There are a few more games that have an opening "Special skill shot" (opening = prior to plunging)although all that comes to mind at the moment is Williams Jive Time. It's great when you learn the sweet spot on the plunger to get that Special (almost) every time. I know it's not a Special, but a number of Bally EMs in the 1960s have an opening shot where you try for a high-value lane, but if you first hit a nearby rebound switch or rollover button, the lane value drops. You gotta get that ball to go in an exact trajectory. Great feeling to conquer it.
People often say that multiplayer EMs had no ability to retain the playfield settings from player to player and that the games just reset after every ball. While I can think of examples where that is exactly true, I am going to be the annoying guy who plays with semantics and say that quite a few multiplayer EMs actually DID retain the playfield settings from player to player, and these settings did NOT just reset after every ball. Quite a few multiplayer EMs are like this.
What I think people mean to say is that these games did not allow each player to accumulate features that were not also available to the other players. That these games did not allow for private progression for each player but had features for shared progression. That it is the solid state games which retain for each player, not "from player to player".
Here's what I mean:
Whenever you have certain features, the next player's ball starts out with whatever the previous player left for him/her. Games like Williams 4-player Whoopee and Gottlieb's 2-player Sunset have 5 steel balls in the center looping feature that do not reset for each player. What one player does with that feature is there for the next player to deal with. Gottlieb's 2-player Wild Wild West (and maybe also Lariat) have the unique vari-targets that stay "pushed" until collected by either player. Games that have roto-targets may or may not spin at the start of a player's ball so what the last player left exposed is what the next player gets. Even if they spin at the start, the playfield is not identical at the start of each ball. Gottlieb's 2-player Seven Seas, the 2-player Mayfair, and Bally 2-player Twin Win each have two bonus ladders available to either player that stay until collected. You don't start over like at 1st ball. Community features, shall we say?
So, this is why I say that these playfield settings do indeed retain "from player to player". These carry-over features do not reset after every ball. Quite a few multiplayer EM games are like that. You can probably think of more. In this way, people who press off 2nd, 3rd, and 4th player are not exactly playing individual 1-player games on the same machine with no progression. I'm just seeking to counter that specific perception if you are not an EM player.
If you have never played a multi-player EM game with these features, except all by yourself, then you may not fully appreciate the built-in challenges they present in terms of competition game play. I can describe a certain 4-player EM game that is great fun and nobody talks about, but it is Gottlieb and this is a Williams thread. 
Edmonds, WA
