,And now for something (almost) completely different.

Work-related travels took me to Austin this week. My last stop was closest to the Pinballz location on Research Boulevard (US 183 ). So, I would hop in there for a few games of pinball.

I first took a walk around to see every game in the arcade. I didn’t take any pictures of the lineup, but the place has quite the lineup for a building of its size. There were 71 pinball machines there at the time of my visit. (This count includes Baby Pac-Man as a pinball.) There was also a selection of mostly classic arcade video games. (Notable exceptions to the “classic” were the entire four-game series of The House of The Dead, a Time Crisis 5, and a VR game that cost $5 per play.)

At least three of the pinball machines were out of order; sadly, one of them was Black Hole. I was able to play Black Hole at Hamby’s while in the San Antonio area a while back, so this wasn’t quite that big of a loss.

I did,  however, get to play a Hercules for the first time in a few years. This is the insanely large game Atari made in 1979. Hercules measures 93″ (2.36 m) long, 39″ (0.99 m) wide, and 83″ (2.11 m) high, per IPDB. For reference, a standard machine is 51″ (1.30 m) long, 28.5″ (0.72 m) wide, and 75.5″ (1.92 m) high.

Hercules uses an oversized ball (a billiards cue ball?) and plays rather slow. It’s fun for the novelty, but that novelty wears off after a couple of games. It’s also in the most expensive price tier at Pinballz, which is $1.50. Looking at Pinball Map, it’s a surprise to see there are 22 locations across the US that have a Hercules. Most of them are east of the Mississippi. This Pinballz location, another Pinballz location, an arcade in Garland, TX, and one in the Denver area are the four of that 22 west of the Mississippi.

What really made this trip worth it, though, was getting to play some now-relatively uncommon machines. Those being Grand Lizard, Banzai Run, Swords of Fury, the original TMNT (Data East), etc.

I have a soft spot for Swords of Fury. I am aware Steve Ritchie, the designer, doesn’t like the game (referring to it as “**** Swords” on at least one occasion). I’ve never had a run on Swords of Fury where I’ve started with a single credit and played for over an hour. That changed this evening. None of my individual scores were quite enough for the high score board. I did, however, manage a 5.55M+ near the beginning of that run of close to two hours (taking a couple of breaks due to power issues).

Banzai Run was a drain monster at first, but I did eventually put up a 1.24M+ (the uppermost flipper on the vertical playfield wasn’t working, though I was never able to get the ball on to it anyway). This is a game I’d really like to sit down with and get into. I consider it one of the best games of this era. In fact, I wish the backbox vertical playfield had caught on and really became a thing. (Unfortunately the vertical playfield made the game quite a bit heavier and more expensive than your average pinball machine.)

Among the other highlights was a 13.2M+ on Funhouse. This score should have been over 17.2M+. My third trap door shot for Million Plus, which would have scored 4 million, did not score as it should have. Besides that, about the only real beef I had with this one was that the plunger skill shot was more difficult than usual to make. A full plunge sent the ball all the way around. Any attempt to short plunge and find the “sweet spot” resulted in the ball falling back into the bumpers on the right side. The lock shot was quite “nailable” though. Funhouse wasn’t the drain monster that Banzai Run was for most of my games. Thankfully.

I didn’t really get a chance to play the arcade video games, most of which I either weren’t in the mood for or were titles I could find a place to play locally.

All in all, I had a great time. It’s a shame we don’t have something quite like this in Houston. I am hoping at some point Pinballz decides to branch out into the Houston area.

The Fast forward to the evening of January 1, and my pinball tournament of the year. Once again, it was time to head down I-10 East to Major Drive (FM 364) to Folsom Drive to Colorado Canyon. (Or at least that’s the route I chose this time; taking the freeway around to Lucas Drive is faster but I had more time to spare than usual on this trip.)

