On Indy 500, if you have one ball locked, but there are no balls in the Turbo (say, because a previous player cleared it out with their own MB), fun things happen!
For one, the next ball you shoot into the Turbo will insta-start multiball, regardless of game status. For example:
P1 locks 1 ball towards their 2nd multiball, but doesn’t light their 2nd lock. Drains.
P2 plays their own multiball, clearing out the Turbo. Drains.
P1 shoots the Turbo, MB starts immediately even though they never qualified their second lock.
This lets you stack things that aren’t normally possible. You can start a PIT round, then shoot the Turbo, and now you’re in a PIT MB + normal MB stack. Or you can stack Turbo Boost MB + normal MB.
The best part is when you stack MBs, the game is totally confused, and any shot to the Turbo scores a 60M Super JP. Here it is happening at GSPF.
@cayle has been searching for this his whole life ever since we saw the turbo boost + regular multiball stack and could never figure out how to repro it!
Corvette - the shots lit for spark plugs (w/ yellow arrows) change when the ball rolls through either inlane. Generally lots of shots are lit for spark plugs so this isn’t too big of a deal, but shatzing the inlanes can help you light easier shots for spark plugs to get to extra ball, “Race Today” and the 30M or 40M points award quicker.
Free Ride from the mystery award on Getaway is a timer dependent ball save, rather than ending on a draim, just like the ball save on launch, so you can make use of it to score multiple loop shots.
I remember a discussion on another forum regarding the ruling on this, and surprisingly, the ruling is “normal course of play” (not a major malfunction). If players really expect this to be the correct ruling it’s enough for me to consider not having STTNG in my tournaments.
So add a note to your tournament’s rulebook stating that if that event happens on STTNG, it will be treated as a Major Malfunction. Done. Your tournament, your rules. Just make sure to communicate clearly to players and (if you have them) assistant TDs.
Generally, Bally Harley-Davidson allows lock stealing. If P1 locks a ball in the left saucer and drains, P2 only has to hit the right saucer to start a multiball.
But the game doesn’t handle this case properly:
P1 hits the left saucer until lock is lit, doesn’t lock a ball, drains.
P2 hits the left saucer until lock is lit, locks a ball, drains.
The game tries to restore P1’s lock progress. The left lock will start blinking even though a ball is already locked, and the right saucer unlights.
The game’s then in a weird state. If P1 shoots the unlit right saucer, the ball locks and a 3rd ball is served, but multiball doesn’t start, and all the saucers are unhittable for P1. When P1 drains, the game recovers, and the next player gets a free multiball when they plunge!
Each player has their own jackpot value, but any jackpot building is shared. So if P1 builds their jackpot up by 1M, P2 will also have 1M added to their jackpot value. If P1 collects their jackpot, P1’s jackpot resets back to 5M, but P2 will retain their progress. As far as I can tell, the Tournament setting doesn’t affect this!
I’m not sure what the expected behaviour would be for a game that rolls over at 10 bil that isn’t this behaviour. It silently rolls over at 10 bil however you get there.
When you are in any multiball, completing the stop light standups lights another extra ball. Considering the free RPMs you can collect by plunging and draining at the start of an EB, even if no flips are allowed, I’d say this is at least semi-useful.
Ive noticed a similar progression appearing to happen during the Supercharger mode, but have not managed to hit all 9 to see if it happens there as well.
If you have the last RPM segment to collect, and lock three lit, it is possible to stack Supercharger with the 3-Ball, but it does cause some hinkiness with the jackpot progression. Edit: I think there may be some other conditions required to trigger this, and I’m not fully clear on it.
Iron Maiden: you can get an additional ball in play during any multiball. Have a Revive lit and lose a ball down that outlane. A replacement ball will immediately be launched upon hitting the outlane switch. Quickly hit the multiball’s regular add-a-ball before the outlane ball reaches the trough, and the activated ball saver will also save the outlane ball in addition to adding one. It’s possible to get all 6 into play during Cyborg this way.
I wonder if this works on any other Sterns with an outlane resurrect and an add-a-ball? Feel like I would have noticed if it ever happened on say Godzilla or Deadpool, but maybe it just never did.
AIQ doesn’t have any outlane ball resurrect, so this wouldn’t happen there. You need the outlane switch to immediately trigger a replacement ball, so there’s a window of time to activate a new ball saver before the outlane ball hits the trough. Any ball saver in multiball on Sterns (including AIQ’s super) doesn’t do the first part of that and only operates from balls hitting the trough.
Got a new one. Iron Maiden: it’s possible to collect the same soul shard twice.
I had 3 of the 5 shards, and had played 2 Minutes to Midnight. Currently playing the second instance of Mariner. I got the super jackpot, then started working on Mystery level 3 to spot a soul shard. I got that, but realized it might have credited me the shard for Mariner itself. Trapped up to check and it had. But then when I drained out of Mariner MB, the shard hurry-up started it anyway! I got it, and collected the tomb treasures - both copies of the shard had lit one.
I didn’t get to see if collecting the last remaining shard (the 6th total) would have lit another tomb treasure. If it does in this case, then that’s actually a serious shortcut to Run to the Hills - you don’t need either the 6-way combo or the level-2 Eddie cards. (You get 10 treasures total from 6 shards, Mummy super, Trooper super, loop jackpot, Beast.)
I learned a few weeks ago that if your last room before Tour the Mansion on Addams Family Gold is 3 Million + Trap Door, it will NOT give you the Tour for free, but just spot you another random room you already had (in my case Thing multiball)
