This is my favorite Short-track machine. This is a term that I use to describe a game where you don't need to think about much except avoiding the drain. You just shake, rattle, and roll your way through it, and attrition takes care of the rest. If the expression were not older than this game, I would think that it was the one that started the infamous, 'bouncing around like a pinball machine.' There is no lack of action, and no lull in the action, either. It is fast, and furious.
There is one catch. If you haven't hit the Ace target yet, you are aiming every single shot at it. Without that target, you are simply spinning your wheels, and you're not going to win games on score, and you can't win Specials because you can't light up the whole series. There are another two targets on the lower end, the 7 and the 8, but they are easily picked up. As far as the upper targets go, they are all spot targets, with posts on each side, which need absolute precise shots, if you're going to try and pick them off one-by-one. No need for such nonsense! Just aim at them in general, and use shaking and nudging to catch the rebounds off of the bumpers and posts, and they will ALL get nailed, eventually.
Once the series is complete, you light the Special, which stays lit for the rest of the game! The Special is scored on three different targets, (The tough to get Ace target, the center rollover button, and the inner lanes of the sideouts) and although only one of them is lit at any one time, you really don't need to 'aim' for them, just keep the ball in play, and they will come your way.
I'm not sure if it's a 15 game or a 13 game counter, but I've maxed it out MANY times, both in the wild, and at the Silverball in Asbury Park. Glory! Glory! Be careful though. The first time I played this at the Silverball, I was determined to turn it over 100,000, as nobody else had yet accomplished this feat. I spent six hours banging, shaking, and nudging this thing, and jammed both of my wrists, that I needed to wear Ace bandages on them for three days before I could move them properly again. Being that the spot targets are placed between those posts, there's a lot of crazy, hard, but controllable rebounding going on, which makes this machine just jump with action.
What I like best about Short-track machines, is that they usually don't burn you with the drains that come from poorly placed shots, and those poorly flipped slow rollers that you can see are going to make their way SDTM! Everything about this game is fast, fast, and fast! And how about those unusual sideouts? They LOOK like it will almost never go down the inner lane, but they seem to do so more than your standard ones. Another thing I love about this game, especially when they are lit for Specials!
Now if score is more important to you than game winning, they have you covered on that one, as well, with a gimmick that's as unique as the outlanes. The rollover values vary at 10, 100, and 1000, and change as you cross each one. So when they're at 1000, you CAN actually aim for them, if you'd like, but the only thing I aim at, in this game, is that Ace target. EXCEPT...
This is a neat little trick, that took me a while to figure out. There are three '1000 When Lit' bumpers. One is activated by the Ace target, Each of the others are activated by completing the full rack of left side targets, and the other from the full rack of right side targets. Only one of these will light at a time, even when all three are activated. As you rollover the buttons, there is a sequence of four possibilities. Step one is that none of the bumpers are lit. Next rollover will cause the one associated with the Ace target to light, provided that the Ace has been hit. Next rollover will switch it to the one associated either the right or left side target bank., Again, it will only light if that rack is complete.
Each bumper, in and of itself, is a clean shot, and an easy way to pick up 1000 points, which is a great return on a 100 K counter. So if you have only the Ace complete, only one in 4 rollovers will give you the 1000 opportunity. But if you have the Ace and a bank, you now have a 2 out of 4 cycle shot at it, and of course, when all targets are accounted for, and the Special is lit, you have the chance for that easy pick-up on 3 out of 4 cycles.
So there really is a lot going on, at all times, making this a FANTASTIC Short-track machine!