What is the most overrated table in TPA?

[Zorgwon]

I tend to agree with DokkenRokken about older tables like Centaur, Gorgar or Firepower.

Played Big Shot, Gorgar and Black Rose this morning and according to the leaderboards I wasn't the only one. Older tables may have really many different shots. JY has may be 6.

 

[kinggo]

(...it's always gotta be a DMD or toy insult. lol Don't you guys have a better defense when someone doesn't like a table you like?)

No, because the music is annoying, and the gameplay is garbage. lol

I also don't hold table art as ridiculously high as most everyone here, as I personally couldn't care less about that. It's all about gameplay to me, and "Centaur" is pretty boring. I know most of you guys hold "Gorgar" in high regard as well...ugh. I was thrilled to finally be done with the Wizard goals for both of those tables, that way I'd never have to play them again.

Is there any table before 86-87 that you like? I grew up with late 80's and early 90's machines. And while I did manage to find some half broken earlier tables I also didn't like them. And I have to say that playing Williams and Gottlieb HOF on PSP didn't do much for me to like old tables. But with TPA on 7" screen things have change. I didn't like Gorgar, Firepower, Flight 2000........ but after a while I started to get along with the tables, the ideas how are they supposed to work. At the same time I still don't find what's so good about Black Rose, Who Dunnit, Fishtales, White Water......
And yes, my initial recations to all those older tables in those polls were meh......... 90% of them look boring but I'm sure that after a while I would start to like at least half of them.

 

[soundwave106]

It's all about gameplay to me, and "Centaur" is pretty boring.

I actually like the fact that in an older game like Centaur, you kind of have to work to get a multiball. Once you get to a multiball that table becomes pretty fun as it becomes easier to add balls. When I was a young kid it was the era of bleep-bleep type arcade effects (Atari 2600s and early-mid 80s arcade games etc.) so I guess the bleep-bleeps of Centaur don't annoy me too much.

"Overrated" is always in the eye of the beholder I guess. Using the IPDB poll for instance, I can't see how White Water and Creature from the Black Lagoon are rated so high. Those tables were meh to me in real life. In particular, White Water has a higher rating than TAF right now. Really? I guess some people disagree with me... but I always found White Water quite a middling game...

(Cirqus Voltaire, Cactus Canyon, and Scared Stiff are also too high in the IPDB poll for me based on my TPA experience, but I've never played the real games of these.)

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Is there any table before 86-87 that you like? I grew up with late 80's and early 90's machines.

I didn't play pinball until late-2013, so except for the most recent Sterns, I didn't grow up with any of them.

I can say that the '80s, I feel, are the weakest point in pinball from a gameplay standpoint, having played them from a modern perspective. I can understand how stuff like Gorgar and Xenon would be groundbreaking for their time, but I like the storylike progression you can have from later tables (probably no coincidence that I enjoy RPGs as a genre of video games), and I like the simplicity and the sheer bounciness of the ball from the EM period (kart-racing games are my second-favorite genre). However, when I play machines made after Mata Hari and before Gilligan's Island, I feel like I'm just going through the motions, trying to progress towards one thing, usually a multiball, and that I have to work to get a table to become fun. There isn't the spectacle later machines would have, and there isn't the charm the earlier ones would.

This is also probably related to how I dislike artistic and musical trends during the '80s as well. The artwork in something like Gorgar is deeply rooted in its time, and I never liked science fiction or fantasy artwork during that time. I don't really have an explanation for it. I just don't. They look ugly to me.

 

[Zorgwon]

White Water......

It has no video mode . Well, it has many different shots and features. The downside are the voiceovers which are just horrible and don't compare well to TOM, MM or CC. This is not only a technical issue. OTOH most other tables also have flaws. AFM could be rated higher because it doesn't have any obvious problem. CFTBL (How about a kiss?) also lacks flaws and could be rated even higher.

 

[Espy]

It has no video mode . Well, it has many different shots and features. The downside are the voiceovers which are just horrible and don't compare well to TOM, MM or CC. This is not only a technical issue. OTOH most other tables also have flaws. AFM could be rated higher because it doesn't have any obvious problem. CFTBL (How about a kiss?) also lacks flaws and could be rated even higher.

What I like about WH2O is the complete back-to-basics approach - shoot the flashing lanes. it's a table I can explain the rules to non-pinball players really easily (shame a real one is so brutal). But is has a killer playfield design that it a lot of fun. It's a simple game, but tremendous fun.

 

[kinggo]

it's a table I can explain the rules to non-pinball players really easily

I just don get the idea behind the rules. Everything seems so random and scattered around.

 

[Zorgwon]

I just don get the idea behind the rules. Everything seems so random and scattered around.

