I realize this stretches the scope a bit, but this is certainly more on topic here than over there. And I also realize this is a bit belated, but my day job has gotten rather busy, leaving me less time than desired to blog.

On Sunday, 2020 November 29, I participated in the inaugural Stomping Grounds DIY Turkey Trot, as best I could. The event was probably intended as a run/jog, at least for the 5K (~3.1 mile) course. The 5K course was:

From 1225 West 34th Street
East on West 34th Street
Left on Alba Road
Right on Wakefield Drive
Left on Sue Barnett Drive
Left on Lamonte Lane
Left on Apollo Street 
[Curves south to east, and name changes to West 41st Street]
Right on Golf Drive
Left on West 34th Street
Finish

I did it as a walk, as I am in no shape physically to try to run that far. I misread the course map, and as late in the week as I participated, some of the course markers may have gone missing. So, as a result, I deviated from the course slightly (specifically, as the image rendering of the GPX file will show, I turned left on West 42nd Street instead of Lamonte Lane, cutting back over via Alba Road once I realized my mistake). Given this was a non-competitive event, I’m not worried too much about a disqualification. Stuff happens, and I still put in the full distance (don’t place too much stock in the 8.06 km figure, that counts some obvious GPS technical glitches; realistically it’s more like 5.5-6 km).

I did this to do something different, and as an excuse to get the heck out of the house for a while. My main regret was that the balloon display was obviously just a bit worse for wear after the weather of the preceding 6 days. Nevertheless I took a selfie in front of (what was left of) it.

I’m not much of a competitive runner; it was a big deal for me to finish a mile in around 10½ minutes as a middle school kid, and an even bigger deal to finish the mile in 14 minutes, 12 seconds, in the only competitive mile I attempted in fifth grade. I haven’t really done a lot of running since. If I had been going for time, even walking, I probably could have finished closer to 1 hour even instead of just over 1½ hours. That said, the DIY format of this event made it such so that I didn’t have to feel any pressure of competition or get weird looks from people blowing past me. I hope the pandemic is behind us by next November, but I’d like to see the event return as a DIY event next year even if we have gone back to “normal”.

Recently, the Space City Pinball League posted a call for player profiles. Rather than submit this through the original Google Form, I am posting my player profile here for several reasons, the least of which is to maintain full editorial control, including answering questions not originally presented and making minor edits to the questions to more accurately reflect my current status. There are questions I would have liked to answer that weren’t included that I have added.

Player Name and “Enter Your Initials” name: Shawn K. Quinn, SKQ / SKQUASHED

Did you volunteer in [SCPL]? If so, tell us more. I did not volunteer in the league during my time as an SCPL player, but will be organizing pinball events under the auspices of a separate organization in early 2021.

What SCPL events did you regularly attend? Your favorite? I most frequently played in the weekly league at Eighteen Twenty Lounge.

What do you do / have you done for a living? I currently work as a merchandiser/field representative. Pre-pandemic I was trying to get an entertainment business off the ground and was doing face painting at parties and events. In the past I have worked as a courier/messenger, Internet service provider sysadmin/tech support, and web design/marketing/PR consultant.

Where are you from? Born in Houston, Texas, and a lifelong resident in the greater Houston area with approximately three years outside of Houston city limits.

How did you get into pinball? Growing up, the local convenience store had a Firepower, with other games at what passed for arcades at the time. I was more of a video game player until seventh grade when mom realized it was both more cost-effective and better for my mental health to put a couple of extra dollars in my lunch money and have me spend the time after school at the bowling alley across the street playing pinball than going to an after-school program at a day care. That bowling alley had a Secret Service (with a replay stuck at 400k!), Road Kings, and High Speed. (also see:
What was the first arcade pinball game Shawn played?)

Do you have any games at home? No playable machines at present.

What are your 5 favorite games? Ghostbusters (new code), Black Hole, Guardians of the Galaxy, Whirlwind, Twilight Zone, in no particular order.

What’s your favorite competitive pinball memory? It would probably be my second-place finish in the one-off tournament I played in seventh grade.

Do you have any other hobbies? Pre-pandemic, I did a lot of volunteering, primarily for arts-related organizations (Bayou City Arts Festival; Woodlands Waterway Art Festival; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; FotoFest) and a few others (most notably I am part of the Extra Life Houston Guild). I have also contributed to OpenStreetMap (lots) and Wikipedia (occasionally).

