Superbowl of Wandering Around Looking for Pinball!

This has been a finding pinball weekend.

I went up to visit my daughter at college this weekend for an exchange of prisoners: I gave her a bunch of stuff she forgot/left/couldn't find before leaving, and she gave me the Netflix disc she took with her three weeks ago and still hasn't watched and season 1 of Battlestar Galactica... I need to start watching it because my wife is obsessing on the new episodes and needs somebody to talk about it to, so February is the month when I have to watch all 60-something of them.

Anyway, so we went to dinner at The Pub, which is just a block and a half from her dorm. And to my pleasant surprise, The Pub had a Champion Pub! It had a strobing display and a slightly weak right flipper, but it was in OK shape otherwise. I had the restraint to not play while my daughter sat idling... I waited until I dropped her off, then went back a played a few unremarkable games.

So today was another in a series of pinball odysseys. Today I headed over towards Anne Arundel County to verify some old FSPA pinball locations. The first stops were in College Park. One wasn't there, but the other was Town Hall Liquor Store and Lounge, which had a Doctor Who, Addams Family, and a turned off Demolition Man. It's kind of a creepy location, and I never went there when I went to school at U of MD because I always thought of it as the place where all the homeless guys and alkies hung out. I did pretty good with DW, almost beating the Emporer Dalek stage in multiball, which is better than I've done at home.

Next up was the Crofton Bowling Center, where they had a Roller Coaster Tycoon with a non-working right flipper and a NASCAR with a few flaky switches but otherwise in pretty nice shape. I won a free game but gave it to a kid that was watching me play. After two years of playing Pizza House's loser NASCAR, it was nice to play one that had all of its parts and has been cleaned.

Then I made a stop that I have been looking forward to, Happy House Pizza, which had a Tales of the Arabian Nights. No GI, strobing display, dirtier than all get out, but perfectly playable and a load of fun. They had a Stern Harley Davidson, but I didn't play it.

The next stop was a bowling alley that was supposed to have a SW Ep1, but it was gone. But on the plus side, I stopped at a convenience store and they had my soda, Vault Zero.

So I went on to my last stop, good ol' Crab Town USA. I didn't have a lot of time since I wanted to see some of the Superbowl. So I played a few games... Twilight Zone, KISS, BK2K, Pinbot, and Fish Tales, plus a bonus game of Punch-out. Everything was in surprisingly good condition, though Fish Tales had a big chunk of plastic on the playfield which eventually blocked the lane and the ball got stuck. But this time I noticed there were little request forms on the wall from the operator, so I left a note for him.

And then even though I'm not a big football fan, the Superbowl was actually worth watching until the end. So overall it was a pretty good day!