Awesome! I couldn’t make heads or tails on some of the games, especially with limited footage and only a limited experience with tournament settings. This game almost is in the undocumented black hole, with half of the guides being lost on German servers. Leave it to a lead programmer to save it!
I realized that in some cases, games seem to not have a cohesive and complete set of rules. Iron Man was…strangely one of them.
Either way, HRC is one of my favorite Early Sterns (fun theme, multiple strategies, tons of features elegantly packed in), so anything you or anyone has is amazing.
It is NOT easy to fool the machine into a double-kill by pressing the little flipper right after flipping. I remember trying this when I first got the game - the software disables double kills for about 1/3 sec after a regular flip, which pretty much ruins any attempt at a straight-on shot. The ball reaches the target before this time expires, and flipping the little flipper immediately after has no effect. Note this is the latest public version.
In PAPA mode, recon level 5 just awards recon level 4. It’ll say recon is lit for 5 but you only get the L4 award (8M) when you collect. If you combo the recon 5 shot, you’ll get 3M combo bonus + advance to recon 6, but then it just awards you recon 4 8M anyway. Definitely push this to level 6 for the 25M and don’t rely on the combo advance.
Not sure if this was mentioned, but the best skillshot by far is to hold left flipper for super skill, but plunge to the orbit hole up top. This will give one of the 5 or 6 advances needed, and more importantly, keeps the orbits lit the entire ball for much easier orbit MB starts. This would be my only strategy for qualifying unless you really have to blow the game up. I say 5 because it seems a bug gives you the (T)WO upon making the last shot of ON(E)
Apologies for the double-posting (boo!), but the 3-28 version is ready to go. Tuesdays are my busy day, with 4 hours of extra work plus having to submit 3 tournaments to IFPA (Pittsburgh/Ohio folks - 24 Hours at Kickback, a series of 3 mini-tournaments including a Pin-Wizards tournament similar to Karl’s format out west, will be happening April 29th if you want to come to the 'Burgh) means I got to iron out a few kinks and write about how to play Little Chief.
3-28 Updates!
A Strategy Corner for Little Chief has been added, along with a few minor note changes!
Thanks to advancements in pinball technology (like taking the glass off of machines and talking to pinball devs - thanks for all the hard work!), High Roller Casino and Starship Troopers have been revised.
PDF uploads returned to DocDroid; the DocDroid machine was nicely fixed.
Just want to note, my comment (SST) about not being able to fool the game only applies when taking a shot. If you see the ball heading towards a lit bug target, say off the slings or a rebound off a post, you can often get the double kill if you miniflip just before it hits. The only rule is that any regular flipping disables doublekills for around .3 - .5 seconds.
I have been playing a SST on location. When the ball rolls into the back of the cluster just below the pop bumpers it is giving the Recon award. I take it this is not supposed to happen? Doesn’t seem right. …
After a big pinball day yesterday and a chance to get to see My Life as a Zucchini today, I finally have finished the Strategy Corners for all the things currently done! Now to finish the second half this weekend with the Ohio show…
3-30 Updates!
Thanks to an anonymous source’s glass-off time, I have all of the HRC shenanigans. And hoo boy, there are shenanigans. Read up!
WRT strategy on barracora. I am assuming the machine will have the gate removed. The one at pinburgh did and i think this is becoming the standard setup. As a result, you will only be able to get 1,2,3,4,5,6 from the right orbit, and not the spinner.
League is done, the big grind at Ohio is ahead of me, but most importantly enjoy some Skateball! I was tempted to write a Superguide for Orbitor 1 and stick it in there to be in the festive spirit, but I realized that it would take a decent amount of time to get my facts straight on that game. I’d be the fool, instead of being able to fool others.
3-31 Updates!
Added Skateball and the Skateball Strategy Corner!
The Skateball links will be fixed in the next edition; they currently link incorrectly.
Sk8ball is a MUCH better tournament game with extra ball set on easy. This causes the saucer to reset after one 100k collect rather than infinite until you accidentally complete SKATE.
I’m turning the corner and heading home. After an 11-page KISS guide, I would like to put out my famous last words and say that the largest guide is behind me. Ohio was amazing, and although I got destroyed by Trentaur I had a hell of an enjoyable weekend; shout outs to the Ohio crew for putting on such a good show!
