Bingo. I think this may be the way to do it. Another alternative could just be to randomize and slow the mode down a bit.

For home play, you could simply award the artifact in addition to the 25 million option when selected. If you know the route, the only reason you play it at home is to go for the additional artifact. By just awarding it anyway, you cut down on the amount of times you have to play it, which would really only be when you want to. It's not as much fun to do it that way though. I'd rather earn it.

Maybe instead of having to take the correct route, you just have to make it through X number of caverns. That way it's really the bombs you're avoiding. However, this option isn't exactly in keeping with the spirit of the game.

Yet another option would be to program several fixed routes that are selectable in the settings. Maybe something a little harder than left left right right etc. like it is now. You could close your eyes and randomly select a route on the settings. That would provide some challenge until you figure out which one it is, then you could randomly change it again.

You could also have several passages (maybe 4) that lead to the end, but the awards are randomized at the end of each route. So going to the end of route A would result in 100M one game and then maybe an artifact next time. For multiplayer games, they would stay the same based on how many times each player has played the mode. If player 1 plays the mode and gets 100m at the end of route A, then player 2 will know 100m is there for their turn. They would still need to know the exit patterns for the other routes though, and even then they only have a 1/3 chance to get the artifact.

Finally, it could be fun to have an option of actually randomizing the video mode itself! Instead of shuttles, you randomly get the hidden Breakout game or Riker's poker.

There's already a setting to disable it completely, though I think it does change the game quite a bit by eliminating it entirely. As Soren mentioned, the mode pops up maybe too frequently.

Ah that must be the revision I have because when disabled it just awards the 25m regardless of selection.

I don't mind it either. I think it's a fun part of the game and integrated nicely with the theme, but I also agree it should be less frequent and/or more challenging because I skip in 96% of the time when playing at home.

Soren, thanks for your hard work! Indeed exciting to see official releases even though I don't have these games. Looking forward to STTNG! Are you basing these revisions off the non-ghosting versions of ROMs for games that have that issue?

I was curious because I have the "ghosting-free" ROM in my game that I bought aftermarket, but I have no idea exactly what that entails. Not sure if it's an updated factory ROM like you mentioned or something that was homebrewed. Just thought it would be worth mentioning. Thank you for the response!

Thank you both for the clarification!

Sounds like it would cheapen the game. Even waiting on the modes to time out adds to the building tension of finally getting to the Final Frontier. In fact, I might like the opposite where the modes only count down 5 seconds and stop until a switch hit, forcing you to play like modern games do.

This would be great indeed! I don't think this has been discussed for sure, but definitely worthwhile.

I agree with a lot of this too. It should at least drop to Warp 4 so the spinner stays lit. However, overpowering too much might have the unintended consequence of making this the preferred strategy in the game instead of multiball and modes. Yeah, it's hard to do and should be rewarded, but it shouldn't be exponentially more valuable than another strategy.

Great idea. This should absolutely be implemented. Really annoying when your kickback and your ball save go off at the same time.

This goes for any of the Neutral Zone multiballs. The jackpots should really be around 50 million to make them worthwhile.

Yeah that was my thought too. Pinball is more fun when you actually have to play pinball. Technically you can just time out all the modes and get to the wizard mode. What's the point of that? Options are great, but I wonder about the logistics of that. Sounds like it would require much more coding. I'm also curious about how much room there is to work with. This is a bit different, but I know Chad had some trouble recoding the DE games because they only have a miniscule amount of memory.

Soren said a while back in the thread he would basically release them when they're ready. A lot of us have provided suggestions for that game in this thread though, so feel free to drop some suggestions here if you have any. I would imagine he has to have access to a game for testing before writing any new code for it, so he may be prioritizing games he has nearby.

This is a fantastic idea except for the Q mode. On some machines the Picard Maneuver is damn near impossible, and it's required to finish the mode.

I check in about every 4 months to see if there is any noise about STTNG. Alas...

Thank you!