87 people, all told, would come to play in the ``WWC OPEN Satellite tournament'' tournament, to use its elegant name. The format? Four strikes, match play, with the bottom two people in a group of three or four getting a strike each. And the only person I really knew there was ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger, so how long would it be until we were matched? ... Turns out, we never would be. There were enough people that we weren't put against each other before we each had gotten four strikes.
My first group was in Aerosmith, Stern's first game with a video screen instead of dot matrix display, and coincidentally one that was brand-new when bunnyhugger went to the Women's World Championship back in 2017. It's vanished from every venue around here, but I felt oddly confident. The table is one that's punishing if you miss your shot, but I've been getting better about aiming, and I've gotten to understand valuable things like how a Stern game signals that a particular shot in the mode is worth double what every other one is. (It's typically the flashing red shot, as opposed to the solid red shot, and it's typically either the leftmost or the rightmost shot not collected yet.) So I felt like, hey, I could at least get into second place with oh sorry, ball drained, no ball saver, a common constraint on modern games. This got a lot of people, in my group and over the night. Kept the game moving, at least. I would end up struggling into third place, barely. First strike.
Next round was on the Gottlieb game Wizard, which was the object of surprise and speculation because the games list for the women's tournaments just listed it as 'Wizard' and everyone expected this was the Bally Wizard game of the mid-70s. Nope; this was the early-70s Gottlieb game nobody had ever heard of. bunnyhugger discovered this when she went the weekend before, and --- letting her sportsmanship win out over the hopes to have an informational edge --- informed people about it, with I think only one person telling her she was wrong about the games at the venue.
The staggering thing, though, is that I had a killer game on this, rolling past the 99,990 maximum that the scoring reels can show so quickly that I didn't realize it at first. All I knew at first was that I'd had a long game but somehow had 10,000 points less than the person who went first. This because the backglass light reading 100,000 was obscured by a sign posted on the single-player game, warning about tilt ending game or something like that. It was when another player similarly rolled past 99,990 that I realized what the stray light visible in the picture recording my score meant. I moved the sign to somewhere it wouldn't obstruct anything.
Next up: Future Spa, a game set in Extremely 1980 Future. Admire here the art and then ponder which ``Because My Tears Are Delicious To You'' book that backglass represents. The goal here is just rolling over the lanes that spell out the words 'Future Spa' a lot, and maybe hitting the drop targets for a bonus multiplier. Also, avoiding this nasty little thing where there's a gap on the lane that feeds a ball to the right flipper, and a bumper over top that gap, ready to deliver death to people who thought they were bringing the ball under control on the right flipper in two distinct ways. I had a magnificent game on this, though, taking my first first-place of the night, and I got to thinking if I could keep up this pace of one strike for three rounds? I might finish on top of this tournament.
Fourth round and the first one where someone could possibly be knocked out. I'm on a group on Cheetah, an early-80s Stern that I know from playing at MJS's polebarn. I know the things you're supposed to do are knocking down this set of numbered drop targets in order --- hitting one out of order doesn't count, it jumps back up --- and something something something bonus lane. I can't get that together any but do discover that the ball really likes spending time in the pop bumpers and this little bank of three drop targets up top there. I feel like I'm doing all right here, but come in third, losing to one woman who'd the next day take fourth place in the North American Championship Series, and to another woman who'd go on to win that night's whole tournament. Any other group I'd ... probably have landed second or third place too, really.
bunnyhugger had a worse time of it, by a little bit. She came in first or second her first two rounds, taking no strikes, but then taking strikes on her nemesis Gorgar and then again on Flicker. That last hurt because Flicker --- an old-time-movies-themed game --- is just a reskinned version of Boomerang, a game she's gotten to know from its haunting of Pinball At The Zoo and other Michigan tournaments. But she recognized that identity too late, and couldn't capitalize on the strategic knowledge. (If it would have helped; the game played differently enough from the Michigan Boomerang that I couldn't put anything together when I played it just for fun.) Also we couldn't recognize most of the figures in the art. Take your own try and see how well you do on them. Also note how in the backglass the 'i' is lowercase while the rest of 'Flicker' is capitals and ponder why that choice was made. She was despairing about her fate and grumbling about how I always do much better than her, prompting me to repeat the statistics I had gathered after the Jackson tournament where from January 2023 to that point we were tied in outcomes. Didn't help.
On to the back half of the tournament!
You're getting some more bunnies on show here. I didn't think you would mind.
Uh-oh. Bunny has noticed me and seems to be deciding what response is appropriate.
Oh! Retracting all legs and turning into a loaf of bun is the chosen response. I got off easy that time.
Loafing bunny approaches the state of being a disapproving orb.
Californian rabbit up front: ``I'm right behind me, aren't I?''
Californian rabbit in the middle: ``Oh no, and now I'm right behind me too, aren't I?''
Californian rabbit taking the chance for a little makeout session with the rabbit next door regardless of where their front-of-cage self wants to be.
Trivia: In January 1567 Queen Elizabeth dissolved the English parliament, in part out of irritation with its insistence on having the succession settled, such as by having the Queen marry and bear children. She advised the Commons, ``Beware however you prove your prince's patience, as you have now done mine! Let this my discipline stand you in stead of sorer strokes, and let my comfort pluck up your dismayed spirits. A more living prince towards you ye shall never have.'' Source: The Life Of Elizabeth I, Alison Weir.
Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby. Most staggering thing I've heard in ages: we know people to be descendants of Confucius, with the (as of the book's publication) 79th generation in the main line and 86th in a subordinate branch. Right?
