ExedExes wrote:I posted that back a few weeks ago, the picture clue in the TPA newsletter was that of a "Bull Dozer". I played this many times.
I must have missed it.
emwearz wrote:I was thinking of buying Season 1 of The Pinball Arcade on Steam during the sale, however they have not put anything on sale.
Hope it hits a flash sale, pretty stupid, there is money to be made damn it!
They typically put season 1 and 2 on sale at 20-30% off, then 50% on a flash sale. I dont know what they are doing this time around. I would love a 25% discount so I can grab season 3 and 4.
I have some general questions about pinball and tables in general.
I very often lose a ball through the sidelanes, which is very frustrating. In games like Pokemon Pinball there are often good and acessible ways to activate kickbacks to the sidelanes making it much fairer (which I try to make my priority) but this doesn't seem to be super common.
Maybe I just suck? What gives? Are unfair sidelanes a beloved design element of many tables, or is it a holdover of most pinball tables being partly intended to be unfair like many old arcade games?
Are the really good tables that everyone raves about doing something to address the unfairness of sidelanes?
Another question is tilt. I actually did play a few times on real tables and either I'm puny (which I guess I am) or it is actually really hard to nudge the ball in a real table? Furthermore, most video pinball games are rather limited in that one is not really able to nudge sideways (I believe this is partly related with the sidelanes being even more unfair in some video pinball tables).
From my experience, outlanes are a necessary evil. That's why kickbacks and features like inlane magnets (like from Theatre of Magic) exist. I find some games have rather attractive outlanes (*cough* Star Trek TNG), but there's not much we can do about that. I rarely nudge if at all, because more often than not, I'll tilt. As you said, it can also be hard to do on certain machines. TPA lets you side-nudge, but not all video pinballs do. For me it's a lot more luck that the ball stays away from them.
Xeogred wrote:The obvious answer is that it's time for the Dreamcast 2.
I always give people who have never played pinball a table with a wide open playfield with limited outlanes, Gottlieb 1981 Blackhole is usually my go to.
By having an open playfield, you have alot of space to learn how to get a ball under control. Once the player has figured out how to hold the ball, how to aim, how to stop a fast ball, and how to pass between flippers, then jumping into a more complicated table is alot easier. The best part is after someone figures out how aim, and gets to the lower board, it is magical. Usually that is enough to get them to try a far more complicated table.
I get that holding the ball is crucial to success (or at least to me it is) but I'm not sure I can kill momentum very efficiently. I can do it sometimes by holding the flipper up and releasing as the ball lands. Is that what you mean?
I'm not new to video pinball as I've been playing for several years, I think starting with Pinball Fantasies (played also Pinball Dreams). More recently from memory I played on handhelds the games above several others on the GBA which has a rather rich pinball library actually (including Muppets Pinball, Pinball of the Dead, and a Sonic Pinball game where there was also a Nights table). I played the Crush series when it was up for Together Retro but due to lack of time I haven't delved into these recreations of real tables.
I apparently haven't played tables with inlane magnets yet.
I fondly remember Pokemon Pinball on the GBA (which I admit is too easy) and Metroid Prime Pinball on the DS which let me feel a bit more in control and had cool rumble pack action.
Currently I'm playing Timeshock (from Pro Pinball series, played The Web from the same series many months ago) and became frustrated with outlanes. There is actually a lucky rescue from the left outlane but it is mostly random (you get 5M points if the ball happens to flow back in) and it is VERY RARE that I can bump the ball back up through the middle pin. There seems to be some way to save the ball from the right lane that I don't know about.
Like I said, maybe I'm just not very good at Pinball. Advice welcomed.
Last edited by Ivo on Fri Jun 19, 2015 11:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
fastbilly1 wrote:I always give people who have never played pinball a table with a wide open playfield with limited outlanes, Gottlieb 1981 Blackhole is usually my go to.
By having an open playfield, you have alot of space to learn how to get a ball under control. Once the player has figured out how to hold the ball, how to aim, how to stop a fast ball, and how to pass between flippers, then jumping into a more complicated table is alot easier. The best part is after someone figures out how aim, and gets to the lower board, it is magical. Usually that is enough to get them to try a far more complicated table.
I've never met anyone (with the possible exception of small children) who hasn't played pinball.
That 1981 Blackhole looks neat. I've never played that one. I grant you that it looks like a good table to practice the fundamentals that I sometimes take for granted. Maybe if I practice on that table, I can increase my score on other tables.
I wonder what my first pinball table was. Maybe Addams Family, maybe Terminator II, or maybe it was Police Force. I remember laughing at the illustration of the turtle in Police Force at some point in my youth.
samsonlonghair wrote:I've never met anyone (with the possible exception of small children) who hasn't played pinball.
I meant more in that they havent really wanted to learn how to play pinball well. More than just randomly hitting flippers.
Ivo wrote:I get that holding the ball is crucial to success (or at least to me it is) but I'm not sure I can kill momentum very efficiently. I can do it sometimes by holding the flipper up and releasing as the ball lands. Is that what you mean?
Holding the ball is by far the most crucial technique to learn. By killing momentum, I mean having the flipper apex as the ball reaches it. If done correctly, this dead catch can stop a fast moving ball and move it into the crux of the flipper so you can aim the next shot. You might here this called a "live catch," "end of stroke," or "end of line" (the last being an obvious Tron reference).
You could do a dead catch, where the flipper is on the return when the ball connects with it. This lets the ball bounce off of it, ready for a second hit, but I find it is far riskier.
