RLM's Thursday night pinball tournaments aren't the only ones out there. There's other tournaments, though. Even on Thursdays. Particularly, there's one at a barcade in Jackson, less than an hour south from here. It's a place we'd never been before, but one of those we always kind of considered maybe getting to sometime. So this time, we tried it.
It was surprisingly easy to find. Basically we had to turn onto US 127 south, and then forty minutes later, make a left turn into town, and that was it. The barcade, Tilted, has nineteen pinball games in a long, skinny storefront with a lot of nice old brick for the walls. Also a chalkboard menu that listed stuff without prices or that was crossed out. All pleasant enough, although we got there bare minutes before the tournament was to begin and so we didn't have time to warm up on anything.
The tournament was to be a series of match play rounds, three- or ideally four-player groups and getting score based on your finish. I felt good about the first table I got called up on, Godzilla, since that's a great, fun table with a friendly playfield and oh my ball just drained. And again. I had a right lousy game but, with some effort, pulled myself slightly ahead of one other person in my three-player group. All right; maybe I just needed to warm up, despite pinball conventional wisdom that you play great when you're cold.
The second round and, finally, the one putting me up against ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger, came out better for me, with a first-place finish on Stranger Things. She got a third-place finish and was already forecasting the day to be lost. (She'd gotten a second her first game).
The third round left me feeling like it might be hopeless, when I had a terrible game of Deadpool and took fourth place. (This two days after I played a horrible game on Deadpool for pinball league.) I tried to reassure bunnyhugger that she wasn't out of it by pointing out that I'd had a worse finish than she had by that round. She wouldn't believe that.
And, not unfairly: this was my last bad finish. The rest of qualifying, three rounds, I took first place each time. bunnyhugger would have a worse time of it, taking commanding first place finishes on Wizard of Oz and on Toy Story 4, and putting up a game of Led Zeppelin that would have won any other round, any other group, but not against someone who put up an impossibly good game. But a last-place finish on Munsters --- and that first-round last-place finish --- kept her out of finals after all. Meanwhile, though, I was in finals.
Finals would not be the five-hour marathons of RLM Amusements. It would be a single game, played on Game of Thrones, among the top four finishers. Game of Thrones is not a game I play well, although I've been starting to learn a few things, like, send the ball into the upper playfield and mess the targets around there, as that counts for a lot. The barcade had the version of Game of Thrones with no upper playfield. No matter; we all had mediocre first balls and maybe my usual poor game would be enough.
Nah. Player one absolutely blew the game up over the second and third balls, getting to something like 400 million points. I had actually managed that score a couple times, chaining together a mode or two and a multiball. And I could manage the ramp shot that would lead to the upper playfield; it's not quite as valuable as it would be if there were an upper playfield, but it's close.
So my third ball I go up trying to do this. And utterly bomb on the multiball; it barely lasts any time, not scoring anything worthwhile for the mode and nothing good in multiball. It's hard to get the multiball started a second time but, you know, what do I have to lose for trying? And I can restart modes well enough and maybe make progress on them.
What followed was a solid ten minutes or more of wood-chopping. I couldn't lose the ball, but I also couldn't manage the high-value shots needed to get the huge points payout I needed. Still, I'm earning some points, and I can keep doing that. And finally, I see the ball lock lit and manage after four million tries the shot to the center ramp that lights it and clap my hands. I have the third ball lock ready and in the resulting multiball I'll surely win.
No multiball starts. I had only locked ball two. I had to get the ball lock lit up again, or the mode finished, and ... I couldn't do it. I had managed some incredible playing, yes, and even got applause, and I was at least sure to have second place in the tournament.
So here's how I did not get second place. Player four, who'd been middling around with the same sort of mediocre scores we all had after ball one, got the modes and multiball together, and the scoring together like I had hoped. In two or three minutes he'd made up the 400 million points that I'd needed. It was an amazing performance too, and neither the first player nor I could feel cheated by that. Still, it stung a little to have a lot of better-than-average play for me turn up nothing.
On the way home we argued about whether I always beat her in tournaments. I looked up our relative finishes on the International Flipper Pinball Association web site and found that, from the start of 2023 to today, we're tied in who finished higher (and at one tournament both finished in the same rank), but this will not end the debate.
Next on the photo roll? Not the Ingham County Fair, but dropping stuff off so bunnyhugger's photographs could be considered for, and ultimately collect, awards for the high quality of her photography.
My car, resting in the parking lot, near the exhibition hall area. Also that nice not-quite-covered entrance that looks like it wants to be a tunnel.
Behind my car you can see the trucks of stuff setting up; the day after is opening.
bunnyhugger filling out the tags for her artwork, the photographs she'd enter. You can see the greater length of the exhibition hall behind.
Vendor tent, I think, getting set up.
In just a couple days there'll be so much stuff and so many people here. I think the white tent was used for bingo.
Trivia: Some ballast bags, made of rubberized fabric, for the airship Macon contained 4500 pounds of water, which is just a bit less than the weight of an SUV. Source: When Giants Ruled The Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship, John J Geoghegan.
Currently Reading: Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie, Gary Weiss.
