I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the most ridiculous/ epic things that happened to me while playing was when I broke Mick on a Stick on a TRS. The first games went out the door with Mick’s plastic having no solid backing. That close to the flippers, it was a recipe for disaster. Broken Mick reports skyrocketed online.
Then it happened to me while playing on location. After strutting around the playfield, Mick was standing there right in the middle of the playfield. Just asking for it. So I hit him with a solid shot and BAM, his upper body separated from his lower body. The upper half of Mick went flipping and flying backwards and ended up at the top of the playfield. Most satisfying shot ever. Stern quickly came out with a metal backing for Mick and sent it out free. It was fun while it lasted.
On AFM I had a ball head toward my flipper that I tried to flip away, but the ball must have been bouncing and only caught the top of the flipper. It went straight up into the glass, and was “below” the flipper. Managed to get the flipper back down in time to keep the ball in play.
A couple hard things to do here, but the upper right flipper trap is a more possible and helpful move on quite a few Pat Lawlor games. And legal too in competition!
Last night during a game of BSD, a league player started pity Mist, hit the ball on the magnet so hard that it went up and around the right ramp while the ball he hit it with it took its place on the magnet. This all happened so fast and seamlessly that it looked like one ball went right through the other.
something that is i think “known” to sometimes happen on Black Hole – on mine it happens about 1 out of 100 times: The player goes to the lower playfield, but fails to open the Re-entry Gate (by knocking down a set of drop targets). This is supposed to result in the ball shooting up the Re-entry Tube on the right side, and out the right outlane into the drain. But every once in a while, it shoots up the tube with enough velocity to careen all the way across the area behind the flippers against the apron, and back into play through the left side near the pop bumper. (i’ve also heard some people say it can pop back into play between the flippers, but mine doesn’t seem to do that).
It’s a wonderful feeling when it happens, because it immediately reverses the EXTREME frustration of the lower playfield punishing you with a drain. (love that design, by the way).
Actually the Black Hole at PAPA used to do that. We saw it happen at Pinburgh to one player and so when I later played it I held up the left flipper (a la death saves) and it popped itself up when it was shot from downstairs
To lighten the mood here is something that happend to me on the Doodle Bug at our pinball club: https://imgur.com/kI79rSa The last owner had put some nails down and the ball decided to rest in the slight hole that the nail had left
Wanting to reawaken this thread with ridiculous tournament stories because I’m really missing tourneys right now.
This is one that I was a part of that made for an extraordinary result. Keith Elwin was two finalists in a four-player final in 2009 and took both second and third places! https://www.pinballnews.com/shows/ppe2009/index3.html
Keith had secured two finals slots because there was an opportunity to qualify for the final four on four machines, and a single player was allowed to qualify for the finals multiple times. Keith almost qualified on three of the four games, but Neil Shatz beat him to secure a finals slot!
One of the Keiths was doing well in the finals against me and NES. In the final game of four on CFTBL, the Keith that was not doing as well started doing well on his game, and I began to root for this Keith because I knew he could slow down the Keith that was doing better. As a result, I ended up taking first, but Keith got 2nd AND 3rd place! I’m not sure if this sort of thing has ever happened before, but it was a very unique result.
The other extraordinary thing I remember experiencing in a tournament is in the 2014 INDISC finals when Keith put up 6 billion to win on Dirty Harry over Robert Gagno’s 3 billion, both the highest scores of the entire weekend. Ridiculous indeed!
It took me a couple views to figure out what happened. When you complete drop target banks during multiball, the awards aren’t granted until the multiball ends. So his first ball drained just in time to save the 2nd ball.
In a “cherry on top” from the pinball gods, his ball was also below the outlane switch before the gate opened, so his outlane Rescue wasn’t consumed by that gift, and remained lit as he continued in single-ball play!
