I'm bringing a modded Freefall to TPF this year. I had it ready to go (not modded) in 2020, but with the show being cancelled the last two years I've had plenty of time to make some modifications.
I found the game to be mediocre in stock form. It doesn't have great flow. It has a challenging ruleset, but the objectives are difficult to complete and don't provide much value when you do complete them. Multiball is a gimmick. It's achieved mostly through luck, and is often short lived. There is no incentive to get multiball, the rules are the same whether you're playing one ball or three.
I intended, at first, to make a few minor changes:
- Add an option to spot SKY DIVERS letters. I can't tell you how many times a ball was dumped out of the walker into the shooter lane because I hadn't collected all of the letters.
- Prevent balls from relocking during multiball. It never fails that when multiball starts, a ball lands in the freefall kicker and is immediately relocked.
- Add a rule during multiball; playfield multiplier or something similar.
Sounds good on paper, right? And that might have been the case if TPF 2021 had happened. But with another year and a Weebly MPU, I decided to get a little more creative. Here are the new rules:
- Spot SKY DIVERS letters by completing the 5-bank or landing a ball in the freefall kicker
- Completing 5-bank in sequence awards 100K altitude bonus and blinks left standup altitude collect target. Hitting the blinking target spots all SKY DIVERS letters
- Left standup altitude collect also increases altitude
- No relocks during multiball
- During multiball, SKY DIVERS letters blink when collected. Blinking letters score 10x and increase altitude
- Increasing altitude to 125K during multiball lights altitude collect target for jackpot. Hit the target to collect 1.25 million!
All of the original rules are still intact. These additions add balance to the game by giving you incentive to shoot around the table instead of just shooting the center bank.
Special thanks to slochar for his tutorials on the Stern OS and PIGS interpreter. And also for his help disassembling the code.
Fun fact: While disassembling the code I found a spot letter routine in the freefall kicker code. This is a non-documented feature and I didn't even realize it was happening until I noticed that my spot letter routine was actually spotting two letters. It is DIP switch selectable with the 3-ball/5-ball setting. In a 3-ball game, a ball in the freefall kicker will spot the next letter in the right lane. I thought there was a bug because they don't extinguish the lamp on the table, but I think the ROMs were too tight on space and they weren't able to add that routine.
Here's an amateurish video showing the gameplay rules:
Copenhagen