Besides the COVID-19 pandemic, what is the biggest challenge you see to the future of competitive pinball? Fixing the reputation issue of pinball. I’ve talked to too many people who still see pinball as a game played by either criminals (gangsters, mobsters) or the outcasts of society. My personal observations have revealed there’s more truth to that than I would like.

Since my last post, I’ve been by Colorado Canyon twice, both of them by-products of work-related trips to the area. For a short time, I considered not posting these. However, it is a the goal of keeping this blog in as close to a chronological order as possible and going back in time to post things makes that problematic at best. Even though there were no new high scores, I do feel like both visits represent some of my better pinball play.

We begin with Friday (2020-11-20), where the main highlight was a 1.103B+ good for high score #1 behind my previous grand champion score (which see). The second best score from this visit was a still respectable 404.5M+. On this visit, I played quite a few redemption games here, more than I usually would when stopping in for pinball a good 90 miles away from home.  While most of the redemption games aren’t conducive to getting final score pictures, I managed to get a picture of my score on this bowling game I took a try at, 45 for 3 frames (with the 3rd frame playing like the 10th in a regulation game). Not too shabby (a perfect score would be 90).

Fast forward to my return on the following Wednesday (2020-11-25). There was a big surprise awaing my arrival; most of the high scores on Ghostbusters had been reset, either by hand or automatically. (Modern pinball machines can be configured to automatically reset the high score list after a configured number of plays.) Of note, the grand champion I had put up was still there. Now, the bad news is it means the 1.103B+ I had just put up on the 20th was relatively short lived. On the other hand, the good news is I was able to put my initials on a couple of the freshly reset category high scores. My top score for this visit was a 473.6M+, still respectable and would probably still get me by in most tournament and league play, with the next highest being 171.6M+.

Unfortunately, I was not able to squeak in a round of mini-golf on either of these trips. The mini-golf course at Colorado Canyon is lit for play at night. However, I really wasn’t in the mood and wanted to stick to something I knew would take a relatively predictable period of time (like pinball). It’s uncertain whether or not I’ll be returning to the area in the near future. A trip to the area just to do tourist/pleasure stuff is not completely out of the question (but would probably have to wait until at least 2021 January). Of note, Speedy’s (back here in Houston) does have a mini-golf course, which oddly enough I have not played.

My recent success on Ghostbusters at Colorado Canyon went far beyond the pinnacle of satisfaction in a series of games of pinball after work. But it did give rise to another question: how well would I do in a competitive pinball situation, given it’s been a good year since I’ve played anything besides a one-player game? It’s a question I’ve been pondering off and on since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic made put the competitive pinball scene we had on pause for a while.

And finally, this past Saturday, the opportunity presented itself. In a fortunate turn of events, I was invited along for dinner and an evening of pinball by William Thornton, whom I have played against in tournaments and league play a few times here and there. William’s son, Brent, also joined in the fun.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get very many pictures of the decor (I will try to next time I am there) but I will summarize by saying they really went all out with artwork evoking memories of quite a few games of years past, most notably Pong, Asteroids, Pac-Man, and the well-known pinball title Black Hole (one of my favorites now that my pinball skills as an adult have risen to the level they have, I might add).

I would begin with a quick one-player game on Roller Disco. Now that a proper steel ball is installed in this machine (the last time I got to play it at the location in The Woodlands, they were using a pink ceramic ball of the type used in Twilight Zone for the “Powerball”). I put up a not-too-shabby 134.5k+, and so we began.

Before I get into some details on some of the games, this is a summary of the games as they were played, including my score (and the winning score if not mine), my playing order, and finishing order:

• Deadpool, 12.54M+ (19.74M+), first turn, second place
• Jungle Lord, 158.2k+, first turn, first place
• Iron Maiden, 142.4M+, second turn, first place
• Road Kings, 1.43M+, first turn, first place
• Space Shuttle, 281.7k+, second turn, first place
• Trident, 257.6k+, second turn, first place
• Torch, 186.4k+ (232.1k+), third turn, second place
• Fish Tales, 16.53M+ (34.99M+), third turn, second place
• Austin Powers, 40.26M+, second turn, first place
• Austin Powers, 18.20M+ (115.43M+ by Brent), third turn, third place

All told, six first place finishes out of ten games, a couple of them by fairly significant margins (see pictures). The true highlights, the most memorable games of the night, would have to be Iron Maiden and Road Kings, though the game on Trident deserves some mention too.

