Mike won his third straight league championship in the Season 16 finals on September 13, coming up out of the second-chance swamp to defeat Tim in two consecutive matches. Mike had to defeat Danny in a clash of the Titans that left Danny going home with third place (but not the third-place trophy, which he forgot to take with him). Pat won the B division championship, with Joseph taking second place and Donny third.
When people arrived, we set out the trophies from PrimeTime Awards for everyone to see, but I mentioned with mild disappointment that they had given us a different sized Zen trophy than our usual. I hadn’t noticed that when I picked up the trophies. These had no pedestal, just a figure on a base. Josh responded, “Yeah, that’s not going to look as good next to my other trophies.” Whether that proves to be a problem for him remains to be seen.
We had the fewest people qualify to play finals in the time that I’ve been running the league, resulting in our smallest A bracket. The seven-person bracket meant that the top seed, Mike, got a first-round bye. I thanked him for making me (the lowly 7 seed) play Danny in the first round, although Joseph pointed out that I wouldn’t want to play Mike in round one either.
This was the first time using a new rule that only allowed each player to choose the same game once in the entire tournament. I was advised to absolutely not pick Godzilla or Rush against Danny, which I certainly wasn’t going to do in any case. I was actually honored that Danny chose Rush against me. If he thought I was a guaranteed cake walk, he wouldn’t have used one of his best games on me. I did beat him on my own choice (Indiana Jones) but I lost the match 1-2. It feels good to even go three against one of the top players.
In the loser bracket, I played Allen, once again losing 1-2, but I did get to watch Allen absolutely destroy Ghostbusters. I was player 2 and hadn’t even finished a mode when Allen was in the high 3 billions. Mike was waiting to play the winner of the match, and when I walked up to play my last ball of Ghostbusters I overheard them talking about Mike’s game choice. I yelled “Hey, I still have a ball!” with mock indignance.
I periodically checked on Joseph and found him progressing through B division, though he ended up losing the final match to Pat, who went through the winners’ bracket without a defeat.
In the second and final battle between Mike and Tim, Mike chose Godzilla and won, and then Tim chose Attack from Mars, which Mike also won. I always like seeing league finals go to the last possible game, but this time I was somewhat relieved that it ended. It was after midnight and Loren from the bar had already come over to ask if they could start turning the upstairs games off. I also had to get up early the next morning for work. I presented Tim and Mike with their glass award plaques, and then realized I hadn’t noticed Danny leaving. He had hung around playing a bit after his loss to Mike and I failed to ask him if he was going to stay for winners’ photos. At some point he must have slipped out without saying anything while I was wrapped up in watching the final matches.
There was also a Tuesday Night Smackdown on The Munsters, a game I chose because I thought it was less likely to be something people would want to choose for their league game. Participation was very low, and in the end the only two people who were willing and able to compete in finals were Jason and me. Jason thought I should award myself the Undercard medal since there was no B division and he took a picture of me with it.
Season 16 is at an end, but we have one more event, the traditional post-season “Zen” split flipper tournament, Super-Ball XVI. That is starting in just a couple of hours now, and I am hoping for a good turnout.
