The Pinball Thread

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Right, gpod to know!
Just played quite a bit of Evil Dead pinball and it might be my favourite machine ever. It's got tons of gadgets, theres so much to do, artwork is great, callouts are amazing, and it plays incredibly well.

[Austin]

Evil Dead is good, yeah. I'm lucky to have one on location nearby. Get to play it regularly. If you like the films and you like pinball.. it's pretty damn good.

[Jeneki]

Thanos-chan, may I please have the ball back?


... No

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Hahaha
...
I just remembered I managed to get a ball stuck in one of the bumpers on an Avengers machine today. The staff member I asked for help was impressed

[DJ Incompetent]

I found a location test playable of Dune

Was this recently? Dunes started showing up at locally,

Half a month before I posted, yeah. But enough time for new things to happen. I thought it was supposed to come out october or something. oh well.

My problem with pinball is that I find it much harder than video games. I never feel like I'm in control of anything. Whenever I ask people what I should have done to avoid losing the ball, they tell me I should have just given the table a nudge, but it never works when I try. So while bare survival seems very challenging, making the ball go where I want (due to the missions) is even harder. Also, mostly I don't know what I'm supposed to do in the first place, while it seems obvious to the pros around me, who tell me "now you have to hit this spot here three times before the time runs out, then this will open up and you have to shoot that" etc

~ Nudging doesn't really work when you're reacting to what's going on. You need to be familiar with anticipating the trajectory of the ball. Playing a few credits on a table should demonstrate what shots and specifically, missed shots will result in a center-drain easily, and you will know to nudge (sideways, or slap the machine) as the ball is much further up the table to actually redirect it. For nudging the outlanes, a common foresight is if the ball is hitting the strongest center-upper part of the bumpers above your flippers, at least once each side. This is a tell the flipper bumpers will push the ball into outlanes, and you can nudge (upward) to use the rubber divider post to block it.

~ General goal is to aim at shots with flashing arrows (on the floor/table). Solid lit things are less priority than steady blinking things. Figure out where a mode start hole is and be sure to read the big screen when you do for special scoring instructions. Blinking arrows that are yellow or red are usually the most important; bigger arrow is assumed better.
Before you play a pinball, look at the table for indicators of "lock" or "light lock". The general universal lit color for lock ball shots is green. You mostly want to start multiball whenever you can, and locking three balls is often the most straightforward path to doing so. When mulitball is activated, often a jackpot special shot becomes available. Jackpot is often the highest scoring thing, if not the double jackpot or super jackpot.

~ The best path to scoring is to slow the game down by learning the skill techniques:

Live catch
Drop catch
Dead bounce
Post pass
Tap pass
Alley pass

As you learn these, you will become your own worst enemy for self-draining and will want to quit. Playing pinball entirely with these techniques tends to suck the fun out of the game. I had to learn these by attempting to adopt 1-2 skills at a time over a handful of credits. Keep at it, then develop your own hybrid playstyle. You'll probably lean on one catch or pass style above the others, just make time to at least practice all the skill inventory, then pick your favorite techniques (one pass, one bounce, one catch, etc). Some shots are easier when playing fast, and most shots will be easiest when you slow the game down by holding and juggling the ball consistently. And don't worry about the countdown timer hurry up shots in the beginning when you practice.

The biggest behavior you need to attune to is what does the ball do after you hit or miss a shot from a hold/slow speed or a fast/impulse speed. Then you can plan your nudging and table slaps around your behavior. This will change for each pinball table except for that one outlane drain flipper bumper habit described earlier, which should remain consistent on all tables.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Excellent post, man. I've been playing pinball for two decades, am still pretty shite, but this was a good reminder that I need to work on my technique a lot more consistently. I'm getting half-decent with drop catches, but as of yet, effective nudging still totally eludes me.
Also, I wasn't aware of colour coding/ green marking the ball lock holes!

Re: Dune pinball, i felt it was very strong on atmosphere, but otherwise didn't click much. Whenever the sandworm arises, you have to wait forever until you can continue playing, which is one of my pet peeves in pinball, but admittedly other people might enjoy that cinematic build-up more than I do.

[Austin]

Consistency is the biggest thing, and that involves doing everything in the book, along with a focus on slowing things down as much as you reasonably can.