Table of the Week Club...Week 21: TWILIGHT ZONE

You are about to enter a dimension where tables are played on a weekly basis, and this week's is The Twilight Zone. Thankfully there are no sparkly vampires in this twilight*. Post strategies, tips, and complaints of this being way to easy compared to the real table below. Enjoy this Lawlor table while we wait for Roadshow to be released. And most of all, as our Aussie friend is apt to say, "Don't shut the door, don't shut the door!"

This table starts the cycle of tables we will be playing in the July TotM. I realize we are starting to get ahead of ourselves, we'll be taking a week off from TotW real soon and that will put us back on schedule. Since I can't remind everyone too much, sign-ups for the June TotM will open on the 24th and the tourney will be on the 27th. Mark you calendars!



*when FarSight was trying to secure the license for Twilight Zone, they thought they had everything locked up. Then they received a notice to stop everything because some genius out there actually thought they were making something to do with the Twilight franchise, and FS had to delay until their lawyer could prove that it had nothing to do with that! One of those things that caused the delay of the table, amazingly enough.

DON'TTOUCHTHEDOOR DON'TTOUCHTHEDOOR DON'TTOUCHTHEDOOR DON'TTOUCHTHEDOOR DON'TTOUCHTHEDOOR DON'TTOUCHTHEDOOR

Anyway, this table still needs to be made harder. Good thing we have upcoming difficulty settings

Well the Ripley's game end bug got fixed, so maybe by the time we play this in tourney, the difficulty will be put in. Fingers crossed.

Ok. Thank God extra balls are disabled in the tourney.

Anyway, Twilight Zone is one of the world's most complex pinhall machines, with multiple oppurtunities to stack modes and Multiballs. However, in TPA, the table is ridiculously easy. So instead of discussing rules, I'm going to discuss some of the best stacking strategies I've used to score big here.

- Multiball + The Spiral: Stacking these two modes essentially means you can score a ton from Spiral; the right ramp always feeds to the left orbit magnet in the mode, so that spots a Spiral shot.
- Clock Millions + Clock 10 Millions (Camera award): Yay for OP targets!
- Powerball Mania + Town Square Madness: Town Square is a frenzy mode. Powerball Mania is also partly a frenzy mode. Anything more to explain?

The one main thing to master on this table is left ramp (from either flipper and preferably with rollings shots), right ramp, piano shot. This is the fastest way to Lost in the Zone, for purpose of points. Extra balls come from the robots, and from the doors (modes) that you collect this way (not important for tournament obviously). In between you can play some multiball and battle the Power. Plunging hard to avoid the somewhat dangerous bumper area is probably wise over the long run, outweighs hitchhikers (and battling the Power) and bumpers. Aside from the relative easy play, it was very exciting to get this table for TPA and offcourse should have been an automatic inclusion from the start. Having TZ, TAF and MM/AFM is having the best from DMD-style era pinball.
[MENTION=134]shutyertrap[/MENTION] : nice bit of info about the teen vampire confusion namewise! Didn't know that.

The things that have helped me the most are...

- Using the mouse to launch and get the Super Skill EB every time. I guess it's obvious but I didn't figure out that most plunger shots can be made 100% of the time until a couple of months ago.

- Collecting Door Panels from the Slot Machine more than the Piano. Shooting the Slot Machine is highly frowned upon but it seems to work for me. My %age of making the Piano is pretty low. I did this on the real table, too.

In my best game (32B) I got at least 14 LitZ's, a 1019M LitZ, a Camera Collect Bonus of 930M, and 18 Dead Ends.

Here are a couple questions I have, before checking the TZ forum:
- How can Bonus X be gotten on purpose? Or do you just need to let it happen?
- Does anyone have any luck with inlane-passing to light and collect the Spiral EB? (after the 1st one of course) I hope I am using the right term for inlane-passing... I mean flipping with the very tip of the right flipper, to send the ball up the left inlane. I haven't had any luck with inlane passing in TPA (though I could do it on real machines decently).

Since Wizard Goals are too easy on most tables, I think it'd be fun to propose a new tier of Super-Wizard Goals. Or Guru Goals. For TZ I might propose, with not a lot of attention paid to detectability:
- 20 Dead Ends
- 100 Hitch-Hikers (or this should be a regular Wizard Goal)
- a 1B Camera Collect Bonus
- having four balls on the Powerfield at once (I have some pics of having three at once)
- a 750M Powerball Mania
- a second Spiral EB
- a 1.2B LitZ
- perhaps something for a high score in the modes... Greed, Fast Lock, Super Slot, Spiral, Town Square, Odd Change. I don't know the rules well enough to give anything in particular... I've gotten a 75M Town Square several times, I think, perhaps with a 3X from something?

I don't have anything new to say about the table itself... it's probably the best table of all time and has been analyzed more than any other table. I was fortunate enough to have not just one or two but several TZ's in excellent to perfect condition in the 1990s.

