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.