Adam analyzes...
Well I’ve fallen behind already in my submissions, I do what I can when I can and that is the way it goes
Anyway let’s do one of my favorite games right now, Tron. Tron is such a fun, fast enjoyable game to play, everything works well and the rules are just about as perfect as you could ask for in a pinball. Simple enough for even the beginner player to understand but tough enough for the veterans. I love all of the strategy choices that come from the 2 simple multiballs that it has. There are actually 3 mulitballs, Quorra, Light Cycle and Disc but it’s Quorra and Light Cycle where the strategy choices really shine. Let me talk about the different multiballs first:
1. Light Cycle is a simple mulitball where there are 3 shots lit initially. The main goal is to make a 3 way combo and I think you can’t repeat any of the shots to get the Super Jackpot. That will light the light cycle insert on the playfield solid to build your progress toward Portal. The shots lit are Left Ramp, Right Ramp and Right loop. When you make any of those shots it then lights the next shot you need to make. So to make the super the easy thing to do is: Left Ramp, Quorra, Right Ramp. But you could also do Left Ramp, Quorra, Gem or right ramp, right loop gem, there may be others but generally speaking your bread and butter is in Left ramp, Quorra, Right ramp.
2. Quorra is the other mulitball and it has the very cool feature of an Add a Ball by hitting the 3 Bank Standup in front of the disc 3 times. You get two add a balls per mulitball letting a total of 4 balls onto the playfield. Jackpots are on the Quorra Shot and the Super Jackpot is on the Gem shot. Quorra is a multiball that players who can stage the flippers love! I love getting two balls on the left flipper and then staging the upper and just going to town using only the one ball, it’s a very cool feeling when it’s all working and also very cool to watch.
Both Light Cycle and Quorra multiballs are 2 ball mulitballs. What I really like about both of them is they stack and can be brought in at any time and progress can be advanced during each multiball. So this is where the choice comes:
Do you light Quorra first and play Quorra and bring in Light Cycle?
Do you play Light Cycle and work toward Quorra to try and bring it in?
Do you light both of them and stack them all at once?
Do you play Light Cycle, work on Quorra, finish Light Cycle, Light Quorra, Play Quorra, and work on Light Cycle to bring it in again?
I love having that kind of choice, that variety offers up a great sense of freedom and that it’s up to me to decide how I want to play the game. Lyman isn’t forcing us to play out the game in a linear path he sets in front of us. Instead he is letting us make the logical choices to decide how we want to play and that choice is what I love about Tron.
The next greatest thing about TRON is the End of Line Jackpot. This is what a tournament player focuses on because it is worth more points than anything else in the game outside of the wizard modes. The End of the Line is a Jackpot value that is collected off the scoop after you have made a right ramp. You need to make the right ramp and shoot the scoop immediately to collect the jackpot. The jackpot value starts at 500,000 and builds based on the number of different combos you make. They don’t have to be unique combos but the bigger the combo the higher the value added to it. It’s pretty easy to get them to just over a million in points but 2 and 3 million also isn’t uncommon if you are making your shots.
Now what is really cool about the End of the Line besides the fun of actually raising the value and collecting it is that the value gets locked in during mulitball. So you can’t raise the value at all once you start multiball. This is a great rule because now it adds another layer of choice:
Do I try and build the value before multiball and hope I don’t drain in the process?
Do I just take it as is and collect it for whatever value it is when I can?
It’s the perfect example of Risk vs Reward that I love so much. So really it comes down to trying to get the value of the End of the Line to somewhere in the 1.5 – 2 million range and then spending your time in multiball trying to collect it. That value can be worth more than any of the jackpots you can achieve in either of the two mulitballs. So again it comes down to choice
Do you play your mulitballs for what they are?
Do you spend your time going after the End of the Line?
End of the Line can be tougher to get, especially with multiple balls and it being all or nothing. You either make the shot and get the points or miss and get nothing. So that is sort of the meat and potatoes of what makes Tron one of my favorite games but that is really only a small element of what Tron has to offer.
There are still the T-R-O-N standups on the left hand side that are largely useless but do have double scoring on them. So if you bring in double scoring which doesn’t last very long and score some End of the Line jackpots that is a huge opportunity for points.
There is also Disc mulitball which has been made better in the most recent software update. Making shots on the playfield raises a jackpot value that is collected on the disc. The more shots you make the higher the value.
But you still need a certain number of those jackpots to get the visor to come up to go after the super and complete the disc for Portal. So again, how do you want play?
Do I play for the value in multiball and try and eek out every last point?
