Look Up
Playing pinball can be a more fun if you know what you’re shooting for. I’ve also just collected way too much pinball trivia and need an excuse to share it! Each week I’ll include a tiny guide for one of the machines you can play here.
Look Up - Reading a Pinball Machine
A big part of playing pinball is just keeping the ball alive. But there’s more happening than just batting the ball around, and understanding some common patterns in pinball will help you know what to expect based on where the ball is travelling.
Several of the pinball machines that we have here will catch and hold the ball briefly while it tells you some information. In a quiet room this is a little more obvious because the music will change and a call-out may be telling you what’s happening.
In a loud room those cues can be easy to miss, but in general the pinball machine will try to guide your attention with lights. When the ball is held somewhere, often the playfield lights will dim, guiding your attention up to the screen.
So when is it going to hold the ball? This varies from machine to machine, and even depends on what state the game is in. For example, in Jurassic Park your ball will be held in the left inlane after shooting the left ramp when all the letters of MAP are lit. Dungeons & Dragons has multiple locations where the ball will be held, including Fizmo’s shop and the dungeon crawl mode.
That’s a lot to unpack, and I’ll talk about those modes in more depth in a later post. For now, I just want to encourage you to look and see what the screen is telling you whenever the ball is being intentionally held by the machine.
It’s Coming Back
So your ball just drained out the side. But wait, another ball immediately showed up in the shooter lane and is plunged back into play! Awesome, but why?
Lots of pinball machines feature a “ball save” mechanic or two. It’s often got a fun name that tries to fit in with the theme of the game, but they generally all work the same. The newer the machine, the more generous the ball save tends to be.
When first getting started on a ball, there’s usually a flashing light somewhere between the flippers. As long as that’s flashing, if you lose the ball it’ll come right back. On Star Trek it’s called “Return to Duty”, on D&D and Jurassic Park it’s just a yellow circle that says “Shoot Again”. FireBall II doesn’t have any ball save whatsoever.
When the machine saves your ball using this mechanic it’ll also automatically plunge it into play, so just keep your hands on the flipper buttons!
The other common ball save is on one of the outlanes. Both Jurassic Park and Star Trek have a save on the left outlane. Jurassic Park calls it “Escape” and gives you one per game for free, but on Star Trek you have to light the “Kickback” by hitting a few targets. So if these lights are lit when you drain out that side, get ready for the ball to come back.
If you have any questions or topics you think would be interesting to cover, please let me know!