Request No more Gottlieb tables

[shimoda]

Is it even playable on macos? I thought it was windows only.

True

 

[DokkenRokken]

"Rescue 911" and "Freddy" are the only two main good Gottlieb tables left, and both highly requested.

 

[SuperKaladrax]

I love every Gottlieb table in TPA so far. Here is hoping for more.

Agreed.

 

[PinballLizard (Mark Wyda)]

I'm thinking perhaps the op is confusing Premier and Gottlieb.

Gottlieb EMs and early solid states are good. It's in the 90s when Premier bought the name Gottlieb that they started releasing stinkers.

Stuff like Cue Ball Wizard and Teed Off is only really Gotlieb in name, not spirit.

That said Id like to see more Gottlieb EMs since they are really great!

 

[Kolchak357]

No love for Stargate?

 

[DokkenRokken]

No love for Stargate?

Looks neat, never played it.

My choices were based on tables I've already played.

 

[StrangeCrunchy1]

The Premier tables I wouldn't mind having are Surf n Safari, Cactus Jacks, Rescue 911, Bone Busters, Stargate, and Freddy's Nightmare on Elm Street after those I don't care what goes up from Gottlieb and Premier. Thank you all very much.

There was a STARGATE TABLE????!!!! OMG, Where have I BEEN?! Also, they need to put in Waterworld >_> Best. Table. EVER. (IMO)

 

[crazyflipperfingers]

I'd like to see a lot more Gottlieb tables. How about Abra-Ca-Dabra, Atlantis, Centigrade 37, Surfer, Fast Draw, Royal Flush, etc... bring 'em on please

 

[Zaphod77]

Premiere games developed into rules rape fests.

Playing a Premiere DMD game is all about trying to figure out how to abuse the rules for mega points.

The best example of that school of design is Stargate, by far. If any of the licensed Premiers make it, it should be that one.

Cue Ball Wizard. Two rules exploits. Easy half billion, and rowdy ramp/multiball stack.
Stargate: Battle mode is an exploit all of its' own. lol. scores and boost the horus bonus. Then it will be high for your NEXT battle mode. Oh, and 3x scoring timer PAUSES during multiball.
Gladiators. Calm Before the Storm exploit, before they patched it. Oddly enough this was the only one they fixed.
Tee'd Off: exploit city. Pitch and put abuse, normal multiball abuse by raising jackpot with bumper, easily rapeable other multiballs by trapping one and shooting up the middle over and over again. On hard difficulty, pitch and put exploit is removed, as it's a flat 25 million per shot.
Rescue 911: Main multiball easy to exploit with Catch-All flippers. Nearly all modes can be run as multiball by changing modes after the second ball gets served to the plunger.
Shaq Attack: well, the hidden features, for starters. collect them all for a BILLION end of game bonus!
Street Fighter II: save the multiball super jackpot for an easy shot. Oddly enough this one was fixed in Tee'd Off. (NOTE: hard rule settings stop this exploit, forcing the SJ to be Ryu/Ken or Guile shot)

I know most of the other are exploitable as well.

Oddly enough, their pre-dmd games are much less exploitable.

Games like Surf N Safari, and Lights Camera Action are cool.

 

[Espy]

First of all please don't liken rape to pinball strategy.

Reading through your rules it sounds like you're describing clever score stacking tactics rather than exploits. And I've only managed to get the half billion on CBW once, so it isn't that easy for the average player. I'd imagine it would be even more difficult on a real machine.

 

[kinggo]

exactly. While there are some exploits, it's not se easy to exploit them after all. At least not on real table where each table behaves a bit differently and where every nudge is not the sam as the previous one. That requires a fair bit of skills to repeat some thing over and over and use the exploit. On TPA on the other hand.......

 

[Kolchak357]

I'd like to see a lot more Gottlieb tables. How about Abra-Ca-Dabra, Atlantis, Centigrade 37, Surfer, Fast Draw, Royal Flush, etc... bring 'em on please

That's the Gottlieb era I love the best too. But I don't think there is much chance of seeing any of these. I get the feeling they aren't viewed as popular/profitable enough.

