Deep Pinball

[Rocko]

What are some deep pinball machines, and what are some good deep ones? and what is the deepest machine?

[Rocko]

EDIT: Look ^

[Max-T]

Reptone, I can give you a couple of suggestions, if only from emulated experience. Though I live in a city of over a million people, I can find less than a dozen pinball machines, but that is a rant for another day.

 

My #1 pick -- Jack*Bot. This is the third in the series started by the famed Pinbot. Jack*Bot in my opinion, is the perfect balance of use between the pinball playfield and the LED playscreen. There are four "casino" games which you play on the LED screen, let's see, Blackjack, Pinbot poker, Dice Game, and, jeez I've been ignoring PinMAME for Atari for too long... umm, Keno. Yes.

 

You add up poker cards and Keno checks as you play, plus after each mini-game played, you choose (by actuating the left or right flipper) if you want to cash in the money just won, or if you want to go for double, which requires you to shoot the leftmost lane. You can also earn bonus multipliers (up to 5X the total bonus per ball) by using skill shots and by random bonus.

 

There are 2-ball and 3-ball multiball modes, and these are in two phases. First, you must shoot both of the Jack*Bot's "eyes". This is a mechanized visor which lifts up under certain game conditions, allowing access to the "eye sockets." In multiball mode, you must score 15 JackBots, which are obtained by shooting either free eyes socket or the leftmost lane, with the "Game Saucer" lane re-activating all three JackBot locations.

 

After 15 JackBots are scored (which is no mean feat, believe me), a second bonus multiball mode is enabled. This is very much easier to score on, since the visor is closed again, and all visor targets as well as those to the right of the visor count. By this time you are scoring mega-points. If you last long enough, the game goes back to the JackBot mode, then back to Visor mode, and so forth.

 

So forth happens only very, very irregularly. While I have never had the pleasure of playing Jack*Bot in person, I have scored 19.7 billion points in VisualPinball/PinMAME. No, I am not British. Billion means billion. I was proud of myself. Of course, Twin Galaxies won't accept emulated pinball scores, so who cares?

 

If I haven't thoroughly bored you by this point, my second choice for deep pinball would be Road Show. This again is a newer table, making liberal use of the high-res LED screen. I couldn't possibly try to list all scoring modes, since I have never come close to beating the table, but there are 20+ cities to "visit", and a corresponding number of "souveniers" which you can purchase at the cost of points.

 

Third, and a close third, I bring you Junkyard. This one, I have had the rare pleasure to tilt in person. The object of this table is to collect pieces of junk, again at the cost of scored points, and some of those pieces combine to make new devices, which earn you bigger bonuses at end of ball. There are a couple on LED mini-games in this one as well.

 

Those are the top three tables I would recommend, as far as deep play is concerned. The time i scored almost 20 bil on Jack*Bot the game took over two hours. And I would say that I have spent several hundred hours playing just these three tables out of the 500+ that I have on my PC.

 

Not too deep, but just because... Black Knight 2000. I would commit certain acts of violence to own one of those. But that's the old man in me talking. Stick with the first three, and you'll be stuck for ages.

[NE146]

This is by far the "deepest" pinball machine you can "get into":

 

http://jditmars.net/BANG/BANG.htm

 

And if you're not into that you can just get this one:

 

http://www.exo.net/michaelb/gogirl/gogirl.html

[Max-T]

Wow, you have got me there. Let me guess -- were these machines introduced in Japan? Just a wild notion. That is absolutely hilarious. I can't compete with that.

 

But Reptone, if you were inquiring about pins that do not require the insertion of fleshy parts, let me again suggest Jack*Bot, Road Show, and Junkyard.

 

Deep, but not THAT deep.

[Rocko]

Woah....those are freaky.