From: tyager@maxx.UUCP (Tom Yager)
Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball
Subject: New games
Date: 26 Sep 92 05:39:06 GMT
Organization: New Hampshire Public Access UNIX

I was traveling this past week, and had the good fortune to stumble across a
few new games. My good fortune is your rotten luck, because I now choose to
shoot my face off about them. I haven't any prepared comments, so I'll just
ramble. Anyone who isn't interested in my opinions can press 'n' now.

The three new games I got to see were Fish Tales, Black Rose and Dr. Who. I
also got to see more of Lethal Weapon 3, but since that's already out there
in great numbers, I won't say much about it. I will say, however, that in
terms of backglass art, display work and sound, LW3 is far and away the best
game DE's ever done. Their rules still have some catching up to do, but then
Williams/Bally is in a class by itself thanks to its programming team. The
display on LW3 is the best I've seen on any game, regardless of manufacturer.
It's a shame the guy who did LW3's display work prefers writing game code--
we probably won't see his like again.

I'll work the remaining games to leave my favorite for last. I got to run about
20 plays through Dr. Who. That's not really enough to form any substantial
opinions, but I did come away with some first impressions. Forgive me for
any lapses of memory. I'm sure I got things wrong in my summary below, but
perhaps I can manage to give you a general feel for it. First, you MUST be
a fan of the show to understand the game. There are Daleks and Transmats and
all kinds of whizzy things that are not explained. If you're not a Dr. Who
fan, as is my case, you shoot everything and see what lights up. But that
doesn't work. Apparently, as a Dr. Who fan told me later, if you understand
the show then you understand where the beauty shots on the game are and
why you want them. I didn't get it.

The game opens each ball with a feature that reminds me of a recent thread
here on letting the player choose the rules set. You select one of seven
Doctors Who with the flippers, and each gives some unique boost to a part
of the playfield or rules set. You might get to extra ball faster, or score
more on the bumpers, or whatever. You get several seconds to decide which
nifty thing you want more of before you launch the ball.

Once the ball's in play, you're on your own. There are two banks of standup
targets that spell words (REPAIR and ESCAPE, if I recall), an over-the-top
shot that leads into a bank of pops arranged in Pinbot/The Machine fashion.
I don't want to labor over the fact, mentioned several times here already,
that this is a Barry Oursler game. If you've played Pinbot or The Machine,
you'll recognize lots of things about Dr. Who.

I can't speak to the rules because I found them indecipherable. Perhaps if I
subject myself to an entire season of Dr. Who I'll get it. The playfield,
though, has some interesting attributes. There is an extra flipper halfway
up the left side, aimed at a ramp and a target below it that activates the
Transmat (if it's charged by enough bounces around the pops--that much I
got). The ramp--and I got a kick out of this--multiplies all playfield scores.
At the start of it, this is not a tremendously high-scoring game. I think
allowances may have been made for the playfield multiplier. At the top of the
playfield are two Pinbot eject holes. They're not concealed. Locking balls
in both holes raises the playfield underneath the lock area to reveal a row
of spherical targets. I liked the shape; they're nothing like conventional
standup targets. Bang around the targets until you light the Pinbot grid and
the mini-playfield lifts up yet another level to reveal three doors with
Daleks on them. Put the ball through the Daleks during multiball for the
jackpot. There are golden Daleks and supreme Daleks, and I'll be damned if
I can tell the difference. The mini-playfield shakes and wobbles when the
ball hits it, and the Daleks are painted on flaps. I hate to say it, but
after Addams Family, this thing looks and feels really cheap.

The dot-matrix is good as far as representations of people are concerned. The
rest is not so hot, particularly since the animation slows noticeably when
scores and such are changing in the foreground. The animations played when
you lock the balls make the people look like clowns (are there clowns in Dr.
Who?). The Daleks, whose (which?) voices dominate multiball, screech and
whine. I'm told by my Who-sian friend that this is the sound Daleks make.
Whatever.

