For deep rulesets of that era, I'm looking at more than one way to achieve a high score. I've seen Super Orbit played a couple of different ways. Rip a lit spinner or play for bonus and the bonus collect.

My Super Spin, also Jet Spin, has many different shots on the playfield with a rotary target and vari-target but I've haven't played it yet.

There's also games like Flash Gordon, Black Knight, and Eight Ball Deluxe.

I think Gorgar has a lot of ways to score as well.

Not necessarily deep, but it took a lot of code for all the multiball handling procedures. So the rules set may be fairly simple but the code to make it all work is one of the largest and most complex of the era.

Jungle Lord. Great rules for that era.

Flash Gordon
Eight ball deluxe
Centaur
Nineball

Good call on Nineball,y'all think Fathom qualifies

Agreed. Maybe Xenon.

How about Barracora, Solar Fire, Cosmic Gunfight, and Time Fantasy? Lots of stuff to do and ways to score points besides MB (on the ones that have MB)...

Phoebe

There's a lot of different kinds of deep, there's deep as in 'wide' (lots of different valid paths), deep as in 'long' (do this, then this, then this, then this), and deep as in depth (complex rules that interact with each other creating lots of different situations, etc)

Embryon is both wide and long, there's at least three or four different paths to take, and the main 'spell Embryon' path is long enough that I haven't managed to get 2/3 in at least 20 plays (very impressive for an early SS)

EBD is only 'wide', and then only in the sense that you can go for the orbit, the drops, or the other drops, not sure it's that deep personally.

Black Jack or Spectrum, maybe in a weird way? Fairly simple rules but they require a ton of concentration and effort to really do well on due to being some of the few games in existence where shots can actually be bad for you (Centaur has this a bit too, but not nearly as much)

Hot Hand would have had a really cool ruleset where you try to get flushes to enable various playfield features/multipliers and 4 of a kinds to earn bonus multipliers, but it's too balanced in favor of just bashing the ball around to get as many cards as possible.

I've heard Catacomb has some complex rules, but never played one

CATACOMB.

Complete the toast! Tough task, and you need to figure out how the bagatelle works.

If you want to see some Super Orbit play, check out Pinburgh 2015. I won't spoil it but I watched it live and it was very exciting. Also in the same video is Hot Tip and I liked the rules on that game as well.

Hot Tip 3:43:00
Super Orbit 4:33:00

Great game, but I don't think anyone could argue it's deep in any respect

Warlok

It's deep for 1977. There are two saucers. The upper saucer gives double bonus which is very important or lights the captive ball for 3000 points. Knock down all six drop targets to light spinner for 100 a spin. In the final game in Pinburgh, the players were playing two different ways. One way was to aim for the drops to light spinner first. The other was to rip the spinner all game and hope the bounces from the ball of the pop bumper would complete the drops.

Elektra has got a pretty elaborate ruleset for the time. One that is not that easy to understand for novices. A damn fine game, if you ask me. Hard as nails when tuned in right.

What is the game in the beginning of the video with the slot machine setup in the middle?

Nevermind, it's Who Dunnit. Just had to keep watching

Dave, listen to Phoebe here. She's not wrong! Oh and Jet Spin is terrible.

That doesn't sound too promising. I don't have mine working yet.

Don't overlook the ginger step-son of the era. Vector.
Especially sweet with the 'home' rom installed.

In fact I have sold Centaur and Medusa but still have Vector. It's not as pretty or worth as much as the others but in my opinion is much the better playing game.

It always seems like Bally had the most complex rules out there for their games. BMX has a fun set of rules (good luck finding one though), Elektra is pretty complex, as is Vector.

Catacomb has some really cool stuff going on. If you don't know the rules you are not going to do well. When you learn them you will go.... "Wow, that is really cool"

Black Hole is deep anyhow!

I agree, but it's weird to me that it's true, since Williams (starting with Sys7) developed their own bytecode in order to allow them to fit more complex rules onto their roms, and Stern custom made their U2 'OS' roms per game in order to fit more rules in there too.

I've always felt that Stern had more 'complicated' rules than Bally, even if they somehow end up being less deep in general

What about Spectrum? Always heard that one was a very complex rules set

Spectrum is great but it's a bit of a one trick pony.

The rules are actually really simple (once you know them, though they're hard to explain without a machine to point at), it's just that you need to really pay attention, concentrate, and keep the ball in control.

...though I guess you could say the same thing about Centaur. Centaur had an emergent complexity due to the layout and how the rules interact though, even if the rules themselves are simple

Jet Spin is not terrible- amazing art and game play package- it plays fantastic- amazing game for 1976.

I second this as the most complex ruleset up to its point in pinball history. If you search Pinside you can find the rule list I wrote. It is like 7 or 8 paragraphs long!

you got a link ??

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/elektra-owners-club-fans-also-welcome

post #9

There is a little more depth to it than that, some is just not really noticeable.

Completing A-B rollovers light arrow for 25,000. This can result in increased scoring when the pops run the ball up and down a lit lane multiple times. Of course, A-B-C-D spots one or two targets. Good for getting the last one you might be having trouble with.

8 Ball DT increases Saucer value as well as the saucer collecting bonus (operator adjustable if Multiplier is taken into account when collecting). Good way to increase scores when you have a lot of bonus built up. Also brings about another special lighting.

After Drops down and 8 ball scored, Spell DELUXE. Builds towards another special and also adds a letter to the backglass (one of my favorite feature - obviously comes from their Bingo programming). Last letter in DELUXE usually awards 3 replays. Something well worth chasing when games were out on location. When playing for a while, it is fairly easy to collect this feature in one play session. Not so much on SILVERBALL MANIA with all the extra letters.

There is even significance to if the Pop Bumpers are flashing. They indicated how many times you have completed something (I think its ABCD).

Of course, the HOME Roms also add another level to the DELUXE targets if you can get them in order (similar to HOME Roms for Centaur and the ORBS targets).

Multiplier Drops add to the depth a bit too as it can be a risky shot. So, better done after there is more bonus to collect for the risk of a SDTM drain.

They put a lot of scoring features in a Single Level, Single ball game.