Do I just try and bash my way to a super to work for Portal?
Then you have Sea of Simulation and Portal. I’ve played enough Sea of Simulation to know it’s a very fun mode and a great way to deal with a mini wizard mode. It basically allows you one last opportunity to pick up the things on the playfield you have missed. So there are X number of things you need to complete to qualify for portal:
Flynn
Roll over the switch on the right hand side of the scoop and it lights a roaming shot that when hit collects Flynn.
Gem
The toughest shot on the game is the Supper Jackpot during Quorra and also your Bonus X Advance. It is a pretty cool shoot and very hard to hit with consistency but very satisfying when you do. You need to hit that shot 3 times in order to start Gem and then 1 more time during the mode to light the insert solid.
Clu
Spell CLU on the inlanes to light it on the scoop and then shoot the scoop to start. You need to shoot the 4 CLU shots to complete.
Zuse
Switch frenzy mode and you hit the standups to start it. You need to hit the standups again to light solid during the mode.
Quorra
One Quorra SJP will light this solid.
Light Cycle
One SJP will light this solid.
Recognizer
Drop the recognizer bank to expose the disc to light this solid.
Tron
Collect all 3 awards on the left Tron targets to light this solid.
Portal
The final wizard mode once you have collected everything else listed.
So once you have started each of those modes the Sea of Simulation is lit on the scoop. I think this is a great way to handle wizard modes and I wish we saw more of it. Give the player a set of objectives, make him at least start it and then give them a chance to go back and finish to get the actual final wizard mode. It has to be done on that ball, so if you drain you have to start all over in a sense. You have to play all 3 mulitballs to get back to Sea of Simulation or Portal if you have everything completed.
In regards to Portal, I have made it their a couple of times but not enough to actually speak on the mode. So suffice to say it is a nice payoff for all your hard work. At the End of the day, I don’t have a bad thing to say about Tron. It is the perfect example of taking what really is a pretty simple layout and putting the right software behind it to make really what I consider to be a masterpiece of pinball programming. ACDC would really only be the only other game that I would say could be better programmed but it’s such an extensive and insane rule set it’s almost impossible for a beginner to begin to understand the scope of it. I still don’t understand all of it and really think the only person that does is Lyman.
Anyway that’s my take on Tron, till next time...
Well I’ve fallen behind already in my submissions, I do what I can when I can and that is the way it goes
Anyway let’s do one of my favorite games right now, Tron. Tron is such a fun, fast enjoyable game to play, everything works well and the rules are just about as perfect as you could ask for in a pinball. Simple enough for even the beginner player to understand but tough enough for the veterans. I love all of the strategy choices that come from the 2 simple multiballs that it has. There are actually 3 mulitballs, Quorra, Light Cycle and Disc but it’s Quorra and Light Cycle where the strategy choices really shine. Let me talk about the different multiballs first:
1. Light Cycle is a simple mulitball where there are 3 shots lit initially. The main goal is to make a 3 way combo and I think you can’t repeat any of the shots to get the Super Jackpot. That will light the light cycle insert on the playfield solid to build your progress toward Portal. The shots lit are Left Ramp, Right Ramp and Right loop. When you make any of those shots it then lights the next shot you need to make. So to make the super the easy thing to do is: Left Ramp, Quorra, Right Ramp. But you could also do Left Ramp, Quorra, Gem or right ramp, right loop gem, there may be others but generally speaking your bread and butter is in Left ramp, Quorra, Right ramp.
2. Quorra is the other mulitball and it has the very cool feature of an Add a Ball by hitting the 3 Bank Standup in front of the disc 3 times. You get two add a balls per mulitball letting a total of 4 balls onto the playfield. Jackpots are on the Quorra Shot and the Super Jackpot is on the Gem shot. Quorra is a multiball that players who can stage the flippers love! I love getting two balls on the left flipper and then staging the upper and just going to town using only the one ball, it’s a very cool feeling when it’s all working and also very cool to watch.
Both Light Cycle and Quorra multiballs are 2 ball mulitballs. What I really like about both of them is they stack and can be brought in at any time and progress can be advanced during each multiball. So this is where the choice comes:
Do you light Quorra first and play Quorra and bring in Light Cycle?
Do you play Light Cycle and work toward Quorra to try and bring it in?
Do you light both of them and stack them all at once?
Do you play Light Cycle, work on Quorra, finish Light Cycle, Light Quorra, Play Quorra, and work on Light Cycle to bring it in again?
