New season, new games. Expected: the return of The Munsters, The Beatles, Deadpool, and the debut of Black Knight: Sword of Rage. Unexpected: the return of Star Trek and the debut of Oktoberfest (from American Pinball, the same company that brought us Houdini). WTF moment: the return of Ghostbusters (I seriously thought we were rid of that damn thing, but apparently not yet).
We had a total turnout of 50 players. There were a lot of familiar faces as well as a lot of new ones. My group consisted of one of the relatively new faces, Eric Heskett; one relatively familiar face, Chris Low; and one of the all-too familiar ones, Bryce Revnew. Of all the players in the league, why group me with someone likely to hand me crushing defeats across the entire night?
First up, we would play Black Knight: Sword of Rage. I didn’t get to play this game during warmups, so this would be my first time ever playing this game at all. The first ball would be kind only to Eric, who would start with 10.4M+ versus Chris and Bryce putting up 1.1M+ and my embarrassingly bad 380K+. It would come back around to me with 3.5M+, 11.5M+, and 9.2M+ for Chris, Eric, and Bryce respectively. I would have another dud ball and stay in the trailing spot with 2.4M+.
Chris would wrap up with a total of 4.4M+. Eric would then have another pretty good ball to finish with 22.1M+. That’s intimidating enough, but then Bryce runs it up to 55.3M+. So here I am realistically facing a third place, maybe a second if I’m lucky to start the season. So I start out making a few shots. I get my second balls locked for both Catapult Multiball and Triple Knights Challenge. Then I start Catapult Multiball. And then I stack Triple Knights Challenge on top of that, possibly even scoring an add-a-ball in the middle of it for a total of six balls in play. I’m just trying to keep everything in play and hit as many shots as I can in the process. It’s pure mayhem.
I finish the combined multiballs with a score in the 52M+ range, within striking distance of Bryce. I play on, starting a mode (I think Sandworms, but I’m not sure). I make a few shots, and then notice I’ve passed Bryce’s score. I would drain shortly thereafter and sign off with 60.4M+, good enough for first place in the game and high score #4. Not bad for a start of the new season.
On we go to Oktoberfest. I have pretty low expectations, given I’ve never played this game before. Somehow I manage to piece together a 75,096 just ahead of Eric’s 73,996 but well behind Bryce’s 153K+. I’ll take second place happily, though it does dash my hopes of possibly putting up a perfect night.
If only I could have done as well on Ghostbusters. I’m not even going to go into details, just that my final score was under 1M while Bryce ran away with it putting up 111M+, aided by the video mode skill shot that never timed out after what had to have been 20+ seconds, when mine would time out much sooner (his final score is basically what he got from two video modes and maybe a few million from some other miscellaneous shots). Stern, fix the code already. There’s no point in having a pinball table if one is able to put up 100M+ from playing the video mode twice straight off the skill shot.
Moving on, it’s time for Star Trek. I start off with a nice solid 22.4M+ first ball, good for what would turn out to be an insurmountable lead. I would sign off with 29.0M+, playing out my third ball even though I theoretically could have just plunged it. So far that’s 20 standings points after four games, a solid place with one game left to go.
That game would be The Munsters. I never got to play this one at the end of last season. Again, for a first time playing it, I feel like I did pretty damn good. I would run up quite a few points in Grandpa’s Laboratory (the lower playfield with the smaller balls), signing off with 6.7M+ when no other player scored even half that. So I’d wrap it up with 27 standings points, which would wind up being 6 points off of the lead, and in a four-way tie for 6th place in the young season.
More importantly than that was finishing ahead of a former league champion in three out of five games, one of those in a clutch come-from-behind situation on a game I was playing for the very first time. I’m disappointed that I cannot play next week and follow up that performance. I am looking forward to week 3, however, and the hope is alive that this is the season it all comes together.
