Digital Pinball Help and Recommendations

DJ Incompetent · Post by **DJ Incompetent** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:43 am

BulletMagnet wrote:
silvergunner wrote:Now it`s one in stock at Play-Asia.com(LG Ver.9.1.)

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-8m- ... 0-by6.html
Yeah, so far P-A is the only place I've seen one for sale...not quite prepared to drop 50 bucks on it though.

Word on the street is that link clearanced the game at $30

Team Fremont (that podcast/webcomics site that recently went apeshit over shmups) has a high score list. It happens to champion one Last Gladiators

http://teamfremont.com/newforums/index.php?topic=1886.0

Somebody should go-...you know....destroy those scores.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:32 am

Nice bump, DJ. I've had no time for gaming lately at all, and a bit of handheld pinball is exactly what I need. I wouldn't have thought of it without your bump.

Savory · Post by **Savory** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:09 am

DJ Incompetent wrote: Team Fremont (that podcast/webcomics site that recently went apeshit over shmups) has a high score list. It happens to champion one Last Gladiators

http://teamfremont.com/newforums/index.php?topic=1886.0

Somebody should go-...you know....destroy those scores.

Yeah, our scores on Team Fremont are pretty sad really. I got LG 9.7 earlier this year and was completely shocked to see how high the default high scores were set. I'm not all that great at the game so I have no hope of doing well without a ton of practice. I pretty much buy these games because my wife loves digital pinball.

$30 for 9.7 is a steal, it really is that much better than the original.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:36 am

DJ Incompetent wrote:Word on the street is that link clearanced the game at $30

Arrgh, dang am I tempted...money's tight for the next few months though...

Shoot, gonna hafta think this one over. Thanks for the tipoff...and for the link to the pinball scoreboard, I'll hafta compare my own to theirs, just to see how awful I really am, heh heh.

theevilfunkster · Post by **theevilfunkster** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:48 am

Try Neo Golden Logres For DC, 3 cool medieval style tables and it's usually dirt cheap. Although I wouldn't recommend it unless you've got a large tv, or preferably a VGA monitor. The only view is is displayed at quite a ridiculously high angle.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:08 pm

Update: I couldn't resist, I sprung for it. No food or shelter for me for awhile I guess, heh heh. I'll hafta compare it with the original once it gets here...hopefully the copy I got is in decent condition, they don't say much about it besides that it's "used"...then again, JP used games tend to be pretty well-taken-care-of, in my experience at least. Guess I'll soon find out, heh heh.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 4:52 am

While I wait for LG9.7 to arrive, I've played a bit of Necronomicon to get me in the mood, so to speak...if anyone from Team Fremont wants to post my lousy scores on their board, I scribbled 'em down (last time I checked there were no scores for Necro there at all, so at least this could give you a low bar to clear, heh heh).

Arkham Asylum: 4,046,871,870

Cult of the Bloody Tongue: 3,234,12,400

Dreamlands: 7,733,238,200

Once LG9.7 arrives maybe I'll toss some scores up for that too.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:45 pm

9.7 just arrived a little bit ago.

Having only played it a little bit so far, I'll probably need more time with it to really see the differences between it and the original version...it's got the same cheesy themes (not necessarily a bad thing), same slightly "zoomed-out" table view (I prefer Necro's closer view, but not a huge deal), and same view-blocking "announcements" (something Necro fixed, I'm disappointed they didn't do that here). The default high scores are indeed a ways higher than the original (between 3 and 4 billion, compared to a half billion in the original), but unfortunately it still only saves one high score per table instead of 5, another thing Necro addressed.

I've only spent a little time on each table, but offhand it seemed to me that the center ramp on "Gladiators" and the lock hole on "Knight of the Rose" were trickier to hit than before, although the ramp seemed easier to get onto in the latter, as well as the extra ball holes in each. "Dragon Showdown" is still a pain, though I managed to hit the round hole for the first time in memory (yay!): "Warlock" overall seemed a bit more forgiving (no more instantly losing all your multiballs down the out lane, at least), which opens it up to possibly becoming my favorite table of the set (though "Dreamlands" from Necro is probably still my overall favorite). On that note, I wasn't aware that there was a Necro demo on 9.7...sort of an odd choice to include, seeing as it was released the year before 9.7 came out.