The idea is to progress towards Wet Willie's ranch using a raft. To advance the raft you have to shoot 7 different lanes. Scoring is constantly rising. The whirlpool is kind of a standard rules part of that era. In FH it's the mirror, in BR it's the broadside. I don't see any random there. I would rather see TOM having a bit of random rules. Every shot scores something (usually between 10M and 50M) and you can hardly guess that without knowing it. TOM beats WH2O in the sound department, though.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Love White Water, won't hear a bad word against it. Back during my summer breaks from Uni, the arcade I frequented most had White Water and Whirlwind, and I played them both in equal measure. Another arcade had Jurassic Park, but it was busier and I didn't hang out there so much.

I can't remember if I've said it before, but I think that ST:TNG is definitely over-rated. Or rather, it's not aged well, at all, and there are just too many things that can go wrong with the table to make it darned near unplayable. Outlanes aside, the TPA version is all too easy.

 

[netizen]

The only beef I have with WH20 is the Big Foot Bluff, at least on mobile. IDK if it's a matter of there being a "defective" opto, but I get a service dot on a regular basis and when I check the code for it it is always for a malfunctioning Bigfoot. This prevents balls from going down the proper path after you get the hotfoot, and makes getting the camera for extra points on the spinechiller nigh impossible. However when I play in pro mode and disable the bigfoot head animatronic I no longer have these problems with improper lane selections when the modes are activated.

 

[vikingerik]

The perception of Whitewater is weird. There's quite a few things wrong with the table. Deadly bumper area worse than TZ. Wildly unbalanced scoring, where multiball jackpots are the only thing that matter, especially at 5x. Annoying lock mechanic, hit Lite-Lock on that nasty tight timer. Clunky wizard award progression, complete Willie's then lock balls. And an underwhelming wizard award itself.

Yet... Whitewater is still loads of fun despite all that and a real machine always grabs me to keep playing it. Still can't figure out why.

 

[Espy]

The perception of Whitewater is weird. There's quite a few things wrong with the table. Deadly bumper area worse than TZ. Wildly unbalanced scoring, where multiball jackpots are the only thing that matter, especially at 5x. Annoying lock mechanic, hit Lite-Lock on that nasty tight timer. Clunky wizard award progression, complete Willie's then lock balls. And an underwhelming wizard award itself.

Yet... Whitewater is still loads of fun despite all that and a real machine always grabs me to keep playing it. Still can't figure out why.

I largely ignore multiball jackpots and use the multiballs as "ammunition" to advance to Wet Willie's faster. Not sure if it's a better scoring tactic but aids progressions towards the ultimate goal, so is more satisfying for me.

 

[Kratos3]

The perception of Whitewater is weird. There's quite a few things wrong with the table. Deadly bumper area worse than TZ. Wildly unbalanced scoring, where multiball jackpots are the only thing that matter, especially at 5x. Annoying lock mechanic, hit Lite-Lock on that nasty tight timer. Clunky wizard award progression, complete Willie's then lock balls. And an underwhelming wizard award itself.

Yet... Whitewater is still loads of fun despite all that and a real machine always grabs me to keep playing it. Still can't figure out why.

I think the boulder garden is what annoys me. I will get into it more when I go for the Wizard goal. That's when ST:TNG clicked for me.

 

[Bowflex]

I think the boulder garden is what annoys me. I will get into it more when I go for the Wizard goal. That's when ST:TNG clicked for me.

That's the one bad thing about the table. I love Whitewater but the Boulder Garden means auto-drain down the right outlane about 70% of the time. Plus when I remember to nudge, half the nudges save it and the other half probably put it down the outlane when it wouldn't have gone there.

 

[DokkenRokken]

Is there any table before 86-87 that you like?

That have been released so far? Yes:

- Big Shot
- Space Shuttle (Played this table MANY times when I was a kid, love it a lot.)
- Flight 2000

However, I mostly enjoy late 80's-early 90's tables the most.

 

[Sexton Hardcastle]

For me, it would Creature From the Black Lagoon. I don't even know if it's fair to say it's overrated, as I don't know how popular it is, but from playing the real table to playing on TPA, I've just never like it very much. I always thought it was cluttered and offered very little room to do anything. Just my opinion.

 

[Clawhammer]

MM for me.

 

[netizen]

For me, it would Creature From the Black Lagoon. I don't even know if it's fair to say it's overrated, as I don't know how popular it is, but from playing the real table to playing on TPA, I've just never like it very much. I always thought it was cluttered and offered very little room to do anything. Just my opinion.

I like the Jackpot mechanism on CFTBL, but I agree that the playfield layout is a bit crowded feeling. as far as the mechanics go I would like to see Transporter: the rescue in TPA as it has a similar (almost exact) mechanism for jackpots during multiball and the playfield is far more open, but it's not a DMD and there's no way it is as well known.

I found BK2000 and MM to be overrated. Both are fun games but they have a similar tendency towards wood chopping to progress the game.
BK2000 has the whole RANSOM thing, and MM has the castles. Each has their challenge but it can become meh after a while.