Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle Rulesheet

Games Wiki Rulesheets
1

Game Information & Overview:

  • Manufacturer: Spooky Pinball
  • Release Date: January 2018
  • Wiki Rulesheet based on Code Rev: 1.1.0.1
    • Edit the Code revision, if applicable, when you make changes
  • Original Wiki Rulesheet hosted on Tilt Forums

Rules Overview:

SKILLSHOT
Launch the ball and attempt to shoot the ramps, orbits, or crypt lock to light the secret passage and the outlane ball save. The right ramp will award the skill shot even if the ball only goes half way up. Hitting any other shot, or the slings, will fail the skillshot.

ROOM TRAVEL
At the beginning of the game, and after any monster battle, you start out at the entrance to the castle, in the lowest room of the grid.
While at the entrance you can select the monster you want to battle by shooting the center 3 target. This will cycle through the available monsters.
Shooting the left or right orbit when strobing will move up+left or up+right, respectively. If there is no room in that direction on the grid, the orbit will not be lit.
As soon as you shoot one of the outside orbits you lock in your monster and get into the first room.
In the beginning, you will move directly to the Laboratory/Dungeon, one step away from the monster. After defeating 3 monsters, you will only move to the Conservatory/Ballroom (two steps away), and then after another monster you will have to move through all rooms individually.
Rooms are laid out as follows:

        <Start Monster>
     Laboratory    Dungeon
Ballroom    Kitchen    Conservatory
      Parlor       Library
             Foyer

MONSTER BATTLES
There are four ways to start a monster battle:

  1. Reach the topmost room in the grid via the orbits.
  2. Shoot the secret passage (to the right of the left ramp) when lit. Shoot the center 3 targets three times once a monster has been selected to light the secret passage. Can also be lit via skillshot or mystery.
  3. As a mystery award. Early mystery awards have a high tendency of immediately starting the battle, even if a monster isn’t locked in.
  4. As a pity award on the last ball. If a player doesn’t reach a monster at some point in their game; launching the 3rd ball will put you in the monster room that was currently selected (even if it has not been locked in)

MYSTERY AWARDS
Shoot the middle scoop (left of 3 center targets) to build mystery. When the award is ready the left scoop arrow will do a color cycle animation to indicate its ready to collect. This will commonly award monster progress, such as “move 1 room”, “move 2 rooms”, or “advance to monster”, and sometimes point values. (are there other awards?) If not collected, the mystery will eventually time out and need to be lit again.

CRYPT MB
Lock a ball in the crypt (to the left of right ramp), by either shooting into it from the lower playfield, or by dropping into it via the rightmost of the three upper lanes. Once a ball is locked, the crypt shot will light blue(?), and shooting it again (via either playfield) will start Crypt Multiball.

During Crypt MB, shoot the crypt for jackpots. This multiball can be stacked with any monster battle (including Frank MB); you can make progress through the rooms while in multiball, or start it while already in a battle.

After you exit multiball, repeated shots (how many?) into the crypt from the lower playfield (upper does not give credit?) will reactivate the lock (note there is no indication that the lock is ready besides that the back drop target will be up).

FRANK MB
Shoot left left via left ramp into physical lock. Then get to upper playfield and knock down the drop target and shoot the upper left ramp behind it to start multiball. This mode will block the start of any other monster, and can be started as many times as you are able to.

During Frank MB, shoot either lower ramp for jackpot. After three jackpots, the upper right ramp (guillotine) will light for supers. (does it ever unlight?)

UPPER LANES
Complete the two ‘X’ lanes to activate light the lower right target (above right inlane/outlane) for a bonus multiplier. Use flippers for lane change.

COMBOS
Shooting some shots (which?) will temporarily flash other shots orange for a combo.

EXTRA BALL
Extra ball can be lit by shooting the upper right ramp 10 times (‘chops’ displayed on display).
Will also be lit after starting third monster battle (including frank)

Extra ball will light at the extra ball target on the left side of the upper playfield.

BALL SAVES
Ball save is activated when you complete the 4 bottom lanes. The outlanes will then light purple for 45 seconds. Draining on the outside lane when lit activates the drain magnet and will fling the ball back up the playfield, or at least is should. This mod is being coined Mag-Neat-O save. If you complete the fourth lane as you drain, the ball save will activate and be immediately used. During multiball the magnet is not active, and another ball will be auto-plunged instead.

ITEMS
There are two items for each monster, located as follows:

Ballroom, Alice: Jacket
Ballroom, Insect: Zapper
Parlor, Vampire: Pool Cue
Parlor, Wolf: Shotgun
Dungeon, Zombie: Chainsaw
Dungeon, Igor: Whip
Conservatory, Pit Creature & Alice: Shears
Conservatory, Wolf: Wolfsbane
Kitchen, PitCreature: Salt
Kitchen, Vampire: Garlic
Labratory, Ethyl: Formaldehyde
Labratory, Zombie: Dynamite
Library, Ethyl: Cross
Library, Igor & Insect: Book

When you are in the listed room, with the specified monster selected, the target at the back of the upper playfield will flash. Shooting it will collect the item. See the specific monster for item effects

Note that, since at the beginning of the game, you always move directly to the lab/dungeon, you can only collect items in those rooms, so only certain monsters will give you access to items until some monsters are defeated

MONSTER BATTLES
At the beginning of each battle, the ball save will activate. Complete the mode’s objective to start a 25(?) second ‘frenzy’ with unlimited ball save. The frenzy will have the mode shots active which score big points as well as other arrow shots lit orange to also collect points and add to the hurry-up.

After the frenzy ends, the left target (above mystery scoop) will light for a hurry-up. the hurry-up starting value is ALL the points scored during the frenzy phase of that monster battle, with a minimum base value of 5M * (# monsters defeated, including this one). The hurry-up counts down to 2.5M * monsters. It counts down fast, so you have to be quick!

There is no maximum to the hurry-up starting value. Once the hurry up times out, you will back to single ball play ready to battle the next monster.

FRANK
See FRANK MB

ETHYL
From the upper playfield drop ball into the crypt via the rightmost lane. Another ball bill be auto-launched. Shoot first lower drop target or the rightmost lane again to release, then keep shooting the drop targets/scoop to collect jackpots. Mode ends when you drain one of the balls. (how to win?)

Item: Skip straight to super jackpot stage

IGOR
Complete three sets of lit shots. First set will be three shots, then four, then five(?)

Item: skip straight to third set of shots

VAMPIRE
Stake/dismember the vampire by hitting the back target on the upper playfield three times.

Item: Only one shot to back target is required

ALICE
Get to upper playfield and shoot past guillotine 2 times. The guillotine lowers a bit. Shoot a 3rd time to capture the ball in the guillotine. Theatrics play and Alices head gets chopped off.

Item: Only one shot to the guillotine is required

WOLF
Shoot any green shot to load the gun, then shoot the three bank to fire the gun and damage the monster. Shots will light green again, but the ones you’ve already shot will be red instead. Shooting a red shot will damage the player. Health bars are shown on the screen. Defeat the wolf before it defeats you (usually 5 hits?).

Item: only one shot is needed to kill the wolf

ZOMBIE
One roaming shot will move back and forth across the playfield on the orbits, ramps, center scoop, and inner orbit (secret passage). Value will decrease on a timer until the shot is made. Complete 5 shots to finish the mode.

Item: only one shot is needed to kill the zombie

INSECT
Random shots and targets will be lit. Shoot 10 to complete mode.

Item: only five shots are needed to complete the mode

PITCREATURE
The mystery scoop, center scoop, and crypt will flash. Behind one (random?) is the pit creature. Once found, most shots will light, and a count down timer will start. The timer will only count down while the ball is ‘hidden’ from view, such as being in a scoop/subway, or going through one of the orbits under the upper playfield. Count the timer down to zero to finish the mode.

Item: first shot will always find the creature

BILLION DOLLAR BABY
Wizard mode, available after completing all other modes.
how to start?
how to play?

2 Likes
2

Has anyone had any time on this game yet? I started playing one on location yesterday and had a bunch of confusing moments, but wasn’t sure if they were due to incomplete code or mechanical issues. I’ve only had about 5 games on it, so these are very early impressions and are relatively uninformed.

When the mode is ready, it says to start it at the secret passage. The passage shot is lit, but when shooting it, the ball just comes around the right orbit without starting a mode. After a drain, launching the next ball will start the lit mode though.

Shooting the center scoop builds the mystery, but when mystery is lit on the left scoop it doesnt award anything, just stays lit.

When you use the outlane ball save (earned and used just like TNA), there is a magnet below the flippers that grabs the ball. I thought it was going to toss the ball back into play like 007, but it just dropped it and another ball autolaunched into play. Is this the intended behavior?

The ramps are STEEP. This is a brand new game and the shot needs to be damn near perfect for the left ramp (which will usually roll back sdtm) and absolutely perfect and preferably with a moving ball to make the right ramp. Maybe flipper strength can be adjusted in settings, but as it stands they’re super difficult and frustrating.

A plea to Spooky - PLEASE give some warning on the left scoop kickout. A light, a sound effect, something! There are two hidden scoops in the middle of the playfield that feed the left kickout and it’s very unclear where the ball is coming from.

I ended up in multiball once over 5 games because the ramps were so hard to hit. And the goal when the multiball started was… shoot the ramps! Good grief. Well with the traffic of multiball it was even tougher to hit the already difficult ramps. Again, this could come down to a flipper strength setting.

Shots that exit the right orbit are almost always catching the right sling. Is this intended, or possibly a pitch issue? Maybe the game is set too steep, I don’t know. Could explain the ramp difficulty though.

That’s all I can think of for now, but I’ll add more as I get more time on it. The art and display are nicely done. Couldn’t really hear the audio because of the noisy room. Upper playfield is unique and gives some good nudging opportunities, but I didn’t make it up there enough to really get a feel for it.

2 Likes
3

Excellent presentation at TPF, @bkerins. I like your concept of the mode score multiplier. Interesting ‘take now or save for later’ debate to have with one self. Great innovation. The victory lap hurry up too.

And I especially liked to see, that the GI light effects seem to have been toned way down compared to what I remember from previous ACNC footage. At least in the lower 1/3 which is what matters the most. Others could learn from this.

3 Likes
4

@bkerins Is there a stream archive of your ACNC tutorial seminar at TPF? I noticed that Marty has a stream on his Twitch channel with you playing the next day that likely has some similar explanations. But I figured I’d try to watch the one where you had a few more hours of sleep. :wink:

5

Ha yeah. The other one is better explained and it’s on twitch.

https://twitch.tv/videos/400129332

… and, it’s gone! I’ll ask them about when they plan to upload to YouTube.

1 Like
6

We got to play this last night in league. I had a great time of the game. We ran into a lot of problems using this as a competition game. It is possible we were not on the lastest code, as I know some of the collectors other games were on older code. So hopefully things are already addressed.

Biggest was tilt-throughs. The game had been set super tight. If someone did a hard move, they often tilted through 2-4 players. Tilting through on a modern game is annoying. Tilting through multiple players on a modern game should not happen.

Second was crashes. Some seemed to be related to tilting (like tilt into lock) others were just at unfortunate times, like offer entering initials.

The game was super fun. I really want to spend more time on it. Hopefully it will get competition ready because the strategy and risk /reward is great.

1 Like
7

Along with that, is there any reason why the SAVE expires? It seems counter intuitive to hold your SAVE lanes at 3 until you want to activate the ball save. Also, your SAVE gets used while ball save is active, which is a minor modern inconvenience.

On what I assume is current code, I had a Danessi softlock where the ball would not eject itself from the 2nd drop target of the lock when stuck.

Definitely gives a TNA 2.0 vibe, which is pretty darn cool. Its solid work!

8

I noticed one of the awards that comes up on the list is tilt other player. Never got that award but I like the idea.

9

Was noted on pinside that this rulesheet is out of date, but it seems I can’t edit it to fix it up?

10

Doesn’t look like anyone has turned it into a wiki. One of the mods can do it.

11

Rulesheet has been Wikified.

2 Likes
12

Updated with my partial knowledge of the latest code (1.07)

13

Extra ball is also lit when you start your 3rd mode (Frank MB counts as a mode).

2 Likes
14

So does hitting the end of mode Hurry Ups increase the base scoring on forthcoming modes? What incentives and perks are these Hurry ups giving apart from points, if any?

15

And how did I light the Special on the right loop? Mystery?..x amount of Combos?? This pin is nuts… I love it!!

16

Mork calling Orsen… Come in, Orsen…

17

impressive stuff by @kdeangelo, once again plowing through Wizard mode!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/555878408?t=00h45m24s

4 Likes
18

Does anybody know how the weapons work in the new code?

19

Updated with item rules

1 Like
20

So if you collect either of the two items for a Monster, then you get the listed benefit for the Monster’s item?