Table Pack 16: Flight 2000 and Goin' Nuts!

[Matt McIrvin]

You can split up SS into way more than just two eras.

Numeric, Alphanumeric, DMD, Pin2K, LCD...

True. And electromechanical games have sub-eras as well: pre-flipper, flipper but pre-standard-bottom, and the final flowering in the 1960s and 1970s.

I think I roughly think of the pre-DMD solid states (which I love unreasonably) as falling into three narrower categories:

- the 1977-79 numeric EMs like Genie, Space Invaders, Kiss and Superman that had gameplay resembling an electromechanical machine, only a bit fancier (widebodies were common) and with the possibility of a persistent game state for multiple players;
- early-Eighties numerics like Flight 2000, Black Knight and Black Hole that started incorporating speech, multiball, sometimes gimmicky playfields and more complicated goal progressions;
- and the mid-Eighties-to-early-Nineties alphanumerics, where there are multiple modes and goals and things start getting really elaborate.

Of course there are some like Gorgar that fall on the edge between two of these categories.

 

[Sumez]

You can keep up making subcategories, it's really just a question of whether it's practical. Typically the partitioning is EM, early SS, and DMD. There's no reason to move WOZ into a different category because it has an LCD monitor (though the name might end up being misleading if LCD monitors catch on)
Yeah, there's a big difference between Genie and Funhouse, or Terminator 2 and LOTR, but there will always be transitions.

 

[Pete]

I like to think of it like this... farsight needed to do a simple pack this time around so they could get right down to pushing forward and getting terminator 2 ready for the next pack. I'm all about buying the whole season packs for all my devices now because I love this game and so many good tables are in each season that it's fully worth it. When you compare season 1 to season 2 season 2 looks a bit lacking right now. Cactus canyon, whitewater, and the soon to be released t2 are the stand out complex awesome tables whereas season 1 has wayyyy more than that and allot of licenses like Elvira and Harley as well as 2 kickstarted tables. To make season 2 equally comparable to season 1 were gonna need more cheap licenses and a 2nd kickstarer table after t2 for the remaining packs. I wonder how the remainder of season 2 will play out.

 

[Bowflex]

There is also quite a disparity with the lack of gottlieb and stern. Gottlieb is fixing itself by the re-releases but stern still only has a few tables. I would expect to see Sterns show up a bit more often now that reissues are winding down.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

There is also quite a disparity with the lack of gottlieb and stern. Gottlieb is fixing itself by the re-releases but stern still only has a few tables. I would expect to see Sterns show up a bit more often now that reissues are winding down.

When will we actually get some Gottlieb tables that weren't part of the HOF collections? Geeze...

 

[heddhunter]

I think you're missing the "adventure" aspect of modern pinball machines.

For example, there's a certain excitement when you get good enough to see a mode like "lost in the zone" on Twilight Zone or "touring the mansion" on The Addams Family. Modern ROM-based machines generally have more combinations of goals and outcomes to explore. On an old EM, I can pretty much see everything that could happen, there's not much element of mystery.

I almost never play video games for purely for a high score. I'm usually more interested in accomplishing tasks and not losing/draining/dying.

Pinball, for me, is all about the high score. I'm playing in a league now and on a game like Dirty Harry you will sometimes be offered the choice between 5 Million Points or advancing a mode. I always go for points

I used to be like you and want modes, goals, targets, etc. Now I just want fun shots with good flow and POINTS POINTS POINTS.

 

[Sumez]

5 Million points is very little in Dirty Harry, I'd rather go for the mode if I really wanted to score big. Of course, completing all modes is pretty difficult - multiball is where the immediate scores are at.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

Pinball, for me, is all about the high score. I'm playing in a league now and on a game like Dirty Harry you will sometimes be offered the choice between 5 Million Points or advancing a mode. I always go for points

I used to be like you and want modes, goals, targets, etc. Now I just want fun shots with good flow and POINTS POINTS POINTS.

Sometimes when I come across a game that gives me a choice between hitting the right flipper for one option and the left flipper for another option, I do a quick mental coin flip and just go with my gut without thinking about the consequences. If I really get into the table and take time to learn the rules, I may make a more educated decision. Mostly it is skill versus chance. It's like the "Let's Make a Deal" show. Take the money or get a chance to win the item behind curtain number one. If you're good, unlocking a mode may give you an opportunity to win a lot more than the aforementioned 5 million. But if you fumble the ball or fail to make it up the ramp, it's a lost cause.

The fact that Pinball is somewhere in that happy medium between skill and luck is what makes it so alluring.

Skill <------------------------------------------------------> Luck.
Chess <--> Video Games <--> Pinball <--> Casino Gaming

 

[Dutch Pinball ball]

Hmmmm.... Interesting. I kinda agree, but alot of games you can win without skills too. They are on about the same on the skillstree.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

As for me, I haven't tried Flight2000 yet but am looking forward to devoting a good solid couple of hours to it.

I finally got sick of playing Goin' Nuts and tried Flight2000. Quite a good table actually as I played a number of rounds last night. The peg between the flipper design is a little unconventional for an SS and feels like a throwback to some of the old EM designs. I have to employ a bit different of a strategy here, because for SDTM shots, I have to train myself NOT to hit the flippers and let the ball bounce back up, otherwise it will just go underneath the flipper and drain. I also noticed it is possible to shoot balls into the lane where the table presumably holds them for multiball, but when I hit the third ball into this ball holding area, the first one jettisons out but not the others. I might have to study the rules a bit to figure out how to achieve multiball since it doesn't seem likely that I'll simply stumble across it by accident.

There also appears to be numerous glitches. At least once TPA completely froze up in the middle of a game of Fl2. On my Ouya, I hit the system button twice to exit, and when I restarted TPA, it got stuck again by resuming with the table still stuck. No option to call attendant since the controls were froze up completely. I backed out of the game a second time, and when I reloaded TPA, it exited with an error message. I reloaded TPA again and it booted normally. Another bug I encountered, I also somehow achieved Goal #5 "Score 750,000 points" yet my score only showed 200-something thousand when it unlocked. My high score is still only 400-something thousand yet somehow the game shows that I achieved the 750,000 goal.

 

[Kolchak357]

You guessed correctly. There is more to multiball than just getting three balls in the lock maze. If multiball isn't ready it will just spit one out until you hit all the targets you need to get it started. Then you can start it by throwing the third ball into the lock maze. The rules list them all for you. It's a pretty tough multiball to get going. I really like Flight 2000.

 

[heddhunter]

Once I bothered to actually read the rules, Goin Nuts became a million times more fun. It's actually quite an interesting concept, and it gets very stressful when you're down to 1 ball and a few seconds on the timer.

Unfortunately the theme/art really lets the game down. It's just terrible.

 

[JefferyD]

Yeah, reading the rules brought me around on Goin' Nuts, too. I didn't care for it at first, but I'm really getting a kick out of this table.

I'm a multi-ball choke-artist so you'd think it would put me off, but it's good training. After a dozen or so very short games, I overcame the immediate panic that sets in one more than one ball starts bouncing around, and I got better at it. I've come within about 10 seconds of that 180 seconds goal a few times, and I'm starting to believe I can do it. (Horrible feeling, tho, when you lose your last ball and you see all those earned seconds wind down to nothing. Oh, well.)

I hope it translates to better multi-ball performances on Champion Pub, Taxi, Attack from Mars and Cactus Canyon.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

Goin' Nuts = great Multiball practice.

 

[Fungi]

Goin' Nuts = great Multiball practice.

You sure? Because, I don't button mash on other tables.