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And then there was my climb in the A Division of pinball league finals. My first round was to be against MAG, and was the only one I figured I could plausibly win; we're roughly evenly matched. But the winner of this round would face the winner of DMC versus PCL --- that is, DMC --- and after losing against DMC would face either FAE, RED, BMK, and MWS, any of whom are good enough to make state champion.
MAG had first pick, and chose Foo Fighters, which I was glad of because it's one of my stronger games. He had a very strong first ball and I had two balls of absolute nonsense. Last ball I went up needing to make up 110 million points on one ball and, good greif, but I actually did it, after a long chopping-wood grind. MAG, as the loser, had the right to pick the next game and chose Black Knight: Sword of Rage. Ordinarily this would be a good choice because Sword of Rage is a very erratic game, but the past month or so it's decided that it really wants me to play it, and I've had a succession of killer games on it. So I did this time, giving me my first win and ensuring that, whatever happened, I wouldn't finish below sixth place in league.
This did mean my next opponent was DMC, who had (it turns out) needed all three games to send PCL to the second-chance bracket. He had game choice, and chose John Wick. I chose to go first, reflecting my confidence that he was most likely going to beat me and we might as well move on to the next game when he'd passed my score. But John Wick, like Sword of Rage, is one of those games I'm having an unaccountably skilled phase in. When I finished my first ball DMC, coming back from the bar, looked at my score and did a comedic double-take, a pretty friendly move from a more remote player. While I did have a surprisingly good lead through two balls yeah, he beat me on the third. This gave me game choice and, considering what games I might at least put up a good show on? Or even win on? I went to Tales of the Arabian Nights and had, as on Foo Fighters, two lousy balls and a ten-million-point deficit for my third. Reader, I did not make it up, but I got pretty darned close especially considering I was on my last tilt warning most of the game.
On to the second-chance bracket, where if I won three rounds of best-of-three matches I could go back to finals. My first opponent was RED, and remarkably I had game choice, so went to The Addams Family. After two solid first balls we both flopped balls two and three, but I flopped a tiny bit less and claimed my win. RED then chose the newest game in the venue, Star Wars: Fall of the Empire, based on the parts of the Original Star Wars Original Trilogy that weren't used in the last two Star Wars pinballs from Stern. I barely know anything about this game and can't even reliably get a multiball started on, which is absurd when you realize any pinball game post about 1995 is going to give you a multiball like it or not. But he was also having a lousy game and ultimately he won the race to the bottom. RED was going home for the night, avoiding the worst of the storm. And meaning that, as he was the person with keys to the games, there'd be no more opening machines and freeing stuck balls. I don't believe this ended up mattering.
I couldn't believe I'd beaten RED, but I knew there was no way I'd beat BMK, next opponent. And then somehow, on BMK's choice of Deadpool, I did. He then picked Sword of Rage, my second visit to the game that night, and that was really peculiar to me since I believe he was in the group with me when we played it a couple weeks ago in league and I tore the game up. We both had really good games on this one, but I had a slightly better game and so, somehow, beat him two games to nothing.
This brought me to the last round of the Second Chance Bracket, incredibly, playing FAE to see who would go on to finals. Also at this point I was assured a trophy, and was now playing to see whether third, second, or even first. I figured there was no way I could beat FAE, but then, there was no way I could beat BMK and beating RED was pretty unlikely too. FAE had first pick and chose Star Trek and, what do you know, but after two mediocre balls I pulled everything together for the last and not just won but won handily, with a score maybe three times what I needed. I couldn't believe it either. FAE then picked Star Wars: Fall of the Empire, and did not repeat RED's mistakes. I don't think it's true that their first ball beat every score I've ever had on it combined, but this was closer than I'd like. So I was --- finally --- playing the third game of a round, and had my pick.
When I thought I was going to get knocked out on Star Trek I'd done a little intelligence-gathering on the tables, mostly looking for ones with high score tables with few FAE's on them as my best shot. Monster Bash, one of the 90s Williams tables based on collecting the Universal Movie Monsters into a band, felt like a good pick, something I enjoy, am strong on, and not prone to letting anyone have preposterous runaway games. And then, on a table where I can always collect Creature From The Black Lagoon, Wolf Man, Mummy, and Dracula before starting Frankenstein multiball, I couldn't get any of them. I had to struggle on the last ball just to get Frankenstein multiball by itself, never mind any companion monsters. Which would have been all right as FAE was having a similarly weirdly bad time of it. But their last ball they got The Mummy and Frankenstein going together, and blew past my score in what probably wasn't so excruciatingly long a time to wait. I just had to wait for the multiball animations to pass long enough that I could confirm that I had lost.
And there it was: after a night I was ready to kneel on, I ended up beating several people I didn't believe I could, and took home a third place trophy. I never figured that I'd rank that again.
That's not all I have to share about pinball league finals, but I also have more to share about Le Grand Huit. Let me share another half-dozen photos with you, to start:
Near the bar they had a carousel which rotated continuously ... and which was raised to the top of the ceiling, so that you could not ride it, but you could see it working from an angle you never really look at carousels from.
Another view of that elevated carousel. For scale remember that even at the lowest none of these poles were in danger of hitting any person's head.
And then more pinball! As if the four games already listed weren't a curious enough set they also had Gilligan's Island and Surf N' Safari. Both kind of fun games, but we were out of change and you can see the coin slot here was taped over.
The instructions card for Gilligan's Island, which yeah, explains it all pretty well, really.
The French version of the anti-drug warning.
So, the Gilligan's Island pinball, like many Gilligan's Island projects, couldn't get Tina Louise's image rights, which is why you'll notice she's facing away from the viewer in the backglass there, and why when the dot matrix display does a little roll call of the cast, well, in English rather than show her it just shows marquee lights and ``A Movie Star''. Or, in French ... there you go.
Trivia: Scotland began using January 1st as New Year's Day from 1600. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel.
Currently Reading: In The Shadow Of The Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965 - 1969, Francis French and Colin Burgess.
