And now you know why Stern and JJP don’t accept submissions from outside contributors.
Removing stupid pre-coffee Monday morning post because Scott and I are friends and have worked on a couple things together in the past and will hopefully collaborate more in the future.
Aside - If anyone’s interested in designing custom or commercial games I highly recommend getting in on the pindev slack (pindev.slack.com). Messaging Jimmy on pinside is usually the quickest way to get an invite.
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Actually, we’ll (or at least I’ll) listen as long as you acknowledge disclosure gives up any ownership and we may or may not use your idea. 
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If you want to go full letter of the law, you still have to plunge balls 2 and 3 regardless, with a chance to tilt away your TNA bonus, tilt through, play out of order, etc. All of those things seem impossibly unlikely (except maybe play out of order), but by the “letter of the law” they can still happen, and your remaining balls are “played.” You’re simply playing a mode where the flippers are disabled. Good luck!
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After extensively evaluating audits with the help of Scott Danesi 99.97% of games played don’t reach destroying reactor 9. I’m considering this not material.
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Cool that this doesn’t DQ TNA from normal competition. Still, if there ever were to be a reason to technically have “all” balls playable, I suggest that, if tournament mode is set, the game be allowed to carry on with flippers enabled in “aftermath” mode, where a few difficult-to-hit switches would score a point each, and everything else on the PF is dead. No music, just some background wind noise. Sure… play on… you won’t catch up before you die in the wasteland.
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challenge accepted!
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How about all those Data East games, which gap the scoring to 9,999,999,990? 
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Follow-up question: should TNA be played as a single-player game in comps because it allows lock stealing?
Absolutely not.
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I hear you. I agree, too 
But why? At least around here, most tournaments that use lock stealing games play them as a single-player game. From memory, quite a few tournaments in the US do the same?
So, why should TNA be any different?
Yes, I know that part of the TNA fun is whether my opponent drains with two locked balls ready to be picked off. It adds a lot of excitement. But then, how is this different from stealing locks on Swords of Fury or Dungeons and Dragons, or any one of many other games?
If what’s good enough for the Goose is good enough for the Gander, there should be a uniform policy?
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If I could make the rule that lock stealing games must be played multiplayer I would.
In the meantime I can just make sure when I’m the TD of an event, all lock stealing games are fair game and played multiplayer.
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This hasn’t been my experience at the tournaments I’ve travelled to and we don’t do it that way locally. Just this past weekend at Women’s / Nationals / Pin-Masters in Vegas, they had Sorcerer in the bank and played it with two players.
I agree that rules should be applied consistently, so if you generally play lock stealing games as single-player, TNA would fall into that category, but what’s the rationale for playing them single-player?
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I only see an issue with multiplayer lock-stealing games if the process to re-lock balls is especially difficult. Games like Radical! or Fire! both force you to slog through the lock lighting process again to re-lock balls, which is a real drag. Games like TNA or Taxi aren’t a big deal because you can just pop them back in without difficult requalifying.
So I think it’s fine for the TD to make this decision on a game by game basis without creating a blanket rule across the board.
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The rationale is that, if in single player, I have to earn my locks, an no-one can take them away from me. Conversely, if in multi-player, if I drain at the wrong moment, I can leave the locked balls to my opponent on a silver platter, which is considered “unfair” (by some measure of “unfair”).
At a recent tournament, I found that Addams was being played as a single-player game. Rationale: The first player gets the luxury of having additional balls served into the shooter lane, allowing for another skill shot. Subsequent players, once balls are locked by earlier players, get the ball served out of the swamp kick-out.
This was the first time I came across playing Addams that way. I have to agree with the reasoning: it is indeed an advantage to get a ball into the shooter lane. On the other hand, I’m wondering whether that isn’t taking the idea of fairness one step too far. (I’m honestly not decided on this one.)
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Tip for fire. Trap up and wait 3-5 secs. Ladder usually comes up for a couple secs. Shoot that for a lock.
Also if you advance the bonus x via the center horseshoe, ladder comes up for a period of time. Shoot that for a lock.
Basically only shoot straight up the middle on fire!
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That’s unfortunate
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In a head to head match lock stealing is perfectly fair. Decisions you make has a risk reward tradeoff. In a 4 player group I see it differently. I remember playing space station as player 2. All 3 balls I walked up to the machine with balls already locked and got them released. I don’t like the fact that choices P1 makes can benefit P2 to the disadvantage of P3 and P4.
In reality, I recommend playing TNA on P1 and P3 in 2p groups because danger through is still an issue and you don’t want to need to make that ruling. I need to understand the tilt software settings on TNA, maybe it can be balanced better.
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This sounds suspiciously like a ball search exploit.
Edit to add: I don’t know fire well enough to know if that’s a true statement or not. Also I hate fire because of its shit dealing-with-locks programming.
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