From: jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey)
Subject: Re: Black Rose commentary
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 03:23:41 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.061354.16592@leland.Stanford.EDU> trump@leland.Stanford.EDU (Michael Jason Lewis) writes:
>1)  The machine at the student union at Stanford is finally fixed.  Glory be.

	The cannon in the machine is finally fixed--  after about a week of
them refusing to acknowledge that anything was wrong with the machine!  There
still are some problems with other parts though, as you note in question 2.
This machine sure has had a lot wrong with it in the three weeks it's been
here.


>2)  I got the cows for the first time.  It was funny, although it caused me
>to not get a free game.  As they went by, I completed the 2-way combo, but it
>didn't award it to me.  Oh, well.  Then I missed the replay score by 400,000.

	Yeah, that machine quite frequently doesn't register points.  It
happens on the combo every now and then--  but much more frequently (and
annoyingly) it doesn't award you the jackpot.  I'm not going to bother 
complaining to the management though.  It would take them two weeks to have
someone look at it, and that person would probably screw some other part of
the machine up even worse.

>
>3)  Can anyone out there get the "Walk the Plank" bonus consistently?  Tires
>my hand out, and I still don't make it more than 10% of the time.

	It's tough--  I can do it about half the time now, when it's on the
first level.  I haven't been able to do it at all at the higher levels.


>4)  What are you supposed to aim for during multi-ball?  What are "jewels"?

	Two things.  First of all, there are the ramps.  Every time you hit
the ball up a ramp during multi-ball, you spot a letter, which moves closer
towards being able to sink the ship.  There are also the jewels, which you
can see marked at various points on the playfield.  When you hit a certain
number of these jewels during multi-ball play, you get the hidden treasure
bonus (which of course, does not register until the end of the turn.)
>
>5)  One defect on this game is that the ball comes out of the whirlpool moving so (oops, sorry) fast or something that it flies off the channel on the way back
>to the left flipper.  It still lands on the left flipper, but it is much harder
>to get repeated loops.

	If you shoot it up without too much force, it will come all the way
down, but it does fly off an awful lot.  I'm not sure whether that's just an 
error in design, or whether it's an intentional part of the game.
>
>6)  I've never seen a game that bounces the ball off the glass so much, and I'm
>not talking about the intentional times.

	It sure does-- bounces like crazy, sometimes 5-10 times a ball for me--
sometimes when just coming off of one of the bumpers or something!
>
>7)  Do 5 and 6 imply that the game is incorrectly sloped?

	I've noticed that the ball tends to roll oh so slightly to the left,
but all the machines in that room do.  I think the room itself is sloped.  Or,
are you referring to the slope of the playfield?

	
	And in response to your other question-- about the ricochet bonus, your
guess was right--  that's when you hit the torch, powder, and cannonball 
banks one after another.  It's a nice 3 million points too!

	--  Jim C. <jchokey@leland.stanfor