TFA, you need to get out more and play some different pins.

Your poll needs an entry "E.) No, not even remotely close"

I agree with this one. Valinor is damn near impossible for most. Alien Invasion is attainable but rarer. LITZ can be achieved with practice.

Not impossible.

There are also lots of pins that are REALLY hard that necessarily don't have a wizard mode as their end goal. Games like Black Hole and Firepower are brutally tough, but they don't necessarily have wizard modes to aim for.

Mine's pretty tough. Never beat the super wiz mode in any of these...
(probably why they're still around)

lineup.JPG

WPT ,LOTR & TSPP are far from "easy" and toss in a Shadow for more punishment.

Never shot the left orbit on TSPP? Much harder. Same goes for TZ's and TAF's through the bumper shots.

Heck, even X-Men has harder shots than Avengers, I feel.

BSD and possibly some other games with lightning flippers. Its easy to start 10 short games in a row if you dont think about what you are doing!

BSD and possibly some other games with lightning flippers. Its easy to start 10 short games in a row if you dont think about what you are doing!

yep, tight shots, and you have to make a ton of them to go into specific modes. Very difficult.

By modest collection do you mean in quality or quantity? Either way, I would disagree with you. Looks like a great lineup to me.

As has been said before, BSD. Decidedly harder than any of your six.

I'll put MM in the mix too. Finishing it's Wizard mode. Shots fairly easy, finishing the wizard, not.

TRON. Come back to me when you can hit the Gem shot reliably.

LOTR, just for sheerly annoying number of steps to get through to finish. Go do Valinor on it.

TSPP, same as LOTR, probably due to the same programmer.

Just saying, there's a lot of hard, challenging pins out there. Personally, I don't think rulesets that require a *tedious* trek through requirements are actually good rulesets. LOTR comes to mind very quickly. (we always had ours set on Hard btw) After knocking down all the pre-reqs, getting to DTR just to miss by a hair is one of the most frustrating things about that game to me. Starting over from scratch? No thanks.

I'd much rather play MM where the challenge is also fun at the same time. Getting to Battle for the Kingdom in that title is why so many people put it on it's pedestal. Fun, challenging, yet not tedious.

If difficulty is measured in terms of ball times, Fish Tales is substantially harder than the majority of your games, maybe harder than all of them. The most important shots in that game are in the middle of the playfield, and have posts right next to them that will send the ball straight down the middle if you're slightly off. The outlanes are pretty vicious on that one, too.

I would argue that average ball time is actually what makes a game difficult. When I go and play a 45 minute game of LOTR and don't get to the end, I generally don't sit there thinking that it was a more difficult game then the 5 minute game of Jurassic Park that I had where I reached it's wizard mode, for instance.

I'm with you on that, Goatdan. I can see an argument for difficulty being measured by how often one can complete the objectives, or get a high score, but like you, I feel that it's largely down to the ball times.

I don't understand why the OP is so adamant about his being the hardest. We're talking about his pinball games, not his 'gentleman sausage.'

I agree about short ball times. But the most important shots in Fishtales are the ball lock on the right, and the left orbit for jackpot. The only time you shoot the middle is for SUPER JACKPOT...otherwise just avoid that area altogether...if going for a monster high score

Tomdotcom - I didn't mean the captive ball; that's not one you really ever WANT to shoot (except for Super Jackpot, as you said.) However, the boat ramp shots put you at risk of hitting the posts next to the captive ball, and you can't really play Fish Tales without those ramp shots. I probably just phrased that poorly at first.

No you didn't, but to get a KILLER score. The strategy is shoot ball lock. Get Jackpot. Do 3 times. Then get SUPERS. There is no reason to shoot the boat at all. That's all I meant. If playing tournament style for a huge score, and not just for fun.

There are things that are hard to do, and there are things that are hard because the game has flaws. Something like the Super Jackpot in CFTBL isn't extremely hard, but it is challenging. The game is designed to make it tough, but it's not tough due to the design of the game. Getting the Super Jackpot is tough because it takes a lot of control and the ability to maintain a 2-ball multiball for a while.