As far as play goes, Dr. Who should be moderately friendly. I got myself
in front of a badly-adjusted game in which the right ramp, which was supposed
to feed the return lane, fed the outlane more often than not. This game has
a ball saver (quick drain insurance), but it only works once. With that
ramp fixed, I think the game would hand out average ball times or perhaps
slightly less. I didn't dislike Dr. Who, but I think Bally's limiting its
potential audience considerably by building a game that can't be completely
understood by anyone but Dr. Who fans. I've got nothing against the show
(it's on at a time when I can't watch), but the pinball-playing public,
intersected with the number of them that are crazy for Dr. Who, amounts to
a lot less people than lined up to play Addams Family.

As an aside: I wonder if Williams management didn't make a mistake in
loaning Bally its best people for Addams Family. That set a standard that will
be hard to match up to. When I was writing for Play Meter, I was always willing
to cut Bally some slack for being the lesser of the W/B twins. Now, however,
with all this sharing of talent, I can't reasonably let Bally off the hook
for a game that doesn't measure up to Williams.

That brings me to Black Rose. I've said some unkind things about this game
in the past, and I think I should tone them down a little. Doing a limited
run of this game was the right thing--it's really not that good--but it has
some endearing qualities to it. The cannon in the middle of the playfield
is something I'd like to see again (with some better rules built around
it), and the ramp in the upper-right was kind of fun. While I wouldn't
throw the rest of it in the trash, it was, overall, a bad package. The
display was the worst of it, but the rules seemed thrown together--anything
with a pirate or nautical theme was tossed in. It turned out to be more
playable than I originally gave it credit for, but I had the same opinion
of Riverboat Gambler. I think both games will prove to have no legs. If we
still see Black Roses on the streets in six months, I'll be surprised.

The most pleasant part of my visit to this arcade was the 100 plays or so
I ran through Fish Tales. This is definitely going to be my next purchase--
what a great, goofy game! Mark Ritchie has done himself proud, building a game
that exhibits creative playfield layout and deep, imaginative rules. The
display work is very nice (although I'd still place it, on the whole, a notch
below LW3), the sounds are a gas, and the music is a perfect fit. There's very
little I'd change about this game, and I must say I'd be hard-pressed to 
come up with a better Williams game since Funhouse. Yes, I did like it more
than T2; Arnie's history in my game room. Others have already posted rules
summaries and such here, so I won't trouble to repeat them. I'll just add my
resounding "ya-hoo!" to those that have been here before.

I don't doubt that I'm not as good a player as many who frequent this group,
but I think I'm a little better than average. So I'll offer this caveat: Fish
Tales is meaner than it looks. You have to be suspicious of any game that
plants something so huge in the middle of the playfield (the dual criss-cross
ramps and the captive ball), but it seems like EVERYTHING on Fish Tales
is engineered to challenge the player. Example: halfway up either of the
center criss-cross ramps could send the ball screaming toward a close center
drain. Example: the multi-ball holding area empties into an open pipe at
high speed. You'll have one hell of a time making the ball go where you want
it to after it comes zipping out of the pipe. Example: a shot that slinks
down the right alley from the top often takes a bounce that makes it a 
close, but avoidable, center drain. And finally, the combination of slingshots,
rubbers on the sides of the ramp entrances, and springy fat standups above the
slingshots on both sides makes Fish Tales a side-drain nightmare. So much so
that I wish I'd seen the game with a center post. To its credit, this is the
first game I've seen in a while that so clearly separates the men from the 
boys. It's frustrating as hell, and a delight at the same time. If you master
this game, you'll feel like you've really accomplished something.

That's it. I didn't get to see more of Star Wars than I did several weeks
ago; I expect great things from it. We'll see if it delivers.

Have fun, all.

Pinball: it's the most fun you can have (legally) on four legs.
---

-- 
Tom Yager, BYTE Multimedia Lab Director
           Author, Addison-Wesley UNIX programming book (Summer, 1991)
           Author, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich multimedia book (Fall, 1992)
           decvax!maxx!tyager, maxx!tyager@bytepb.byte.com