danny were held up at work. Because of the tight competition, neither one was about to give up a night’s points. Mike ended up arriving around 10 pm but Danny didn’t know when he would be able to come. Joseph volunteered to wait as long as it took for Danny to make it, but that ended up being nearly midnight. I actually left as Danny arrived, leaving Joseph in charge, because I had things I had to do before bed and school in the morning. According to Joseph, by the time Danny and thus the league session finished, the bar had turned off most of the pinball machines and they were about to start closing up.
Even if not for that, it would have been a late night. First, league was unusually long for our new format. My group ended up backed up for ages behind Joseph’s group as he played a huge (I mean, not Eric Stone huge, but Lansing huge) game of Batman ’66. In retrospect, I really should have just skipped over them to KISS, but I was held back by knowing that in the past skipping groups caused problems and backups. This was a time I really should have made an exception: we ended up waiting probably 45 minutes. Sorry, Lexi and Nate!
Then there was the Smackdown. We had just gotten a new game, Rush, and so as is my usual habit for new games, I made it the Tuesday Night Smackdown game. When “Rush” was first announced as Stern’s next pinball theme, Joseph joked, “I’m looking forward to the guaranteed 17-minute play time.” When we arrived and set up the Smackdown tournament, we quickly discovered that the joke had come true, it is a really long-playing game. Only four people (playing together) managed to get a qualifying game in before league started. During finals, on Ball 3, Jason (player 2) had played a really huge game, putting him far in the lead, and Brian (player 3) was now up. It had already been going on for ages at this point. Then the game decided to completely crash and reset. I had written down a 4th place already for Player 1 (Joe) as his position was already determined, but no one else’s was, and I had not recorded any scores. As a result I had to rule a complete restart of the game between everyone except Joe. After another long game, Allen emerged the winner.
Around the same time that Rush reset, Mike was playing his league game of Batman ’66, and that also reset. I wondered at first whether the two issues were due to a power fluctuation, but it turned out that Mike’s reset and the Rush reset were about five minutes apart. Fortunately, Joseph was observing Mike’s game and was able to attest the approximate score, and so I ruled that Mike could keep that score and add compensation balls to it.
Finally, sometime after 12:30 am, Danny was finished and Joseph went home. Season 15 was in the books, except for playoffs tonight. It was an eventful season and it should be an exciting finale. I hope to see you there.