Anyways, I'll keep plugging away at it, and hopefully getting more used to it (looks like I'm not going to be able to milk "Black Knight" as easily as I used to, however, heh heh)...it was probably a good thing I sprung for the deal, since P-A is apparently out of stock of the game now (I may well have gotten the only one they had left). I was also surprised to see it come in an "oversized" CD case, and with a HUGE instruction manual (especially after the almost nonexistent one included with Necro), it looks nice in my Saturn lineup though, heh heh. More impressions (and hopefully some decent scores) to come...

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:54 pm

"Get them back to the arena!"

I've finally had a little time to compare the original Last Gladiators with the 9.7 revision at least somewhat "in-depth"...the main difference between them, it'd seem, is that the ball speed is slower overall in 9.7: as I mentioned before, this makes some areas (particularly the ramp in "Gladiators" and the dark mountain lock in "Knight of the Rose") harder to hit, but overall makes the game more precise, as in the original your ball would go flying and ricochet all over the place much more than it does in the revision.

Some of the tweaks are much more noticeable after playing the two back-to-back (most notably how your ball doesn't go RDTM as often right out of the gate on "Knight of the Rose," and your multiballs stay out of the out lane in "Warlock"), and overall work in the game's favor: I did finally discover that the game does indeed record the top 5 scores for each machine instead of just one, though you have to wait a minute at the high score screen to see them. So far the only table I've managed to score well enough on to even get onto the list is "Warlock" (managed over 7 billion): so far no sign of the unskippable credit sequence, hopefully it'll stay that way, heh heh.

Overall 9.7 is definitely an improvement, though not as much as I would have hoped, as some annoyances from the first still remain, and its overall design still lacks in some areas. Necronomicon, at least as of now, remains my personal favorite digital pinball game: it's not as varied as Last Gladiators, but is more streamlined and balanced. There's still plenty more pinball games for me to try though.

If any of the Team Fremonters are interested, I'll post some scores (in addition to the Necro ones that are already up) to add to your forum topic.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:39 am

On the Warlock table my score was so high the counter reset. Maybe they tweaked 9.7 so that you aren't able to get into grooves as easily. Also, I remember a few areas of the original where your ball would get stuck at the top of the table, hopefully they fixed that as well.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:47 am

JoshF wrote:On the Warlock table my score was so high the counter reset.

Heh, how long must that session have been? I'd imagine that you used Rats, Last Judgement, and/or the multiball to get the score so high (along with, perhaps, a few "Light Extra Ball" random awards)...I can score a few billion off of each of those if I play it right, but not nearly enough to get things that high (then again, I'm not that good).

JBC · Post by **JBC** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:03 am

Odd, i was just looking at this thread the other day and found out about Jaki Crush for the first time... sadly it's not as cool as Devil's... still decent though.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:01 am

Heh, how long must that session have been? I'd imagine that you used Rats, Last Judgement, and/or the multiball to get the score so high (along with, perhaps, a few "Light Extra Ball" random awards)...I can score a few billion off of each of those if I play it right, but not nearly enough to get things that high (then again, I'm not that good).

It's been a while, but I think I got in a groove where I was alternating between the left and right ramps for a long time. I also remember getting a lot of extra balls.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:53 pm

JoshF wrote:It's been a while, but I think I got in a groove where I was alternating between the left and right ramps for a long time. I also remember getting a lot of extra balls.