I love having that kind of choice, that variety offers up a great sense of freedom and that it’s up to me to decide how I want to play the game. Lyman isn’t forcing us to play out the game in a linear path he sets in front of us. Instead he is letting us make the logical choices to decide how we want to play and that choice is what I love about Tron.
The next greatest thing about TRON is the End of Line Jackpot. This is what a tournament player focuses on because it is worth more points than anything else in the game outside of the wizard modes. The End of the Line is a Jackpot value that is collected off the scoop after you have made a right ramp. You need to make the right ramp and shoot the scoop immediately to collect the jackpot. The jackpot value starts at 500,000 and builds based on the number of different combos you make. They don’t have to be unique combos but the bigger the combo the higher the value added to it. It’s pretty easy to get them to just over a million in points but 2 and 3 million also isn’t uncommon if you are making your shots.
Now what is really cool about the End of the Line besides the fun of actually raising the value and collecting it is that the value gets locked in during mulitball. So you can’t raise the value at all once you start multiball. This is a great rule because now it adds another layer of choice:
Do I try and build the value before multiball and hope I don’t drain in the process?
Do I just take it as is and collect it for whatever value it is when I can?
It’s the perfect example of Risk vs Reward that I love so much. So really it comes down to trying to get the value of the End of the Line to somewhere in the 1.5 – 2 million range and then spending your time in multiball trying to collect it. That value can be worth more than any of the jackpots you can achieve in either of the two mulitballs. So again it comes down to choice
Do you play your mulitballs for what they are?
Do you spend your time going after the End of the Line?
End of the Line can be tougher to get, especially with multiple balls and it being all or nothing. You either make the shot and get the points or miss and get nothing. So that is sort of the meat and potatoes of what makes Tron one of my favorite games but that is really only a small element of what Tron has to offer.
There are still the T-R-O-N standups on the left hand side that are largely useless but do have double scoring on them. So if you bring in double scoring which doesn’t last very long and score some End of the Line jackpots that is a huge opportunity for points.
There is also Disc mulitball which has been made better in the most recent software update. Making shots on the playfield raises a jackpot value that is collected on the disc. The more shots you make the higher the value.
But you still need a certain number of those jackpots to get the visor to come up to go after the super and complete the disc for Portal. So again, how do you want play?
Do I play for the value in multiball and try and eek out every last point?
Do I just try and bash my way to a super to work for Portal?
Then you have Sea of Simulation and Portal. I’ve played enough Sea of Simulation to know it’s a very fun mode and a great way to deal with a mini wizard mode. It basically allows you one last opportunity to pick up the things on the playfield you have missed. So there are X number of things you need to complete to qualify for portal:
Flynn
Roll over the switch on the right hand side of the scoop and it lights a roaming shot that when hit collects Flynn.
Gem
The toughest shot on the game is the Supper Jackpot during Quorra and also your Bonus X Advance. It is a pretty cool shoot and very hard to hit with consistency but very satisfying when you do. You need to hit that shot 3 times in order to start Gem and then 1 more time during the mode to light the insert solid.
Clu
Spell CLU on the inlanes to light it on the scoop and then shoot the scoop to start. You need to shoot the 4 CLU shots to complete.
Zuse
Switch frenzy mode and you hit the standups to start it. You need to hit the standups again to light solid during the mode.
Quorra
One Quorra SJP will light this solid.
Light Cycle
One SJP will light this solid.
Recognizer
Drop the recognizer bank to expose the disc to light this solid.
Tron
Collect all 3 awards on the left Tron targets to light this solid.
Portal
The final wizard mode once you have collected everything else listed.
So once you have started each of those modes the Sea of Simulation is lit on the scoop. I think this is a great way to handle wizard modes and I wish we saw more of it. Give the player a set of objectives, make him at least start it and then give them a chance to go back and finish to get the actual final wizard mode. It has to be done on that ball, so if you drain you have to start all over in a sense. You have to play all 3 mulitballs to get back to Sea of Simulation or Portal if you have everything completed.
In regards to Portal, I have made it their a couple of times but not enough to actually speak on the mode. So suffice to say it is a nice payoff for all your hard work. At the End of the day, I don’t have a bad thing to say about Tron. It is the perfect example of taking what really is a pretty simple layout and putting the right software behind it to make really what I consider to be a masterpiece of pinball programming. ACDC would really only be the only other game that I would say could be better programmed but it’s such an extensive and insane rule set it’s almost impossible for a beginner to begin to understand the scope of it. I still don’t understand all of it and really think the only person that does is Lyman.
Anyway that’s my take on Tron, till next time...
