(Topic ID: 63962)

HH or BH ? (vote now!)

By mof

10 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

  • 27 posts
  • 22 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 8 years ago by pezpunk
  • No one calls this topic a favorite

You

Linked Games

Topic poll

“Choose one for a 1980's collection”

  • Black Hole 48 votes
    57%
  • Haunted House 36 votes
    43%

(84 votes)

#1 10 years ago

A Haunted House just came up FS/FT locally, and I have been in the market for a (local) Black Hole for ages. I never considered HH due to the lack of multiball (yet I own a Cyclone.)

Has anyone own or played both, and can make some comments as to which would be better in a 10-pin collection?

(see poll above!)

thanks!
-mof

#2 10 years ago

Have a look at the top 100 comments there is heaps of good info there about both machines........out of the both Haunted House would be my pick just because of sentimental value as playing it in my child hood.

#3 10 years ago

Both are good games though I prefer Haunted House over Black Hole.

#4 10 years ago

Haunted house is the better game but BH looks pretty nice with LEDs.

#5 10 years ago

haunted house. black hole is awesome too. hh is more fun imo.

#6 10 years ago

I've owned both and prefer BH. It's just a much faster and harder game than HH and getting multiball on it is a rush.

#7 10 years ago

Is this the one for $1900? If you go for it, I hope it's real nice and plays great.

Though I have both, I'm more of a fan of Black Hole. I'm not crazy about Haunted House game play because it's a one ball game and it has to travel a lot of playfield real-estate to accomplish the rules. The ball goes up ... the ball goes down ... down ... up ... (rinse and repeat depending on where you aim) HH does have a good art and sound package though. Sometimes it feels more like a game of luck than skill. I don't have it set up at the moment.

BH, on the other hand has a great art package, multi-ball, a good rule set, is difficult to master and good sounds. All in all, it has a better all around feel to it and it keeps me pressing the replay button. Drop by and play mine.

If I ever had to chose which one of the two would leave my System 80 collection first, it would be HH (but that would be before a few others I'm not that fond of).

Steve

#8 10 years ago

I played both extensively. My opinion: BH over HH...not even close:
Multiball
Superior artwork
Challenging rules ("reentry attempt has failed...")

HH upper playfield is just real estate lost for the main PF. Gameplay suffers from that.

-2
#9 10 years ago

Black Hole's lower playfield is wasted, IMHO, because of its stupid ruleset. You have to clear a drop target bank to keep the ball from draining when it comes back up to the main playfield-- but then if you hit one of the 10pt switches, that resets and you have to clear another drop target bank to keep from losing the ball. It makes you want to avoid what otherwise would be the machine's best feature.

So needless to say I prefer Haunted House over Black Hole.

#10 10 years ago

Another vote for Haunted House.

And honestly it being a non-multiball game really never bothered me.

#11 10 years ago

Something to consider is that Haunted House is going to play more differently than your other machines than Black Hole will. HH has that big open area in the main playfield, made even moreso thanks to the widebody, and plenty of extra non-obvious kickers that cause plenty of left-right action that most machines don't have.

-1
#12 10 years ago

HH is lame. The only reason its here is because I got it so cheap years ago and the fact that non pinheads think it looks really cool, which it does but if one had to go......? HH would be gone in a second. I've been offered what I would call stupid money for mine but yet I cant seem to let it go, not just yet anyways.

John P. Dayhuff
Battle Creek, Mi.
269-979-3836

#13 10 years ago

I like HH for the theme.

#14 10 years ago

This is one of the oldest debates in pinball and it's a tough call. BH is the better players game with it's deeper rules, ball locks and multiball. It also has speech and an animated backglass. HH is pure aesthetics. It looks and sounds awesome. It arguably has one of the most iconic backglasses in pinball. I wouldn't mind having one, but it would probably get repetitive sooner than BH. Another thing to keep in mind is that both of these games are an extra challenge to maintain.

#15 10 years ago

i had both on my showroom floor and HH always got played first

#16 10 years ago

I voted for Black Hole and no, it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I currently have one for sale in Milwaukee

#17 10 years ago

Both games are rather iconic and many people never look past these two titles when looking for something from this era. I've owned both and they're both long gone. Good looking machines but the rules just aren't there for either of them to be keepers imo. Virtually everything that Bally and Stern made in this era were better than either of these imo.

#18 10 years ago
Quoted from Finrod:

Black Hole's lower playfield is wasted, IMHO, because of its stupid ruleset. You have to clear a drop target bank to keep the ball from draining when it comes back up to the main playfield-- but then if you hit one of the 10pt switches, that resets and you have to clear another drop target bank to keep from losing the ball. It makes you want to avoid what otherwise would be the machine's best feature.
So needless to say I prefer Haunted House over Black Hole.

