Quoted from jrpinball:I checked IPDB in an effort to answer my own question, and they erroneously state that "...after several hits on the mushroom bumpers with the second ball, the captured ball is released into play)."
The captured ball is not actually released into play, but returned to the shooter lane. From that point on, I guess it's optional for the player to shoot it into play, or to wait until the ball in play drains, then shoot the extra ball. I never did get mine working properly, so I don't know that if you choose the latter you can push a second ball up into the shooter lane.
Since the captured ball is not automatically put into play, I don't know if the game is a true multiball game. I would think that it is not.
It could be said that shooting a ball is part of playing a ball but I see your finer distinction of what "into play" means to you and I can update the Mad World text to reflect that the balls are released to the shooter lane (not back onto the playfield). Now, maybe some people believe that that is enough to call it multi-ball while others may believe that multi-ball can only be something that is fully automatic and not involving the player pulling the plunger. There are solid-state games that initiate multi-ball by delivering balls to the shooter lane then auto-plunging them onto the playfield so we know from this that the shooter lane itself should not be excluded from our thinking. Then for example there is Williams 1980 Black Knight's end-of-game Bonus Ball for "unlimited multi-ball" which delivers drained balls to the plunger repeatedly until the timer expires and the player has to shoot them into play to maintain multi-ball.
Our glossary definition of multi-ball is pretty loosey-goosey: "When several balls are in play at one time." In play, as in on the playfield? What did we mean?
Hmm... We may have kept it loose for a reason. Thinking more about this, for the multitude of EM games that came equipped with 5 steel balls resting in a trough under the playfield and visible through a window in the cardholder, how else are players supposed to describe the mode they create when they ball-lift more than one ball to the shooter lane and plunge them into simultaneous play?
I'll look for additional input here before I might re-write anything.
Thanks!
Jay
Lewiston, NY