Getting to the end of something like The Avengers is tough because the game has design issues. The latter reason for being tough makes me just want to walk away from a game.

Actually, how often you can get a high score isn't really a fair thing either, as if you get it a lot it means your skills are improving. Completing objectives is a sort of subjective thing because it really depends on what you're looking at. There is a mode on Viper Night Drivin' called Alien Abduction that you can ONLY reach by doing something very specific in a single mode. It's so tough to do that when I got into the game, I could not find *any* mention about how to get to this mode anywhere online. I experimented with the glass off until I figured out what triggered it, and then shut it off just so I would know. When I play Viper, I will often play specifically trying to start that mode. In literally thousands of plays knowing what I need to do, I have yet to do it.

Having said that, just having that single secret in there doesn't make the game itself any easier or harder. It's simply something really really difficult to reach. If this was a list of the hardest things in pinball to accomplish, I'd put it (as well as Do or Die Multiball) up there for sure, but when you're talking full games...

On top of that, it depends on how you set up your games. I like my games nasty. If my average ball time on WCS for instance is 35 seconds, that just means I set up my machine difficult. I'd argue that there are some games that are inherently more dangerous to shoot even if you make them easier, so I guess that is what I'd put down as the "hardest" games.

I don't understand why the OP is so adamant about his being the hardest. We're talking about his pinball games, not his 'gentleman sausage.'

I don't mean to cut him down about it - it's probably something that he looks for in his collection as "games I cannot easily beat" and based on what he listed, no matter how you set those games up you can beat them. And that's great! It is why so many different people can like pinball for so many varied reasons.

I like *short* ball times and tight tilts. I'd argue my collection is more difficult than average, and those who have played games (my favorite being one friend who has described my machines as "you know it's a Dan game if it's set up juuuuuuust this side of playable") would agree. And that's great for me

Sweet Stern wall o' pins there!

Avengers - Yes, multiple times, different games. Most recently was yesterday. I honestly don't know what is going on in that game because my scores sucked, but I can tell you that hard was definitely not a word that I was thinking for it. I actually remember when playing it yesterday at one point thinking that maybe I should just let the ball drain because it was clear I didn't know what I was doing, and nothing was going on. I feel like I need to dig into Avengers before I can give it any sort of honest review, and I didn't have the time to do that yesterday, so I wanted out.

ACDC I agree with you can be pretty quick from factory.

CSI is not fast from factory at all. I actually really dig CSI as a game, but if you set it up factory I don't think it's hard to keep the ball in play at all. Based on what I have seen using that machine in tournaments, players tend to agree.

I'm glad that you enjoy Avengers, but it's not an A game by any measure. You can love non-A titles though. BoP isn't an A game, but dang it, it's in my top 20.

An A list game is something totally subjective. It includes Viper Night Drivin'.

I don't see why it has to exclude Avengers in any way.

Nailed it.

Easy or hard game means different to different people. WH2O is a perfect example . If you are just playing for score go for X5 playfield, lock the balls and rape the waterfall jackpot = great score. If you want to advance the raft to Wet Willies (and hit vacation jackpot) the score is secondary to advancing the raft, class 6 river , locking balls, etc.

Hard is subjective and varies if you are just trying to hit the wizard mode and "beat" the machine or posting a high score. Its not a "hard" game but getting vacation jackpot can difficult to hit.

WCS94 is not a super hard game but getting to the finals is not simple either.

I like them both more than some "A" list titles and are WAY more fun.

WCS is an A list game too.

Whitewater is not. Maybe Bish.

(For anyone freaking, remember, I said an A list game is subjective, and that is truly how I feel).

Everything about BSD is brutally difficult. If you are not a control player you will suffer. Missed shots = death. Slingshots = death. A lot of the times shots made = death. The big challenge is getting all three MB ready to go and then starting all of them at once. Doing this gives you 3x scoring and makes major shots in the game worth 30m a piece. The real satisfying goal are the 3x double castle jackpots and hearing the vamp ladies scream when the sight of the cross melts their faces off lol!

Heres an example of a properly setup BSD kicking the @#$% out of some players.