Before setting off from Houston, I had thought of this tournament as one of the more important recent tournaments. It’s the start of a new year, which is at least symbolic of new beginnings. In the case of competitive pinball and the IFPA, it’s a clean slate for everyone with regard to state(/province/district) rankings. The players that qualified for the state championships will play those in a couple of weeks, etc. For the rest of us? This is the “next year” we’ve been waiting for after realizing we were out of the running.

There was no fifth game added to the lineup for the evening, though one was not really needed as there were only 14 players. That’s actually a pretty good turnout for New Year’s Day considering the typical overlap between “pinball player” and “party animal”. (And I arguably speak as a member of someone within that overlap, having been at the Cidercade Houston New Year’s Eve event a mere 17-18 hours prior to my arrival at Colorado Canyon.)

So on we went. My round 1 would be on TMNT, leading off against Casey Sudela and Allen Robertson (in order). I had a decent start with a 3.39M+ first ball, though Allen would answer with just short of 6M. The second ball would be a dud for both us, but Casey would regain some ground. Going into ball 3, the scores were 3.65M+ (me), 2.77M+ (Casey), 6.01M+ (Allen). I would once again have a dud for ball 3, signing off with 3.96M+ which Casey would easily pass. So I’d start off with a last place finish.

I would move on to The Uncanny X-Men for round 2. Playing order would be Leon Moncla, Kelly Moncla, Meghan McCormick, and finally me. Leon would jump out to a commanding lead by the end of ball 2 while the rest of us struggled. Somehow I manage to squeak out a second place in front of Kelly. The margin of victory was just over 140k points (10,270,040 to 10,129,640). Still not the first place I was hoping for; I am now  hoping I’d be able to make up for this slow start in the final three rounds.

The third round brings up Godzilla, I would be playing first in front of Trey Gilpin and Johana Mercer. This game, too, would result in a close finish. I would get just enough in end-of-ball bonus to pull ahead of Trey for the win (35.1M+ to 33.8M+). And all of that without starting a single multiball (usually the key to scoring well on this game)! Obviously I prefer more decisive victories, but in this scoring format a win is a win no matter how close or dominating.

And apparently I have angered the RNG gods at some point today, for I would not be assigned to play John Wick for either of the final two rounds. If you go back to December 27 you’ll see that juicy 129.9M+ on John Wick at Cidercade. It’s a game I now feel very confident playing. I mean it’s not like I haven’t run up some massive scores on the other three titles in the lineup.

Round 4 is on guess what? TMNT again. I’m first up, Dennis Moncla is second player, and Meghan would play third. This wasn’t a good game, I would be trailing pretty much the whole way. Going into the third ball I’m at 2.1M+ versus Dennis at 10.7M+ and Meghan at 5.6M+. I get very lucky here and squeak out a second place (6,116,440 to Meghan’s 6,037,750) that I may or may not have deserved.

The final round would once again be The Uncanny X-Men with Trey, Brian Fults, Russell Mercer, and finally yours truly. I would need first place and some massive help to make the playoffs. Basically, Brian also needed to come in third or last and I think some other players would have had to have dud games as well. (In the heat of the action I didn’t take screenshots/photos of the intermediate standings, for better or worse.)

The game began. Ball 1 was a relative dud for everyone, with all four scores well under 1M. Brian jumped out to a lead after his ball 2 though, and the scores would read 3.9M+, 13.5M+, 382k+, 262k+ as I stepped up to play my second ball. I would somehow catapult to a temporary lead, ending ball 2 with 22.1M+ and putting the other players on the defensive. Brian would come back with 24.4M+ with neither of the other two players being anywhere close.

I did everything I could do to squeak out first place; I didn’t have that great of a ball. Once again, it came down to the end of ball bonus, and it was by the narrowest of margins: 24,530,310 to 24,491,000. However, it was against Brian and only pushed him down to second place securing his spot in the playoffs.

At least I ended the tournament on a high note, and Brian did fall to to the fourth seed in the playoffs because I won that last game (otherwise, he would have been second seed).

