Funhouse Tactics and Strategies

Everyone knows the game by now - this is not the only way to a high score on Funhouse, don't read this if you want to figure it out by yourself, and use my high score (205M, #11 on the 360 boards as of this writing) to decide for yourself if I'm worth paying attention to. And therefore, it's time for the...

General strategy: Multiball, multiball, multiball. But that's so obvious as to not be worth writing this post to point out. What is not as obvious is how to quickly and easily rack up the Million Plus shots once you're there, and some other features of the table that can be stacked with multiball or used on their own to up your score. But first...

Ball control: That kickout above the right flipper is your friend. Hold right flipper up for instant trap on the right. Do a dead pass for a safe trap on the left. Completely unrealistic, and not at all like most real Funhouses, which tend to allow one or the other some of the time, but never both and definitely not 100% consistently, but hey, me takes what me can gets.

Getting to Midnight Multiball: Hit stuff, almost anything will do. More specifically, the ramp is nice and safe. If you have Jet Bumpers at Max from the mirror, shoot the left orbit to drop the ball in the pops for 10 minutes a hit - a direct shot to the bumpers is too dangerous. If the ball is on the lower left flipper, shoot the lock for 20 minutes. Do the lock thing from the left flipper, using the mirror and a dead-bounce to set up the shot as needed.

You definitely want to go down there: When multiball starts, immediately apply a medium-light nudge as Rudy vomits the ball. Doing so keeps it out of the left outlane. Experiment with the direction and force of the nudge until you find one that puts the ball where you can get control of it. While doing that, try to make the trap door from the balls coming from the lock. Don't fret too much if you don't make it, just focus on control.

At first, you'll have 3 balls, which is actually quite annoying, because you only need 2 to do what I'm about to tell you, and the third ball gets in the way. There's actually an argument to be made for deliberately draining this ball to get it out of the way and to reduce the chance of double- or triple-draining. I don't go to that extreme, and prefer to throw the ball into the pops, the mirror, up the ramp, anywhere to get it safely out of play for a few seconds.

Regardless what you do with the third ball, your aim is to do the following:

1. Get one ball on the lower left flipper and one on the right.
2. Throw right ball up the ramp to relight Million Plus at trap door.
3. When that ball loops around and comes down, and is roughly in line with the center of the clock, throw left ball into the lock.
4. The ball from the ramp should be in the left inlane. Immediately bankshot it off the Superdog targets into the Mystery Mirror.
5. The ball from the lock should have just ejected. Take your nice shot at the trap door free from interference from the other ball in the mirror.
6. Do not stare at the flashing lights, and pay no heed to screaming dummies! Instead, dead-bounce the ball that just ejected from the kickout (originally from the mirror) onto the left flipper.
7. As soon as the ball crosses the center gap, hold up the right flipper to catch the second ejected ball (originally from the trap door) onto the right flipper. You are now back at step 1.
8. Repeat for Million Plus up to the limit, then continue repeating for unlimited Ten Millions.

If you lose control, simply focus on regaining it, even at the expense of not taking a trap door shot, which is hard to make anyway when you're flustered at losing control of the other ball.

Mirror, mirror: Like Whirlwind, that scoop up top awards various things and leads to Super Frenzy. Unlike the Super Cellar Door, the Mystery Mirror is quite a bit easier to complete - so easy, in fact, you can complete it on every ball. Like the Mega Door Bonus, achieving Super Frenzy locks out the Mystery Mirror for the remainder of that ball. Your awards are:

• Light Extra Ball: Get it, obviously. Note that if you collect this, the Gangway starts resetting itself to 75K after each drain. If you're going for the standard goal "Light Extra Ball from the Gangway", you may want to avoid collecting the extra ball until you light the other one. Extra balls do stack.
• Light Million: If you're close to multiball, just collect it when you shoot Rudy to start MB. Otherwise, collect it whenever, remembering to nudge to prevent Rudy-to-left-outlane drains.
• Jet Bumpers at Max: Very nice if you just exited multiball and you're faced with a clock at 5:00. Throw ball up the left gangway to drop it in the bumpers for 10 minutes a hit. It is occasionally possible to light lock in one shot doing this.
• Light Superdogs: Not worth going for. Sure, 200K is nice, but you could be making progress towards multiball and Million Plus instead.
• Light Crazy Steps: Collect whenever. The only time you might hold off is if you want to stack Frenzy onto multiball, but this is not really worth aiming for. (Super Frenzy on multiball is another story.)
• Quick Multiball: This can actually be played like regulation multiball above, although the ball goes out of control after each Rudy hit and the ramp shots really have no purpose since you're not relighting jackpots. Better to hold one ball on the right flipper and shoot left flipper to lock, upper left flipper to Rudy, careful nudge to get the ball to go down the left inlane, repeat.
• Super Frenzy: If at all possible, get this after the second lock and then quickly start multiball. If you're not near multiball, but the crazy steps are lit, go ahead and start Super Frenzy and then shoot the ramp and collect regular Frenzy to add 20 seconds to the SF timer. A 35-sec SF is nothing to sneeze at. Do not drain while the mirror is flashing for Super Frenzy; if you do, you've essentially wasted the next ball's entire mirror.