 

[soundwave106]

Reading through your rules it sounds like you're describing clever score stacking tactics rather than exploits.

The term I would use is "unbalanced scoring". Many late 80s to 90s Gottliebs really are unbalanced in scoring which means the strategy is to go for the shots or modes that have far too many points. In Pinball Arcade, I would definitely say this is the case for Victory, Tee'd Off, and Cue Ball Wizard.

(Class of 1812 I *think* is pretty balanced but I haven't played that pin enough to have a real good opinion about it...)

 

[Zaphod77]

I didn't invent the term. Was used on rec.games.pinball long ago. And yes, the intent of the term is to imply how WRONG they are.

http://www.dmpweb.net/pinballworld/why.htm#r

It's right there.

The easy half billion exploit is not the normal 9-ball mode, but leaving the 8 ball lit before starting pool ball mania. If it's lit when you start 9 ball, you can skip 1 through seven, which you aren't supposed to be able to do. Collecting the half billion (doubled to a billion if ya spelled double) is supposed to require 9 successful shots on one ball that all leave the ball out of control after... not TWO.

Only two of the main modes were intended as multiball modes in Rescue 911. You aren't supposed to get them ALL as multiball modes.

Actually i'm reading up about these, and turns out a fair number of them DO get fixed.. It's just that Premiere refuses to document their rom revisions, so no one knows if they have the fixed version, and they don't provide a central distribution site to let people get the latest one. Someone posted that in "production" versions" of Tee'd Off that the shot you hit unlights until you hit something else in lightning storm, yet here on TPA it's clearly not the case. People have seen versions of Gladiators where the shot you just hit unlights in Calm Before the Storm, yet every machine i've seen in real life has let you abuse it. Some ROMs of stargate don't seem to pause the 3x timer in multiball as well,but the only way you know if yours does or does not is to try it.

When something as bad as these exploits is discovered in a bally/williams game, they ALWAYS update the ROM to fix it, and let you download and burn your own new ones. (15x multiball jackpots, and 5x vacation jackpot in WHitewater being big examples that do not work anymore in current roms)

There are two main classes of this sort of thing.

one is a combination of interactions that may require some skill to set up, but overpowers everything else in the game. 3x eye of ra/stargate multiball, 255 million pitch and put, etc. These ones take skill to do, but if you knwo how and your opponent doesn't it's an IWIN button.

the other is a setup that is somewhat high reward and very low risk. This is your lightning storm/anything goes/calm before the storm exploit. Even a player of moderate skill can just keep trapping the ball after the shot and shooting it again without missing. This is the sort of thing that allows player 4 to win the tournament simply by shooting the really easy shot over and over again until he takes the lead, and leads to long matches and qualifiers. These are a tournament directors nightmare.

Unbalanced scoring can be intended by the designers. But what people call rules rapes is when it's NOT intended, for the most part. For example Meet your Maker in No Fear is very high scoring. it's unbalanced compared to the rest of the game. but it's also the wizard mode, and intended by the designers. Stacking gold mien multiball with showdown, and using showdown's add a ball to extend gold mine is also intended by the designers. Poliece force's take high score award is most definitely unbalanced and totally unfair for competition. but it was very definitely intended by the designers.

 

[karl]

I have only played a few of them in real life and a few more in VP,(love those I have played) but just browsing in the book "The Pinball Compendium 1970-1981" I get the feeling that I would enjoy almost every Gottlieb machine from ca 74-80 tremendously. Something very wrong happened to the company ca 1981. One factor is Probably the departure of their main designer all through the 70' - Ed Krynski and his Art guy Gordon Morison soon after. A few good titles popped up in the early 80', like Black hole and Haunted house, but that's about it, from the looks of it. Bally also had a crazy downward spiral after 81 but man, what a killer year 81 was for Bally.

