So I was listening to an old episode of C2C pinball where Josh and Nate talk about Lyman’s rules on TWD and MET getting close to “Pinball Perfection”. The criteria being rules where the strategy for playing for fun and playing for score isn’t two separate strategies.
So Indy 500 would be the opposite example where it’s multiball all day when playing for score, and the rest of the rules doesn’t matter.
So this got me thinking what games live up to this “Pinball Perfection” criteria. The game would need to have some sort of modes and something like a wizard for this to matter I would guess. Off the top of my head I could think of:
Bram Stokers Dracula
The Walikng Dead
Metallica
AC/DC (almost, encore)
Ironman
Tron
No Fear
Gilligan’s Island (the word perfect seems misplace here imho)
Scared Stiff
The Shadow is great at least partly for this reason.
I tend to disagree about Indy 500. I know that MB can dominate, but Loop Turbo combos and playing out modes (and finishing them all for the Victory Lap) can be effective in some different situations. I played it in a 4-player group a few weeks back and was happy to prioritize starting video mode for a free and easy 50 or 60 million.
Huh? TAF tourney strategy is generally either go for mansion (and ignore modes), or multiball. Don’t think ignoring modes counts as “pinball perfection”
Which modes do you ignore? Maybe Raise the Dead . . . Fester? The rest I find just come with normal gameplay of grinding out starting more modes, playing your millions plus, or advancing towards multiball.
Assuming the magnets are disabled I’ll cash out that Seance.
3/6/9 million - Take em!
Cousin It/Mamushka - Take the points as they come!
Quick/Thing MB - Oh hell yes I’ll play those
Graveyard at Max - Take it!
Whitewater, Monster Bash, Dirty Harry, World Poker Tour.
I would also like to add two more criteria to “pinball perfection”, though, as far as rules:
-Depth
-You need to make lots of on-the-fly decisions, i.e. each game doesn’t play out the same
As far as depth, it’s easier to have a ruleset where you’re motivated to “do everything” if the set of “everything” is small.
For the on-the-fly decisions bit, each game of TWD clearly plays out quite differently based on lots of factors, while Tron or Scared Stiff you feel like every game you play is about the same as the last, except of course how quickly you drained.
Well, I guess this was mostly my point. For the most part, you can ignore which mode started and just keep lighting more and starting more. That’s not really “rules perfection.” The MB’s clearly you don’t, though, and good point now that magnets are disabled in tourney games commonly, Seance is another worth playing.
I might push back a slight bit on Tron - watching people grind out end of the line jackpots to max out score while minimizing risk may not be playing for fun.
I really like the concept though, good discussion!
I’d have to agree. I just plain stink at hitting scoop for the end of lines, guess that’s why I thought of it more given that SOS was the way to go for everyone
I think Dirty Harry is a game that comes close to “Pinball perfection” in terms of rules. Not the most nice looking game, but well suited for tournament play. It has balanced scoring and it’s worth playing multiball and modes!
Playing the modes is a bit generous for No Fear. If you’re playing for a high score, the only goal is to get through the modes. It really doesn’t matter what you score in the modes, you’re only goal is to make it through them. The only reason to shoot anything is because the mode timer stops.
If you can get into a good rhythm, using the Super Skill shot to light 2x at the fuel lane then right ramp, fuel lane back and forth is a fast way to points on Metallica and safer than 10 shots to Sparky IMO.
We ran a 2-minute high score drill and the high score was just over 41 MIL just doing that. I suspect better players could really go to town and never touch Sparky. (We sometimes play starting Sparky ends game). Of course it assumes the feed back into the left inlanes is reasonable, left flipper is strong enough etc.