I know the TPA version is easy, and quite a bit easier than the real machine. This doesn't bother me as much as most of you... I didn't get bored in that 32B game, and it's one of my ten favorite TPA tables as it is. Now going for 100B or 1T is probably very annoying...

Play it quick before the license runs out!

Also can't wait for the difficulty settings.

Three balls on the Powerfield

Invitro-which ball is that? Is it in the season 2 pack ? Looks like it may be near impossible to follow since it looks like it's reflecting everything it rolls over? Also, how did you get three balls up there?

Kind of a self-imposed challenge when this game comes in next month's tournament: Play in Pro Mode, No EB's, and set Piano and Slot Machine to Extra Hard.

Reagan Dow said:

Invitro-which ball is that? Is it in the season 2 pack ?

Click to expand...

It's one of the Star Trek custom balls (Klingon Empire)

Did FS have to remove any Addams family callouts from the Fast Lock multiball round? Would they now be allowed to put them back in?

It plays the TAF, Earthshaker, or Whirlwind multiball music depending on the lock value. Pretty sure there are callouts from the latter two games.

EldarOfSuburbia said:

Did FS have to remove any Addams family callouts from the Fast Lock multiball round? Would they now be allowed to put them back in?

It plays the TAF, Earthshaker, or Whirlwind multiball music depending on the lock value. Pretty sure there are callouts from the latter two games.

Click to expand...

They didn't remove them.

Went and broadcasted on Twitch (new for me) as I collected all the wizard goals. All done! I really hate the 4 way combo, and don't think I earned it the honest way either.

In case you all didn't know, the top score in your local highscore that is SDC? Yeah, that's Sean DonCarlos. Happy to have bumped him down from his perch while doing this!

Reagan Dow said:

Invitro-which ball is that? Is it in the season 2 pack ? Looks like it may be near impossible to follow since it looks like it's reflecting everything it rolls over? Also, how did you get three balls up there?

Click to expand...

I usually use the Dr. Dude ball -- seen below. I love that one but am trying out some others for variety. I haven't noticed any problems following it... I am trying to choose balls that contrast highly with the background. There's no secret to getting the balls up there... just shoot them all up during Powerball Mania. And I am silly about liking it.

I'd like to see a pic of four, or more!, balls on the Powerfield.

EldarOfSuburbia said:

It plays the TAF, Earthshaker, or Whirlwind multiball music depending on the lock value. Pretty sure there are callouts from the latter two games.

Click to expand...

Does the TAF callout voice(s) sound a little different than it does in TAF?

And don't forget the FH and Banzai Run callouts & music...

shutyertrap said:

*when FarSight was trying to secure the license for Twilight Zone, they thought they had everything locked up. Then they received a notice to stop everything because some genius out there actually thought they were making something to do with the Twilight franchise, and FS had to delay until their lawyer could prove that it had nothing to do with that! One of those things that caused the delay of the table, amazingly enough.

Click to expand...

This story sounds like a Fish Tale to me. Twilight Zone is not an obscure license. Maybe SYT is foolin' us, or Farsight was foolin' him. Or maybe Farsight has a really, really bad lawyer. Like why couldn't a lawyer just email the judge with a "uh, HELLO, the TV show Twilight Zone? Which was followed by other TV shows also called Twilight Zone? Which was also a movie or three? Which is also the name and theme of one of the most successful pinball machines ever? Which we are emulating? Is this thing on? Don't touch the door?"

invitro said:

This story sounds like a Fish Tale to me. Twilight Zone is not an obscure license. Maybe SYT is foolin' us, or Farsight was foolin' him. Or maybe Farsight has a really, really bad lawyer. Like why couldn't a lawyer just email the judge with a "uh, HELLO, the TV show Twilight Zone? Which was followed by other TV shows also called Twilight Zone? Which was also a movie or three? Which is also the name and theme of one of the most successful pinball machines ever? Which we are emulating? Is this thing on? Don't touch the door?"

Click to expand...

Clearly you don't understand the insanity that Twilight fans exhibit. They actually tried to file a copywrite infingement on a movie that had wherewolves in it, saying they stole it from Twilight. I mean, how they call something that can go out in daylight, doesn't drink blood, and can look in a mirror a vampire goes to show how ludicrous these people are.

They have no sense of history, which is why they probably thought "Twilight Zone" was probably some piece of fan fiction that wasn't Fifty Shades of Grey. Yes, FS cleared it up rather quickly, but the fact they actually had to make the call and wait for the okay did happen and did cause a minor delay in their release window.

so what your saying is twlight fans are lost in a surreal slightly creepy version of reality? well you can forgive the mistake then, they probabky thought it was a documentary

I just hate when I need the camera shot, that's when I can't seem to get it.
Just play this table occasionally since it's been out so long.