Party Zone first impressions

[masterthes]

It's decent, completed standard goals already

 

[McGuirk]

It's a lot of fun, and I must say, looks beautiful on my Nexus 7 FHD. The bottom area off the playfield looks a little fuzzy, but the actual playfield really stands out. I don't think I've seen another table look so good on my N7. I love the campy theme; I'm 32 and have those feelings of nostalgia for the late 80s and early 90s. Love Dr. Dude for the same reason.

 

[Zaphod77]

This game is much more of a drain monster than I remember the real table being. The Door Prize skill shot tends to go STDM, and when the ball ejects from the captain, it either forces you to do a tricky left-right save, or goes down the right outlane.

Yes, the real table can and will drain off of a door prize, and the ballsaver is points based, so the door prize cancels it. A very rude surprise. if you miss the skill shot, you will usually get the ball back if you drain.

And i've played RL Party Zone tables with much more brutal Capt'n kickouts. like straight into the left outlane brutal.

This one is pretty kind, actually.

It's almost pointless to bother with the cottage because the comic is very happy to award instant multiball. it does this especially if you are trying to save up party dudes for the next ball.

The Purple Haze bit is almost certainly licensing. The Jimmy Hendrix Estate are *****es.

 

[Robert Misner]

Edit: That center eject hole is really annoying. You have to hit it just right for the ball to land in it. It also has a nasty habit of kicking the ball out so that it bounces off the left slingshot and down the center drain, unless you nudge.

On pc it does this every time. You either have to nudge when it hits the left slingshot to give it more bounce ..or you have to nudge to get your flipper to reach as it drifts down to the center drain. I find I'm having to constantly nudge to avoid center drain much more then other tables..but maybe its just ment to be that way i've never played the real table.

I do like the tables gameplay, the flow is fun once you kinda understand what you need to do to progress. The audio seems really low quality tho,I suspect its the the way the samples are the visual style isnt not my favorite(reminds me of the bad Mad Magazine comics) but its a fun table overall.

 

[kinggo]

Man, I really forgot how great this one is. This could be* the S4 winner for me. Unless FS suprise us with one of those from my sig I don't see anything better coming out.

*since I never played TAF I'll be so open to the possibility that it really is so god as everyone says but from the rest of confirmed tables this one is clearly a winner for me.

 

[oqvist]

Yes, the real table can and will drain off of a door prize, and the ballsaver is points based, so the door prize cancels it. A very rude surprise. if you miss the skill shot, you will usually get the ball back if you drain.

And i've played RL Party Zone tables with much more brutal Capt'n kickouts. like straight into the left outlane brutal.

This one is pretty kind, actually.

It's almost pointless to bother with the cottage because the comic is very happy to award instant multiball. it does this especially if you are trying to save up party dudes for the next ball.

The Purple Haze bit is almost certainly licensing. The Jimmy Hendrix Estate are *****es.

I got that left outlane drain from the captain bizarre. I also got the center drain so it´s realistically badly designed then.

 

[kinggo]

I would not call this one a drainer. It doesn't drain that much and unlike on some others, there's plenty of time to react. Sure, it isn't RBION but it also isn't POTO or Dr. Dude or FT.........

 

[Reagan Dow]

I would not call this one a drainer. It doesn't drain that much and unlike on some others, there's plenty of time to react. Sure, it isn't RBION but it also isn't POTO or Dr. Dude or FT.........

+1

 

[weirdproq]

But the part that disappoints me the most: WHERE'S PURPLE HAZE? When you make the Big Bang shot, it's supposed to play Purple Haze. When I did it, it just played Pinball Wizard again. Maybe it's a licensing thing, but not being able to hear the wizard-mode music is a huge letdown.

Actually, I'm wondering where's Come Fly With Me? The Captain only seems to play Feelings as his favorite. I guess they couldn't get licencing from the Frank Sinatra estate? Maybe they spent most of their licencing money on Pinball Wizard and only had enough money for Feelings.

 

[Heretic]

saide from the jimi omisson i enjoy this table, tho i dont keep wanting to tell lil captain its my turn....

 

[DanBradford]

which is the fourth one?

