Pinball League in SoCal

Alright, wanna know all the tables we had available to play?

Let's start on the main wall, left to right...



Guns 'N Roses*
Star Wars (Data East)*
Godzilla*
Lost in Space*
Apollo 13*
White Water
The Shadow
Creature from the Black Lagoon*
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Theatre of Magic
Congo*
Tales of the Arabian Nights*
Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure*
Medieval Madness*
Cactus Canyon*
Attack From Mars



On the east wall, where AFM was, we had...

Cirqus Voltaire
Twilight Zone
Doctor Who*
World Cup Soccer '94

Opposite those 4 were these three...

Water World*
Riverboat Gambler
Stargate*

Back to back with those three were 3 tables from companies I'm not familiar with. Unfortunately I only caught the name of two, and none of them were turned on to play.

Grand Prix
U-Boat 65
Unknown

Opposite the main wall to the south, the Stern wall.



Star Trek LE
AC/DC LE*
Lord of the Rings LE
Tron LE
Metallica LE*

On the east wall 4 more tables that weren't turned on for play...

Spooky
Hot Wheels
Farfalla
Verne's World

Outside the arcade, there was a small room converted into a mini arcade. He had a cool display cabinet filled with miniature tables (4" in length) of a lot of the actual machines. He also had an Aliens Extinction video game in there along with the following...

Sexy Girl (2 of 'em)
Paragon*
Flash Gordon*
Embryon*

There was one other that like Sexy Girl, had a screen set into the playfield but I completely forget what it was.

Out in the living room, 3 more tables were set up just for the tourney...

X-Men LE*
Ford Mustang* (not an LE, unsure if Pro or Premium)
Sleic Pin-BALL*



I put an * next to all the tables I got a chance to play at least once on. I made a point to jump on machines I normally would pass up in favor of favorites, and hit 22 in total.

As I mentioned before, these tables were all in amazing condition. There might of been an issue here and there, like Creature was wildly out of level, or the way X-Men kicked out, but that's it. I did come away with some thoughts...

G'n'R is a kick. It was the first table I played when I walked in, and I could have played it for a long while if there weren't everything else calling to me. That's saying something too, as I loathe how Data East machines play.

I hate the way playfield artwork looks on Sega tables. It's like playing on top of a poster, not an actual wood playfield. There's just nothing pleasing about it. Say what you will about Stern and photoshop, because Sega makes those look like art.

I really badly wanted to see the 13 ball multiball on Apollo 13. The game play itself was doing nothing for me, but then I found the shot that would trigger the ball madness. Lemme just say, when it started I gave out an audible laugh. You can't help but feel joy having that many balls on the table at the same time, even if it's just lunacy. Of all the tables I played that day, that particular moment was my favorite.

So Water World and Stargate. As much hate as I dump on Gottlieb, everyone is always bringing up Stargate at least. Know what I say? NO. Stop. Blech. Both were ugly, crowded, had weird shots, and I got no enjoyment.

Speaking of ugly, those Zaccarria machines. The plastic they use on them looks of the same quality you'd find on knock off kids toys made in Tijuana. The colors are horrendous, as is the theme integration. I've played Farfalla at a different location, so I can say I didn't much enjoy the game play either with that one. I wish I could have played Verne's World, as it had some interesting things going for it even while failing at others.

So there you have it. Good times, all machines on free play, and I fell right in the middle of the pack for the tourney. Not too often you get to go to a place that has as many machines as in your TPA collection! No idea what next month has in store, but I'm sure I'm gonna start repeating locations from last year.

Meh, there's more pinball machines in that one house than in my entire city.

I'll continue to appreciate Stargate as it is a good game when you're not flooded with limited editions and pinball machines that cannot be found outside of collectors houses.
It was a machine that was in the wild, easy to find, and I rarely ever found a broken one back n the day. Unlike many of the highly requested titles that I would encounter during the same time period.

Had our second League meeting of the season, and it was a horrible one for me. I'll just get right into it, and I'm not even gonna bother with the scores. Instead, I'm gonna humiliate myself with showing where I placed overall! We were at this buy Bill's house, and since I've posted tourneys from his house twice before, I'm not gonna elaborate on what he had machine wise. Cactus Canyon Continued was there, and I've already started a different thread about that.

Buccaneer 20th of 22
I hate EMs. This table in particular does not like my style of play, and where everyone else in my group was draining down the middle, I was inexplicably having outlane problems. Not a good way to start, took last in my group of 3.

Cirqus Voltaire 4th of 22
As you can see, I was rockin' on this table. Unfortunately, I was in the same group as the guys who took 1st and 3rd overall. That means I took 3rd in my group, and didn't score good tourney points. I only missed out on higher ranking by 4 million points too. I had 2 balls get stuck in the ring master pit, and after they were freed I'd lost my mojo. I actually managed to defeat all the ring masters too, and only had 3 marvels left before joining the circus. Some days, you just get put into the wrong group!

Funhouse 18th of 22
Talk about getting nothing going on. This game was practically over before I started. So bad, I honestly don't recall what went wrong. 4th in my group of 4.

Cyclone 18th of 23
Here's where I should have had an easy 2nd place finish in my group. Only one other guy was playing good, and I was right on his heels going into ball 3. During ball 2, I had double scoring going, but couldn't hit anything to save my life. At the start of ball 3, I hit the mystery wheel for...zero points?? Adding insult to injury, it kicked the ball out straight down the middle, right over the top of my raised flipper (which normally would have caught it). So I scored next to nothing on that ball, and fell to 3rd in my group.

Addams Family 4th of 22
This table has stomped on my in all previous tourneys. This time, it all went right. Sorta. I got both Showtime multiball and quick, but neither time could hit the jackpots. So while I scored okay, it could have been so much more. I took 1st in my group (for once), but compare it to CV. Same overall placement, but I got 10 points for TAF and only 6 for CV. Still, glad I finally did something on this machine.

Jack*Bot 22nd of 22
Oh my god. Just pure suckage. Right off the bat, we could all tell the table wasn't level after ball 1. I turned on my level app on my phone, and sure enough, it was -2 degrees to the right. Everybody was just like, let's play anyways. So I watched as balls arced instead of traveled in straight lines. Arced right down the middle.

So overall, I dropped from 23rd to 33rd in tourney standings. Ouch. Hope next time is much much better.

Rough night SYT, but I'm still jealous you got to play those machines. You'll get 'em next time.