Metallica is the second and last in the Beavis and Butthead Anthology of Pinball Machines, since a Winger machine is unlikely. John Borg and Lyman Sheats team up for this one.
What do you think of Crank It Up?
Adam Becker, @PressStart, put together this impressively detailed piece on Metallica’s gameplay and strategy:
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I had not seen that site before, I’ll have to dig through his strategy guides.
Metallica is easily my favorite Stern in a really long time. I love playing it and I think CIU is one of the best things to come out in a game in forever. We recently did a side tourney here where we set CIU to its easiest level (5 of each item to light) and it was SO MUCH FUN. I wanted to make it 1 of each item but the software won’t let you do lower than 5. The risk/reward setup is awesome.
I didn’t think Stern would top ACDC, but Metallica has knocked it down a notch for me. Great writeup by Adam linked above that covers many of my talking points about why this game is so fantastic.
With regards to Coffin MB, something I like to consider is which MB I’m going to stack into it. Say for instance Coffin starts and I have no Chair progress, but Grave is ready to go… I will avoid starting Grave until I can pick off a bunch of safe Chair shots. Once I see that Chair is very close to being ready, I’ll stop shooting it and bring Grave into Coffin. That way when I’m back in single ball play, Chair will either be lit or very close. I think it’s a better move to leave Chair to run on it’s own as it’s a more substantial MB.
Side note on stacking a MB with Coffin - You can only get one add a ball. I prefer to save it until I’ve stacked two MBs together before cashing it in, but with 4 balls flying around during Coffin it can be hard to keep them from hitting the snake.
I’ve been playing to prioritize going for end of line lately on my machine, and my starting strategy is to lock in the lights for right ramp and grave marker first, start grave because I’m close by the time both are lit, light EOL during grave, play EOL, then start chair. It makes for an interesting game with lots of on the fly decisions, and it’s hard to go back to the bash the chair strategy that seems to be optimal in match-play competition, unless you have the accuracy of Jorian, that is.
I think Metallica in someone’s basement or on location is much more interesting than in competition as a match play machine. If you assume you’ll have a decently long game, there’s all kinds of routes as far as strategy that make sense. But, as someone who watches a lot of tournament pinball finals streams, I’ve seen about as much bash the chair as I can take. I guess time will tell whether any other interesting strategies will commonly be played in that situation.
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I found out the other day that the Super Skill Shot to the Piston target lights 2x playfield scoring at the piston target and bypasses the FUEL targets. 
Whoah! Now that is a quality rule to know. Seems like it could be difficult to pull off though. I guess on some games you could Super Skill -> Loop pass -> Piston target.
Has there been any discussion about the payoff for getting past 7 Sparky super jackpots?
I don’t want to spoil it, but I got there for the first time last night and it was pretty great. 2x made it better. Tried to start 4x and failed.
During RCP champs, I think Noah was holding up the flipper for super skill but soft plunging so it would come down the right orb to the right flipper, which depending on the feed could make a pretty easy shot to the piston target. (Wouldn’t a loop pass count as the super skill anyway?)
You can definitely hold the left flipper and short plunge like that. The only drag is when you plunge too short to put the ball in play and your super skill time expires before the ball even leaves the shooter lane. It’s a good rule to prevent exploiting with the short plunge.
Yeah, it’s a pretty amazing reward. Very hard to get and very cool.
The Loop pass on it is great from the left orbit…skill shot definitely worth trying for every ball, because even if you miss it then the ball tends to carom into SOMETHING for a skill shot anyways. Haven’t played a metallica that wasn’t loop passable though, even if you had to bump the side of the cabinet.
Right ramp to piston for the “combo jackpot” is awesome! Not only will it be a 250k plus shot, but it also starts the double pf when lit, extends the double playfield while it is running, adds metallica letters and collects items from the right ramp…once you get lady justice started and you get in a rhythm, the points are incredible. The piston shot also counts as a left playfield shot in lady justice mode which is also for higher points. I have to give credit to Cryss Stephens for most of this info, but in Jorian’s game at expo you can see this being done brilliantly.
Strategy for success? Advance as far towards sparky as you can without starting it, lock a ball in the coffin, go for grave markers. It’s nice to have sparky primed to go coming out of grave marker multiball, especially if your multiball was lucrative and you collected some hurry-ups. There’s very little chance you’ll come out of sparky without being close to CIU.
So after you finish seek and destroy, are the items removed completely from the shots and you have to redo all the hurry-ups? Does anyone know if the shots still give you credit towards items even though the shots aren’t lit solid?
Yea once you start S&D you have to re-do all the hurry up’s. You only get credit to CIU on the shots that are lit up.
Yeah, I believe they’re “unlit” after starting S&D, this is a bit of an annoyance. If you’re gunning for crank it ups, it may be in your best interest to not finish lighting shots, or to time out the coffin hurry up. S&D can be very valuable if you have a multiball ready or even better a couple to play back to back (chair straight into coffin afterwards works great if you have S&D going), but outside of being ready to have a multiball going, I generally will try to time out the hurry up to either play S&D at a better time, or be able to get to the next CIU with 4/5 lanes lit up instead of 0/5.
I suppose it might be interesting to let you “stack” lit lanes, i.e. the 2nd time you light a lane it’s worth 2x of the 3 shots, but it might make the later CIU modes/EOTL a little too easy to reach(and make the coffin shots the limiter always).
Does anyone know how to, or if you can choose where the super skill to start hurry up will be? If you do, is there any difference in tournament mode?
There is no choice, it seems to be the furthest left most shot.
So as an example, if the hurry up is completed for the left loop, it will be on the inline drops.
If both left loop and inline drops are done, it’s on the left ramp.
Don’t think there is a way to actually change what shot it is on.
Strange. I believe you from what I’ve seen video footage of, but I’ve played a couple metallicas that have had the right ramp or right orbit lit off the bat. The papa one though I’ve only seen left orbit
It is in all likelihood a tournament mode setting. I think non-tourney is random.
The lit super skill shot seems random unless for example only one set is needed and then it lights the remaining one.
I have not tested it on tourney mode.