Jacks Open....it's an EM but damn when I play it at a friends house, it always beats me up. I keep playing and playing it and never get any better 
(Topic ID: 19255)
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Newkirk, OK
I swear this is the truth. My JM is the machine that I have the hardest time with. I have played so many games and just keep telling myself that I will get better. I beat my friends pretty much every time but thats not saying a lot. I went to the Pinball Hall of Fame and got so many free games and did well on so many machines. It just made me realize that I suck at the game that I have played the most in my life.
Leduc, AB
My vote, Pin Bot. I have not rolled this pin yet, 7,800,000. When they have a fun pinball challenge, like one flipper only. Using a Pin Bot would not really make any difference. I have played it a few times, and never used the left flipper once. Have Fun Folks.
Wheel of Fortune. The flippers are wider apart than normal, there's a big post between the outlanes that lulls you into a false sense of security. The thing that makes it hard is your strategy to save the ball quite often involves fighting your natural instinct to flip. You'd have to play one to know. That game pisses me off but not to the point of being violent like BSD does. 
Hardest i've played was the EP1 at the Zoo show about 4 years ago in the finals. Everyone walked up, played for about 15 seconds and sat back down. I think the record ball time was 45 seconds, which was enough to win.
BSD easily.Of course that's why I wanted it 
Werribee
emperor Ming awaits 
Flash gordon and Pinbot two of my favorite classic games are both drain monsters but that does not stop me from always putting in more games and trying.
There's a Pin*Bot at Free Gold Watch in San Francisco. The plunger lane is messed up so it's nearly impossible to get the ball up the vortex spiral. Maybe 1 in 10 shots makes it to the 5000 hole. The tilt is so tight that if you even breathe on it funny it tilts. A few of us have taken to calling it Tiltbot.
1 year later
Chevening
I looked this up as I was curious what people would say. I think the shadow is one of the hardest I have played, took me 10 years to complete the final battle however I never go for a score but to complete the game. I will never be a competition winner just enjoy knocking the balls around. Which ever machine I chose to play. I have played many machine that are hard but I have found some not that enjoyable to play. So their could be harder I just didn't necessary like them so lost interest in them.
Quoted from MikeS:For DMD era I'd go with BSD. That game continually kicks my butt!
For pre-DMD i'd have to say Flash Gordon.-Since I swapped in my CPR playfield, I think my average game-time is about a minute!
I can vouch for this, my game was over before I knew what happened.
TX Sector makes me swear a lot. The reasons why I think it's tough.... None of the ramps feed back to the main flippers, 9 drop targets fairly low on the play field and in addition to the normal slingshots it has two extra kickers low on the play field to give you an extra dose of side to side nastiness. When I do manage to get multiball I'm lucky if it lasts more than a couple seconds before they go down the drain. Damn you TX.. TX.. TX!
Big Daddy. You are doing good if you get to hit the ball with the flippers or have a ball time in excess of 5 seconds.
Harder = ball time:
I would say as a whole the EM's are much harder than the SS (includes DMD) pins.
Of the more modern (last 23 years) I think STTNG can be brutal if your not a good nudge'r. I hear IM is tough but the only time I played it was at the Michigan Expo on the last day and I got 40+ million (or is it billion???) and put my initials on it.........so it didn't seem that bad but I will assume I got lucky.
AC/DC Pro (harder than the premium) can have some short ball times as well.
1 week later
Cyclone is much harder than it looks if set up with a vicious left flipper hop. This is with everything fully working, but of course out on a route, stuff breaks. Cue these stories:
Quite a few of the times I ran into a TZ on location (this was BITD, mid- to late 1990s), it had something broken on it making it more difficult than it would otherwise be. Once, it was the gumball diverter. A couple of other times, it was a misaligned rocket kicker sending the ball who knows where. Another time, it was the ball dumper (right ramp diverter) being stuck open so all shots would go to the powerfield (too lazy to fix it properly). $DEITY forbid you make the right ramp shot with the wrong amount of force with the powerball... no ball check can move a ceramic ball using only magnets intended for steel balls. Also, that busted diverter ruins any chance at most three- and four-way combos.
There was the nimrod that removed the left rebound gate on Time Machine one time, meaning a hard plunge went straight past the lanes and maybe right into the bumpers if you were lucky. That's a clear bastardization if done on purpose (again this was BITD, we had quite a few sloppy operators in this area).
Granted certain breakage was beneficial to the player. Such as a Pin-Bot where the plunger lane would register various switches on the skill shot. Before locking a ball, I think it was the 5K one. After locking a ball, the 100K one. That's the only time I've ever rolled a Pin-Bot. Though, trying to finish the ball with the skill shot animation going off over and over again was a new challenge...
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