Crazy Flipper Fingers

played this for the 2nd time in my life last night, and totally can't believe danny's score, because my best was 2 mil. it's a fun game, and you can keep a ball going for a long time, but scoring is really tricky! anyone have any tips? specifically, i had a hard time hitting the ramp to lock balls for jackpot-- i think i only locked 2 on my best game. i didn't play it that long. i had a pretty easy time hitting the upper loop, (not more than a few times in a row though,) i don't know what the timing is to hit that ramp. seems you have to flip early? danny? anyone? how do you do it? and how the fuck do you advance to 47 mil?

in this article, LFS (lyman sheats) says his best was 110 mil on 3 balls-- he quit after 3, after playing for an hour and 45 minutes, even though he had 2 more balls waiting. and this was years back, i wonder if he's bested that now.

what do you guys think about the idea of using some dues to chip in and fly lyman out to portland for a vacation and week-long pinball tutorial? if we could get him to let us document it, it could propel all of our skills to massive new levels. what do you think? i think it would be so fucking worth it, it would be super fun and awesome, and it would probably not cost each of us much. it would be like summer pinball camp, except we bring the coach to us! i've always wanted to meet that dude and see him play anyway.

Its all about the hurry ups in that game, spell WAR hit the loop a couple times drop it down to the bottom playing field and straight shoot it right back up the left side for 1 mil, or extra ball or whatever other crap its giving. Do that about, 37 mil i believe it was, so we will say 50 times or so and you got it. MB ramp is tricky, you almost need to get it off of a bounce from the WAR rubbers.

I don't think a tutorial will help, we all know how to play the games, we just need to start playing them differently I tend to play a lot of games a week, which means a lot of games go to shit after a bad 1st ball or i am just playing poorly that night yet still just try to get GC's the way I know how to on a given game. That needs to stop. These A-league players aren't going out, or home trying to GC games everyday. They are practicing passes, and bounces, and stalls. Watch Jay collect his 3 ball MB on Grand Lizard, it blew my mind. He practiced a flipper move that had all the balls flying around but after 5 seconds 2 were resting on on flipper and one on the other. We don't need to be shown/taught that, we know it already we just need to practice and practice and practice so we are confident to apply it when it matters. Seeing everyone dead flipper pass was crazy, I have never even thought/heard of it and when i did I didn't believe it could possible work let alone be relied upon, I usually lift a flipper and it will bounce up and slowly come done, sometimes nicely into a flipper other times straight into the slingshot or out lane, a dangerous risky move i need to eliminate from my game. It gets cheaper is a line I have heard and told many people as I am sure you all have too, well i think its time to start investing money into our games by going out and trying crazy new shit on these machines. Why didn't any of us know you could hold the balls on FG and still play Stewie pinball, and if someone did, why didn't all of us know that? One of the guys up there was using the slingshot to make the Meg shot, I can't make the Meg shot period except by mistake, it took him quarters and practice but he can hit it, in a pretty sweet way too. That should be us!

FYI: Black Knight 2K is going to be moved from C-Bar to Alleyway. And Alleyway is getting rid of Whirlwind I like Whirlwind..

Any idea on what is going to replace BK2K at c-bar then?

No, didn't get that info. Nikki says that whirlwind isn't pulling in enough money, and so Cashbox is swapping it out. I'm guessing it's not making money mostly because it doesn't have a ball save (unless you score zero boints). It's a hard game, and with no ball save, too many people are turned off by the quick drains. You'd think that would be offset by the price (2 games for 75c, 3 for a dollar). But it's not. Oh well. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out where it goes next.

Last night I tried practicing my multiball handling skills on whirlwind - stalling on left flip, inside shot with right up to lock hole under the ramp, then upper flip to jackpot. Hit it twice, but overall, it was difficult. Mostly because that inside shot is difficult. I also had some major problems even getting the multiball... but that was mostly my dumb luck/skill.

That is some funny shit if they think WW is hard wait till they get a load of BK2K. Ball save, I think NOT! And fuck um anyway for wiping Danny B's score!

I also like WW lets hope they just swap them. I was just getting into it when they yanked it the first time. I like Alleyway but I just never find myself in that neck of the woods, and outside WW I can find those games closer to me and not have to worry about scores being wiped, (accept at C-bar) fucking Cashbox!

that's weird because nikki actually has a good relationship w/ the cashbox guys and mentioned the issue of erasing scores to them. they said they try to avoid doing that, and weren't doing it on purpose specifically to CFF scores, and after that conversation it did seem like things were getting better. it seemed like they reset scores on a bunch of machines at CBar (batman, IJ4, and BK2K were all clean) but they didn't erase danny's GC on fishtales or any of the scores on AFM. maybe someone just doesn't know what they're doing and erased them accidentally when they were checking audits or something. it sucks either way-- that score was awesome. it should've stood for a long time. it's a shame to see the stuff that doesn't get erased (high scores set before machines got trashed so they can't be touched, even though on a working machine we'd kill them,) and then have legit scores like that get wiped when they should be admired-- they raise the bar for everyone. pinball is hard, people should know what's possible. most of us are at the point where defaults are a joke and even GC on a machine with defaults isn't that satisfying. that's a good reason to leave scores up. the people who are playing the most (us) are going to spend more time gunning for a high score we know we can reach, than playing a clean board where we know we can have TBD in 4 games.

Anyone use the left backflip through U-turn as a safe flipper pass? Seems almost like the game was built with this in mind.

as I recall, post passes are fairly simple on BK2k no? No sense risking things...

the safety of the u-turn really depends on the machine. it didn't seem too risky at the standard, but by default i completely avoid it.

On the other hand, if you can hit the u-turn safely and consistently, it can make for some quick big boints.

I think it depends on whether or not you're consistent with post passes. I tried one on that machine to test it and drained. That could be me or the machine -- probably me since I usually test post flips on every machine and pretty much end with a similar outcome. That particular BK2k I could put up soft backflips with the left that would trickle through the u-turn and deadflip on the right; also deadflip anything coming through the upper playfield.

Whether that's consistent for all BK2K I couldn't say, since it's the only one I've ever played.

The other unique problem/feature on this one is how to handle the three ball multiball that comes all at once and enters from one side of the machine. Only thing I could think of (after the fact) was do a roll pass to trap on the left and trap one ball on the right by sacrificing the middle ball as a stop.

Once that's done it seems like it could be possible to play the game without having to use the left flipper at all -- just cycle it through the upper playfield, deadflip right and repeat.

I blew a post past at a crucial point on that BK2K. They're possible, of course, but I think they're a little more difficult than usual on that machine. I need to test it more, but I think the flip that bounces it up to the post shouldn't be too rapid.

I don't have a good multiball strategy, either. The best mbs I've had on that game actually consist of me wailing on the u-turn. 250k each. But, that's not an easy or safe strategy...
I was trying a few things the other day - backing up the first ball, dead-flipping the second, and then reflex shooting the third up the ramp. once again, not too easy to do.

So, instead of post passing from the left flip to the right, when the ball's on my left flipper I shoot it up into that mystery hole (whatever it's called), which brings the ball to the upper level.

That's what I go for also, It's a fairly easy shot. you can also do a rolling backhand half ramp dead flip pass to get it back to the right or just don't miss the ramp in the first place!

Yeah... I gotta work on my rolling backhand half ramp dead flip passes too.