Road Kings, as you may or may not be aware, was the game I played in my very first pinball tournament back in seventh grade. I put up a score somewhere just short of 200k (I want to say 194k+) second only to the friend of mine I played pinball with at the bowling alley every day, who I think put up a score in the 257k+ range. All in all I was pretty proud of myself and my performance back then (this was easily a quarter century before Houston had anything resembling a proper competitive pinball scene), but it was nice to be able to play this game again with a couple more decades of pinball experience under my belt, and punch up a score well into seven digits.

Even more so, I actually figured out the rules of this game, whereas most of the time back in my middle and high school years, I was just smacking the ball around and aiming for what was lit. With a little more practice, I’m looking forward to putting up a 4M+ score sometime in the next year to date (i.e. during or before 2021 November). I hope a score in this range will be enough for the high score board (somewhere on it at least if not #1).

Iron Maiden, the game we played right before Road Kings, was another pretty solid tour de force on my part. It seemed like I made almost everything I aimed for, and started just about every multiball mode in the game one right after the other. The only thing I’m surprised about is that I wasn’t able to rocket into 200M+ territory, signing off with a mere 142.4M+. But that was more than enough to win.

Trident is a machine I’ve struggled with at times. The 257.6k+ I was able to post this time is perhaps the exception to the rule, and would probably get me by in most tournaments and league play. I don’t consider it a truly great score, though; in my view, that label is reserved for 400k+ or so.

With the multiplayer games at a close, I was able to get in a few single player games before it was time to call it a night, most notably on the electromechanical era games (which were all one- or two-player, making a three-player contest rather tedious), and a couple of video games thrown in just for the heck of it. I’m not going to post all my scores from this part of the night, but the highest scores were:

• Beat Time: 3,130
• Friendship 7: 1,309
• Pioneer: 39,510
• Space Shuttle: 656.7k+
• Ghostbusters: 26.20M+
• Deadpool: 28.28M+
• Road Kings: 1.12M+
• Space Station: 1.29M+
• Roller Disco: 106.2k+
• Jungle Lord: 39.0k+
• Blackout: 133.1k+
• Iron Maiden: 48.45M+
• Space Odyssey: 88,890
• Hard Drivin’: 50,351 / 1:52:65 lap
• STUN Runner: 66,445

Even though some of my scores in one-player games were not equal to my prior efforts on the same games earlier in multiplayer, I still feel pretty good about most of them. In particular, I did a little better on Road Kings in the multiplayer games versus single player, but cracking into the seventh digit is still a good indicator of a relatively good score (to me, “great” would begin at around 2M+).

A great time was had by all. My thanks to William for making this possible; he is a great example of the kind of good people we have here in the greater Houston classic gaming community.

So today, my regular job involved a trip to the Beaumont area. After work was done, I had a brief lunch at a nearby Mexican food restaurant, and headed over to Colorado Canyon, originally for a game of mini-golf. I feel like I didn’t too bad, staying relatively close to par until the 13th hole, but still managing to turn in a 59 (+16) for the whole course. Decent, but not exactly living up to the legacy of my grandfather (who was an avid golfer in his later years).

So, after turning in my ball and putter, I decide I’m not ready to go back to Houston just yet. I look through the arcade, and much to my surprise I am greeted by a Ghostbusters pinball machine. With a game started, and another credit in reserve. I play a couple of games, doing well enough to win three replays. Everything plays okay. I decide I’m going to play a few more. In the middle I take a break and play Space Invaders Frenzy, but I do hop right back on Ghostbusters afterwards (the arcade is nearly empty). I win a few replays here and there and finally break through with a smashing 1.36B+. In the interest of brevity I’m only posting this one score, though I easily played 10 games total (many off of replays).

This is the new code, which no longer awards the video mode on skill shots. Ghostbusters is a decent pinball game again. Finally. All the video mode weenies will probably whine now that they actually have to play pinball to get a high score on a pinball machine. Such is life. I’m not a huge fan of video modes, but I tolerate them if they do not unbalance and ruin the game. (That score was made without playing the video modes even once.)

Since the bars and arcades are temporarily shuttered, I’ve been stuck at home playing some old classics. This is a small sampling of my recent bests, in order:

• Atari Video Cube, 1:57.3 (variation 12)
• Atari 2600 Frostbite, 26340
• Atari 2600 Midnight Magic, 483990
• Atari 2600 Stampede, 3212 (I think this was variation 1)
• Atari 2600 Super Football, 24-14 win versus computer
• Atari Lynx California Games BMX, 626