Big Shot: TPA versus RL

[Potrzebie]

I'm sure this question has been touched on before, but has anyone ever done an A/B test between TPA play and real life play with Big Shot? I realize in many respects it would not be a fair comparison depending on issues such as maintenance and how a RL table might be set up. But, from a pure geometry standpoint, I wondered if a RL version is just as #$&#$ unforgiving as TPA.

 

[Crawley]

I've played a well maintained Hot Shot, which is basically the same thing. But I only played a few games. My takeaway was that it wasn't nearly as fast as Big Shot in TPA. I seem to recall when I hit a drop-target too it didn't go down - but that can happen on any table. In case I know I wasn't playing all that long so I suspect the table was still difficult. In TPA at least you can use the nudge to get you out of trouble often.

 

[Potrzebie]

I've played a lot of EM tables and it seems to me too that TPA is a lot faster than RL.

 

[Edan-Grossman]

I own a Gottlieb Pro Pool which is the add-a-ball version of Big Shot. The geometry between the two games are very similar, some of the playfield posts are located slightly different (ball deflections aren't all that different).

When I compare the TPA Big Shot to my RL Pro Pool, I am very impressed with the physics. I would say that my RL pro pool is easier to play than the TPA big shot, but I could increase the difficulty of my pro pool by increasing the slope and moving the playfield posts to the "conservative" settings. My playfield is set a little bit shallower than the TPA and my posts are set to the "liberal" settings (it appears that TPA's playfield posts are also set to the "liberal" settings). If I made the adjustments listed above, my RL pro pool could be much more challenging than the TPA big shot.

Overall, I would expect the RL version of any game to be more challenging than the TPA version since the tilt is far more sensitive on the real version.

Another key difference between TPA EMs and RL EMs is that if you hit a target that causes the score motor to rotate, any target that you hit while it's rotating will not award any points. Example: if you hit two drop targets simultaneously or within 1 second of each other, you'll only get points for one target. In TPA, (please correct me if I am wrong) it appears to give you all the points anyways.

 

[Zorgwon]

Example: if you hit two drop targets simultaneously or within 1 second of each other, you'll only get points for one target. In TPA, (please correct me if I am wrong) it appears to give you all the points anyways.

From a technical standpoint this should be like that with maybe just 300 ms latency. Atlantis gives higher scores for shooting neighboring targets. BS was an earlier table, though.

 

[Kevlar]

Can someone check if the real machine has a ball in play display right on top of the left flipper? . I've reported this numerous times but for some reason they think it's ok there

 

[heberts811]

One thing that always bothered me is that, in a real EM, if the ball drains without scoring any points, it is shot back out without counting as being played.

Gary

 

[Edan-Grossman]

One thing that always bothered me is that, in a real EM, if the ball drains without scoring any points, it is shot back out without counting as being played.Gary

This depends from game to game. On the Gottlieb EMs, if the first ball drains without scoring any points, it will give the ball back to you, it won't do that for any other ball. On the Williams and Bally EMs, I think it will give you the ball back for every ball if you don't hit any switches.

 

[Edan-Grossman]

From a technical standpoint this should be like that with maybe just 300 ms latency. Atlantis gives higher scores for shooting neighboring targets. BS was an earlier table, though.

I'll see if I can confirm the timing on my machine.

 

[Zorgwon]

I'll see if I can confirm the timing on my machine.

That would be interesting.

During bonus count all table lights should be flashing. Center eject hole is never lit.