Monday, June 30, 2014

Los Angeles Pinball

At the end of April this year I ended up in Los Angeles after a weekend exhibiting at WonderCon in Anaheim, California.  I was there to record my parts for a rock opera version of my graphic novel Basewood that my friend Andy and I are creating.

On the night after we wrapped all of my parts, Andy and I hit the town and played some pinball to celebrate.  Our first stop was Tower Pizza Bar & Grill.


They had a Family Guy machine that was working great, except for one switch in the miniature playfield, which made it impossible to beat that mode.


Andy and I had actually warmed up on this machine the night before, but sadly had to leave after only one game because the place was closing.  This time we were both getting a lot of replays which was great.  I got the #2 score with 45 Million, which felt pretty awesome.


Next we headed to AMF Mar Vista Lanes by Andy's house.  We had been here once before when there was a Spider-Man, but it had been replaced by a Lord of the Rings.


The left flipper was in the process of dying, but I still felt like this was the most satisfying game of LOTR I had ever played.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is my favorite set-up for playing pinball.  Two friends, working together to learn more about a machine.  We figured out the mechanics of a lot of the modes, and made sense of the bewildering playfield layout, which has always confused me.  It got me excited to play this game again and to get a little deeper into the ruleset, whereas before this, I always avoided this machine because I felt it was too complex.


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