From: drew@ophelia.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt)
Subject: Re: *** High Speed II ***
Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 21:54:31 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.230158.4124@cbnewsd.cb.att.com> knudsen@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (michael.j.knudsen) writes:
>Not really a followup, but a good spot to hang my impressions
>about HSII: The Getaway.
>
>The resort in New Bern, NC where I was on vacation had a game room
>with two pool tables, air hockey, a dozen vids, and ONE pinball,
>the successor to my old fave High Speed.  After reading about it so much
>on this newsgroup, I was delighted.  It was clean and in perfect
>working order as far as I could tell.
>
>I watched some others play first.  One guy was decent, and got up
>to the Donut Heaven scene with three cop cars.  Based on what I'd read here,
>I wanted to yell "Shift!" or pump the handle myself, but decided
>that wasn't a good idea (he was a foot taller).

On some of the HSII machines I've seen, it resets the stop light 
targets if you drain the ball during secret mania.  Generally, 
the jackpot (25M here) will be worth much more than what you get 
during Secret Mania, so if you're not confident about keeping the 
ball in play..
 
>
>Anyone else shift gears with his knee?
>After losing a ball off the left flipper while I was shifting,
>I learned to prop my left leg up so I can easily pop an up-shift
>with my knee when called for.  Inspired by an old joke about driving
>while on a heavy date...

I usually just trap the ball for shifting in HSII, or shooting in LW III.

>Replay was set at 40M.  One game I did great, pulled off 9 supercharger
>loops to lite the Jackpot, then nailed it!  Ended up with 49M,

Lucky.  When my favorite local arcade got it's HSII, it started 
out like this.  I played it all night on the same credit until they kicked me 
out at closing,  and the next day they had set replay to 150M.  

>which pushed the replay score up to 47M.  Only time I got the replay.
>I and most other players typically were scoring around 20M.

The quality of players varies greatly from location to location - 
the better players at our favorite arcade will post scores in the 500M 
range on HSII (That's 5 ball), 300-400M on the 3-ball HSII they had 
at another local arcade.

>This is to give you an idea of how the options were set up.
>It was priced 50/1 75/2 1.00/3 as usual.  (Those German and British
>pricings are scary -- we may have dollar/game sooner than we think.
>Another good excuse to buy your own machine :-)

Assuming that you're in good form, you don't play one game per credit. 
Of course, this requires an empty bladder, full stomach, plenty
of sleep, and not being under the influence of anything legal or illegal...

Especially on HSII - you should be getting one replay for score, 
one for tunnel shots (Set to 11 for the first one, ~60 for the second
on our machine), and perhaps more for high scores or the random award 
from the tunnel kickout...

>I liked the Burn Rubber awards -- now I feel let down when my HS
>kicks my ball out of the saucer without awarding much of anything.
>
>Except the lopsided scoring feels weird in this way:
>You play the first ball, and get about 12-15M.  OK, you figure
>two more like that and you've got the 40M replay.
>So you knock the 2nd ball around for waht seems as long,
>check the score and it's barely advanced at all, maybe another million.
>Why?  Cuz you didn't Burn Rubber and get 5 Mil (that was about the
>smallest thing you could get there). 

"Kock the ball arround for what seems like as long" - the big points in 
HSII are not from "kicking the ball around" - they come from multi-ball,
a  ~100M super jackpot, with other goodies like the ~25M jackpot,
Helicopter Bonus, Freeway, and Supercharger thrown in along the 
way.  

>Is it totally random how many times the Supercharger loops?

No.  Hitting the 6 targets that relight kickback also advances the 
number of super charger loops.  Locally, ours will go up to 10 loops,
starting at 3.  HSII gives you some message like 
"Super charger at maximum" when you get there.

>Is the Jackpot always same fixed amount (20M here), unlike Classic's?
>I agree Wms should give that yellow traffic lite back to Data East.

I think so, although the Helicopter Bonus is variable, and can 
get quite high during multi-ball (ie, 15-20M).  

>All in all, a fun game.  I may play some more at the local arcade,
>but truthfully I'd check out all the other new games (like TAF) first.

IMHO, TAF would be a fun game if it wasn't for The Power, and 
the electric chair.  

The Power is completely unpredicatable, and the few times I've played it, 
I've had balls chucked down the center or side drains.  

In some ways, the Power is similar to the spinning discs on Whirlwind, 
but the Whirlwind disks have no effect if you make the shot, and don't 
side drain it as badly.

The posts on the sides of the electric chair can lead to misses bouncing 
straight down the center  -

The Machine has this problem with the heart beat ramp, but at least 
that's far enough up the playfield that you have enough time 
to nudge it properly to save the ball.

-- 
Microsoft is responsible for propogating the evils it calls DOS and Windows, 
IBM for AIX (appropriately called Aches by those having to administer it), but 
marketing's sins don't come close to those of legal departments.
Boycott AT&T for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit.