It is absolutely an art form. Even with the amazing quality videos that are coming out these days, it can be very hard to see the subtle nudges and subtle flipper button action that the top-tier players demonstrate. That’s why match-play tournaments like Pinburgh, or just local leagues with good players in the mix, are awesome… you get an up-close-and-personal view of what better players are doing. (Just don’t hover over them TOO closely while they’re playing!) Doesn’t even have to be “amazing players”… just someone who’s consistently better than you. Watch them. Talk to them if they’re willing (most are!). Learn from them.
In general, the earlier you make corrective actions, the more potent those actions are. A mere 1% deviation of the path of a ball that’s traveling several feet (i.e. from the top of the playfield to the bottom, or perhaps rocketing side to side between the slings) might be half an inch (about half the ball’s diameter)… that can be the difference between going straight between the flippers and being in range of a saving flip, or the difference between swishing the outlane and hitting the rubber above the outlane. So you learn to look ahead and predict what the ball is going to do, and if you don’t like it, apply a corrective action as early as possible.
And finally… truly don’t worry about knocking a pinball machine over. It’s just not gonna happen.
Another point… You get to nudge more than once. Bump it off the top of the sling shot. Crap, it went towards the inlane/outlane. Bump it off the post. Ugh, don’t like the looks of that. Again. Drat, still bad. Bump it off the side wall. I used to let so much go out the R outlane on Addams Family that I realize is now savable from 2 or 3 separate nudges in sequence. Keep focus.
Re: Shadow, BSD, FT, CFTBL. I agree. Those machines brutally punish mistakes and unaimed “up-shots” but they reward controlled play and make you feel like a superhero when you have a great game. The control and patience you learn from playing on a tight playfield translates to so many other games.
All right then. A childhood full of knocking things over and breaking things by bumping into them by accident has left me utterly scared of such a thing.
I’ve gotten over other fears before though; I think I can get over this excessive cautiousness. Thanky ou for the advice, everyone. (I can say that Casa de Carlos and Family Amuasement Corporation both have VERY tight tilts though, so I’m guessing it’s not a good idea to practice there. They’re both so tight, I’ve gotten warnings just playing the game normally.)
Two more sets of questions: I think I mentioned it prior, but I often see people do hard forward nudges on a machine so much that they almost look like they’re, well, making love. Like, every 3 seconds. What are these people doing? Are they practicing nudging, or do they just have a messed up idea of what nudging is?
Secondly, I also often see people slapping the flipper buttons instead of just pressing them. What are they doing? Is it to send the ball in a particular direction they can’t get by pushing the buttons without force?
[quote=“SunsetShimmer, post:43, topic:298”]
Two more sets of questions: I think I mentioned it prior, but I often see people do hard forward nudges on a machine so much that they almost look like they’re, well, making love. Like, every 3 seconds. What are these people doing? Are they practicing nudging, or do they just have a messed up idea of what nudging is?[/quote]
Up Push. The idea is to nudge the machine as the ball comes towards the slings to reduce dangerous side to side motion that can lead to outlane drains.
Sometimes that slight amount of force can make the difference between the ball going down the middle and just grazing the tip of the flipper and staying in play.
Well, for the first question, I understand what they’re intending to do, but I mean they are pushing, and pushing HARD. Like, with all the force they can muster. They’re putting not just their arms into it, but their torsos, legs, and feet too. The machine swivels forward by like an inch, and it rams up against the wall (or the arcade machines on the other side). And they do it constantly. They’re doing it so often, they seem to be nudging forward every time the ball comes down. I’m curious because I keep seeing these people doing it.
I think if the machines are hitting other machines that’s way too much force. A girl here who plays at the bar I play pinball at used to thrust her hips and body against the machine and if you do that you’ll likely tilt (unless the tilt is set pretty loose). Usually it’s better to just use your arms to nudge the machine instead of your whole body but this is based more on your strength and size. if you are smaller then you might need to nudge more but there are people like Escher Lefkoff who aren’t big people but can nudge machines well and then there are really large folks like former NBA center Todd MacCulloch who probably don’t need to use as much force to nudge unless they’re playing Hercules
Aside from the two-flipper slap save posted above, there is also the one-flipper slap save where you leave the flipper you aren’t slapping down. This usually puts the ball on the other flipper or at least it rolls up the inlane and back down for an on the fly shot instead of putting the ball completely out of control like the 2 flipper version.
