So upon my periodic checking of Pinball Map sometime in the days prior, I noticed that there was a change in the lineup at Poison Girl. Wheel of Fortune was moved out, replaced by a new-ish and certainly new-to-the-location Elvira’s House of Horrors (EHOH).

I had a few fairly good runs on Whirlwind, topping out with a 14.7M+. I also got in a couple of games of Iron Maiden, though neither really went anywhere. My scores on EHOH were what I’d call decent for one of the first times really trying to learn the game, though not enough to win a replay. It does seem like a game I’ll eventually get into if I play it enough, though.

The documented highlight of this particular night was a 210.4M+ run on Spider-Man, good for a spot on the high score list as well as many of the category high scores. Of note, the best combo champion is from a following game; the 210.4M+ game only had a double 6-way.

Unfortunately, there are pictures missing due to a technical issue, including a 250M+ run on Creature, during which I came painfully close to hitting a super jackpot and breaking through to the grand champion spot on the high score list. I am omitting the Creature games with lower scores as I don’t see any point in posting them.

The beginning of June brought the opportunity of a work-related trip to Port Arthur, after which I swung by Colorado Canyon for an almost-obligatory session on Avengers: Infinity Quest. I should note that most of the games in this arcade are ticket/redemption games. Not surprisingly, I’ve racked up a fair number of tickets over my many visits here in the past couple of years. I finally decided to go ahead and cash in what I could. (To my credit, there were a couple of times between the departure of the Ghostbusters pinball and the arrival of AIQ that I noticed the promised new pinball machine had not yet arrived, and immediately left for home. Despite the distance from home I treat this the same as any arcade visit for which my primary objective is to play pinball.)

The best score for this particular session on AIQ was decent but not superlative: 109.5M+ (it is difficult to read as the picture didn’t come out very well). After this and a few other ticket games, including a 16K on Skee-Ball (equivalent to 160 on “old school” Skee-Ball alleys which score in tens not thousands), I headed over to the redemption counter. I had some 2600+ tickets, enough for a couple of LED neon-style lamps.

All things considered, I’m pretty happy with my haul. Both of these lamps take three AA (R6) batteries, for an apparent nominal operating voltage of 4.5 volts; they could probably be modified to run off of 5 volt USB, possibly with an appropriate series resistor. (I have a Pac-Man ghost light which runs on USB and I was kind of hoping these would be powered the same way.)

So even at an event like Comicpalooza, where I spent about 8 hours volunteering (over two days, Friday and Saturday), I still managed to find some time to get a little pinball in, courtesy of Joystix who brought some arcade games to the event (on free play of course). The lineup consisted of Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic Park, Avengers Infinity Quest, and The Mandalorian, all titles which I have played before (unfortunately I didn’t take notes on if these were Pro, Premium, or LE; I think AIQ was at least a Premium).

The Guardians score was perhaps the highlight of my time behind a pair of flipper buttons: 297.0M+ with no player benefit malfunctions. That’s mainly the result of a couple of good Groot Multiball rounds. The AIQ score was perhaps one of my better runs but not a record breaker.

The Asteroids score was an emulated cabinet that was out on the show floor. I post it only because I feel like 4800 was a good score given the highly unusual control layout: a joystick for rotating, then buttons for shooting, thrust, and hyperspace (X was hyperspace, Y was the fire button, and B was thrust if I remember right; it took significant trial and error to figure this out).

Yeah, I even found a gap in the long line of kids at the face painting booth to sneak in. (I am mindful of when the majority of expected guests at a face painting booth are children and avoid taking time that would have otherwise gone to a child. Had I not seen other adult guests get painted I may have passed on the opportunity, or actually, not considered it an opportunity intended to be open to me.) This pinball-inspired design was done by Cassi Moon who was at the show Friday and Sunday.

The weekend ended with a couple of games of Ultimate Werewolf, which I’m mentioning here in passing as it may well become something I play a lot more often. I’m not giving up pinball, whether competitive or casual play, but I do need to broaden my horizons. For those who have never heard of it, Ultimate Werewolf is a published version based on the original Werewolf game by Andrew Plotkin, which was in turn modified and adapted from Mafia by Dimitry Davidoff.

So yeah, the mysterious number 7 and 16 cards against the carpet of one of the rooms of the George R. Brown convention center are what signify the two games of Ultimate Werewolf. The game doesn’t lend itself easily to documentation nor are the games themselves something I would consider blog-worthy narrative. I will say I was a villager both games, and wound up getting eliminated (“killed off”) prior to the end of both games. Once being lynched as a suspected werewolf, the other having my body taken over by someone with a special role (which is a strange way to end my time in a game, I will admit).

All in all it was an enjoyable weekend, and a very different volunteer experience than what I have been used to. I definitely plan to return to Comicpalooza next year, hopefully with more money to buy from the many vendors on the show floor.

There were a few highlights to this particular trip out to Einstein’s. Yet another high score on Hoops (9.56M+!), slowly but surely inching my way up to taking over the high score board on this machine. Also of note was the surprising 665K+ on Meteor; it’s amazing what a few well-timed spinner rips can do to your score on this game. My Foo Fighters score (54.1M+) isn’t a record-breaker by any means, but one of my better runs of the few times I’ve played. I am slowly working my way up and learning this new game; at first I had serious doubts it would become a game I’d enjoy playing, and it does have its own rhythm and flow different from a lot of other titles.

With the twin monster scores of two nights ago still fresh on my mind, I decided once again to descend upon Poison Girl for a few more games of Whirlwind, and possibly other games, depending on how the first few went.

Let’s just say that I surprised myself by putting up a score I didn’t even think was possible. But first a bit of history…

I have some very fond memories of playing this game growing up. I don’t think I ever broke 10 million all those years, not once. Getting the million plus shot (basically, the multiball jackpot) once was enough to put me over the moon. I don’t have any notes from back then but I think my best from that era was something like 9.3M+.

Fast forward to today, and a “good game” for me starts at 10M. To get an idea of the scale of this game on this particular evening, my score had already rocketed to 38.7M+ by the end of the first ball (including extra balls). I would sign off with 48,150,810 including three multiballs and a maxed-out 99 skyway tolls. Good for a new grand champion score, and good enough to have completely taken over the high score list on this particular machine.

What really stands out about this one, though, was it was my very first game on this machine after walking into the bar. There is a definite parallel here between this and a typical tournament situation where I would need to “catch lightning in a bottle” as I once described it.

No, I’m not done playing Whirlwind at Poison Girl yet. It’s still a fun game to play (possibly even my all-time favorite at this point), even if I don’t run the score counter up to stratospheric numbers.