Sometimes progress doesn’t look like making finals.
Sometimes it looks like making it one baby step farther than last time and just making it past the cut-line.
The June Starfighters Monthly was one of those days.
Starfighters remains one of my favorite places to play competitive pinball because for $13 you get tournament play and unlimited access to the machines all day. That means every tournament game is also a learning opportunity. If a machine gives you trouble during competition, you can walk right back over afterward and start figuring it out.
My tournament was a mix of highs, lows, and a few machine arguments.
I started with a second-place finish on Gorgar, then fourth place on Elvira Party Monsters, then second-place on Surfer and before running into a rough third-place finish on JAWS, and then Elvira’s House of Horrors decided it was time for a comeback story. And Ghostbusters handed me a painful fourth.
My Elvira House of Horrors game was not pretty.
In fact, it was one of those games where I kept feeling like I was leaving points on the table. But tournament pinball isn’t always about pretty. It’s about finding something that works and cashing it in. A Wild Women Multiball and some serious arguments with Elvira later, I found myself sitting in first place with 11.2 million points.
That win kept me alive heading into the final qualifying round.
The last round put me on RoboCop, a game I didn’t know particularly well. At that point I needed a strong finish, so I did what tournament players often do: read the instruction card, watch what the machine was asking for, and start collecting information. Skill shots, colored directives, a ball lock, and a little persistence eventually turned into a surprise first-place finish and another 7 points.
RoboCop ended up being one of my favorite moments of the day. And it was enough to squeak me over the cut-line.
Sometimes you don’t need to know everything about a machine.
You just need to learn enough to make progress before everyone else does.
Unfortunately, Creature from the Black Lagoon ended my run right after I made it through the cut-line.
Pinball Receipts
The score wasn’t what I wanted, but the machine ended up teaching me a lot.
After the tournament I spent time practicing skill shots, completing Park Your Car objectives, working on Snack Bar modes, and becoming more consistent at starting multiball.
The scores weren’t huge, but the reps were valuable.
One thing I’ve learned this year is that practice doesn’t always show up immediately on the score sheet. Sometimes the win is learning a shot. Sometimes it’s understanding a mode. Sometimes it’s figuring out why a machine keeps beating you. Every rep adds up, even when the score doesn’t.
That’s one of the reasons I love Starfighters. Unlimited play means I can turn a frustrating tournament result into a useful practice session immediately afterward. I also gave Ghostbusters another shot after the tournament. Earlier in the day it had completely humbled me.
Later that evening I put up a 213 million point game, which felt a lot more like the Ghostbusters I remembered.
Sometimes the machine isn’t the problem.
Sometimes you just need another chance.
I didn’t platform in the tournament, but I did make it past the cut-line for the first time simce Starfighters adopted this paced matchplay format.
Pinball improvement rarely happens all at once. It happens through hundreds of little reps, frustrating drains, unexpected wins, skill shots, multiballs, and lessons learned. Every tournament adds another layer.
This month’s lessons came from Elvira, RoboCop, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Ghostbusters.
The standings didn’t end the way I hoped, but I left knowing more than when I arrived.
And that still counts.
See you next month at Starfighters.
Competitive pinball may not look like exercise, but five and a half hours of walking, standing, concentrating, and moving around the arcade still adds up.
Incidental Exercise Receipts
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