So I haven’t dropped by Del Mar Lanes in a little while. Much to my surprise, upon my arrival I noticed a freshly started game on Godzilla just sitting there, with another ¾ of a credit. So I got to play two paid credits for a whopping 25 cents total. I say two paid credits because it wound up being no less than six games. I put up another high score and a few more mode records. (I still have the 606.7M+ grand champion from April 10 as well as the rest of the high score board from the last reset.)

Incidentally, that very first game, I wound up putting up 209.6M+ which would temporarily be good for high score #4 before I surpassed that score later in the session. This is not unlike just walking up to a machine in a tournament, and that kind of score in a typical tournament qualifying session would likely be towards the top (depending of course on who else is playing). In a typical strikeout or matchplay tournament, it would likely be good for at least second in the group, maybe first.

I’m mentioning this as a reminder that I am not giving up on tournament play. I do hope to have more tournaments to write about for the second half of the year, whether or not they are ones I have a hand in directing/organizing.

Finally, earlier today, I made a quick jaunt over to Equal Parts Brewing. There are four games in the lineup. Three of them were somewhat familiar to me: Rick and Morty, Godzilla (again), and Terminator 3. The fourth, was NBA (Stern, 2009), not to be confused with NBA Fastbreak (Bally, 1997). This game plays a lot differently from Bally’s take on a basketball themed game. Stern stuck to traditional pinball scoring though there is also a basketball points counter for the curious.

I paid for one credit on NBA and won a second credit via match. The second game’s score was a bit higher so that’s the one I’m posting. After this I played one game of Rick and Morty (taking advantage of the ⅙ credit making my cost $1.25) then moving over to Godzilla. I had a fairly decent romp on Godzilla. I paid for a total of six credits ($1.50 by coins, then $5 for five via credit card) and wound up winning one replay for a total of seven actual games. In the process I “redecorated” what was apparently a freshly reset high score list (thus all the pictures; I made no attempt to document which mode records were set in which games, so this is just what was on the board at the very end).

This past Sunday, the 21st, brought another visit to Einstein’s in Katy. Most of these scores are pretty run of the mill except for my Attack from Mars score at the very end, good enough for 4th place on the scoreboard for now (I’m not really expecting it to last given some the players who usually play here). My best score on The Walking Dead is perhaps another standout, though it was nowhere near enough to get on the board.

July 3 brought a quick trip to The Deuce, a new pizza bar that opened up in The Heights. The pizza was pretty good if a tad pricey, and being in what was in effect a “pizza bar” was a great reason to have a beer for the first time in a while. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason I went…

The most notable part of the (rather small) game area in the corner was a Space Shuttle pinball. This, arguably, was the primary reason I went in to check out the place. While my high score on the evening (1.71M+) was nowhere near what I’ve put up in the past, I think it’s pretty good for the best in a series of casual games.

I also got in a quick game of Robotron. My score of 83,925 was best for the day; I’ve done better but I do not consider myself an expert on this game by any means.

I realize it’s a bit late but I will go ahead and post this for completeness.

Yes, Houston got hit with another major weather event, this time Hurricane Beryl. The house has been without power for most of the week but supposedly is once again energized as of last night. I’m fine and made it through the storm safely.

Unfortunately, Facebook (or the “artificial stupidity” in charge) has decided to mark the post to the Facebook page for the July 2 recap as spam, hiding it from everyone except the page owner (me). I can’t guarantee this won’t happen again in the future; I have far more confidence that Automattic will not arbitrarily censor announcements of new posts that come directly from the site. The email subscription form is in the upper right corner of the home page at the very top.

As evidenced by my post history on Rant Roulette, I consider censorship to be quite odious and have opposed it in many instances. This one is no different.

Edit 2024-07-14: The repost also got removed as spam. I’m at a complete loss as to what is tripping the artificial stupidity to call it spam. Apparently it’s perfectly okay to post diet pill/gummies ads, seedy online casino ads, and whatever else, and tag 99 people (the limit) for maximum annoyance. But $deity forbid a pinball wizard from Houston post a couple of arcade visit recaps, that’s a mortal sin in Facebook’s world. </sarcasm>

The story continues on the Tuesday evening of July 2. I made two pinball-related stops this evening, an earlier stop at Eureka Heights again, and then a later one at Little Dipper for the planned weekly tournament. Of note was my 2.93M+ on Pulp Fiction and 54.6M+ on Star Trek (Stern), the rest I can take or leave.