I played Jackbot twice in the tournament at Starfighters Pinball Festival this weekend. (Great tournament, great event!)
There were two unusual bits about this game: first, the software settings disabled cheating. Second, the skill shot was the cleanest I’ve ever seen on a Jackbot. Plunging in multiball was especially fun. Skill shot was hit almost 100% of the time.
Casino Run got weird. I built up a good bank … maybe about 800 million … and probably should have cashed out. I thought there was a good chance of a bomb on the next spin, so I didn’t spin again … I did this:
Drain on purpose. Lose 5 seconds.
Plunge skill shot. Gain 10 seconds.
Repeat a couple times.
Drain on purpose. Lose 5 seconds.
Full pull plunge, score 150 million from Vortex value and multiplier.
Keep going…
Drain on purpose with less than 15 seconds left.
Plunge skill shot, collect bank and get out.
I wonder if there is a limit to this behavior. Probably not, I’m guessing? What is the highest Casino Run you’ve seen?
For this to be exploitable you need to find points on other places of the playfield. Doing Casino Run feature will eventually get you bombed. Plunge skillshot-points, plunge skillshot-time, repeat, would do the kill. Remains to document how skillshot-points works.
Initial investigation: Two add time options offered per CR only. Eventually the game offers Collect on the centre skillshot. Which is kinda nice, if you land at plunge with virtually no time left. Mr. Larry Demar figured it all out.
I was watching the whole game. I don’t think you repeated this as many times as you think. I remember you getting the +10 seconds twice, and I don’t recall you repeating it over and over, so soren may be correct that 2 is the max per CR. I may take the glass off next week and try it just to see it with my own eyes.
True – I didn’t feel like trying to do this indefinitely was a great idea. Oh, Soren is saying the max time bonus is +20 seconds?! That is very cool. The cashout on plunge is great and dramatic, though you can also short plunge to a saucer (usually).
Surely you, Bowen, and anyone else on this forum would be confident going for plunging and trying to make a saucer for collect. Even with very little time left. Skill and game knowledge. Knowledge of not only the rules. But also that the timer is stopped, that you may be able to get the ball to trap on flipper without the timer even starting and that after times-up there is still grace time for you.
For the main audience in 1995, the collect skillshot was a challenging last change. Bringing some excitement to the game. Although I think it may be buried so deep in the rules that people rarely got to it. I think it is trumphed by add time (when available).
A timed single ball play mode, where a drain will not end ball-in-play, but punish your mode and return the ball is ultra great pinball. I was happy to see the concept used on Infinity Quest and dread that it has not been used in more games.
I wonder why, now it is so awesome. Could be a reluctancy to “ball saver” because of the belief that players do not get it and walk away. More please.
I normally would not do this at all, I am not that great with skill plunges. For some reason, this particular Jackbot was perfect. And, like you say, you can short plunge and shoot a saucer – I thought the chance of bombing out was very high so I was trying to avoid that!
Absolutely a great wizard mode, so fun and well constructed.
This thread piqued my curiosity so I did a little additional looking.
If I knew about a 2-skill-shot limit on add time, that knowledge long since left my head. The rulesheet for the game also says the timer caps at 45s for the “more time” spin award. This may or may not be applicable to the skill shot add time as well (however, I would ASSUME that it DOES apply, so the timer will never be seen >45s). The 45s limit sounds familiar, but I couldn’t have told you that without looking it up.
Every switch scores the 4M, not just the bumpers.
While reading the rulesheet, it mentions that ramp is up and the cashier target does nothing. This gave me a fascinating idea for a rule: One saucer is blinking, or solidly-lit, or something other than the other 2 (I guess it can’t be solid since a locked ball would also be solid). Shooting this saucer is guaranteed to be safe (no bombs). If you make that saucer, it advances to the next one. The cashier target could be used to advance the saucer light as well if it’s on something you don’t want to shoot (e.g. game saucer).
That would greatly change the mode obviously, but you can’t deny that it’s interesting!