Quoted from KingBW:Thanks a lot for bringing Alien! My wife and I took up about 10 of those plays during the day on Saturday. My wife is REALLY into the Aliens series of movies so she was especially interested and wanted to give it a shot. To be honest though, we hope that it is still really early code. We could not get that alien tongue to come out to grab the ball for anything. Never saw it work when we were looking over the shoulders of others playing either. Was it functional? My wife hit it 6 times in a row. We do not know the rules or qualifiers ... wish we did before we went to the show. Lesson learned for next show we go to. Maybe next time we play a Alien it would be more eventful. But, again ... we really appreciate you bringing it for everyone to play. (And thanks for the RZ translite too.)
Sorry was typing while driving last night so had a short reply. The tongue from the Alien mech is currently disabled as the board is being redesigned that controls it. As it was explained to me by heighway it was essentially too sensitive and the tongue mech was coming out at times when it shouldn't risking ball strikes and damaging the mechanism so for right now mine is unplugged as I await the full production replacement board. The targets below the xenomorph head require 8 strikes to start that multiball mode which is called Ambush, after that last strike the magnet will still grab and hold the ball very similar to Sparky on Metallica, the GI goes dark and then you get a radar screen that pops up on the displays telling you what direction they are attacking from and what shots you need to hit. The jackpot shots during this multiball are varied in color as I believe the colors may coordinate to the distance the attackers are from you, but I can't confirm that.
Each of the games 4 multiballs are started in unique ways.
-Ambush by bashing the Xenomorph
-Hypersleep by completing the drop targets on lower right, and then locking balls at the upper left ramp.
-Sentry Gun (the easiest to start, and the only one you can stack with another multiball) by collecting 1000 ammo (ammo is gained 1x per switch hit, and more for different shots on the playfield, more difficult shot = more ammo)
-Save Newt by completing 3 life cycles.....egg, facehugger, chest buster, xenomorph....so orbits, followed by vent, followed by the hardest one the chest buster which is just to the right of the right ramp, and then the xeno morph targets.....12 shots to start the multiball. I have only done it 3 times so far, but from what I understand it is worth attempting to build towards this one first as it increases the values of shots and modes for each life cycle completion.
All film modes, Alien or Aliens, are started by left inlane and right inlane to qualify mode start at rear scoop. Start mode, check out LCD screen and shoot corresponding shots. Find Jonesy has been the hardest for me because it is basically a trap up mode, wait for an orange shot and then hit it, and typically I don't trap up a lot while I play. My favorite mode is drop ship, requires shooting the stand up targets to load your ship and then ramps to progress and eventually scoop to finish.
Also I have noticed that not many people have caught on to the fact that as you earn weapons....(I believe again by shooting the standups during regular play, but I'm not positive) they light the launch button to activate a "power up" of some sort...things like increase bonus multiplier, double scoring, ball save, 2 xenomorph hits, gives needed shot, etc....Some of those can be very helpful and essentially serve as a ball save if you have a multiball ready to go or something like that.
Anyway I hope that helps for the next time you come across an Alien machine.