Whaaaaa? The one in my basement does not behave that way. Once the re-entry gate is open, it stays open until you re-enter the upper playfield. it even remains open if you go back to the lower playfield within a few seconds.

Are you basing this on an old buggy version of Black Hole in The Pinball Arcade video game? What you are describing was a bug in their game at one point. I just looked at my Black Hole manual and it describes the re-entry gate as staying open until drain, and I don't see an operator setting to configure the machine to do anything different.

anyway, as to the original question ... Black Hole

#19 10 years ago

I appreciate all the feedback so far. It is helping me make a more informed decision.
-mof

#20 10 years ago

have you voted on 1981 vs 1982?
-mof

#21 10 years ago
Quoted from mof:

A Haunted House just came up FS/FT locally, and I have been in the market for a (local) Black Hole for ages. I never considered HH due to the lack of multiball (yet I own a Cyclone.)
Has anyone own or played both, and can make some comments as to which would be better in a 10-pin collection?
(see poll above!)
thanks!
-mof

you missed one out,multiball HH : )

http://www.pinballnews.com/learn/hauntedhouse/index.html

Even with HH speech and multiball,I would still(JUST) give it to BH.Challenging game and I personally like the re-entry rules for the lower playfield.
Would personally add a Pascal Janin board,whichever one you get.
Love the whooshing sound on BH lower playfield.Great sense of reward for getting the multiball.Great locks,and looks even better with a few LED's added as previously said

ITs mad that here in the uk a game like A13,or Hurricane would prob get more than a BH

poibug

1 year later
#23 8 years ago

Going to reopen this debate, because I think it's a good one.

Black Hole is a super looking game, and it's fun to shoot on with all those drops. With the multiball, lower playfield and spinning backglass, it's really in a class all it's own, and can be challenging.

However, Haunted House is masterpiece looking game. The backglass is among the very best in pinball imho, and the artwork is again, among the very best if not the best, it's fantastic. The game reminds me much of vintage ''Haunted Mansion''

The gameplay however, is questionable. It can be a lot of fun or it can be so so. There are things about HH that I wish they did better, such as the left side where the ball enters the playfield. During normal play, this feels like a very wasted space to shoot for, yet the ball gets in there now and then. The basement is excellent, though the ball does seem to get down here often, maybe too often? There are just too many ways to get down there (4 ways!)

HH is widely known as a wasted effort. No speech and no multiball. While it's possible to convert it to both, it's not cheap and doesn't appear to be too easy. Where Haunted House really shines is the nostalgia tied to it, it's a 1982 pinball, the art is amazingly good and the game is overall, enjoyable and fun to play, because with 3 playfields it truly feels like you're playing in a Haunted House.

Overall, slight nod to Haunted House, but just barely.

#24 8 years ago

I owned both. BH is a better player, HH is a better looker. I prefer the BH game play by a long shot so I sold HH when I needed space, and it was a super nice one at that.

#25 8 years ago

I perfer HH myself. The re-entry from the lower playfield and having to complete B-L-A-C-K and H-O-L-E drops in order on BH can make it pretty hard, let alone how fast multiballs seem to drain after how hard it is to achieve. HH on the other hand has probably the opposite problem. I feel like I'm in the lower playfield a lot and it's low stress because I can't lose my ball. HH is the perfect game to be reimagined in a modern, over-the-top way like a JJP game to fix some its shortcomings.

#26 8 years ago

Black Hole for me over HH. I've owned both and BH was more of a challenge with multiball and chance losing the ball in the lower playfield.

#27 8 years ago
Quoted from patrickvc:

Black Hole for me over HH. I've owned both and BH was more of a challenge with multiball and chance losing the ball in the lower playfield.

Yeah it's actually sort of simultaneously infuriating and hilarious when you finally, against all odds, start Multiball on Black Hole, and then fail to drop a bank of targets on the lower playfield, thus instantly draining two of your three balls before the mode even starts. So brutal! God I love it.

Promoted items from the Pinside Marketplace
From: $ 1.25
Playfield - Other
Rocket City Pinball
Other
$ 83.00
Electronics
PinballReplacementParts
Electronics
From: $ 5.00
Playfield - Other
Rocket City Pinball
Other
From: $ 2.99
$ 399.95
Lighting - Led
Pin Stadium Pinball Mods
Led
From: $ 399.95
Lighting - Led
Pin Stadium Pinball Mods
Led
$ 1,159.00
Flipper Parts
Mircoplayfields
Flipper parts
2,950 (OBO)
Machine - For Sale
Shakopee, MN

Reply

Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.

Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!

Donate to Pinside

Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!


This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/hh-or-bh-vote-now and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.

Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.