Well done on the Robot score. I always find the Robot Bridge (on that Robot, anyway) rejects a lot of balls!
If we’re all sharing scores, I want to boast about my son, Hector (age 7) for a while
The UK Open was his first tournament. He’d only competed once before (in anything) and that was submitting a ‘best game’ card at a Pinball Republic (PBR) league event, aged 5.
He was, I think, the youngest competitor in the main event - although, possibly only by a few months.
Hector is a very bright, mature, inquisitive little boy, but he has quite major support needs at school, often struggling with noise, frustration and unpredictable situations. As such, we haven’t felt able to take him to events before now and, although he’s been to PBR a few times, we stopped taking him after he became very distressed when he found The Addam’s Family - which he’d planned to play - was out-of-action. We tried taking him to the Pinball Office once, but there was a league event on, and the noise/crowding caused him to flee and hide in the kitchen!
Anyway, he got back seriously into pinball over the summer, and now has Grand Champion on all our machines. We eased him into public pinball venues with a visit to the new PBR and Funland, wearing ear plugs for the first time. He felt too socially anxious to agree to compete in head-to-head competition with other young people (he later agreed, but felt unable to cope as the competition started), but decided he wanted to accompany us to the tournament on Saturday to put in some cards.
I wasn’t sure if he’d manage. We had contingency plans for the situation where he walked into the main hall, felt unable to cope, and walked straight back out again, or where something went wrong and he bolted, completely overwhelmed, into the foyer.
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Anywaaaayyy… None of that happened. Hector was rock solid for six hours (with a break for lunch and to play in a nearby playground with his little brother) entering five cards with his ear plugs in. He managed in a completely new high-stress environment filled with noise, crowding, unfamiliar machines and frustration with barely any adult support, as well as independently choosing machines, liaising with scorekeepers and deciding how to allocate his cards.
Already, I couldn’t be prouder of him
However, to add gravy to this already amazing Saturday pinball lunch, he didn’t come last! His card came 159/160 in the UK Open and he came 147/149 competitors in the PBR Championship. In both competitions, he put some serious heat into the bottom of the field, with several volunteers (and very good players focusing on other competitions) only beating him with their second card. His PBR Championship score was an especial achievement as his best card (of two) came under sustained pressure from adult competitors for nearly five hours on Sunday, but never broke.
His best individual machine score was 55th on Rush Prem with over 31 million. Amazingly, we don’t own a Rush Prem, although he had played it at PBR a few weeks ago.
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In other news, his four-year-old brother, who is also autistic with suspected ADHD and severe sensory issues, entered the youth competition wearing both his ear plugs AND a pair of noise-cancelling headphones (!) and put in a commendable performance on Diamond Lady, scoring a cool ~200,000 after shooting the Spot Target as an opener before fighting his competitor to the last ball. He says the middle drops and spot target reminded him of the Honky Cat Hurry-Up on Elton John. I think he was the youngest competitor in Youth this year.
Anyway, I came home and I literally wept with pride. I am so unbelievably proud of them both
[And, for anyone wondering after reading this wall of text. Yes, I have watched the Robert Gagno Wizard Mode documentary… as has my son
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. Seriously, gotta remember the good games, there were plenty of bad!. Lovely machine that genesis. Amazing score Dan.
(I did play well the previous round in the PBR comp off camera...) Still, no shame in losing to such elite players.