I vote for a separate game from Farsight: Gottlieb 1974-1979 "The golden years"

 

[Rudy Yagov]

I have only played a few of them in real life and a few more in VP,(love those I have played) but just browsing in the book "The Pinball Compendium 1970-1981" I get the feeling that I would enjoy almost every Gottlieb machine from ca 74-80 tremendously. Something very wrong happened to the company ca 1981. One factor is Probably the departure of their main designer all through the 70' - Ed Krynski and his Art guy Gordon Morison soon after. A few good titles popped up in the early 80', like Black hole and Haunted house, but that's about it, from the looks of it. Bally also had a crazy downward spiral after 81 but man, what a killer year 81 was for Bally.

I vote for a separate game from Farsight: Gottlieb 1974-1979 "The golden years"

The Gottlieb name got bought and sold a bunch of times. By the time Premier got hold of the name in the mid 80s, it was just a label and had no real meaning.

 

[vikingerik]

Pitch and Putt in Teed Off can't be nearly that abusable on a real machine, right? We get TPA's railroad physics allowing an auto-catch after each captive ball shot to increase the value. But you'd never last that long on a real machine before one of the uncontrollable rebounds finds a drain.

How is Victory abusable? Yeah there's the multiplier that you need to max, but once that's done, you're still playing the entire table and all the shots.

And Williams games are hardly immune. Billionaire's Club, 3x Lightning Lamp, Borg Multiball, RTU Victory Laps...

 

[Jeff Strong]

I vote for a separate game from Farsight: Gottlieb 1974-1979 "The golden years"

My heart just skipped a beat at the thought. I'm going to have to get back to Vegas soon just to feed my classic Gotlieb addiction.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Pitch and Putt in Teed Off can't be nearly that abusable on a real machine, right? We get TPA's railroad physics allowing an auto-catch after each captive ball shot to increase the value. But you'd never last that long on a real machine before one of the uncontrollable rebounds finds a drain.

How is Victory abusable? Yeah there's the multiplier that you need to max, but once that's done, you're still playing the entire table and all the shots.

And Williams games are hardly immune. Billionaire's Club, 3x Lightning Lamp, Borg Multiball, RTU Victory Laps...

The Tee'd Off at Chaparral Lanes in San Dimas, CA is MERCILESS. Failed volcano shots zoom straight down the middle half of the time. The volcano up-kicker sends the ball flying at high speed down the right flipper. The central up-kicker does the same with the left flipper. Pitch-and-Putt shots that aren't precise will bounce around the walls and roll back down to the upper flipper. A ball not going at the precise speed will roll right over the Hole in One scoop at the top. The whole game moves so fast that cradling is near impossible. Together, multiball modes tend to be very short because of how dangerous the whole thing is with drains, and the center shot has been drastically reduced in value. I have never reached Lightning Storm on this machine even though I can do it just fine in Pinball Arcade.

While on the topic of Gottlieb, if the Wii U version ever comes out, I'd like to see Super Mario Bros. on there. I think it'd be perfect and would help sell Pinball Arcade on the Wii U all by itself, especially if the Wii U version is delayed beyond Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. 4 and Nintendo promotes the Super Mario Bros. table (which I know it would, even more so nowadays now that Nintendo is producing Super Mario artwork in the style of the late-80s early-90s illustrations).

 

[soundwave106]

Pitch and Putt in Teed Off can't be nearly that abusable on a real machine, right? We get TPA's railroad physics allowing an auto-catch after each captive ball shot to increase the value. But you'd never last that long on a real machine before one of the uncontrollable rebounds finds a drain.

I always found Gottlieb System 3 pins easier to trap and catch the ball. So TPA's "railroad physics" is sort of similar to real life here.

Having said that, I don't remember Pitch and Putt being "abusable". But raining cats and dogs / anything goes multiball was relatively easy in the real pin, just trap one ball and loop the other one or two around for massive points. Getting there might take some work but once there, the scores could be quite high.

Victory is more "unbalanced" then "abusable" in my opinion, kind of like some of the Williams examples you gave (the two-shot Billionaire's Club is probably the closet thing to "abusable"...). I have never played a real life Victory to compare, mind you...