I had my best game ever on it, was totally in the zone. Collected the Q artifact (a first for me) and pretty much all the artifacts except asteroid threat and battle simulation. The interesting thing though was what happened during the shuttle simulation. I always like to try different paths (patterns) and have yet to get the extra ball but, at one point the flashers all started going off in sequence, not like an error, like it was supposed to at that moment. Anyway, it sort of freaked me out and of course I crashed as a result. Has anyone ever experienced this before?

BTW - did kind of lousy on the FF mode but, still racked up 5.2 billion to the GC score. Still well short of my goal of getting on the Q continuum list.

That has to be it the more I think about it. Makes perfect sense. It did not knock, even though I have my knocker turned on but, maybe it doesn't knock during the shuttle simulation since it also can't play the extra ball animation. Anyway it was cool seeing the flashers suddenly light up when the whole playfield is dark.

Yes. I can see where my wording may have been a little misleading. I've owed my STTNG for 2.5 years now and have never collected an artifact during Q mode. I considered it an accomplishment almost like killing the witch king on LOTR (never done that either).