On paper, which table makes the least sense?

[mikehg]

Honourable mention goes to Whirlwind. All the fun of preparing for a natural disaster, in pinball form. Sounds hilarious.

But the winner is surely Funhouse. Insert coin, and accompanied by a photosensitive epilepsy inducing lightshow, a disembodied animatronic head with creepy eyebrows mocks you, gives you poor nutritional advice, and lies to you about what you should aim at next.

So you wait till he falls asleep, and try to put your balls in his mouth.



What has become of the world...

 

[Heretic]

well the bride gets one in the mouth then a tea bagging and her tits are on the right side of her head, god blessythin angehlo

 

[vikingerik]

Centaur makes pretty much no sense. A motorcycle cyborg is weird enough to start with, but then what exactly are you doing anyway? You're not fighting or shooting or attacking him. And who is the Queen and what does her chamber have to do with anything?

And not in TPA, but I was always rather confused by Spectrum. Had absolutely no idea what was going on until reading the rulesheet online... and it still makes no sense to solve a color-matching puzzle by shooting pinballs.

 

[mikehg]

Who is the Guardian? What are his power orbs?

And who is doing the voiceover? At first I assumed it was the Centaur, but at the beginning he instructs you to "Destroy Centaur". Maybe Centaur is suicidal? Who can blame him - it must be hard being a motorbike Centaur thing. With a face even a mother would struggle to love too.

Perhaps most importantly, what the hell are those back legs doing there? Assuming a cyborg motorbike thing makes sense in the first place, why would you give it back legs, apparently borrowed from a horse? What's wrong with a kick-stand?

---

ETA - even the ones that ought to make sense don't make sense. Space Shuttle. You spend most of the game trying to make sure the airlock is open, lest you be sucked into space. Now maybe I didn't pay enough attention in astronaut school, but...

 

[DrainoBraino]

well the bride gets one in the mouth then a tea bagging and her tits are on the right side of her head, god blessythin angehlo

Well..... it didn't make sense until you explained it! I get it now.

I agree that Centaur makes no sense. You never destroy anything. Releasing power orbs leads to more power orbs. I've had 5 at once, centaur was not destroyed, still running his mouth.

 

[JefferyD]

The table that screams "Dada" to me is Taxi.
"Hey, I've got an idea," some drunk said. "How about a pinball game that pretends to pick up people in a taxi and then, um, let's see.... take them to the airport!?"
"Good idea," another drunk said. "Who do we pick up in a Taxi?"
"How about, Santa, Marilyn Monroe, Dracula, Gorbachev... and, um. I can't think of anyone else."
"Yeah me either. Wait. How about Pinbot?"
"Pinbot?"
"Yeah!"
"No, that's dumb. He's the only one who's not a real person!"
"Oh come on!"
And so on, until they convince more drunk people to give them the money to make it.

 

[mikehg]

Maybe they should do a "Pinball After Whiskey"...

"I know. A've gotthe bestest idea. Less do one where you gotta assemble a rock band. Only with monstersers."

 

[Buzz1126]

Centaur makes pretty much no sense. A motorcycle cyborg is weird enough to start with, but then what exactly are you doing anyway? You're not fighting or shooting or attacking him. And who is the Queen and what does her chamber have to do with anything?

And not in TPA, but I was always rather confused by Spectrum. Had absolutely no idea what was going on until reading the rulesheet online... and it still makes no sense to solve a color-matching puzzle by shooting pinballs.

The very first time I saw the backglass for "Centaur", I thought, "you meet the nicest people on a Honda".

 

[Espy]

The ruleset for Champion Pub sounds odd on paper. But on a good game, it really works.

 

[vikingerik]

Champion Pub always got me this way. The ruleset captures the flavor amazingly well, with the training and the fighting and the other old-timey side stuff like the spitting video mode. Except for multiball - when all of a sudden you leap out of the boxing world and into a totally standard modern pinball lock-lock-jackpot sequence.

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

The obvious winners are Tee'd Off, Whitewater, and Theatre of Magic.

 

[The loafer]

This thread is now personally labelled "don't drink while reading" as I just about choked twice. Well done lads, well done.

 

[mikehg]

The scene: Gottlieb HQ, August 1984.

"How's the new table SFX going Gordon?" And... by all that is holy, what are you doing to that poor macaque?"

[three weeks later]

"Well, we don't have any music for the new version of El Dorado. And after the police got involved in that unfortunate business with the macaque, we don't have anyone who can write some."

"How about we just use some looped Morse code, for no apparent reason?"

"I like it. That should throw everyone off balance..."

 

[PinballLizard (Mark Wyda)]

Pinbot.

I feel like there's some kind of story involving planets and a robot who has a guitar hero beard, but I'm just not getting it.

Centaur makes sense to me. You're definitely trying to destroy him, he's evil, the voice is the narrator, and the queens chamber is a secret place you must enter to get more power orbs and secrets await.

The pinball machine is centaur and by scoring high you destroy him. Get it? If not then you're not doing enough drugs!

 

[Carl Spiby]

All the best ideas are discovered in bars.