There were a few more visits through the remainder of the year, culminating in a very special New Year’s Eve at Cidercade Houston. Special, in that it’s the first time I can remember that I was playing a game pinball through the stroke of midnight–that’s how much I was into my games. This particular play of the game (Rush) happened to be a relatively unremarkable run, though it was a surreal experience to clean the confetti off of the playfield glass in mid-game.

Notes about the two Centipede scores: One of the two Centipede machines is set for a brutal 2 lives and extra every 10k. This was, oddly enough, the machine on which I set the 44,818 high score. The other was (I think) an ordinary 3 lives/12k setting.

And yes, for better or worse, Spiderman replaced Funhouse at Little Dipper. It does seem to be playing better on its return, though.

November 15, Continental Club (the BurgerTime game is in the back with the shuffleboard and pool tables):

December 2, Little Dipper:

December 26, Little Dipper:

December 31/January 1, Bishop Cidercade:

I wanted to get this up even though it will be (somewhat) out of chronological order.

Not too long ago Cidercade (2320 Canal Street, Houston) announced the Valentine’s Day Stoplight parties for all locations. As you may recall, I attended this event last year, which I was eagerly looking forward to after it was cancelled in 2021 due to inclement weather (the infamous 2021 Valentine’s Day ice storms).

Well, I just got my ticket for the event at the Houston location and I am looking forward to it again this year. It’s $10 which is basic admission (does not include food or party favors). Like a lot of events at Cidercade, this one is likely to sell out so if getting your classic arcade and pinball fix sounds like your kind of Valentine’s Day event, go get your ticket(s) from Eventbrite. I look forward to seeing you there!

I realize this is a rather belated post, but better late than never. I’ve actually had the sorting done since sometime around mid-December but time has been at a premium due to my regular job.

Again this year, I spent the majority of my time at my face painting table. Many of the pictures represent games played during the breaks I was able to take, most of them early in the event and late in the (event) day on Sunday, and during other slower business periods.

This (gigantic) gallery has the pinball scores in alphabetical order, then the video games in no particular order, then games from a pre-war mechanical pinball display. In the case of the pre-war games, that actually represents everything I played; they were in the vendor hall and as such much friendlier to a quick game while waiting for more business.

My score on Tempest was eventually beaten before the end of the event. While it doesn’t represent my best efforts on the game by any means, I did feel it was a good effort for the limited time I had to play it. Some titles (most notably Genie and Power Play) did have some player benefit malfunctions helping me along; I didn’t really take notes or remember to what extent on each, or even if that was the complete list of games being overly generous.

Black Hole locked up and refused to advance to the next ball; the score and bonus represent the state of the game before I had to power-cycle it to clear the malfunction (I don’t think I had a bonus multiplier earned but I could be wrong).

To keep things in chronological order as much as possible, this is split from the visits and games played in later November. Oddly enough, this is just one visit to Poison Girl on November 7 with best scores on only two different machines (of the eight or nine available), those being Attack from Mars and Mousin’ Around. The latter of those two appears to only have been at Poison Girl very briefly before being taken to Houston Arcade Expo and presumably put back in storage (I’ll need to double check the lineup later this week).

The scores for Mousin’ Around include the full high score list (including the new addition of 11.01M+) for reference.

By the time you read this, the move from my old Mastodon account at skquinn@octodon.social will be moved to skquinn@mastodon.sdf.org. Hopefully I won’t need to do this again for a while. If you followed me before it should have been moved over to the new account, but it never hurts to check.

[Edit 2022-12-13: Moved again to skquinn@toot.community due to hardware issues at SDF.]

Many of the previous posts have been edited with a disclaimer regarding recent events. This is unfortunate but I feel it is necessary given what has transpired.

Should circumstances change, those disclaimers have been added in a way to make it easy for all of them to disappear with minimal tedium, odium, and utterances of profanity by yours truly.

Thanks, and I appreciate the continued support.