First things first: I’m not going to go into details on the social aspect of the party, other than it didn’t pan out as expected. I did get a compliment on the Pac-Man shirt I wore. I decided to wear that shirt because it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up, given it was my first time back at Cidercade in quite a while.

I did get a few good scores in on pinball. But, oddly enough I felt a bit more satisfied when playing some of the classic arcade games than I did when playing pinball. The variation of Skee Ball on offer was a particularly nice change of pace from the typical silverball shenanigans.

It’s not that I no longer think playing pinball is fun—it most definitely still is­ for me, at least in a casual play setting—but I haven’t really sat down and played a lot of these old video games before. I’m pretty sure I never played Solar Fox in the arcade, for example, and I got too frustrated with the likes of Space Ace as a preteen video gamer to properly enjoy it.

As a side note here, I can see why Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace didn’t do as well as one would have hoped. They take a special type of play and attention to detail. You have to move the joystick or hit the fire/sword button at just the right time, and you only have three lives, translating into two chances to screw up as the third means game over.

Notable scores:

• Ghostbusters 626.3M+
• Heavy Metal 9.00M+ (high score #4)
• Q*Bert’s Qubes (video) 99,760
• Star Trek 111.4M+
• Star Wars Mandalorian 84.46M+ (high score #1, Razor Crest Multiball champion with 50M)