Deep cuts of semi-useful pinball knowledge

It feels like the hit region of the cows is a little larger (i.e. easier) than the saucers. Not sure if that’s actually true.

Plus the Cow Attack sound effects are awesome.

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I like it when I can finish the first wave without the smart bomb. Then in the second phase you can kill the mother ship with one press of a button. Difficult, but satisfying when you do it.

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You can get up to an extra 12M in video mode if you use the smart bomb when you’re down to less than 5 hits left to destroy the mother ship / cow. The smart bomb registers 5 saucer kills or 5 mothership hits, so if you have fewer than 5 hits left to go, you get extra hits, recorded at 3M points each. Thus the true maximum video mode score is not 635M but 647M [635 + a maximum of 4 surplus mothership hits at 3M each].

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Now that’s a deep cut.

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Once this thread has run its course, I suggest a new one: “Semi-deep cuts of useful knowledge”. (Although I’ll concede that the BBH ProTip sounds quite useful).

Dr Dude. The long-short plunge.

A plunge at the exact strength will maneuver the ball through the bumpers without any switches triggered. And you can get the ball on the left flipper with the game still in start-of-ball.

Why not just short plunge to the right flipper?

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Not a particularly deep cut but a surprising amount of people I play with don’t seem to know that on Metallica if you shoot the fuel piston for super skill, not only do you get the super skill points but fuel will also be instantly lit. You can hold the left flipper down and soft plunge the super skill to a live catch on the right flipper to shoot the piston, or you can full plunge super skill and loop pass to get it to the right flipper. Though if you blow the soft plunge and it doesn’t go onto the playfield you pretty much lose your chance to get the skill shot so beware.

It’s nice to have a 2x playfield ready to go for sparky or crank it up without having to shoot standups. :+1:

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Pirates of the Caribbean. If you destroy a ship with a cannon blast the subsequent ship’s sails come down in one shot. (And if you destroy that ship with a cannon blast, the subsequent ship’s sails come down in one shot). And on and on.

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A whole bunch of posts by @keefer on here, particularly on the games he’s coded. Here’s a great example of a Keefer Deep Cut: School me on The Simpsons Pinball Party

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watching @heyrocker yesterday we tested out that “Free Kick” are possible during MB on WCS94, who knew?!?

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In Rollercoaster Tycoon, if you shoot the right ramp to start multiball, it is supposed to divert into the scoop. Then the multiball buildup happens, locks are released, fun ensues. Every once in a while the ball will miss the diverter and instead divert back into play on the playfield. If this happens, and your ball drains before locks are released, your ball will end, you will not get multiball, bonus will count, and on your next ball you will start the lock sequence over as if you had.

So if this happens to you TRAP UP and wait for multiball to actually start before doing anything.

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Ugh I had this happen to me in a tournament except it went SDTM from rejecting out of the hole.

I am surprised to hear this, because of the same thing happening in STTNG 9 years earlier (make a ‘jackpot’ from the cannon and fail to load the cannon for another jackpot - ball goes straight into outlane and the reward is a bonus count).

On Tron if you drain with 2x scoring running, it will double your bonus. This is after any bonus x is applied. The display will not indicate it, but the points ARE DOUBLED! I have achieved bonus of over 30 million this way.

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I’m always surprised when I’m playing against someone on BSD in a tournament or league and they don’t know about the extra 5 million points you get if you flip both flippers when the ball falls into the asylum (left hole). This was one of the first pinball “easter eggs” that I learned about.

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I swore I’ve been suspicious of that countless times.

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As soon as you also know that dangering the game while the ball drain the outlane would skip your whole bonus T_T

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The good thing about it is it comes at a time where there’s a break in the action. So it’s perfectly acceptable to blurt out: HIT BOTH FLIPPERS NOW!!! Once they do it, you calmly inform them they just collected an extra 5m points.

On TSPP during couch multiball, if you collect the jackpots in order from bottom to top, you get an extra bonus for that. Can’t recall what the bonus is and exactly what the order is, but it’s there.

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1x-2x-3x in order, I believe.

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