Most of this session on Godzilla was pretty normal. This is as close to an actual “quick game of Godzilla” as I will typically get; even then, this was actually the best game out of three played (one paid credit, two replays).

This particular wound up being quicker than expected, but I did put up what I felt was a pretty decent score for just walking up to the machine after work and laying one down. (The two scores after this were much lower.) I know I’ve done far better than 191.4M+, this isn’t to brag but just to add another page to the story.

While in the area for work, I ventured down to Quasars Arcade in Corpus Christi. I picked Quasars mainly because of the presence of certain pinball titles. Specifically, these are games I wouldn’t get to play in the Houston area very often, if at all. The list includes The Beatles, Dialed In, Twilight Zone, and Ghostbusters. I did play on some other pinball titles besides those, as well as a few video games.

The pricing structure is kind of strange: you buy a game card and you get a certain number of “Q-Bits” depending on how many you buy. At the time of this writing, $20 for 90 Q-Bits was the cheapest buy-in I saw posted. The more you buy the better deal you get, up to $100 for 650 Q-Bits.

Thankfully phones have a calculator function so I can figure out how much each Q-Bit was worth. (I think they are supposed to be roughly analogous to quarters.) Pinballs and newer video games were priced at 2.9 Q-Bits (around 65¢). Older video games as low as 1.2 Q-Bits (just over 25¢) with some a bit higher. The prize games priced at 5 Q-Bits (around $1.10) and up. Of note, most if not all pinball games at Quasars are set not to award replays except for matching. Instead, the games award extra balls for score (usually one extra ball by score per game).

Despite the presence of a price structure designed for the “leave credits on the card so they’ll come back”, I did by chance swipe my card on a Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga combo cabinet with only 0.4 Q-Bits left (about 9¢) and got a credit anyway.

A lot of my scores from the night weren’t that great but I did have good games on The Beatles, Aerosmith, and Cactus Canyon, and a decent game on Dialed In. In the video game department I put in at least one fairly good run on whatever version of Initial D this was (I think this was 4 but don’t remember) and a passable run on Ms. Pac-Man near the end of the evening. In the case of Dialed In, I was just glad to get to experience the game with all the music and sounds. Getting a decent score was just a nice extra.

There’s not a whole lot to report on this visit. I did manage to put up a 306.7M+ to bump the high score #4 that much higher. However, there was an interesting first that happened on this visit. I was in the middle of the follow-up game to that 306.7M+ score, and during a rather frenetic multiball, all of a sudden the sound went silent and the display froze. While the flippers stayed active for another 15 to 20 seconds or so, they too went dead. Of course, the machine then rebooted, and there was no record of my score (the score that came up was the same 306.7M+ from the previous complete game).

Fortunately the rest of the session went by without incident. The replay score has yet to catch up to how well I usually do when I come by and play, for better or worse.

So I haven’t dropped by Del Mar Lanes in a little while. Much to my surprise, upon my arrival I noticed a freshly started game on Godzilla just sitting there, with another ¾ of a credit. So I got to play two paid credits for a whopping 25 cents total. I say two paid credits because it wound up being no less than six games. I put up another high score and a few more mode records. (I still have the 606.7M+ grand champion from April 10 as well as the rest of the high score board from the last reset.)

Incidentally, that very first game, I wound up putting up 209.6M+ which would temporarily be good for high score #4 before I surpassed that score later in the session. This is not unlike just walking up to a machine in a tournament, and that kind of score in a typical tournament qualifying session would likely be towards the top (depending of course on who else is playing). In a typical strikeout or matchplay tournament, it would likely be good for at least second in the group, maybe first.

I’m mentioning this as a reminder that I am not giving up on tournament play. I do hope to have more tournaments to write about for the second half of the year, whether or not they are ones I have a hand in directing/organizing.

Finally, earlier today, I made a quick jaunt over to Equal Parts Brewing. There are four games in the lineup. Three of them were somewhat familiar to me: Rick and Morty, Godzilla (again), and Terminator 3. The fourth, was NBA (Stern, 2009), not to be confused with NBA Fastbreak (Bally, 1997). This game plays a lot differently from Bally’s take on a basketball themed game. Stern stuck to traditional pinball scoring though there is also a basketball points counter for the curious.

I paid for one credit on NBA and won a second credit via match. The second game’s score was a bit higher so that’s the one I’m posting. After this I played one game of Rick and Morty (taking advantage of the ⅙ credit making my cost $1.25) then moving over to Godzilla. I had a fairly decent romp on Godzilla. I paid for a total of six credits ($1.50 by coins, then $5 for five via credit card) and wound up winning one replay for a total of seven actual games. In the process I “redecorated” what was apparently a freshly reset high score list (thus all the pictures; I made no attempt to document which mode records were set in which games, so this is just what was on the board at the very end).

This past Sunday, the 21st, brought another visit to Einstein’s in Katy. Most of these scores are pretty run of the mill except for my Attack from Mars score at the very end, good enough for 4th place on the scoreboard for now (I’m not really expecting it to last given some the players who usually play here). My best score on The Walking Dead is perhaps another standout, though it was nowhere near enough to get on the board.