This game on Funhouse is really awesome for a number of reasons, but on ball 2 Keith gives a masterclass on one flipper slaps. It isn’t a big move, but it just extends the flipper enough to get some rubber on the ball and tip it over to the other flipper. He also uses a sharp upward nudge to help on the inlane pass from left to right. Like other people have said, a lot of nudging is subtle; you don’t have to make a huge move to make an impact (although sometimes a big move is needed). Keith makes a bunch of great nudges to save to ball, but doesn’t pick up a danger the entire ball.
That seems weird. For one thing, that amount of force will generate tilts on most machines. For another thing, ow, that seems like an unpleasant way to play. I don’t think this is behavior you want to replicate.
I play with an older guy that seems to nudge the game forward every time he tries to make a shot basically. I asked him why he did it and he said it just feels right. He’s a old school flow player that’s been playing that way for years. I’ve seen him tilt out great balls because of it though. IMO there is no need to nudge when you flip unless you are making a save like a slap save etc.
I have a friend who throws his shoulder into every flip. I’m trying to cure him of this, because I’ve seen him tilt this way. The switches that control every flipper ever, only have two states. On and off. It doesn’t know how hard you pressed.
I’m wondering if the slapping you’re describing may be seeing people flip in a way that their hand comes off the button quickly. This is probably good practice because holding the flipper up after a shot doesn’t do any good, and it can hurt you if the ball comes back quickly enough to go underneath your unnecessarily extended flipper.
Yeah, I visited an arcade today and I saw this guy vigorously nudging the machine forward every single time he used a flipper. The tilt setting must have been very loose or nonexistent, because each time the ball headed towards an outlane, he literally shoved the machine four or five inches in a particular direction, almost colliding with the machines next to it. He was playing Sopranos, and when he triggered Stugots Multiball, I saw him nudging the machine forwards literally two or three times per second. He was shaking the machine so much, it looked like a bad washing machine. I’m surprised he never tilted it out. So apparently, this is just what people are used to doing? (For the record, he seemed have drained ball 2 at 9 million total. I always felt that nudging that much doesn’t really improve your performance. I tried the 24 there, and the tilt setting was a lot tighter. I can’t get away with forward nudges without a warning.)
Nudging will definitely be something I have to consciously think about first. I forgot about the name of that psychological process where you become skilled at something, but I remember it being four steps: Incompetent and unaware of it, incompetent and aware of it, competent only when you concentrate, and competent without having to concentrate. I think I’m at the “incompetent and aware of it” phase. Hopefully I can do it without having to think about it in the future. I’ve done this with other things before, where I consciously and constantly think of the thing I want to improve upon, and I eventually settle into detecting instances after some time.
Regarding slap saves: I’ve seen slap saves and they are amazing to look at. I mean something else though: People who slam their hands on the flipper buttons every time they flip. I saw people doing it at It Never Drains and they would tilt out maybe half the balls. It also looks like their palms would hurt after some time.
Older folks thrust with every flip. Harder to eek the ball into the top half of the playfield on some EMs. Must be some ingrained impulse from worn out laundromat pinballs.
Regardless of tricks you can do, it’s controlled by a switch, which only has two states.
I’m guessing that tap passes are possible because on older machines, the flipper was slower to engage, so if the time between opening and closing the switch was small enough, then you’d be disengaging the flipper before it had gone through the full range of motion.
Ah, that explains why most of the people who do this seem to be old people. There are a few young people I see doing that too; I’m going to guess that they see those older poeple doing it and think that’s how it’s supposed to be done.
Yeah, mostly because of weaker coils I think (don’t need walnut-blasters on single-level games). If a game is responsive enough, however, you can still do it. It’s possible[1] to tap-pass on WOZ, for example.
