Tag: preview

It’s League Night tomorrow (Tuesday 11/4) and not a moment too soon.  This is meeting #6 of 8 for Season 3, so we are starting to head into the home stretch.  The gods of chance have decreed the following games for our friendly little competition:

• Attack from Mars: AfM has been down for quite a while.  It’s perennially popular and so I assume many will welcome its return.  Plus, even if you have the lowest score in the league, there’s the consolation that your non-pinball friends will think it sounds impressive.  “A hundred million points?!  WOW!!”
• Addams Family: In my last preview, I stated, “Everyone loves Addams Family!”  It turns out I was wrong about that.  Everyone loves the voices in Addams Family.  The punishment the game deals out, not so much.  I stand corrected.
• Indiana Jones: Indy gets a sequel, after its unexpected appearance at the last League Night when it served as a replacement for Getaway.  The endless search for the Mode Start will continue.  I’m almost positive it exists, but it hides every time I try to shoot it.
• Junk Yard: Oh, Junk Yard, you devil!  Every time we try to include it at League Night something goes wrong.  Still, the right ball recycle has finally been repaired, giving us hope that it’s been given some TLC in general.  Maybe we’ll see its angelic side this time.

Be seeing you all at the Avenue tomorrow at 7!

Update: Addams Family is on the fritz.  Matt has announced that the replacement will be Austin Powers.  (I’m just lucky that The Simpsons is apparently still down…)

Rejoice! For tomorrow (Tuesday, if you’ve lost track of the week already) is League Night.  Our beloved organizer Matt has announced the games (chosen by random lottery).   Assuming no mechanical troubles, our games will be:

• Junk Yard: This one hasn’t been chosen as a league game for a very long time due to its frequent mechanical issues (getting stuck various places, double dispensing balls). It’s nice to see it back in the rotation… knock on wood. I expect to see a lot of people going for the fast point grab of the dog video mode. “Hey, that’s not pinball!” Don’t rely on the right ball recycle, whatever you do: it’s still not working, which is why the rat on that side looks especially shifty-eyed…
• Getaway: Not a popular game with some of the players in the league. It giveth to some and taketh away from others… and it tilts if you look at it cross-eyed. Let’s just hope no one breaks the launcher again because I absolutely do not want to play any Simpsons.
• Addams Family: Everyone loves Addams Family! (I’d love it even better if they turned up the sound so we could hear it…) And what an appropriate choice for the last league night before Halloween. As is…
• Monster Bash: Another great choice for late October. I know this is a favorite for several of the league regulars including Matt. Get ready to stack those modes like a Dagwood sandwich. Delicious, delicious points!

We are now moving into the second half of the season and so competition is really going to heat up, especially for the third place position.  Aaron suggested last season that second prize should be something amazing like an animatronic giraffe. I say this season third prize should get this tasteful statue:

Be seeing you all at the Avenue tomorrow at 7!

Tomorrow is the night we all look forward to, League Night!  The competition starts at 7 p.m.  Our beloved organizer Matt has announced that the games for this time will be Lord of the Rings, World Cup Soccer, Indiana Jones and Junk Yard.  This is, as always, dependent on the machines behaving.  Junk Yard, particularly, has developed a bad habit of loading two balls (the reason we had to abandon playing it last time) and if this is still going on we will have to pick something else.  If so, I am hoping for anything but Simpsons or Getaway, both of which are unkind to me.

My highly inexpert game selection analysis: 

• Lord of the Rings tends to be popular all around, so I don’t anticipate a lot of crying about that one.  Well, except for the lack of a ball save on it, but we’ve all been crying about that so long that the tears have run dry.  Russell needs to make his reappearance so he can show the rest of us how to make grooves in the floor with it.
• World Cup Soccer is a friendly game, treating most people pretty well.  I anticipate a lot of high scoring games on this one (even adjusted for pinflation).
• Indiana Jones has its fans and its detractors in the league.  You can count me among the latter.  If you can’t manage to hit the mode start (which loves to just skip the ball right over the back on a dead aim shot) you get nothing.  Having said that, though, I have seen people just go for the multiball before and do fine that way.  That’s a harder way to get points (versus a fast grab on the video modes) but it can be done.  Just, well, not by me.
• Junk Yard is generally well liked, or at least I don’t hear a lot of complaining about it (but that may be because we haven’t used it for league play in a while).  But beware!  Beware the right ball recycle!  It does not recycle your ball but whisks it to a landfill never to be seen again.  (Will this ever get fixed?)  Prepare for some gnashing of teeth over unjustly lost balls.

Update: Matt has announced that, should Junk Yard still be running its ball loading two-for-one special, we will be playing Tales of the Arabian Nights.