How buggy was T2's ROM?

[debuggiest]

So I'm playing a game of T2. Got an extra ball and the replay, and I had just earned a second multiball. Accidentally drained two balls at once and the table started playing the end of ball jingle with a ball still on the table. Then a couple seconds later, I earned another extra ball by shooting the left orbit. I wasn't shooting ramps, so it wasn't from the escape route.

In PAPA 14, T2 glitched out on Josh Sharpe too, and didn't award him a super jackpot. (skip to 5:45)

Has anyone else seen some quirkiness on T2?

 

[Mayuh]

You should see certain AFM ROMs on my Vpin... everything there from switches not registering to two balls in the plunger lane. There a some ROMs like lx-1 and lx-3 on getaway that render the machine almost unplayable. Still way better than JJP's we'll-add-the-wizard mode-and-a-few-multiballs-months-later-policy

If it would work, it isn't pinball

 

[vikingerik]

I own a real T2 and can confirm the bug of the game forgetting its way out of multiball. The super jackpot should be lit, but instead the game suddenly lights up 4 targets instead, hit one and it says "3 more for multiball". This happens even far away from any drains, with two balls in play that have been on the table for several minutes. The jackpot shot doesn't have to be involved, can happen any time during multiball (though you most likely won't notice any difference until your next skull shot.) I've seen this happen many times. I've even had it start video mode with another ball still on the table.

I don't think I ever saw your first reported bug though. Never saw the bonus count with a ball still in play, unless maybe a trough switch went bad.

The left orbit awarding EB is normal. Those awards get lit by the three center standups, not the ramps. I never saw any glitch in the award sequence, it always went in order awarding the EB once on each cycle.

Reaching 6x or 8x bonus for the first time in a game awards EB also, that could be what you saw after a left orbit shot.

 

[vikingerik]

Saw a nice glitchfest just now. First, the game forgot its way out of multiball with a clear cause. I started multiball and had the ball carom into a lock almost instantly, before the other two balls launched. Since there were briefly no balls in play, the game forgot multiball was running. (I've seen the real table do that often.) While in that state, I got Video Mode while trying to keep control of two other balls still on the table. That didn't go well.

So I started shooting for the skull to "start" multiball. 5 targets, as usual. 3 targets. 1 target. Then...

Yeah, 0 targets for multiball. WTF? I dutifully shot the skull again, and one target (not zero) lit up. I actually missed it, but then multiball "started" anyway (still with two balls on the table, and the third now relaunched.) From then on, the multiball behaved normally.

 

[Biff]

Which glitch did you use to get this score?

 

[Kolchak357]

Couldn't hit 20?

 

[vikingerik]

No glitch. I intentionally stopped at x9,999 for style points and so that the ROM would recognize the 9999M score without rolling over again. Yeah, that makes it look pretty hacky and Farsight even asked me about it.

The "glitch" compared to the real table is that the center standups are very easy to complete. There's a railroad-physics path to always complete all three in one shot by going from a catch on the right flipper > rightmost target > bounce off the jackpot targets > hit the other two standups. Can even do this during multiball. Just pound that escape route to earn an EB on every ball and go infinite.

 

[Zaphod77]

It's worse then that.

Once you tour the escape route, you can start working on the NEXT extra ball. Say you get the replay the bonusx extra ball, and the escape extra ball. You got three. say you manage to tour it twice. you have four extra balls stacked.

Now say you drain twice, so the bonux resets. you are down to two extra balls. you can then collect BOTH the bonusx extra ball, and the escape route extra ball to get back up to four with only one tour of the escape.

You can build up to max extra balls at any time. Even if you couldn't abuse the escape standups you could still collect the bonusx extra ball.

This could be fixed by putting some slight randomness off the standup bounces.