Continuing the discussion from Game malfunction ruling question:
I’ve read over the papa game notes, assuming it’s the one being referred too, and it doesn’t seem to have any notes on Getaway, or anything about the Creature bug mentioned elsewhere on the original thread.
I’m much newer to running tournaments than many of the players|TDs here, and lack this history knowledge.
What’s the story with Getaway?
Any others to add to the “avoid for software bugs!” list?
With Getaway, you literally need a spreadsheet to chart its awfulness.
To some extent, though, it’s not as bad as it sounds. The 2 major versions to use are L-2 and L-5. On L-5, every 3 arrivals into the lockup per player will restart your multiball (complete with ballsaver). If you understand what that means, then great. Otherwise, think of it like this:
lock 1->lock 2->lock 3 (multiball start)->jackpot->sj->sj (multiball restart)->jackpot->sj->sj (multiball restart)
It gets really really horrible when RLM gets involved.
lock 1->lock 2->[start RLM]->jackpot (multiball restarts)->jackpot->sj (still augmented to 100M at least I’m pretty sure)->sj (multiball restarts)
Or,
lock 1->[start RLM]->jp->sj (augmented to 100M) (multiball restarts)->jp->sj->sj (multiball restarts)
Hopefully you generally get it.
I believe this also means
lock 1->lock 2->lock 3 (mb)->jackpot->sj->[drain out]->lock 1 (multiball starts)
I’m a little bit sketchy on that last one but I think that’s still right.
But, in L-5, secret mania works. yay. Why the hell are you picking secret mania anyway?
In L-2, everything works as it should, but secret mania is completely fucked.
Therefore, on L-2, you could say “start SM at your own risk (you will not come out ahead)”.
I do not believe the secret mania breakage affects other players, but if it did, you could always prohibit and automatically charge an intentional interference to anyone who started it during a multiplayer game.
Hook is one of the buggiest games ever. The most important thing, however, is everyone needs to agree that crock clock rollovers still count for 100M on your score (croc clock total goes from 95M->0M). We did this in fspa way back in the day. As long as the display is functioning correctly (a big if) it’s otherwise a fine game to play.
The CFTBL snack attack bug is to start snack attack (typically 4 right ramps), do NOT collect it, then start multiball instead (helps to be lit before starting snack attack). In order for the bug to occur, you need to drain directly from multiball to bonus (actually I believe you can drain during the restart timer as well because modes are resurrected yet). On your next ball, snack attack will restart, with the hurryup value starting at ZERO. This causes an underflow to 9.999B, so you have to wait long enough that your score + hurryup doesn’t go back OVER 10B, otherwise you have basically subtracted points from your score.
STTNG has many many horrible bugs. If you start final frontier and the ball isn’t being held for some reason (ball is live on pf during artifact count-up) and you drain that ball before balls are kicked out, you go to bonus and no points AT ALL are awarded. Also, the FF total seems to have little basis in reality, but I have nfi if the points are scored properly or not.
The list goes on and on.
Isn’t there some kind of infinite ball saver bug even on L2? I was talking to @pinwizj about this recently because Northwest Oh-Pin was planning on using it for qualifying and we had a discussion going about what rev was “least bad”. Also apparently L2 doesn’t allow two-stage flippers which while not major is annoying.
Moral of the story: If you want to use Getaway in a tournament, use High Speed with the fixed jackpot ROM instead 
PS. If anyone could tell me where to get one of those, I’d be very much obliged!
If anyone has the details of this I’d love to know.
and this.
A friend in ATX has a HS2 and we were planning on using it in future tournaments and leagues. I’ve owned HS2 and didn’t notice anything screwy but, mostly one player games and never used in tourney. The two balls in the lock trough delay was probably the biggest thing I was aware of.
I had a crazy bug in BSD during TPF though. I played all three balls with no issue and @Snailman walks up to play his ball three in our finals match, hits the launch button and nothing. We messed with it for a while and gave him ball on flipper which drained during ball save. Now the ball is back in the trough and still not getting kicked out. Put the ball back on the flipper and he eventually drained for a loss. I power cycle the game and of course the launch button works perfectly and still does to this day… BSD hates everyone equally
I have also seen this on BSD. No idea what causes it or how to repro it.
Almost every BSD I have played has ended my ball at some point when draining down to 1 ball after a multiball. It seems random, and is impossible to reproduce. I tore my hair out replacing trough switches and optos with my old BSD. Could never figure out why it happens. Maybe I’ve just had bad luck. Regardless, its still one of my favorite games, and I’d happily play it in a tournament, bugs and all.
That’s why the magnet on mine was disabled for TPF but, like you said its impossible to reproduce. One fun thing about having the magnet disabled is that if the ball somehow goes into the left side magnet pocket the game won’t try to remove it, ever. C-Bar’s BSD was like this until I “fixed” it. YW 
Wasn’t Planetary potentially working on doing something about the bugs in the Bally/WMS games as part of their WPC 2.0 thing?
If this happens during Mist multi all, you could have a problem with your inductor on the 24-opto board, which can intermittently fail.
I remember playing BSD in a tournament setting last year where I was able to start video mode during one of the multiballs (probably Mist?). Flippers were killed, I watched all the balls in play drain, and that was the end of that ball after video mode ended. The TD (@PAPA_Doug) was sympathetic, but ruled “that’s pinball”. 
I replaced the inductor in mine, and eventually installed the homepin redesigned board. Problems persisted.
Seems there has been no movement on this idea, at least according to the pinside thread they started
STLE last night - saw a bug thought was fixed: Completed Nero III, locked in the left orbit for double scoring. Started Destroy the Drill. Lost a ball, pick another mode. Somehow I picked Nero again and it said 0 shots left. Played a while (entire time left orbit was lit for double scoring, aka combo shot since I had completed Nero III already), lost a ball. New ball still on Nero III but needed 65,000 shots to complete. Talk about odd. I’ve heard of that bug before but never seen a bug AFTER completing a mode and getting to start it again. Still awesome game - might do some glass off testing.
Yes, Mist multiball if you hit the mist ball into the video lock. You have to double flip to skip the video mode intro and then die right away to hopefully get flipper power back and still have a ball left. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a ball save on the one that drained.
I guess that adds some additional risk to the risk/reward of my usual goal of trying to knock the Mist ball into the coffin lock. If you miss, and hit the ball into the right loop hard enough… you’re screwed. And BSD laughs.
Just make sure Video mode isn’t lit when trying it.
I was playing BSD and missed the mist ball as it traveled right to left. When I missed I looped the left ramp and the mist ball came back into play traveling from left to right. I’ve never seen this before. Bug?
BSD will (in some cases at least) finish a current DMD animation before evaluating the ball saver. Meaning that you can have the ball draining to trough with the ball saver lamp on - then no activity for a short while along which the ball saver run out - and then have end-of-ball. Which really sucks!
I have seen numerous other funnies with BSD. But I suspect the machine have suffered unstable trough switches.
“You are safe with me! Ok maybe not my bad” - Dr. Acula