All eyes left: To get Frenzy from the steps whenever you want, plunge very softly, knowing that it won't reach the award holes. Then plunge a smidge harder, harder still, etc., until you just reach the Frenzy hole. Very useful when extending Super Frenzy or stacking with multiball.

Skill shot: Pretty rough on FunHouse, but generally not an immediate drain hazard. Alternate school of thought favors a soft plunger to get control immediately on the lower flippers.

Extra balls and specials: One for 7.2M, one from the crazy steps (but if you collect more than 2 or 3 other extra balls, the game stops lighting the steps extra ball), one from the gangway, and unlimited from the mirror! Since you can complete the mirror once per ball, you theoretically could play Funhouse forever.

Special is lit by reaching 11:30 the second time. You do not need to actually start the second multiball to light the Special.

Fun with bonus: Bonus is your 50,000 x your Rudy hits, plus any Frenzy total. This actually starts becoming significant during a long game with many extra balls, 70 hits for instance is 3.5M per ball in bonus. Multiple rounds of Frenzy and/or Super Frenzy send your bonus through the roof; 10M+ in bonus is not implausible. Don't tilt!

Good luck!

Great guide, thanks.

One important additional thing to note about Funhouse: while 'unlimited' Extra Balls are available from the Mirror, you can only get one per ball. That's because after you complete the Mirror (and get Super Frenzy), the mirror is unavailable for the rest of the ball. So once you light the Mirror EB, it's important to complete the mirror before you drain, so the mirror will relight next ball and you can keep the EBs flowing.

Serenseven said:

The ball from the lock should have just ejected. Take your nice shot at the trap door free from interference from the other ball in the mirror.

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I do it in a very similar way to your advice.

If i have a combinition of midnight multiball an frenzy i make as much shot as i can with all
three balls, the bumpers are best.

With midnight multiball i let the first ball drain to have a better contol of the other two balls.
The biggest problem is the trap door shot. If the ball comes out of the hallway lock or rudis
hideout it is so slow that i mostly hit rudis mouth and not the trap door. If the ball comes from
the plunger or the right loop/gangway i can hit the trap door/ trap door loop without any
problem because this ball is much faster, but the right loop/ gangway shot during midnight
multiball is very dangerous/difficult shot, fu**.

So i don't make very much million+ shots, the 10 million max. is a dream for me. Until today
my best is 4 trap doors for a 5 million shot and don't ask me how i did it, but i liked it
to hear rudi sream so often.

For nearly one week i only play funhouse, because i want to reach the 1000 Hall of Fame score.
I increased my best from 72M to 160M, and my best is 105 rudi hits. If you have enough
patience funhouse is an easy to learn pinball, because it's easy to control the ball(s).

Serenseven said:

Skill shot: Pretty rough on FunHouse, but generally not an immediate drain hazard. Alternate school of thought favors a soft plunger to get control immediately on the lower flippers.

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on the iPad, there is a particular plunger position (say that 5 times fast) where you can get the rudy's hideout skillshot every time. it's hard to describe ... but i bring the rim of the plunger handle exactly even with the bottom border of the rectangular housing. maybe i'll post a screenshot to explain what i mean. anyway, it's worth a million points every shot, so that pixel is worth seeking out

pezpunk said:

maybe i'll post a screenshot to explain what i mean.

Click to expand...

That would be great.

It's done...

Good bye Rudi, it was a pleasure to shot you.

165 Rudis, 11,500,000 best frenzy, a two hours game:



My second table with 1000 HoF points, the next one is BoP.

Excellent strategies, some of them I didn't know about... Thanks!

I've seen it mentioned elsewhere in this forum-- there is a huge difference in the gameplay between Pinball Arcade FunHouse and the actual table: in a nutshell, the digital version is WAY easier.
Are there any efforts underway to make the digital version more difficult and unpredictable, like the actual table?