Yeah, that sounds like either the multiball or Last Judgement (I know the first rewards hitting the ramps, and I'm almost positive the latter does too). Offhand, do you know if/at what point LG gives extra balls in terms of how high you score? I'm pretty sure Necro eventually does that, I don't know if LG does...if not, then the only way to light the extra ball is via the once-per-round feature, or just dumb luck...I've been lucky with that once or twice, but it's only happened when everything else was going wrong, so I ended up losing all those extra balls within seconds and getting crud scores, heh heh.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:24 pm

You can get more than one extra ball per round you just have to activate it. I forgot how, but I'm sure it tells you how in the in-game manual.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:40 pm

The only ways I know of are to activate the regular "Extra Ball Lit" feature found on each table, or else get lucky via either the Mystery award or the pre-launch award. I could check the instruction manual, but I don't recall seeing any other way to do it.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:20 am

Clarification: What pinball game are we talking about?

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:22 am

Last Gladiators

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:33 am

JoshF wrote:Last Gladiators

OK, cool. I've got that game for US Saturn.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 1:04 am

Yeah, you can get it for peanuts on the US Saturn...the Japan-only "v 9.7" revision is tougher to track down, though. As I said, however, if you're going to snag an import Saturn pinball title, look for Necronomicon.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:43 am

Any worthwhile shmups on the NES or SNES? (I suppose I should just reread this entire thread.)

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:14 am

professor ganson wrote:Any worthwhile shmups on the NES or SNES? (I suppose I should just reread this entire thread.)

I assume you meant "pinball games."

Off the top of my head, the only Pinball game I know of on the NES is plain ol' "Pinball," though I'm sure there are probably others...on the SNES, off the top of my head, there's Super Pinball: Behind the Mask, Pinball Dreams, and Jaki Crush, plus probably others I don't know...I haven't played any of them firsthand, though there are a handful of opinions on some of them scattered within this thread IIRC.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 3:13 am

Thanks, BM. I did indeed mean pinball games. So not a lot of offerings on either system. Sounds like nothing essential.

nem · Post by **nem** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 6:22 am

I've heard good things of Pinball Quest on the NES. I actually have the cart right here, maybe I should try it?

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 6:50 am

Bonus thing: Last Gladiators Warlock/Sexy Warlock in Maried with Children.

"I'm coming for you...ya' best be ready for me!"

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:45 am

professor ganson wrote:So not a lot of offerings on either system. Sounds like nothing essential.

As I said, those are only the ones I know off the top of my head, there are certainly others.

Bonus thing: Last Gladiators Warlock/Sexy Warlock in Maried with Children.

Is that actually the same actor? I don't know squat about movie/TV actors.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:34 am

I actually found the NES pinball game for $2.50 tonight, so I picked up (along with UN Squadron for $5!). I hope to check it out soon.

The Coop · Post by **The Coop** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:47 am

http://irpinball.ztnet.com/

IR Pinball. Recreations of older (and some newer) real pinball machines, as well as original tables. There's a lot to dig through, but try out "Black Knight/2000", "Xenon" (just for the goofy voices), and "Dragon" (Interflip) to get you started.

And I recommend Dragon's Fury over Devil's Crush. Technosoft did a great job improving upon an already fun pinball game. There's also David's Midnight Magic for some old video pinball, Pinball of the Dead on the GBA for something a little different, and Dragon's Revenge on the Genesis is you're feeling a bit self torturous (it's a sequel to Dragon's Fury, but it was done by Tengen).

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:06 am

The Coop wrote: There's also David's Midnight Magic for some old video pinball

I haven't played much of the 800/C64 versions, but the Atari 2600 one, while different from the others, is quite impressive. Very fun little pinball game and about the only 2600 pinball with decent physics.

it290 · Post by **it290** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:35 am

<shameless plug>... Try the Space Shuttle table for Virtual Pinball, I actually built that one... it's kind of crap but no one else wanted to tackle it and it's my favorite real pin. It looks terrible compared to the more recent and polished tables but it plays fairly accurately. </shameless plug>

I remember playing Midnight Magic on the Apple II back in school. Pretty decent game for the time. Also, Pin*Bot for NES is OK and I have a soft spot for Crue Ball.