I understand the playfield is awful and its impossible to keep running, but what actually makes Popeye so bad from a rules standpoint? What are the game-breaking features of it?
(I honestly don’t know and one just showed up at a local arcade)
I understand the playfield is awful and its impossible to keep running, but what actually makes Popeye so bad from a rules standpoint? What are the game-breaking features of it?
(I honestly don’t know and one just showed up at a local arcade)
I would tell you, but the one near here was never functioning properly long enough for me to find out.
Doug says he’s not aware of any rules that make it bad, just that it’s “super shitty,” which is a highly technical term. It’s also a very long player. He considered using it in Pinburgh last year but ours in not in great condition and not worth messing with to get the timing down.
Bluto multiball all day. And I think you can get a lite lock on every plunge.
OK, but in an environment with no EBs, that is one free multiball. You get the same on basically every Data East game known to man. Is the lock reasonably easy to light otherwise?
Isn’t the locking a copy of Whitewater? So, yes, but not if you shoot Bluto too cleanly.
I believe it’s similar: lite lock with standups either side of Ctr hole
I feel like you get a skill shot on every plunge but I could be misremembering.
There is nothing else in the game worth going for other than multiball. The multiball jackpots increase by 30M every time you get one for no reason.
90% of the play field is wasted space.
Its been a minute since I played, bit that sounds right. You can can skill-shot your way to MB on each ball. That said, I felt like the skill-shot was pretty unreliable to actually hit.
So you’re saying GOTG is a rip off of Popeye???
Fascinating read based on Python’s notes on the game concept:
I played it a handful of times a few years back, before I’d consider myself a “good player” or knew much of anything about pinball, really. I found that pretty much every shot on the table is obscured by some kind of overhanging plastic or toy and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I didn’t like it much at the time, but that backglass with the flipper-armed popeye is certainly… something.
So in theory the sequence would go “plunge, light lock, lock. Repeat two times. Play multiball. Light lock manually. Lock ball. Then repeat as above”?
There’s a plug you can buy to eliminate the ability to plunge the light lock every time. We use it for league and the games are never long. Haha.
Yes. Except as stated earlier, it’s copy/paste from Whitewater, so it’s even harder to do light lock on mb 3 on Ppy*, and I don’t even know how you’d normally light a lock on mb 4+.
As for jackpot scoring, yeah it’s 30M+, double-able, but the overall multiplier is always capped at 6x.
Jackpot 1: 1x 30M = 30M
Double Jackpot 2: 2x 2x 30M = 120M
Jackpot 3: 3x 30M = 90M
Double Jackpot 4: 2x 4x (caps at 6x) 30M = 180M
Jackpot 6: 6x 30M 180M
You can get to the wheel from the UPF, too, so you can always get a lucky lock light from there as well after you play multiball instead of trying to light manually.
Then you’re just Saving Swee’ Pea all day long for 50M. Do you really want to go down THAT path?? How much more of the game are you willing to neuter?
Every hole but the 100 points. Haha
Lol. I’d forgotten about the base JP increase on every JP or DJP that created the much-more-than-“Double” Jackpot.
Others have mentioned the free locks, but this especially presents a problem in multiplayer, because it uses a physical ball lock (and there are no software controls for virtual locks). The other ways to earn locks is a select a feature (similar to Indy 500) or the lucky upper playfield shot.
So player 1 can jam up the lock and prevent the other players from getting all the locks lit via skill shot.
And it’s true, the jackpots dominate scoring. The only other significant scoring comes from making a large number of consecutive loop shots, finishing a mode, or finishing the five animals on the push thing. And even that scoring is crushed by a double jackpot.
So in multiplayer if I lock two balls and drain, how does player two get to multiball?
One free lock, then the harder/luckier ways.
To be honest I kind of dig this strategy choice, just like in Dr Who. Makes the decision around player order a little more complicated.