Table of the Week Club...week 7: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON!

[shutyertrap]

Our 7th TotW is Creature from the Black Lagoon. So get out there, move your car, enjoy your hot dog, and be a hero.

As a reminder, this next tournament will ask for you to not play extra balls, so work that into your week with this table to get used to it!

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

Our 7th TotW is Creature from the Black Lagoon. So get out there, move your car, enjoy your hot dog, and be a hero.

As a reminder, this next tournament will ask for you to not play extra balls, so work that into your week with this table to get used to it!

Oh great. Yet another easy table.

 

[shutyertrap]

Oh great. Yet another easy table.

Oh you'd say that about most tables!

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

Yay.

I enjoy this table for all its worth but it's gonna take a while to be re-introduced to this table's flipper lag.

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

Alright, I have my Pinball Dissected article up for this table: http://digitalpinballfans.com/entry...D-Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon-(Bally-1992)

 

[etchie]

So when you actually play in the tournament, no extra balls will be rewarded, or are we just going to have to purposely drain them? This may sound like a dumb question but I recently saw a tournament in somewhere on this forum that mentioned that the final scores would be based don the honor system. I haven't participated in a weekly tournament before so I wasn't sure how well it was integrated into the game itself, if that makes sense.

 

[shutyertrap]

So when you actually play in the tournament, no extra balls will be rewarded, or are we just going to have to purposely drain them? This may sound like a dumb question but I recently saw a tournament in somewhere on this forum that mentioned that the final scores would be based don the honor system. I haven't participated in a weekly tournament before so I wasn't sure how well it was integrated into the game itself, if that makes sense.

That would be our Tournament of the Month (next one is March 28th). Yes, you are going to be plunging extra balls. We don't have the ability to set parameters in the game as we are not FarSight, so we trust everyone to be on the honor system. Check out the 'Everything you need to know' thread stickied in the TotW forum.

 

[superdan]

CFTBL is one of my personal fav pins. Just a cool vibe to it and I also remember playing it quite a bit when it came out late '92/93, thanks to a local shop owner who liked it as we'll. ranked 24 on pinside top 100, it's surely an "A" game. Not without critics of course. But who can deny the coolness of the 3-D mode of the creature peering around. Look forward to playing this in the tourny...and even plunging extra balls, I think top players will have to set some time for this one. Will be interesting if a top player "flubs" it, if they will man up with their lousy score or go eh, nobody is the wiser...redue. It's a minor blight on the tourny something our brilliant minds will have to figure out as human nature will eventually triumph over honor system...just saying

 

[JPelter]

Put up 50B as a dry run for ToTW purposes. Thoughts:

-Very stylish table. I like the art design a lot.
-Terrible unbalanced scoring.
-Too easy to farm extra balls essentially forever, but also
-One of the few modern tables in the TPA lineup where simply turning off extra balls wouldn't fix most of the problems with the table.
-Boring to play.

e: oh yeah forgot about a key one

-Will cramp up your left trigger finger if playing on a gamepad after a while really badly.

Also as a note I definitely did not plunge my extra balls when playing. I know the first post said to but I wanted to get a real game in as a reminder since it's been a long time since I last bothered with it. I didn't actually farm extra balls either though I just took the ones that came incidentally to multiballs. The game breaks your spirit even faster than most of the other forever slappers.

This whole post might come out a little bitter but the table is just broken on so many different levels I just can't get that excited about it. Cool art though.

 

[Bahnzo]

Any tips for reliably hitting the snack bar targets? That's the part I often have trouble with.

 

[JPelter]

Any tips for reliably hitting the snack bar targets? That's the part I often have trouble with.

Hitting the bottom left one is safe from the right flipper since it goes into the ramp. The top left is doable but a really hard one to hit from the right flipper as well. If both of those are already lit I go to the bumpers through the top to switch till one of those two is unlit, and repeat. Trying to hit the right side targets from any position seems to be death from my experience, although I could be wrong.

 

[workshed]

Hitting the bottom left one is safe from the right flipper since it goes into the ramp. The top left is doable but a really hard one to hit from the right flipper as well. If both of those are already lit I go to the bumpers through the top to switch till one of those two is unlit, and repeat. Trying to hit the right side targets from any position seems to be death from my experience, although I could be wrong.

In my experience you are exactly right. As the feed from the pops is easily controllable and the center shot is pretty easy as well I find the best strategy is just to let the pops cycle the menu targets around until that lower left one is unlit. The upper left is doable, but certainly harder. If you flip at the lower left late it can easily head right for the left outlane in an awful hurry though, while hitting it a little early is safe and may hit the upper left, so I am usually conservative and have to take a few (or many) shots at it. Leads to a lot of car moving, and in long games I start to just time that out...can't be bothered anymore. This seems to be the opposite of some real Creatures I've seen played competitively however, where the game is set up steeply enough that only a clean shot to the left ramp can make it up, making the right side menu targets the more desirable ones.

 

[workshed]

Can anyone explain exactly how the scoring multiplier bug works on TPA? Originally I thought that once you got to 4x you were done multiplying your multiball score for the remainder of the game once that multiball ended. In my experience that doesn't seem to be the case but I'm not sure if it's draining a ball or just scoring another jackpot that resets it.

 

[shutyertrap]

Can anyone explain exactly how the scoring multiplier bug works on TPA? Originally I thought that once you got to 4x you were done multiplying your multiball score for the remainder of the game once that multiball ended. In my experience that doesn't seem to be the case but I'm not sure if it's draining a ball or just scoring another jackpot that resets it.

Once you drain the ball, you can get 4X again.

 

[Bahnzo]

Any tips for reliably hitting the snack bar targets? That's the part I often have trouble with.

Hitting the bottom left one is safe from the right flipper since it goes into the ramp. The top left is doable but a really hard one to hit from the right flipper as well. If both of those are already lit I go to the bumpers through the top to switch till one of those two is unlit, and repeat. Trying to hit the right side targets from any position seems to be death from my experience, although I could be wrong.

Thanks. I just figured out that you don't need to hit those targets to light "I" (which is what I was having trouble with).

 

[Bahnzo]

I had a problem during a game where the multiplier was stuck at 1x. I remember seeing a message flash on the DMD saying something like "Multiplier Maxed", but it was showing 1x and wouldn't increase no matter how many whirlpools I shot.

Weird? A bug? Or something I don't understand yet?

 

[Heretic]

bug dude nothing yiu can really do about it except end the current ball or stick to 3x

 

[masterthes]

Highly enjoy this table, as with most season 1 and like a good number of pins, the big Wizard Goal is still eluding me (the Super Jackpot in this case) Top score I've managed so far was a 325 mil

 

[HOW]

This is a Table - along with lots of others - that I've not given enough love.

I'll try playing with and without EBs and see how I do.

Missed NGG last week - so may try and squeeze a few games of that too.

Enjoyed last tourney here - But must admit I got right into TPA's last Mobile one - Still stuck in Silver, but was happy with my 60th-ish place
How did anyone else in Silver do?

 

[shutyertrap]

Played 2 games last night. Wizards were already done, so just playing to play. First game, abysmal. I don't even think I hit 100 million. Basically a game of shaking off the cobwebs. 2nd game was more to what I'm used to, as I got up to 3+ billion while plunging extra balls. I did play the extras after that 3rd ball, and got up to 5+ billion. Was very disappointed as I had a huge super jackpot bonus going but kept fumbling my multiballs before I could collect.