Nice to find this forum!

I haven't quite got the feel of the TPA version of Funhouse yet... but does the Super Frenzy bug still exist?

It doesn't on the real table, but does on the PS2 and PS3 Pinball HOF games.

I actually tend to prefer Quick Multiball to regular multiball and usually find it much more profitable simply because the Rudy shot is so much easier to pull off than the orbit for Jackpot.

Tripredacus said:

I haven't quite got the feel of the TPA version of Funhouse yet... but does the Super Frenzy bug still exist?

It doesn't on the real table, but does on the PS2 and PS3 Pinball HOF games.

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What's the Super Frenzy bug?

A tip on the left plunger

I'm playing this on Mac, and there is a design under the machine (carpeting, I guess) that has proven most useful. For the left plunger, there is no plunger guide. The design on the carpeting helps me to gauge where the plunger is as I shoot for the lowest step.

This advice applies to IOS ... i can't vouch for it on other platforms.

when the ball is launched from either the hidden hallway lock or from rudy's hideout, shooting the ball from the upper flipper at rudy is over 99% safe. my 399 million score was made by shooting at rudy's head every time the ball ejected from either the hallway or the hideout (ended up with over 200 rudy hits). HOWEVER -- and this is crucial -- for some reason, when the ball comes out of the crazy steps, shooting it from the upper flipper at Rudy often causes a drain. must be something different about its speed or trajectory, but trust me it is better in that situation to let it drop and try to catch it on either the left or right flipper. so to sum up ... when a ball comes out of the hideout or hallway, shoot at rudy. when it comes out of the steps, don't shoot at rudy.

this is probably the easiest table to get a thousand PHOF points on, not because there aren't a lot of ways to drain, but because there are a large enough set of shots that are predictable enough to make practically indefinite play possible.

Discovered something quite by accident last night. When you start the game, IMMEDIATELY launch the ball and shoot for Rudy. You can get it in his mouth while he's still laughing and you'll score a 250K "Rudy Gulp".

That will stop his stupid laugh. Heh. I supposed that could happen any time he randomly speaks, but there should always be that opportunity at the very start.

phreaker47 said:

Discovered something quite by accident last night. When you start the game, IMMEDIATELY launch the ball and shoot for Rudy. You can get it in his mouth while he's still laughing and you'll score a 250K "Rudy Gulp".

Click to expand...

Good call. I still didn't get the Rudy Gulp goal, because the game bugged every time I score it. Either I'm getting it during multiball (which doesn't count ingame, so it's fair), or the collision failed and just pushes the ball through his jaw or even his neck, without registering the switch, or the table DOES give me the gulp bonus, without the game actually actually registering the goal.
The randomness and bugs of this goal makes it more difficult than any of the wizard goals.

Just got 203M for #26.

The one thing I am missing in this game is to be able to hit that trap door shot with regularity. As another poster mentioned, it's actually easier when the ball is rolling to that upper flipper with some speed. When it's spit out from the lock, that sweet spot seems VERY elusive. I can hit Rudy, the ramp, gangway, lock, and mirror all day long, but the one that really counts and for the most points...damn. If anyone has figured this out, especially from a lock eject, I'd sure like to know how.

phreaker47 said:

If anyone has figured this out, especially from a lock eject, I'd sure like to know how.

Click to expand...

For me the Trapdoor shot is earlier(!) than the Rudy shot, when ejected from the hallway. Maybe you want to give this a try, it works for me 50% of the time...

Mayuh said:

For me the Trapdoor shot is earlier(!) than the Rudy shot, when ejected from the hallway. Maybe you want to give this a try, it works for me 50% of the time...

Click to expand...

I'll check that out... I'd be happy with a 50% success rate... better than what I've been getting.

Ditto... I almost only hit trapdoor from the gangway or a plunge.
Unlike the PHOF version where you make that all the time, and it's hitting Rudy that's impossible.

Well, that works, I confirmed last night... at least, better than anything I've tried. Basically, when the ball comes from the lock eject, hit it as EARLY as you possibly can, and the trap door can be hit that way more often.

Got the million plus up to 10,000,000 a couple of times last night, landed the #5 score. Thanks for the vital tip! I kept trying to "logically" find the sweet spot, shooting later rather than sooner.

Damn, gotta try that. Sounds implausible, but worth a try. Wonder if it works on 360, too.