I’m going to mainly post the pictures, though there will be minimal commentary where I feel I can add some after each gallery.

June 8, Darkhorse Tavern:

Still here, still about as playable as it has been. 771K is a pretty decent score but of course I’ve done a bit better.

June 25 Cidercade

A lot of the usual suspects here. The Cactus Canyon high score was with some player benefit malfunctions, though it’s definitely within the range of what I can attain during normal play especially with that many extra balls. I’m finding that I enjoy Pepper II a lot more than I ever would have back in the day. The Stranger Things high score is probably the highlight of my trip, I think that’s a personal best but I’d have to look again.

June 27, Little Dipper:

Decent scores, all things considered.

July 11, Little Dipper:

Didn’t play a whole lot of Creature so yeah, that score is going to be pretty low. Monster Bash, on the other hand, was one of my better runs in recent memory if not all time on a real machine.

The big story is Funhouse: Rudy’s Nightmare, which has LCD replacements for the main score display as well as the Wind Tunnel Mystery Mirror and allows one to play the original game mode as well as the upgraded/updated version. I never realistically expected to see one of these on location, much less at Little Dipper. To say the least, this was a welcome find.

It took me many tries to get to the score shown (7.98M+). I didn’t get to play this game a whole lot in first run but it’s easily one of my all-time favorites now.

Somewhere I have a screenshot of me running the original Funhouse up over 200M in Pinball Arcade on my tablet from a few years ago when it was the free game of the month. At the time, I had completely forgotten how much harder the real thing was. But, now I remember.

I’ve still been getting in the occasional round or three or ten of pinball when time permits. So here’s what I’ve been up to behind sets of flipper buttons.

May 22, Darkhorse Tavern

I know I’ve done far better, this was mainly to ensure the game was still there.

May 23, Little Dipper

Didn’t play a whole lot tonight. The game on Creature from the Black Lagoon was someone else’s unwanted replay.

May 27, Cidercade

There was a good chunk of this visit (about an hour or so, judging by the photo timestamps) where I was playing Killer Queen. Unfortunately KQ doesn’t lend itself to being documented in the same form as there are no real scores to speak of, just a winning team. I’ll have more commentary about KQ in an upcoming post.

June 6, Little Dipper

Note: The 172M+ on Creature from the Black Lagoon was without the aid of a multiball jackpot.

A few more scores from this past Monday. The Monster Bash score was from a game interrupted by a malfunctioning slam tilt switch, or could have potentially been much higher.

I played Creature from the Black Lagoon the most on this visit. I enjoy this game but the requirement to start multiball is a bit tedious, not to mention the frustration when one finally gets multiball lit only to drain on the last ball.

There was a little time for pinball before and after trivia, so I have a few scores to post. Of particular note is the 215.0M+ on Creature from the Black Lagoon, by far my best game in recent memory if not my best game ever on this title to date.

Not much else to add, as this was a short night.

The night of Friday, April 22, brought a great reason to pop into Cidercade as a friend of mine was celebrating a birthday. The higher scores on Star Wars and Iron Maiden were mine; the one on Rush, unfortunately, was not. We also played some Pac-Man Battle Royale, one of my favorite modern video games which unfortunately does not lend itself easily to score photos of this sort. (The format is up to 4 players playing 5 rounds, with the winner being the one to win the most rounds. There are no real “scores” to speak of.)

Perhaps the highlight is the 22.1M+ on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The one at Cidercade is a Pro model; the others I’ve played are both LE. The main difference is that the Pro model does not store balls inside the van toy, but instead launches the balls for Turtle Power multiball out of the plunger lane. It really does not affect game play that much, but seeing all four balls come out of the van toy like they do on the LE (and Premium?) is kind of cool to watch.

I know this is a bit stale by now but going through my notes and pictures wound up being a bit more of a challenge than originally expected.

The main items that are remarkable are the video game scores. I mean, sure, there’s another roll-over score on Charlie’s Angels but those are barely newsworthy now (though it still takes me a few games to get to one every time I play it). There are two Joust pinball scores as one is from a one-player game (only the highest one-player score) and one is from a two-player game.

On Elvira and the Party Monsters, it seemed like the right  flipper was incapable of making the left ramp, and the left flipper making the right ramp was only possible with considerable effort with a much smaller than usual margin for error. (Since jackpot is to make both ramps in multiball and many other awards are keyed off of the left ramp, one could make the case this makes the game nearly pointless versus the designer’s original vision.) Given both of these I consider my what’s normally a rather lousy 2.1M+ to be actually quite decent.

It had been a while since I had made a trip out to The Game Preserve. My goal is to make it out to each location at least twice a year going forward, possibly more depending on certain other things happening.