The collection is pretty awesome. A lot of them are organized by theme, so you have a Space area (with Space Shuttle, Space Station, Star Trek, Attack+Revenge from Mars, Space Invaders, etc.), a Zaccaria section, an early EM section, etc. I got to catch up on my recent Stern games (24, CSI, and Batman) and play some super-rare games (Varkon, Blackwater 100, and Joust to name a few). And to contrast the lame-ass crap that you see at shows, all of these games were in perfectly reasonable working order -- maybe not all perfect, but highly playable. I can't think of one game I played that was mechanically not up to snuff.
The competition went OK for someone who didn't care whether he won. I entered two tournaments, "Classics" and the lowest division... if I had managed to make it to the playoffs in C division, I would have had to have come back on Sunday, but I didn't think I would and I solidly met that expectation. Classics was mostly EMs and a few early SS games, and I was in the top 8 for an hour or so. I ended the day in the top 25% out of 100 players, which I thought was fine. I even had a top 10 score on one of the games, but that was balanced by my bottom 10 score on another. In C Division I can in just out of the upper third, and playing a couple of sucky games didn't help... I only got points for two of my five games, Batman (which I did spanked in practice) and Doctor Who (with which I was able to use secret techniques gleaned from playing at home, namely racking up a huge playfield multiplier then starting multiball). Both games I finished in the top 40. Overall, I had a good time and I thought I did fine for my skill level.
I did meet up with a couple of people from the league, which allowed me to have the novel experience of actually hanging around with people at a pinball-related event. I even got to play a few games with a guy in my division, which was pretty fun. We played a few games of Joust, which is a blast with two players... you play 3 normal balls, then the game spews all the balls out onto the playfield for 30 seconds of nuttiness. I was invited to join the group for dinner, which was nice. It did keep me out later than I would have liked, because they were all staying in hotels and I had a 4 hour drive ahead of me. So as soon as we got back, I jumped in my car and drove.
The trip back was hard but not the helldrive it could have been. Towards the end I was stopping every 30 minutes or so just to keep myself in drivable condition -- not helped by all the budget-related rest area closures. I finally made it home at 2:30 AM.
Next week are the league finals, so we'll see how that goes.
And one final note, on Saturday I beat my current high score on Paragon with a score of 962,000. I basically got the 40K super bonus on the first ball and the 5x multiplier for most of the balls. Assuming uniform scoring and adjusting that to a 3 ball game, that would have put me in 4th place for that game in the B Division at PAPA. Sadly, I checked the Classic Joe scoresheet from my youthhood and found that my top score for the Big P was 1.02 million, so I have a little farther to go before I can do le Danse Superieur on my 18 year-old self.
