- Mar 17, 2012
- 4,293
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Since this machine is fairly rare - there were only 994 made, and only about half those were sold; the rest were salvaged or destroyed unsold - and IPDB doesn't have pictures of the illuminated playfield, I decided to take a couple of shots of CP Pinball's Spectrum for everyone's viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
Spectrum Upper Playfield
Off to the sides by the spinners, there are hidden return lanes. When the ball falls into one of these, the ball locked on the corresponding lower kickout releases immediately. Star Trek: The Next Generation is not the first table with preloaded balls to speed up gameplay! (TX Sector's "teleporting" ball uses a similar system as well.)
Spectrum Lower Playfield
Note that Spectrum has no outlanes! Unfortunately, it has an extra wide center drain to compensate; a great deal of the strategy is to only shoot the green and yellow banks when you absolutely must to make progress on the color code. You can't nudge the machine enough to save a SDTM ball.
Spectrum also has no plunger; you use the right flipper button to launch the ball out of the center drain onto the playfield.
Spectrum Upper Playfield
Off to the sides by the spinners, there are hidden return lanes. When the ball falls into one of these, the ball locked on the corresponding lower kickout releases immediately. Star Trek: The Next Generation is not the first table with preloaded balls to speed up gameplay! (TX Sector's "teleporting" ball uses a similar system as well.)
Spectrum Lower Playfield
Note that Spectrum has no outlanes! Unfortunately, it has an extra wide center drain to compensate; a great deal of the strategy is to only shoot the green and yellow banks when you absolutely must to make progress on the color code. You can't nudge the machine enough to save a SDTM ball.
Spectrum also has no plunger; you use the right flipper button to launch the ball out of the center drain onto the playfield.
