This past February 11 came and went with little fanfare, but something happened on that day. Something quite noteworthy, and perhaps something rather unfortunate in a way, but it is what it is.

As of 2022 February 11, I no longer have any active IFPA-endorsed events in my player history. I had taken a voluntary hiatus from competitive pinball play as of June 2019, and had planned to resume right around the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit. (Once the pandemic hit and the IFPA temporarily suspended endorsing events, the earliest I could have had some type of IFPA-endorsed events in my ranking history would have been last August.)

This is, of course, only a temporary situation. I’m not giving up on competitive pinball, and I’m certainly not giving up on playing major tournaments and the chances at fame, honor, and prizes that go with winning them.

On that note, this coming Friday through Sunday, March 25-27, is the Texas Pinball Festival. I will be competing in the Wizards tournament. It’s my first tournament in almost a year (despite my attempts to organize tournaments in the interim). Time permitting, I may be issuing live updates, probably on my Mastodon account. More about that later (I will be posting again prior to my departure from Houston).

But first, I need to clear the air about something. When it comes to competitive pinball events, I still intend to play to win. Of note, however, is the often-overlooked yet quite important difference between the object of the game and the object of playing the game. The object of the game is to win, get the highest score, etc; the object of playing the game is to have fun and enjoy the experience.

These two objectives should not be, and are not supposed to be, mutually exclusive. That is, one should be able to both play to win and play to have fun, and neither have to give up playing to win in order to have a good time nor have to give up having a good time in order to play to win.

I hope to continue to enjoy whatever competitive pinball experiences I am able to participate in for the remaining time I am able to do so on a regular basis. The day may come where it’s just not fun any more; I obviously hope that day is far into the future, if it ever arrives.

Yes, I’m still playing pinball. Perhaps not as often as I would like, but I am still playing.

This is from last Sunday and Monday, March 8 and 9 (in order, separate galleries for each day), both days at Little Dipper. I’m happy with the way Creature from the Black Lagoon is playing; it is a much more effective use of the space than the barely functional The Machine: Bride of Pinbot that used to be there.

Not a whole lot to add here, except it didn’t take long to get on the high score list for Creature. That’s a good thing and segues nicely into the announcement I will make tomorrow.

First things first: I’m not going to go into details on the social aspect of the party, other than it didn’t pan out as expected. I did get a compliment on the Pac-Man shirt I wore. I decided to wear that shirt because it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up, given it was my first time back at Cidercade in quite a while.

I did get a few good scores in on pinball. But, oddly enough I felt a bit more satisfied when playing some of the classic arcade games than I did when playing pinball. The variation of Skee Ball on offer was a particularly nice change of pace from the typical silverball shenanigans.

It’s not that I no longer think playing pinball is fun—it most definitely still is­ for me, at least in a casual play setting—but I haven’t really sat down and played a lot of these old video games before. I’m pretty sure I never played Solar Fox in the arcade, for example, and I got too frustrated with the likes of Space Ace as a preteen video gamer to properly enjoy it.

As a side note here, I can see why Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace didn’t do as well as one would have hoped. They take a special type of play and attention to detail. You have to move the joystick or hit the fire/sword button at just the right time, and you only have three lives, translating into two chances to screw up as the third means game over.

Notable scores:

• Ghostbusters 626.3M+
• Heavy Metal 9.00M+ (high score #4)
• Q*Bert’s Qubes (video) 99,760
• Star Trek 111.4M+
• Star Wars Mandalorian 84.46M+ (high score #1, Razor Crest Multiball champion with 50M)

If you are in one of the three metropolitan areas with a Bishop Cidercade, you’re in luck. All three locations will be hosting a Valentine’s Day stoplight-themed party where attendees will select a colored wristband based on their relationship status: green for available, yellow for “it’s complicated”, red for taken.

Tickets (including further details) are available at Eventbrite. Please be sure you have selected the correct city.

I will be attending the event at the Houston location and am looking forward to a great time.

How about some pinball scores for a change?

These are the highest scores per machine per day from immediately after Houston Arcade Expo until January 31 (last Monday).

• Little Dipper 2021-11-29: Spiderman 25.65M+, The Walking Dead 41.54M+
• Darkhorse Tavern 2021-12-11: Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man 926,520
• Darkhorse Tavern 2021-12-16: Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man 793,320
• Colorado Canyon 2021-12-23: Ghostbusters 648.8M+ (high score #4 and Super Jackpot champion 351.5M+)
• Darkhorse Tavern 2022-01-07: Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man 837,260
• Little Dipper 2022-01-24: Spiderman 62.4M+ (high score #3), The Walking Dead 107.1M+ (Bicycle Girl champion 14.4M+)
• Colorado Canyon 2022-01-29: Ghostbusters 74.02M+
• Little Dipper 2022-01-31: Spiderman 52.94M+, The Walking Dead 173.8M+ (grand champion, tunnel champion 67.6M)

Sidenote: The 107.1M+ on The Walking Dead was frustratingly close to the high score #4 at the time (not currently pictured) which was 107.2M+. That makes the grand champion the following week all the more satisfying.

In case you missed it: Tonight is the first monthly tournament (of what we can only hope are many more) at Little Dipper. See linked post for further details.

I am still working on getting caught up on pinball- and game-related content. There will be new developments to post about and I still have a couple of bar/arcade visit posts to add from late 2021.

In the meantime though, I thought I would post a few pictures from my attendance at Zoo Lights on its closing day, January 9. This was my first time going and though in a way I wanted to attend much earlier in the season, I am grateful that I was able to attend at the very end and perhaps it worked out for the best as the crowds were relatively light (pun intended).