http://pinball.org/rules/taxi.html

According to my memory and the rule sheet above, the skill shot doesn't affect "carry passengers"

Of course you aim to collect them all on every ball ... My record is 3x jackpots on one ball.

I always aim for the 25,000 Spot Passenger skill shot myself.

Games like Taxi really increase your skills as far as ball aiming goes.

Good luck!

rd.

I always shoot for the 25K passenger spot. The general rule I use is to hit the ball to the top of the field often, especially on the right. You'll not only be getting and practicing the jackpot shot, you'll be picking up Gorbie and running the ball through the cab lanes more frequently. This contributes to advancing the multiplier and getting free ball lit, which is the Drac shot. Playing the high left side of the field, gets you Santa, Joyride and the Carry passengers.

So while you will need to make other low shots get the ball up to the top of the playfield more frequently and you'll begin to see better scores overall.

I usually just go for 100,000 skill shot unless I am 1 away from jackpot.
Carry passengers is lit when you knock down either set of drop targets.

How bad is the return if it only goes halfway up a ramp? some I have played are brutal and if you dont make it all the way up that ramp it comes screaming down and you are done.

As I said above, the Sys11 games like Taxi, Diner, Dr Dude which set you 3-4-5 goals to a believe per ball REALLY improve your playing skills.

Whereas on most DMD games, any clown can just flail the ball around for a while and amass some points and say "I'm a really good player!"

Real pinball skill is to pick out the targets, in this case the 5 passengers, collect them all with as few shots as you can (less shots = less risk) and to slam the jackpot. Then do it again. Then do it again.

My mate was playing Dr Dude the other day. He nailed the ramp 5 or 6 times in a row. He got no points at all! Hahaha! Because until you collect Heart of Rock and Roll, Magnetic Personality and Gift of the gab, the ramp is worth nothing.

rd.

Knocking down the Marilyn (or Lola) & Pinbot drop targets lights carry passengers regardless of whether or not those passengers are lit & yelling at you. Any time you complete a set of those targets you will light carry passengers. A perfectly aimed backhand shot from the left flipper to hit the Carry Passengers target is extremely rewarding.
If you're getting consistent drains straight down the middle from an eject on the Santa hole, make sure your machine is properly levelled. Mine tends to eject the ball towards the far left pop bumper, although it doesn't always contact the popper.

Just in case you haven't already seen it, watch this:
http://pinball.org/videos/tutorials/taxi/

Taxi has improved my game MORE than any other pin. It forced me to practice dead flipper bounces & post transfers. The latter being pretty easy on this game. If you aren't skilled in those techniques, now's your chance! My highest score to date is 11.2 million.

Btw, I've got to call you out for correcting my spelling on the word "levelled" in the quote. (I hate misspelled words!) You made me look it up on google only to find out we are both correct, as either way is acceptable, apparantly.

Nice sys11 lineup you have there. I want a GL in the worst way.

Since you're the OP & you asked, I don't mind going off topic in a Taxi thread.
It's not for everyone, but I freakin' dig it. BG is not as simple as some would have you believe. Well, not if you're after great scores anyway. One of the toughest skill shots in all of pinball for starters. To relight the kickback on the left you have to light 10 standup targets. THAT'S RIGHT, TEN. To relight the gate at the right outlane you must kill a troll on the upper playfield which sounds simple enough, but sometimes isn't. Without the gate & kickback protecting the outlanes, this game is a drain monster & you had better have decent flipper skills & be good at nudging. Entering multiball & lighting the jackpot is easy enough, but actually achieving the jackpot can be elusive due to the short time limit (I use default settings) in which to do so.
Since BG's never were all that popular, and they didn't get played to death like HS for example, you can find very nice ones for a good price. I highly recommend you pick one up & give it a try for a few months. You can always sell it if the two of you don't click. (I don't think mine will ever leave my collection. It's a players pin imho, though some may wholeheartedly disagree.)

Keep in mind that in the PAPA video you are witnessing two seperate games, with two different strategies. The first 11 minutes is all about the upper pf... killing trolls & advancing bonus multipliers which is ridiculously satisfying. Game two starts at the 11:30 mark with the player going for locks, multiball, & jackpots. I try to employ both strategies in a single game when I can, but prefer the upper pf strat to start off with. My personal best so far is just shy of 10 million.

The Bug Guns PAPA vid for anyone interested:
http://pinball.org/videos/gameplay-videos/big-guns/

Taxi is all about going for what feels good imo. If you're hitting ramp shots santa million is it. Otherwise there's multiball & pickups. When i miss the ramps a couple times i start heading for the jackpot. If yer locked on gorby spelling cab is always a good idea. I lowered my jackpot payout to two million and maxed the start value and build up. Default of 500k for jackpot makes going for more than one jackpot in the game not worth the effort.

