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Gold Ball
  PBLPinballUC  
  opened by paleface at 01:15:15 01/09/07  
  last modified by paleface at 12:27:18 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=PBL; cat=Pinball; reg=NA]
           
The back-glass has some amusing early-80's sci-fi themes going, with gold-painted characters posing in big round helmets. The instructions lead me to think that if you do well, at some point a gold-colored ball actually appears. The black and gold theme of the table is fairly attractive, but the table itself is hard as hell--just about everything seems to lead to the ball going down the wide right gutter, or just straight down the middle. Ouch. This table made me its bitch in record time.
 
I don't know if it was just the particular table we played, but it was very dark--not lit up much, I mean. When I lit one of the bright green bonus indicator lights near the flippers, it actually made it hard to see the flippers due to the sudden lighting contrast.
 
  paleface 01:15:45 01/09/07
           
Oh, forgot to mention this is a Bally Midway table.
 
  paleface 01:28:10 01/09/07
           
Part of what makes it hard is that there are no real ramps below the lower rebounders; there's nothing at all there on the right, and on the left, you have a short lane that starts at a dead-drop, and you have to hit the right switch somewhere to cover the drop so you don't automatically lose your ball if it heads left.
 
  paleface 03:24:24 01/15/07
           
Played this a little more, and managed not to do quite so badly. Thing is, you really don't want to shoot the ball straight up the table indiscriminately, because lots of the time it'll rebound off the center target and go out straight down the middle.
 
The scoring in this is pretty weird, because apparently the two most important mechanics are completely random. For one, sometimes when you have a new ball to shoot, the Extra Ball skill shot will be lit up--just by random chance, as far as we could tell. Second, apparently there is an actual gold ball that just comes out randomly sometimes instead of a normal ball. Huh!
 
Oh, and the sound effects sound like Defender.
 
Still, it's a nice roomy table, with lots of space to shoot, and a traditional yet fun arrangement of a ramp looping up around on the left side to the top four bonus lanes, with three jet bumpers below them to kick the ball around a bit.
 
  paleface 03:26:07 01/15/07
           
ipdb.org says there's an upgrade to the table that turns the gold ball release into a skill shot: you have to light up all the G-O-L-D-B-A-L-L lights, triggered by the middle target. I wonder if this one is set that way or not.
    

 
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