Space City Pinball League Season 4 Week 3: English, [bleep], do you speak it?

Note: Due to recent events, Shawn no longer recommends participation in Space City Pinball League events until further notice. Please see the Bayou City Pinball League website for alternatives.

Our league plays Monday nights. The Houston Texans were playing on Monday Night Football against the Denver Broncos. In case you missed it, they lost horribly. Was I any more ready for prime time?

Games: Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman, Game of Thrones (Premium this time), Metallica, WWE Wrestlemania, Ghostbusters. Notice anything different? No Medieval Madness! No Kiss! (Good riddance to both, though if I can actually play it worth a damn I wouldn’t mind seeing Kiss come back in a later week.)

This week I would be grouped with Austin Knight (who pre-played his games, like I did in week 8 of season 2), Brian Foytik, and Matt Quantz, some of the better competition in this league. Due to Austin having pre-played his games, the score display photos will only show three-player games but I will note Austin’s scores below:

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: 6,205,160
  • Game of Thrones: 107,087,350
  • Star Trek: 6,197,670 (not used)
  • Ghostbusters: 27,997,810
  • Metallica: 32,457,160
  • WWE Wrestlemania: 12,380,700 (not used)
  • Spiderman: 33,766,290

We would begin the night on Game of Thrones. This is a game I feel confident playing. This time, the bottom fell out, and I would manage a paltry 1.5M+. Not surprisingly, that’s good for dead last. One game, one standings point.

The next game: Ghostbusters. I had a reasonably good game, but was unable to take advantage of having super jackpot lit on the last ball. 32.3M+ good for second place to Matt’s 44.3M+, bringing me up to four standings points on the night.

Moving on: Metallica. This game usually does not give me the trouble it did tonight. 5.2M+ good for third place, with both Austin and Matt scoring way ahead of my performance (and Brian’s too for that matter). That’s six standings points.

Fourth game: Spiderman. I put up a rather disappointing 14.2M+. I got one ball locked and lock lit for another ball (or I might have had two balls locked, it was difficult to tell). Either way, another case where I wasn’t able to close the deal and wound up with a much lower score than I probably should have. Eight standings points so far with one game left to go…

And finally: Pirates of the Caribbean. This was at least one game Stern released with these screwball player-selectable dual language ROMs. So Matt does us all a huge favor (not!) and selects Spanish… which sticks for all three of us. Matt finds it hilarious; I am most definitely Not Amused, and I’m (for better or worse) the most Hispanic-looking guy in the bunch (though believe me, I identify as white, even if I’m a regular at Chipotle and Taco Cabana). I fall back on shooting for what’s flashing, but only manage 6.0M+. I fail to beat Austin’s score, which Matt and Brian both surpass easily. Nine standings points… kind of like the 9 points the Texans put up on the football scoreboard in Denver. Apparently I wasn’t any more ready for prime time than they were, with not a single first place finish the whole night.

Incidentally, this is an example of getting a good break from the game draw. Austin’s two unused scores were two of the three weakest performances out of the seven games (with the Pirates of the Caribbean score being the other one). I certainly would not be thrilled with a score well under 7M on Star Trek, and I know I can beat 12.38M+ on WWE Wrestlemania (especially Pro) with anything resembling decent luck and would not expect a score in that range to place any better than third realistically.

I will leave this post as the most recent post for a while, but I will have an announcement to make before the week is up. Stay tuned…