Meteor Basics

Playing pinball can be 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.

Meteor

Meteor is (at the time of writing) the oldest machine at Tiltshift. It was created by Stern Electronics and is themed loosely after the 1979 movie of the same name starring Sean Connery. While the movie was a flop, the pinball machine is excellent.

This machine features three flippers, 15 drop targets, and a surprisingly elusive spinner. The very short strategy guide would be “Knock down all but one of the METEOR drop targets, then hit the spinner repeatedly”, but we’ll get into a little more detail than that.

One, Two, Three Drop targets

Around the playfield there are three sets of three drop targets labelled with either a “1”, “2”, or a “3”. Knocking down any of these targets advances the corresponding missile in the center of the playfield by one light. At the end of your ball, every light counts as 1000 points in the bonus.

If at any point all three missiles have the same number of lights, one drop target bank will be illuminated for a Special and will award extra points when hit.

Meteor Drop targets

The drop targets labelled METEOR have several functions. Knocking them all down advances the bonus multiplier, which holds over from ball to ball. Reaching 6x will light one of the Meteor drop targets for an extra ball.

These targets can also be dropped by other actions around the playfield, for example a lit inlane, the roll-over targets at the top of the playfield, or the center standup target.

Spinner

The METEOR drop targets also modify the value of the spinner. Each of the “E”, “T”, “E”, and “O” target add 200 points per spin, while the “M” and “R” add 600. The maximum value for the spinner is achieved by dropping all but one of the 200-point targets.

That’s basically all there is to it. Meteor has a very simple rule set, but is difficult to master.

If you have any questions or topics you think would be interesting to cover, please let me know!