19/08/2026
We had 11 players at Tower Cinemas Pinball Club last night. We were waiting around a little while for Mitchell Joy to show up to make even numbers but he apparently got caught in the teaching Twilight Zone.
We had two new players last night - Brett Van Holt and David Locke. Both new to the club but judging by their ability, not new to pinball. Brett has a Williams Big Deal pinball at home which seemed to help him on our oldest machine Space Invaders. Brett put up a very big score in the last round to get his first win of the night. Brett also won an Amusement Machine Distributors t-shirt.
When Brett signed up I asked David if he was going to play as well. He said "I'll try but I'm not very good" He then put up a great score on AFM in his very first game. As he did on Godzilla. Unfortunately in both games player 4 managed to chase him down each time. David also won an AMD t-shirt. Hope to see both of these guys at another Pinball Club night.
We also had some Central Coast visitors last night Con George, Suze Louise and Michael Bird. Con started out slow but had a perfect round in the second round and held on with two second places in the final round to force a playoff for a spot in the finals with Peter Schmalenberg. Peter also managed a perfect round along the way and ended the qualifying with 3 wins, 2 thirds and a last. Both players finished on 28 points which was 8 clear of the next closest players. As we were making pretty good time I didn't put the tiebreaker game on Fish Tales this week (Peter had already played it twice somehow - thanks balanced game banks...) and instead the battle for the last spot in the finals was played on The Mandalorian. Con was able to grab the win and Peter continues his run of 5th place finishes. I reckon it would have to be the 5th or 6th time Peter has been in a playoff position.
Sue also had a slow start but picked up her game in the middle with a nice 3rd ball comeback on Godzilla to take the win and a second place on Twilight Zone to put her in the top group for round 3. Unfortunately 2 lasts in the final round dropped her out of finals contention.
Michael decided he was only going to get either 2nd place or 4th place and so started off with 3 second places, followed by 3 last places. Michael also made the comment that I should have been a journalist :) I'm glad people are enjoying reading the recaps :)
Tom Nichols had a slow start which dropped him into the bottom group for round 2. He then proceeded to get second place in every game until the end of qualifying. Unfortunately as he was in 3 player groups his second place finishes were only worth 4 instead of 5, and so he was unable to make it to the finals. It was a tough night to make finals with only 4 players going through.
The best players of the night were Mal Cawthorne and Brett Goodwin who both finished on 34 points. Both winning 3 games, getting second twice and third once. This meant we needed a playoff to see who would decide the game to be played in the final. Nobody wanted to play Fish Tales for tiebreakers for some reason... so we went to Iron Maiden Premium. From what I can gather, Brett took the win because Mal played Bretts ball... :)
Brett made the decision to play Attack From Mars. Possibly a good choice as Brett currently has the grand champion score on it of 14 billion. He also used to own one and had over 100 billion top score on that one...
Play order was Con, Pat, Mal, Brett.
Con's first ball was a stinker, possibly hitting nothing at all :)
Or it may have been Brett. Or both. Mal and myself put up 1 billion on ball 1.
Ball 2, Brett made it interesting, scoring 3.5 billion and taking the lead.
On the last ball I just needed one right orbit shot to start Total Annihilation and... I DID IT. Ended up getting the jackpot shots up to 160 million and ending my ball on over 4 billion.
Mal had a great ball 3, also starting Total Annihilation AND he even had a Strobe multiball going at one stage. He finished his game on about 3.8 billion.
Brett stepped up to his final ball needing about 600 million for the win. He also only needed one right ramp shot to start HIS Total Annihilation. Tried the super skill shot (hold left flipper button and press launch to make the ball go all the way around the orbit to the left flipper) and missed the shot. It's ok, ball saver is still on, try again. No, that also missed. Ball saver is gone... and now so is the ball :( Its always that one shot you need that becomes the hardest to hit.
Brett couldn't overtake Mal and so the final standings were
1,Pat Nichols
2,Mal Cawthorne
3,Brett Goodwin
4,Con Hantzi
5,Peter Schmalenberg
7,Tom Nichols
7,Sue Hantzi
7,David Locke
7,Naiomi Goodwin
10,Michael Bird
11,Brett Von Holdt
I was going to give away a Stern Pinball translite if we got over 16 players... Since we did not get over 16 players I will just wait until the next time we have that many to give away the prize.
Also I've got some stats for you. Well I thought I would put some together for how many events people have played and top 4 appearances... but the numbers looked off. There were a lot of changes to be made to the data. Still not sure if it is correct. Don't know if I can trust this AI :)
An interesting stat (I think) is the 6 players who have shown up to Pinball Club once and made the final 4. 100% success rate. With the 1 player who has shown up once and won it once Matt Sutton
The other members of this illustrious group include Matthew Broderick, Shane Anthony, Andrew Waszkiewicz, Chris Slevin and Jonty Lambourne.
We have had 82 different players come through pinball club and it would be good to see if some will return for more flipping action.
Remember if you attend 10 nights of pinball club you could be in the running to play in the ladder finals at the end of the year.
This is the current list of finalists - https://app.matchplay.events/series/5960
Also don't forget we have the Transformers Launch Party coming up on Friday September 18th and a 3 Hours of Tower Flip Frenzy on Sunday 20th September. Tickets for both of these events are available from September 4th: https://www.fivestarcinemas.com.au/newcastle