Personally I think BSD is similar to IM in overall difficulty but I would still give the edge to BSD. I do think getting dodmb or dod is tons harder than 3x mb. To bad BSD doesn't have a wiz mode.

Um, no, you don't personally decide what an A list game is. The community decides that through votes and the set pricing. What is subjective is how much you like or value any given game, regardless of it being an A title or not. We can't have people listing Stern's NFL as an A list game, because it is not by any measurable factor. It doesn't mean that it can't be your favorite game though that you personally value far more than the established amount by the community.

"A" list is not a real list anyway, just a number of top priced, desirable games with little bearing on how they actually play. A-list = high price but not necessarily a great playing game.

I seem to remember "A" list games representing out of production games that cost $3K or more.

I realize it may be difficult for some of our newer people to believe, but back in 2005-2007, The list of out of production games that consistently cost more than $3,000 were:

The Addams Family
Medieval Madness
Attack From Mars
Tales Of The Arabian Nights
Cirqus Voltaire
Theatre of Magic
Monster Bash
Cactus Canyon

I may be missing one or two, but "A" games had nothing to do with quality of play. It had everything to do with being the highest cost games.

At least, that is how I remember it.

Marcus

Strange, I always say "F_cking -A" every time I play mine.

Crap! There was a vote? And I missed it? What year was this in? What is the set pricing that officially decides when a game becomes an A list game? And if it is above what Avengers LE sells for, that would make A-list what?

I'd like to talk to who voted.

At least from my memory, people were talking A-list games all the way back to the late 90s. There was big debates / whinefests in the early days about if LOTR could ever be an A title. It sort of settled on the machines that were like the ones that you named, but there was always debate over it.

It should also be noted that if we are using the definitions that were started back then, only Bally / Williams titles could be denoted as an A game. Data East / Sega / Stern / Capcom, no matter how expensive, were never considered because they weren't "of the same make."

Around the time frame you mentioned, the list you suggested was about the correct list of games that were sort of generally thought of if someone mentioned an "a list" game, but especially the last two or three years with the pricing changes, as well as how many new collectors are into Sterns, the definition has completely blurred.

If pricing is still used as the main measure, I would have a hard time believing that the bar for pricing is above what Avengers LE is.

Fine, you define whatever you want how you want. Life and language don't work that way, but whatever. This is silliness in the extreme and I feel like I'm trying to argue with my 4-year old son.

+1 on that

RBION is insane

I do not think TSPP is that hard to obtain as I've done it several times and I'm not a great player

Have not gotten Do or Die multi ball but got the other multiball with completing all modes on one ball that the 50 million shot

Add RBION instead of AC/DC and Flash Gordon and that's an insane kickass hard lineup

A list or A-list (lst)
n. Informal
A list or group of the most admired or desirable people, as for a job or social gathering

So it's a list reserved for the most desired and most admirable according to the majority consensus. Sorry, Avengers doesn't qualify.

Stop thinking that your own opinion defines the list for everyone else. Everyone else actually defines it for you. You can disagree, but you don't change the list by doing so. I dislike CV, but yes, it is most definitely an A-list game by definition.

What is the official list then? Where can I find it, and who defines it?

And, since I've been watching these debates for nearly 15 years now, so I must have totally missed when this became official. I'd really like to know what I missed.

Edit: Saw your above post. What about Avengers makes it not desirable or admirable? Wouldn't pricing on it be way lower based on your definition? I can buy a TZ cheaper then an Avengers LE. Is it not A list?

Iron Man doesn't give a multiball upon completing all modes on one ball. If you start (not complete) all modes on one ball, you get Do Or Die which is the 50 million shot you're mentioning. If, however, you complete all of the shields in one game, you start Jericho - but that isn't a multiball mode. Probably what you are thinking of thought.

Yep one shot up the middle for Do or die. my bad as it is not a multi ball

+2

Just picked up a nice RBION and I figured out 2 things pretty quick:

1. It's awesome
2. It's really hard

On topic, TFLE is a great game along with Avengers. 'A-list' is in the eye of the beer-holder.

No mention of TOTAN? Unbelievably hard. But the plus-side of that is you won't get bored with it.