BMU’s Pinball “EM-cyclopedia” A Player’s Guide to Electro-Mechanical Pinball Machines Quick Links; ctrl+click to go: Author’s Note ........................................................................................... 1 Overview .................................................................................................. 2 Preview and Basic Principles ................................................................... 2 Ball Control .............................................................................................. 3 Shot Selection and Aiming ....................................................................... 4 Common EM Playfield Features ............................................................... 5 Game Condition ....................................................................................... 9 Nudging and “Key Feeds” ...................................................................... 11 Machine Settings and Instruction Cards ................................................. 11 Parting Words / Disclaimer / Feedback .................................................. 12 List of Machines Covered in Detail Here ................................................ 13 Author’s Note Hi, I’m Bob Matthews, a.k.a. BobMathUse, a.k.a. BMU [machine high score initials]. I started playing pinball in the early 1970s. It was 10 cents a game, all EMs, and add-a-ball only - - replays were illegal where I lived in New York State. To make my dimes go the furthest, I had to strive for long games. This is some of my accumulated knowledge from the past 45 years. My ideas aren’t always perfect, nor my execution of them, but they’ve worked pretty well for me. In some cases, expert players may have different opinions on choices of shots or flipper techniques to use than what I describe here. That’s fine; if you find or hear of something better that works for you, use it! If you find the tips here help you, you’re welcome, and spread the word. And if you want to pass this along to someone or somewhere else, go ahead as long as it’s attributed to me. My thanks to Levi Nayman for editorial help on this new version. You can reach me at [email protected]. Overview Electro-mechanical pinball machines, commonly called “E-M”s for short, are the older games which were made up until early 1978. About 90% of the ones you’ll see in tournaments or at shows were made by either Gottlieb, Williams or Bally. Most of those which are “tournament grade” in terms of design, maintainability and “skill” date from 1965 and later, skewing towards the latter years. All have mechanical scoring reels which rotate vertically to advance in value. Some have an indicator light to show when a player has “rolled over” the score, typically at a value of 100,000, but most have no indication when a player rolls the game a second time. Most EM games have manual coil plungers, but a few older ones automatically plunge the ball when you hit one of the flippers, usually the right one, similar to the autoplunger buttons on newer games like Attack From Mars. Older games may also have a push-up trough where the player must first push a lever on the right side of the machine cabinet to raise a ball into the plunger lane prior to pulling the plunger to serve the ball. These machines will show the balls yet to be plunged through a glass window in the lower front of the top of the game surface. I will be using a fair amount of “pinballese” here. I also am omitting photos both to save space and because I do not possess photos of many of the games I’ve included. For both a good pinball glossary and useful photos of most machines, I recommend using the Internet Pinball Database [ipdb.org]. I will include explanations of a few terms here when I think they may not be in ipdb or if I use them somewhat differently. Preview and Basic Principles 1. When in doubt, UTAD - - Up Top All Day. Shoot the ball up towards the top of the machine, through a spinner if possible, and better yet if that spinner is lit for its maximum value. 2. Nudging: unlike modern games, EMs have NO tilt warnings. You find out you shook it too hard when your ball, or the entire game, suddenly ends. Nudge, but don’t vigorously shake or slide the game. One-time bumps on the side or front of the game should suffice. On many games, a large fraction of your final score will come from end-of-ball bonuses. On such games, avoiding tilting is more important than you’re probably used to. On games where there is no end of ball bonus, desperation shoves are worth a try if it’s your last ball, or if the penalty is only the end of the ball currently in play [some games take the ball in play plus a second ball as a tilt penalty]. 3. If there’s a “collect bonus” shot and your bonus is close to maximum, shoot it. There are some exceptions, but I’ll cover these game by game. 4. If there’s a “light double bonus” shot lit, shoot it. 5. Completing sets of things [targets of a given color or suit, lanes, saucers, etc.] is generally better than a random mix of each item. 6. If there’s a “close flippers” shot [older EMs from the 1960’s], shoot it. 7. If there’s a shot or a nudge that gets the ball back to the plunger lane, do so. 8. When shooting for bumpers, whether normal or “mushroom” bumpers, try to make the hits grazing ones where the ball will continue upwards after hitting the bumper. [See El Toro, Fireball, Cosmos, etc.] A direct hit on the bottom of a bumper may cause the ball to be kicked out the center or side drain by the bumper. 9. Use “dead bounces” to pass the ball across to the other flipper and get to a cradle. A dead bounce is when you let a ball falling towards a flipper hit it without flipping so that the ball bounces off of it and across to the other side, where it will often roll up just past the other flipper. You can then raise the other flipper and get the ball to settle down onto that flipper to take a more controlled shot. Most older games have relatively dead flipper rubber so that such bounces are unlikely to go up into the slingshots and out of control as if sometimes the case on modern games. But be careful – if the rubber is too dead, the ball may just die down the center. Ball Control When you have the ball cradled on a flipper, you often can’t transfer it to the other flipper using a post pass as you would on most recent machines. There may be no posts, or they may be too high up, or too close, or the flippers unsuited for making that move. Your two basic alternatives are tap passing [soft late flip] and alley passing a.k.a. Shatzing [an end-of-the-flipper shot into the opposite flipper lane]. Bally games are more likely to accommodate tap passes due to the flipper construction. Williams games more often can apply shatzing. Gottlieb games with full-size flippers often can’t reliably handle either one safely, while Gottlieb games with mini-flippers can sometimes shatz. Drop catching, live catching and especially dead bounces will be very useful, but beware the “dead catch” or “death bounce.” Sometimes the flipper response will be so slow after a catch that the ball will roll off the end of it before you can flip. Or the flipper rubber will be so dead that the bounce off of it won’t make it across to the opposite flipper, just die down the center. Watch and learn from the player ahead of you if you can. Micro-flipping. On several games, the ball can come to rest between either the tips of the two flippers, when in a “closed flippers” position, or between a flipper and a center post. When you have a chance to let the ball do this, take it unless it’s easier to get the ball directly to a flipper cradle. Once the ball is there, use tiny flips to nudge it to a spot where you can either cradle it on the opposite flipper [Time Zone], or take a shot as it rolls up the other flipper if that’s more advantageous [Fireball]. This is one skill or feature that’s absent from modern games. Shot Selection and Aiming Ever watch golf on TV? If so, you’ve probably heard an announcer talk about the “correct miss.” This refers to when you take a shot that may not go exactly where you want it to, what happens when you miss by a modest but not severe amount? If you’re nowhere close to target, e.g. 50+ feet off, you may be in a lot of trouble, but that’s due to missing that badly, and you’ll pay the price. But when you miss by 10-20 feet, i.e. you’re reasonably close, can anything bad happen? If the hole is near the edge of the green and there’s a sand trap next to that edge, you’ll see pro golfers target a spot between the hole and the center of the green, rather than the hole itself, so that if they miss, they’re not in the sand trap. Pinball has similar situations. For instance, when shooting the ball up a side orbit to the top of the game, if you miss high, the ball may hit a post and rebound dangerously, while if you miss low, the ball may hit the side of the machine and go partway but not all the way up to the top. The basic strategy is that while trying to hit your exact target, time your shot to favor missing to the “safe” side. The better your aim is, the closer to dead center you should aim in general.