Come to this house

So the rounds. Second round of the day, first with MAT confused about who was the second player, was on the set ``Miaplacidus''. The modern game was a very new one, Stern's Ghostbusters. It just came out a few months ago. It's a funny game, one with a lot of challenging shots, but also one I think is going to age very well. It's hard, and was harder in July, because it's hard finding the shots or the ways to group shots together. But I think it's going to be lastingly popular once players know what to do. Anyway, the game is brutal --- it has to give many compensation balls, because it drains way too easily --- and Pinburgh sets up the games to be almost as hard as possible. A great player could play Ghostbusters for two weeks on one credit. Or for ten seconds. It's a brutal game.

The late solid-state was Bally's 1986 Black Belt, a karate-themed game in which you shoot the pinball into the guy's crotch. I don't mean to be crude. It's just that is exactly what the playfield calls for. I got a couple ramp shots too but mostly, it was what seems like the unsporting play of shooting the guy's crotch.

Early solid-state: Williams's 1978 World Cup, a soccer-themed game. bunny_hugger had played it --- and this whole bank --- the day before. She knew what to do for a boring but easy win. There was a scoop worth 50 points. It would kick out to the right flipper and another kicker that would shoot it back to the scoop. Just don't interfere and you will get as many points you need in the most boring game possible. Someone having a tantrum in her group --- but claiming he was just bored with this --- tilted the game out. For me ...

Well, I'm not shamed to win by a chintzy move like letting the game play itself. I didn't get the chance, though. I got three house balls in a row and never got the ball anywhere near the scoop. bunny_hugger asked how I could have failed to get such an easy strategy going. I didn't have the chance.

And the electromechanical game was Bally's 1969 Cosmos, a beautiful science fiction portrait with a basic game attached. More, it's a game with zipper flippers. With these a trigger can make the flippers come together to form a flat base with no gap between them. If you have nerves of steel you can just let the ball bounce to a stop on them and flip at leisure. If the zippers are flipped together don't flip! But there's also a rollover target that makes the flippers zip apart so if they do you better flip. You can see why this is fun but also hasn't been on a pinball machine since the Nixon administration. I wasn't going first this game, and I learned from that lesson.

I finished the round with 7 wins, 5 losses. I'd jump from 91st-seed to 67th-seed. 27 spots to rise to get into finals. bunny_hugger would have a mediocre session, going 6-6, and rose from 135th to 128th seed.

Trivia: Cleveland's 1908 American League team won as many games as the Detroit team, which won the penant. Detroit had one fewer loss, due to a rained-out game against Washington which they never made up. Source: Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, Cait Murphy. (League rules adopted after this required the playing of any missed games with relevance to the penant race.)

Currently Reading: Discovering the Natural Laws: The Experimental Basis of Physics, Milton A Rothman.

PS: Reading the Comics, October 22, 2016: The Jokes You Can Make About Fractions Edition, and I count two of them.