Though we had never met and knew nothing of CY before the match started I liked her right away. Her partner (boyfriend? Friend simpliciter? Relative?) too. They wore masks the whole time, something done by altogether too few people in pinball. I start from the supposition that anyone opposing the mass decision to make everyone get Covid-19 is of good character.
As higher seed ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had first pick of game. She chose Mystic, a bold choice that could pay off well. It's an early solid-state game, one that's a lot of fun, but that is also prone to house balls. If you build the bonus to certain thresholds, it starts from that threshold on future balls, and it's one that it's not too hard to earn an extra ball on. bunnyhugger had spent the weekend before, and the Friday before, practicing and had a good feel for it. She did get to the first bonus threshold, and I think she got an extra ball. It wasn't a great game, not like her practice games were, but it beat CY handily.
CY, as the loser, had next pick of game. She chose Attack From Mars, a 90s game everyone knows how to play. bunnyhugger had been practicing that one too, figuring it could be one of her picks. The Attack From Mars there plays very rough, harder and more tilt-prone than most tables. bunnyhugger figured this made it a good game for her as everyone's confident they know how to play but doesn't know how difficult it is. CY here played right into bunnyhugger's hands: once again my dear love finished with something like double CY's score.
CY next picked The Walking Dead, which bunnyhugger knows tolerably well but never plays anymore. I went back to the front desk to check in case anyone had turned in scores; I thought it was early for any group to have finished four games, but it was possible, and indeed the first couple returns came in before too long. So I only heard afterward what happened. If I have it right, bunnyhugger had an early Prison Multiball, the harder of the two main multiballs to get, but didn't get any great score with it. She had a fair chance at winning anyway, but she had a momentary fluttering of nerve, and fluttering of hand, and lost her last ball in that. Her first loss and she cursed herself for a stupid loss.
bunnyhugger got pick, then, and chose FunHouse, which she'd almost have to do. I stayed up front --- more people were finishing rounds --- but still got to see. RLM, who'd streamed various of the open state championship, had volunteered to stay and stream the women's tournament too. So he kept going around, finding people willing to be streamed as their game started, and bunnyhugger on the game she's famous for loving? Irresistible.
bunnyhugger did not have a good game. Whether nerves or whether the table had just worn down some --- tables change as they're played and FunHouse is always a popular game --- she couldn't get control. The ball kicked out of the scoop hard, to where she couldn't trap effectively. CY had much less trouble. bunnyhugger's impression of the game is that she played incompetently while CY somehow randomly flipped her way to the better score. I didn't think so, and as we go to the videotape we see no, bunnyhugger played with reasonable control; the ball just rocketed to the outlanes in those unfair ways it always does in tournament play. And CY trapped more, playing with more demonstrated skill, than bunnyhugger had felt at the time. Still, another loss.
And yet ... a couple weeks later bunnyhugger was talking with KEC, another of the competitors who was busy with her own games while all this was going on. KEC asked how bunnyhugger could have lost to CY. I'm shocked by that assessment.
bunnyhugger went to another of her pocket games: Hook, an early-90s table themed to the remembered movie. Another great pick: she likes the game, and it's not a common one. And as an early-90s table it's fussy and hard to play in ways games even from the mid-90s are not. Once more bunnyhugger was not playing as well as she had in her extensive practice; particularly, she couldn't get the hang of this repeatable ramp shot that builds up to three million points a shot. But she did get multiball started, good for an automatic ten million points if you plunge the start-multiball shot right, and so she locked the ball and --- uh ---
So something happened. The game rejected her locking the ball for multiball in some weird way, kicking the ball down the drain but putting a new ball in the plunger lane. A quick call to AJH (with PH as backup) confirmed: something weird happened. But it was the sort of thing where you have to shrug and play on. She did, and learned that the game had not only not started multiball, but had wiped out all her progress toward starting multiball. She would have to start that from scratch and, given that she was on the last ball, she couldn't manage all the shots needed.
CY was not having much better luck, as her unfamiliarity with the game showed. Her partner was looking up rulesheets and briefing her in-between her turns (which is absolutely legal; it's only while you're at the table that you can't be coached). She started multiball without knowing how to get an instant ten million from it. But she did start this mode, apparently without knowing about it, that's a solid five million points in bonus and as bunnyhugger forecast, while her ball drained, CY had just squeaked out a win. She would not have had if bunnyhugger got her deserved multiball (unless she learned from bunnyhugger's play about the ten million). CY was now ahead three games to two in the best-of-seven match.
bunnyhugger picked Congo for the first of her must-win games. It's a mid-90s game, based on the bad but enjoyable movie, and she's played it enough to have a fair idea what to do and how to reliably get a good score --- on that game, a half-billion points --- when she plays. Does CY know the game? Might she luck into a billion points? Only one way to know.
Well, bunnyhugger had a terrible first ball, one of those that ends as soon as it starts. This is a hard blow even on a game like Congo where if you can start multiball you can milk it for several hundred million points. bunnyhugger got a multiball going, but somehow couldn't get a jackpot, a most frustrating situation. She managed to build a lead of several hundred million. But CY got multiball going, and got jackpots going, again and again, even to a super jackpot. She finished the multiball several a couple hundred million points ahead. I told bunnyhugger it was hard, but she wasn't that far behind; if she could get the left ramp shot down --- and she'd been doing well on that --- she could make that up. bunnyhugger told me that was ball three.
The game was over, and she had lost. As bunnyhugger had most feared, and as I'd kept saying would not happen, she had been knocked out of the inaugural State Women's Championship in the first round.
No time to curate pictures today; enjoy text instead.
Trivia: About 12,000 Parisians were arrested in the aftermath of the June Days uprising in 1948; 4500 were ultimately jailed or deported to labor camps in Algeria. Source: 1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe, Peter N Stearns.
Currently Reading: Popeye The Sailor: The 1960s TV Cartoons, Fred M Grandinetti. OK so Grandinetti, who has been going over every single King Features Popeye cartoon and mentioning every time a short reused a bit of animation or had someone's shirt change from long-sleeved to short in-between scenes, says of Popeye's Testimonial Dinner that it has ``Fine animation''. This, the short that has a last thirty seconds that just gets done twice over, the first time with half the characters not in the scene. To quote my own review of the short: what the heck was that?
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Date: 2023-02-13 12:23 am (UTC)Yep.