We started a new bank rotation with our third league night of Season 21 on September 10, between Corvus (“The Crow”) and Perseus (“The Guy Named Perseus”). We were back to Tuesday after a couple of Wednesday night meetings. It turned out to be a very long night for some of us, in large part because Corvus contains both Rush and Game of Thrones. Upon being drawn into a group with me and Brian K., Danny made a comment about how this was going to take a while. I don’t think he was referring to my prowess at Attack from Mars (especially when I went on to put all of 500 million points on it, AKA “an AfM nickel”). Later when I announced that our last game would be Rush, Danny said “Oh boy” with a tone of resignation that confused me. I said, “what are you talking about, you love Rush!” but he clarified that meant that he and Brian would be playing it a long time. This did indeed happen and Danny had one ball that went on more than a half an hour and ended up with over 3 billion points. It’s a score that looks like Joseph got confused about how many zeroes should be on the end of a number.
Another contributor to the long night was a mysterious issue on Foo Fighters. Bryan J. was carefully and politely sliding the game back in place at the end of a ball during his bonus count and the game suddenly reset entirely, wiping all scores. There was no tilt or slam tilt message, just a sudden total reset. I ruled that it was a major malfunction and gave everyone involved the choice of either restarting their whole game or taking the lowest score they were certain they had achieved so far and taking compensation balls with that. Most took the total replay (I think the exception was Jason who had a very high score at the time that he didn’t want to lose) so we were all waiting a long time for that group to finish for the night. This resulted in a lot of the Smackdown qualifiers giving up and going home before the Smackdown.
Another big score moment happened when Cyndi had her first ever high score table entry on Rush, which is a big milestone for a pinball player. I still remember mine vividly; it was on a Stern Pirates of the Caribbean at Pinball Pete’s. I still live for the anticipation of hearing high score board entry music, which in many games is used only for that ritual and nothing else, ensuring it remains special. I’m getting a little off topic but I invite you to check out the high score board entry sequence on Space Station, surely the greatest high score sequence of all time. The burst of electronic noise as it wraps up the song gives me goosebumps! I put in time on Space Station every time I’m at the VFW trying to get the high score so I can see it in person, and I never have.
Anyway, back to the report. The night was noticeably light on attendance as none of our big group of new players were present. This led to speculation about whether they had been scared off, and rumors that they could only attend Wednesdays and were therefore out for the season. I did hear from one new member, Erin, that she was attending a concert at Pine Knob and would therefore be absent, so I wonder if some of her friends who also joined with ehr were gone too for that reason.
We had our Tuesday Night Smackdown game on Tuesday once again, and the arena was Black Knight: Sword of Rage. I surprised myself by making the top group with a big qualifying game despite the fact that the Knight usually won’t let me do a damn thing. Jason got the win, though, and the B division honors on Venom went to Ethan.
That’s the news from a fairly eventful week last week and I’m hoping to see everyone in just a few hours. We’re also still hoping for the return of some of our missing past members such as Mark and Ted!