The regular super skill shot is hold the left flipper while full plunging then hit one of the 10 major shots. You can get a 2x top lane skill shot in the left upper lane or 4x skill shot in the upper right lane if you skillfully plunge while holding the left flipper button which disables the post from coming up to stop the ball.
If you plunge for a super skill shot by holding the left flipper button and don’t hit most switches, then let the super skill shot time out, the upper lanes will remain lit for the 2x and 4x super skill shots, but now if you shoot the ball up either orbit the post will come up to stop the ball and allow it to roll into the left upper lane for a 2x skill shot.
The upper lanes will still remain lit for this 2x skill shot if you hit the slingshots, the orbit switches or spinners (on Premium). Furthermore, the 2x skill shot opportunity will remain even if you hit Sparky (opto or standup) or Snake or the first 2 drop targets. You can actually hit Sparky or Snake as many times as you want. If you start one of these multiballs the skill shot remains lit, but when the game auto-plunges balls you will only get a normal 1x skill shot.
All other switches will extinguish the upper lane skill shot opportunity.
In Mousin Around, pay attention to the state of the 3 upper bonus rollovers when you drain or lock a ball. When the new ball is served to plunger lane, only the skillshot will be flashing up there, but the original state of the lanes is preserved. You can still use the flippers to rotate them and collect an unlit lane/bonus X separate from the skillshot itself.
The items in Mystery Castle advance in a set order, even though the order doesn’t match the playfield at all. The order is:
Potion
Dragon Idol
Bell
Coat of Arms
Scepter
Gold
Candelabrum
Skull
Goblet
Mirror
Crystal Ball
Jester
Pandora’s Box
Painting
…repeat from top
So “theoretically” it’s possible to set things up to get the Skull early. You can change the lit item with the bumpers or by combing into the flashing “Change Item” standup after rolling through an inlane. Note that the standup is normally lit solid but won’t do anything if you hit it – it will start flashing after an inlane. Flashing “Change Item” standup also changes the shots lit to collect the Item.
Seems like the game starts randomly with either the Potion, Candelabrum, Jester, or Pandora’s Box lit. Candelabrum would be the best as the Skull is the next item.
Every 3 right ramps gives an award (skill shots not included). The awards are:
While the solidly-lit Change Item standup won’t do anything in regards to your flashing “next up” Item on the playfield inserts, it does do something: it changes which shot(s) are lit with the white arrow(s) to collect your flashing “next up” Item.
Bride of Pinbot - There’s another backdoor billion besides the 10-way combo described here. If you light all four return lanes for Extra Ball at once, then roll through any lane, the backdoor billion will be scored. This is of course very difficult to do, arguably even more difficult than the 10-way combo because you have to constantly manage lane change, but it’s there…
Pistol Poker - Another Alvin G. game with rudimentary code. Unlike pretty much any other pinball machine I can think of, if you fail to collect any jackpots during Mega Mode, you get an unlimited number of 20-second timed Mega Mode restarts after draining down to a single ball. This is damn useful because it’s tough to even light jackpots on that game. Also, during Black Jack Ramp, you can actually loop the ramp after lighting it for 21 million a shot even though the game doesn’t indicate that being the case.
Frank Thomas’ Big Hurt - If you collect “Double Entire Score” by trading in exactly 16 cards, but your score is over 5 billion, the score tally won’t roll over properly. ie. if you had 6 billion points, and get Double Entire Score, then you would only have 2 billion points afterwards. I’m not sure if this is the case on other Gottlieb games with this rule but it sure is a pain.
Shaq Attaq - Not quite an obscure rule, but the annoying coach callouts can be completely disabled by holding in the left flipper at the start of the game. You can do the same thing on Stargate with the “shoot the pyramid!” callouts. These both help out the game a lot, I think
Batman Forever - If you load the Batwing, then make an aimed shot to the VUK when it’s lit for multiball, multiball will begin with 4 balls instead of 3 and the base jackpot values will be increased. I only learned about this because the game stats in the operator’s menu mentioned it.
Dirty Harry: If you manage to light Magnum Jets and Shootout magazine awards on the same ball, Magnum Jets will continue to run if you outlane drain into the Shootout frenzy mode. In this case, you can easily achieve 100-200mil by simply letting balls drain and get plunged into the pops (significantly more than actually playing shootout, which you probably won’t win, anyways). Extra balls can also be collected during Shootout, if you have one lit.
Metallica: The inline drops alone don’t qualify the playfield. If ball-save is on, it will start the ball-save lights blinking, but the ball-save timer won’t start. So it’s possible to short plunge and start Grave Marker multiball before the playfield is qualified. Although, doing so without hitting a sling or inlane is very unlikely.
On Dr. Dude, whenever the I-Exam target is hit while it is lit for the 75K award “I am Cool”, the game also temporarily increases the bumper value to their max value of 5k per hit. The only indication that this feature has activated is that the 3 lights on the right orbit (that indicate the value of the bumpers) will all start flashing during this time. The bumpers return to their original values after about 5 seconds of no bumper activity.
Only “I am Cool” triggers this behavior - it does not work for the 100K award “I am Way Cool”, nor does this happen for any lower value on the target.
There’s no good reason to intentionally shoot the ball up towards that area, though - so this will pretty much never be useful. Nevertheless, this scoring quirk is there.
It almost comes off to me like the game is trying to compensate for the points that would’ve been scored from the 100k award, which is odd because no other I-Exam awards do that…
On Guardians of the Galaxy - every super jackpot can be comboed for double value, with the exception of the Orb super jackpot, for whatever reason. Always try and hit a ramp before collecting a super in Groot/Cherry Bomb/Immolation/Zandar, but don’t bother with the Orb super.
This rule also applies to a lot of “target practice” games - Stern Star Trek, KISS, Aerosmith all allow you to multiply points if you make shots as combos. It’s especially nice on Star Trek during Vengeance Battle - final shot scores 5% of your total score, but you can get 40% if you make it as the last shot of a 3-way combo with 2x scoring…
Someone was saying you can combo into the Kobiyashi start for 2x but I’m not buying it … I know you can start 2x scoring from the warp and it will double the medal collect but I don’t think the combo will. Otherwise a 4x collect would be possible which I think we would have heard about by now …