The final result was a tie for 6th out of 14. Respectable, but I know I can do better. So it was an early departure back to Houston. I don’t regret making the trip, showing up, and playing, as I still had a great time and got some more tournament experience on modern machines.

At long last, the year 2024 would come to a close. What do you think is the best way to give the year a send-off? My idea was pretty simple: a  few more rounds of pinball. Actually, that with a little classic arcade video gaming thrown in. For me at least, there really is nothing quite like a New Year’s Eve at Cidercade.

On at least a couple of machines, I just wasn’t feeling it. I know these are games that I ordinarily enjoy playing. Part of the problem, or perhaps even the problem, was overly sensitive tilt switches. It’s one thing to discourage abuse, it’s another to have tilt warnings (and actual tilts, for that matter) from normal play. This was maybe a notch or two above “gesund-tilt”; a reasonably soft  slap save was enough to get a warning or two.

The pizza buffet was quite satisfying. Up until now I have never had the pizza at the relatively new kitchen at Cidercade. I do miss the food trucks but one can always walk over about ¼ mile to Big City Wings.

Before midnight (2024-12-31, and yes, a couple of games have more than one score photo):

Of particular note is the 133.8M+ run on Stranger Things, the 291.7M+ on Star Wars, 160k+ on Pepper II, 42.6M+ on Wheel of Fortune, and 3.05M+ on Heavy Metal. Also of note was the 16.7M+ on Elvira’s House of Horrors. The machine never went to a proper attract mode loop. It just stayed put on this screen, possibly due to an oddly timed tilt on the final ball. I don’t try to crash game software on purpose, I swear… it just seems to happen.

That game on Elvira’s House of Horrors would be the last before I got in line for the champagne-style cider and popper. I unfortunately didn’t get any pictures of the area while it was covered in confetti. It’s possible someone out there did. It was quite the festive mess. I think it was at this point I took my first bathroom break of the new year before heading back out for a few more games.

After midnight (2025-01-01):

I don’t know about you, but I would say 306.7M+ on Game of Thrones and 60.8M+ on Black Knight Sword of Rage (Pro) are a great way to start the new year. The rest of the scores are at least respectable. By this point, though, I was starting to feel quite tired. I left a good 10 minutes before the official closing time of 01:00. All in all, I had a great time and I really do feel like I got a happy start to 2025.

And for the next-to-last pinball/arcade outing of the year, I made my way over to Little Dipper after a short Sunday workday. The lineup has changed a bit. Paragon, Jaws, Guns N’ Roses, and Monster Bash are out. Quicksilver (Stern, 1980), Big Game (Stern, 1980), Foo Fighters (Stern, 2023), Batman 66 (Stern, 2019), and James Bond 007 60th Anniversary (Stern, 2022) are in.

I spent most of my time playing Quicksilver and Stars, with a few rounds of Big Game and a quick game on Star Trek in the interim. I eventually managed a relatively good run of 1.05M+ on Quicksilver, and a close-to-the-high-score-but-not-quite 594k+ on Big Game.

There was quite a bit going on for this visit to Cidercade. Though a lot of the scores were pretty ho-hum, I was able to put up a 129.9M+ on John Wick (Pro) good enough for high score #2. Also of note was a 44.9M+ on Wheel of Fortune and last, but certainly not least, 207,700 on Pepper II which is an all-time personal best (3 lives, bonus lives at 70k/140k).

This last one is notable because I don’t really consider myself an expert on this game. This may well be the game I pick for a Twin Galaxies certified record attempt, though I am realistically not expecting a record or even to beat the lowest verified score (5th place of the five scores: 720,200 by Desiree McCrorey, set back in 1983).

As of right now there are still some tickets left for Cidercade’s NYE event in Houston, but that will likely change by end of day on Monday. If you are hoping to attend, the time to buy a ticket is now and the place is this page on Eventbrite.