Results!

Well, I came to PAPA last weekend and ended up having a lot of fun. I went up on Friday. It was a pretty long drive -- over 4 hours with limited stops -- but when I got there it was pretty impressive. It's basically a huge carpeted warehouse filled with lots of fairly well-maintained pinball machines. The center area was roped off for competitions, but all the other games were available for play, usually for 50 cents each. Then off to the side there was the big board showing scores and standings. There are a handful of video and novelty games for the kids, too.

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.