This is the fourth one. From Ipdb:

The backglass and playfield of 'Party Zone' contain characters from previous games:

(1) The Party Animals from Bally Midway's 1987 'Party Animal' and (2) the Party Monsters from Midway's 1989 'Elvira and the Party Monsters' and (3) the Party Dudes from Midway's 1990 'Dr. Dude And His Excellent Ray' all meet on this game at the Cosmic Cottage.

I managed 235M so far, and still I only get 31 HOF points? so it's more like Dr Dude than it is like EATPM in that respect

 

[David T. Melnick]

Love this table so far. Not nearly as obnoxious as I thought it would be, and I dig the music.

Looks great @4k too, not sure why so many hated on the ramps initially, but Ive not seen the real deal to compare.

I was draining like crazy at first, but now Ive got it down, 500 milly on my 4th or 5th try.

Gotta pay real close/quick attention though, ball FLIES around the table.

___
Yes indeed. PZ was done very well by FS. I simply can't figure out why there is any complaints.

 

[kinggo]

This is the fourth one. From Ipdb:

The backglass and playfield of 'Party Zone' contain characters from previous games:

(1) The Party Animals from Bally Midway's 1987 'Party Animal' and (2) the Party Monsters from Midway's 1989 'Elvira and the Party Monsters' and (3) the Party Dudes from Midway's 1990 'Dr. Dude And His Excellent Ray' all meet on this game at the Cosmic Cottage.

I managed 235M so far, and still I only get 31 HOF points? so it's more like Dr Dude than it is like EATPM in that respect

I would never consider Elvira as part of party series. Sure, some characters are in this one but Elvira feels totally different game than the other 3.

 

[Fungi]

I would never consider Elvira as part of party series. Sure, some characters are in this one but Elvira feels totally different game than the other 3.

Yes, that's probably because it's not obnoxious. One should be wearing an Ed Hardy shirt while playing one of those other tables.

 

[kinggo]

well, those were the times......... The tables just reflect pop culture from the late 80's. I was living it back then and I still like it. But at the same time, can't stand all those modern antitalents whose biggest achievemnt is half naked or naked selfie.

 

[Richard B]

Nice to have a table that's not as punishing, given the last half year of TPA output.

Uh oh, return of the easy pieces of crap!

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

DAT 10x PLAYFIELD SPAM.

So I finally managed to collect the 10x Playfield Values WOOC reward today and I glitched it up using the "tilt warning" that stops the timer... but it turns out that the 10x playfield remains intact on your next ball if you tilt! I boosted my score from 180m to 260m this way.

 

[Bowflex]

Yes, that's probably because it's not obnoxious. One should be wearing an Ed Hardy shirt while playing one of those other tables.

Ed hardy is too recent. What did douchebags wear back in the late 80s/early 90's? Maybe skidz or z cavarrici?

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

DAT 10x PLAYFIELD SPAM.

So I finally managed to collect the 10x Playfield Values WOOC reward today and I glitched it up using the "tilt warning" that stops the timer... but it turns out that the 10x playfield remains intact on your next ball if you tilt! I boosted my score from 180m to 260m this way.

Actually, that's wrong. The 10x lamp stays lit, and you get all the sound effects as if 10x scoring is in play for the remainder of the game, but you don't get 10x scoring. I did this yesterday, and I probably hit upwards of a dozen 10M WOOC shots that scored correctly (10M or 20M depending on the playfield multiplier). My score was 859M after all that. If the 10x had been in effect all that time, I'd have been at 2B-ish.

Another effect is that when you do this, if you legitimately start 10x scoring, the timer sticks at 5 seconds and... I wasn't really paying attention to if you get the scoring then or not, but it does go away normally.

 

[Slam23]

Got my score up to 795M, 6th place on the leaderboards. I did it by spamming the rocket ramp from the right flipper and returning the ball there via the left flipper to Robot. This is fairly safe albeit a bit boring, and maybe the best way to stack some extra balls from the Ozone reward counter. With some luck you hit some ha-ha-ha targets which in turn can give you multiball as instant reward from the Robot. Shooting the right-most orbit is profitable when you get it up to 10M per shot, but it also produces a wild ball from the bumper area. That's a risk-reward choice and hitting the orbit consistently from a rolling shot from the left flipper is not that easy. So how many HOF points? A grand total of 106.....that would mean for a 1000 I would have to play around a 6 hour game. I haven't done the exact math but I would guess it takes 7.5B as total score. Or is there a quicker strategy?