I have always wanted to get into pinball. But the few times I decided to really give it a go. I could do alright but most of my games seemed to end with a bounce that went straight down the middle out with nothing I can do about it.
When you watch professional pinball players. It doesnt matter what game it is they always seem to be able to avoid those shots even if its their first time on a machine.
So there has to be a method or developable skill to it. But I cant for the life of me understand it.
In: Other
This is probably one of my favorite questions because a friend of mine decided he was gonna start collecting pinball machines. He has 3, I believe. Nightmare on Elm Street, Terminator 2, and Attack on Mars. When I go over to play I am amazed at his skill, and then I play and I end up getting the pinball straight down the middle phenomenon.
There’s no one trick. The best players know the rulesets of every game and how to maximize points (Escher Lefkoff and his dad know rules better than anyone I’ve ever met) They know when to bump and which direction and with what force to have the ball glance off obstacles for better angles and avoid sdtm. Use tilt warnings. Bumping the right time and directions to avoid outlane drains. Proper timing and use of live catch, drop catch, dead bounce, etc. … And doing all of that for three balls in a row every game. There are tons of videos and tutorials out there. If you go to tournaments, most people love to teach. Having a game at home, if you can swing it, is good for learning the bumping and flipper tricks without spending hours at the arcade wasting quarters. I recommend this channel for descriptions of how to execute different shots: https://youtube.com/@AbeFlips?si=9pxBjAaOFv5oBzqc
The same way people get ‘good’ at anything else. Practice. Lots and lots of practice. In the case of pinball, you’ll start to know where your shots are going to go, and if you know roughly where they are going, you can predict where it’s going to come back down, especially if you’ve made a similar play thousands of times before. In the case of the ‘straight down the middle’ scenarios, you just avoid shots that have a high propensity to end up in that situation. You’re working around the problem by trying to ensure it’s never a problem to begin with.
I think tilting helps too. You shake the machine to help a ball go a certain direction. I think most machines have a threshold though, so if you tilt too hard it locks up. There’s a just right amount you can do though, and it probably varies from machine to machine
My friend used to practice blindfolded and with earplugs. You could almost say Tommy was a wizard.
I used to have a pinball machine in my house, managed to High score over 110 million consistently (friends who tried for the first time only did a couple thousand/million).
You just develop a feel for it, especially for that specific machine. It just takes time and practice.
Once you get good at trapping and aiming learn the table and where to not put the ball. Some tables have areas that have high drain chance.
Looking at you Twilight Zone and your ‘Old Town Square’ area.
Recommend “Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game” film. Fun movie that answers theses questions.
There are professional pinball players? Always surprised.
First off, nobody totally avoids those bounces. Remember that everybody drains eventually.
The easiest way to learn to avoid those bounces is don’t miss shots. Most games, even old EMs, are designed to have pretty safe return paths on shots.
It takes a good long white to learn to be deliberate about your shooting. If you are ever hitting a ball just to keep it moving, you’ve already screwed up.
The second thing you’ll notice is that experienced pinball players backhand a lot more than amateurs. *Backhanding* meaning shooting the same side of the machine as the flipper you use (so right flipper to right ramp, for example). Backhands are generally safer shots for a lot of reasons that I won’t go into right now. If you can backhand a shot, you generally should.
The third thing is high-skill players know how to slap save. A ball going down the middle can often be saved with a hard slap which can temporarily move the flipper over up to an eighth of an inch. Most balls that drain down the middle don’t drain *exactly* in the middle of the flippers.
High-skill players also know how to nudge while the ball is bouncing around, and those nudges influence the final trajectory of the ball.
But the #1 thing is high skill players hit the shots they mean to hit, and they know how to slow the ball down to prevent it from getting out of control. Accuracy is 70% of the battle, ball control (like catching and passing between flippers) is another 15%.
Latest Answers