From: farris@rtsg.mot.com (Dan Farris)
Subject: New Game in Town
Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 20:42:27 GMT

I had an opportunity to play a new game today.  Since I haven't seen any 
word of it in this newsgroup and the operator said it's in beta test, I
figure I owe it to everyone to submit a short report.

The game is Cue Ball Wizard, by Premier/Gottlieb.  It's based upon eight
ball, which from experience usually makes for an interesting theme and
good rules.  The most obvious feature of the game and certainly the most
unique is that there are actual (well they look real) pool balls that
actually come into play!  There is a cue ball that rests above a V-shape
bar, right in the middle of the playfield.  It blocks a horseshoe loop,
and some targets that sit right in the center.  There are also some 
targets that sit higher than these, that only the cue ball can activate. 
So, what happens, is that you hit the pinball into the cue ball and it
rolls around, hopefully hitting its special targets.

What makes it interesting is that to hit the lower targets, you have to
get the cue ball moved out of the way, and then make the shot.  This is
a rather unique kind of combo shot, I'd say.  On top of the horseshoe
loop, is a captive 8 ball.  This gets shot after you get all of your
solids or stripes and then hit the cue ball into the raised targets.

Along both sides at the top are 7 drop targets.  (Guess what these do!)
There is a ramp at the lower right side that basically loops all the way
around the top of the machine and back down to the left inlane.

Along with a couple of kickout holes, one on the lower left (corner
pocket) and two above the drop targets (bank shot), that's pretty much
the playfield.

OK, how does it perform?  Well, I'd say that Williams has some 
competition.  Shooting the traditional plunger shoots the ball up and
around the top and makes the captive 8 ball shoot one of three target
areas (red, yellow, blue).  The captive 8 ball pivots back and forth,
so hitting the different areas is a matter of timing.  I didn't really
figure out how the three color areas figure into the rules, though.

The sounds are tremendous.  When you shoot the plunger shot, you hear
that familiar break shot sound, which is really great.  There are several
voices, telling you what to shoot at, but my favorite was when draining down
the sides a voice sounding like Reagan would say "I hate those outlanes!"  
When you go up the ramp but not hard enough to loop, the ball comes back
down and Reagan says something like "What kind of cowpie shot was that?"

The shots are good, but I like target games, myself.  There are a lot
of timed features, but I really hadn't figured out very many of them.
There seemed to be a lot of vocal coaching ("Shoot for the ramp", "Shoot
for the Bank Shot"), so it shouldn't be to hard to decide where to aim.
One nice feature was that in addition to the rules card, you could hold
down the flipper button and scroll through more rules that are displayed
on the dot-matrix display.  

There is at least one video mode game, but it wasn't too hot.  It was
pretty much a "Pong" game, where balls would come down and you could
move a pool table rail sideways and try and catch the balls in the
pocket.  Because of the aspect ratio (width to height) of the display,
you don't have too much time to move your pocket, because the ball 
doesn't take much time to traverse the display in the vertical direction.
So, for the most part, if you happen to be in the right place, or close
to it, you can catch the ball, but it's mostly luck.

I'm not sure exactly how I got into it, but there is a Nine-ball mode.
In this mode you have to get the drop targets 1-7 down in order.  If
you get them out of order, to the point where your next target is already
down, it'll reset the targets, so you can continue picking them off. Once
you get all seven, then you have to do the cue ball / 8 ball combination
shot.  This lights the nine ball (lowest drop target on the right side)
for a 1/2 billion.  I lit this once and just missed it and quickly 
drained.  I had 300+ million that game, so I would have had a nice score!
Darn!  

I couldn't remember playing a Premier game in a long time, but I was
quite impressed with this game.  I would say that it was easily better
than any Data East game that I've played.  Speaking of Data East, I did
happen upon a possible software bug.  Somehow, the video mode seemed to
activate right out of the clear blue.  The bad part was that the board
went black and the flippers were disabled.  I thought at first that I
tilted, but then I saw the Pong game on the display.  The bad part was
that the ball drained and when the video mode ended, so did my ball. 
Maybe they'll fix this one on a subsequent version.

It's good to see someone other than Williams come up with a good machine. 
I'm sure the competition will benefit the industry.  I happened to get a
chance to tour the Williams/Bally factory a couple of weeks ago and they
were building Black Rose, Dr. Who and Fish Tales.  That's only one good
one out of three in my book, so I'm glad to see Premier coming out with
a machine that looks like a hit.
-- 
Dan Farris                      Motorola, Inc.
farris@rtsg.mot.com             Radio Telephone Systems Group
+1-708-632-3103                 1501 W. Shure Drive
                                Arlington Heights, IL  60004
Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball