I am planning to pick up an EM with bulb scoring (pre-score reels) and thought it would be fun to use it in a tournament. I cannot recall ever playing one in a tournament before. Perhaps with good reason?
Any issues with using such a machine assuming said machine fully working as intended?
We’ve used my Straight Shooter for a while now without any big issue.
Sometimes people misread the scores and give themselves, eg, 5,300,20 instead of 5,320,000 (the game only has millions, hundred thousands, and ten thousands lights) but that’s pretty easy to spot. Also for some reason there’s no 0 light for the 100ks which is a bit weird. Never had to give any rulings but rarely TD will need to come over just to verify they read the score correctly.
Obviously you need to make sure all the lights and associated steppers are solid since unlike a reel game where an issue usually means you just lose 1 place, on a bulb game if your 6 million light is out it’s going to read as 0 million
Thanks!
I assume these games reach a max score and then stop scoring points? If that is what happens does it frequently result in ties and/or grumpy players?
That’s how most work, yeah. I’ve never seen someone hit the max before though.
We’ve used the bulb-scoring, and simply fantastic Williams game Gusher in a few minor Pinball Asylum tournaments. It maxes out at 8,990,000 I think. I’ve never seen anyone hit the max score in the three years we’ve had the game. We did post a sign on it, saying that if there were multiple players who maxed out the score in any particular tournament that they would have to do a playoff. Other than being a bit of a luck-box, players response to the game has been very positive as Gusher with its disappearing pop bumper is a lot of fun to play.