I’m probably missing something obvious, but how do you turn on extra balls on SMB?

My son has taken an interest in our SMB and was bummed out that when you earn an extra ball, the game does not actually give it to you to play after you drain.

Being skeptical of his claim, I then played it and earned 3 extra balls on my game, each of which showed on the DMD as awarded. But when I finally drained, it didn’t give me any extra balls, but rather kicked it back over to Player 1 (my son), and moved us both on to the next ball. This probably isn’t a tragic thing, given how easy the game is, but I went into the menu to change the settings, assuming it would have clear-cut extra ball settings. As far as I can tell, it really doesn’t, at least not an on/off option. I turned off tournament mode, which was still on from my tournament last year, played a game, but still no extra balls that I was awarded were actually allowed to be played.

I searched, but to no avail. Any help on how I enable extra balls to be played after they are awarded?

Great info. When I scrolled through the menu options, “Novelty Mode” was on. I didn’t know what it is, but now I need to look more into it. I suspect it might not be physical dip switches in the case of SMB, unless Gottlieb still used them with their DMD pins. This is all pointing to my newbness with System 3s, which is pretty much what I expected.

Since Super Mario Bros. is actually my wedding theme (and I’m getting married in 2 weeks!), I’m doing a little tournament on this game amongst family. So today I spent some quality time with this game, fixing a pop bumper issue and a switch. With three System 3s in my collection, my lack of knowledge of their inner workings is a testament to their reliability, since I’ve really never had to work on them. Granted they were shopped out by a local pin aficionado several years ago, but impressive reliability nonetheless!

Nevertheless, you totally steered me in the right direction. I have switched it from Novelty mode to Replay, and now we have extra balls and can enjoy even longer games on SMB

Good to know it’s that simple to turn off Extra Balls for tournaments, though. I’m sure Francesco did that last year before my tournament, and I just didn’t know System 3s well enough to understand how to put it back into a more fun format (ie, extra balls) for family and non pinhead guests who want to just have fun.