Big guns is much like f-14 it punishes sloppy play and is very fast. Someone mentioned the skill shot, they are correct i think its one of the hardest. I like the art and music, the game was probably a bit too hard for me at the time i owned it.

I go for the 25K and pickup passenger on the spinout until I get up to 3 + balls, then I go for 100K, 500K per spinout makes it worth it.

Backhand the carry passengers target from the left flipper. I also try to wait to hit the Marilyn drops until I've got multiball going, as the Marilyn shots are the most dangerous shots in the game with many shots going SDTM on rebound.

Great game with nice shots, Python's great artwork and some of the best music in pinball.

You can also go into your settings and change the game difficulty level. Based on selected level difficulty like "Easy, med, Hard, Ex Hard" etc, the order in which the passengers light to get picked up is different for each setting. In addition to the pre programmed selection of difficulty level, you can "Hard Alter" the other settings, like changing the drop target timers, ect. I did this with mine after buying it to get a better feel for the shots, then slowly progressed to harder factory settings. For me it made the game more fun to have the order of passenger pick up different, combined with the various skill timers set long or short.

I don't think so, but I'm not sure. I do know that you can set a minimum (& possibly a maximum?)value for the jackpot.

Unfortunately you can't set minimum and maximum jackpot values to the same number to keep all jackpots the same. Minimum can be set between 500,000 and 1,000,000 while maximum must be between 1,500,000 and 4,000,000.

Yeah that sometimes is a bummer. I used to own a Hurricane which has a carryover jackpot. There were some kids over at my house that played a TON of games but were no where near good enough to get the jackpot. Then their dad steps up at the end of the day, plays one game, and blows my high score way out of the water! It took me a month to get that high score back, and that was doing it without the carry over! He gloated about it so much, I told him I should put an asterisk next to that score.

mof, how does grand lizard hold up compared to taxi? i'm thinking about trying to seek one out.

I go for the 25k pickup skill shot on the first ball, and sometimes the second, but you can get huge points with the 100k skill shot on ball 3 and extra balls. 400k points for a skill shot on ball 4 (assuming you get an extra ball) is pretty big and the chances of you getting the jackpot on any given ball are not that great.

I typically try to wait until muliball to get Lola/Marylyn because you can get juiced pretty quickly by direct shots on her.

Anyway, great game. System 11 games are often more fun for me than many of the DMDs.

This. 100,000 is a lot of points in Taxi, especially with the multiplier. Passenger pick up is great, but not so difficult that you want to waste points for it. Weigh it: 25K + pick up passenger pick up bonus, or 100,000 x 3+) Supposedly, the pick-up automatically selects the "hardest passenger to pick up" before you score the first jackpot (after that, pick-ups are singles). If Pin-bot is lit, I try to pick him up through the spinout if it's an early ball, since he is the most difficult to get. I've never had much of a problem with Marylin/Lola drains and typically backhand all of those around the edges of the targets.

My strategy is to always lock a ball when it is lit, lights after every pick-up, and then start multi-ball. You can't discount the amount of points that starting the Express Lane multi-ball shells out (300,000 + nice ramp bonuses). Plus, two balls flying/flailing around can really help in collecting those drops. Jackpots are nice, but not a reliable means of scoring for every ball, since the amount depends on a raised jackpot that resets after collected, and it is difficult to pick up all passengers every ball. I believe that the better way to score is to start Express Lane anytime you can, if you get a jackpot on that turn great, if not, a few Express Lanes more than make up for it in scoring.

"Carry Passengers"....I don't really go for it, but it is nice to collect it with your last ball, since it doubles your pick-up bonus. It's also good to keep some action in the pop bumpers early and try to complete the rollovers up to 4X to light the extra ball; you may also Carry Passengers accidentally, which doesn't hurt.

I am curious how you guys managed to pick-up Pinbot? I played on a table at TPF in which Pinbot was the second passenger after Gorbie. I just wasn't hitting those drop targets in enough time.

But I don't really know of an easy shot to those drops. I seem to just hit them most often if I put the ball on the left slingshot, but it's a hope shot.

Any thoughts on picking up Pinbot via his drop targets?

All it takes is carefully aimed shots from the left flipper. Trust me, you can hit all 3 from there.

I will have to try again. Since I've never done it, do you mean from the right edge of the flipper? Or something else?

Yeah. To hit the lowest target for Pinbot you'll have to time your shot so that it just misses the top of the right sling. Ball will be in the last 1/3 of the flipper (you know, towards the tip of it) when you make the shot. Think of it like making the Drac shot, only with the opposite flipper & you must wait just a tad longer before pressing the button.