Red Lion, PA
Of course I'll put my vote in for Cyclone. Fast, fun, but can have longer ball times if you are well practiced.
Barry Oursler's quote to defend his brutal outlanes, "Play better." 
(Topic ID: 255373)
Flash Gordon. It will kick you in the nuts in 20- 45 seconds per ball. Once you master it, 2 minutes is a good ball.
Quoted from Coz:Iron man is my favorite modern stern that’s fast and has shorter ball times. I keep coming back for more.
Mine too. IM is in my top 5 favs of all time. Brutal, fun, fast, crazy exciting, pulse pounding adrenaline rush
I will toss in another vote for Funhouse. I did a big restore on mine (rebuilt flippers with new coils, resleeved the other coils, new white rubbers, new cable ribbons, replaced some damaged plastics, carnuba wax and new balls) with the intent of selling this game. Not going to happen: fast, fun, call outs from Mr. Rudy, and I keep going back for more.
Another vote for TNA. Punishing. Fun.
Melbourne
hardest/fastest: F-14 and Flash Gordon
ALMOST hardest/fastest/most fun to play: Tron/Iron Man/TNA/Shadow/BSD/Fish Tales
Quoted from guitarded:Fish Tales
My vote is for fish tales as well . I also have a hobbit for a long playing deep game but my FT with super bands is the fastest game I have played , and I don't even have lightning flippers . It is a very underrated game and great value , it's very fast and easy to understand rules . No mucking around with skillshots just press the button on the Shooter Rod and you're away . Like the Hobbit a lot of people don't like it but I've had mine for 19 years and it's never leaving , can't recommend it highly enough .
Paris
Quoted from SantaEatsCheese:Most people already know this but I'll jump back in as I learned this embarrassingly late. You can make your games much faster and tougher... tonight. When I first got my Whirlwind I was playing 30 minute games on it... and racking up around 50 million points. to be honest it kind of ... sucked. But it's my favorite game now. In order to make it my favorite I opened up the outlanes, increased the pitch, rebuilt the flippers, and switched out the rubbers. Now I play 5 minute games and am lucky to get 10 million points. It's awesome.
My main recommendation on getting a game that plays well in a shorter amount of time is to find a game that doesn't require a ton of steps to rack up the big points. ST:TNG requires you to complete 8 modes to get wizard mode (which I've never gotten). You have to work hard to set up and get those big points. Whirlwind isn't like that...
Other games that fit the not alot of setup to have a good game include the early Pat Lawlors like Earthshaker, Whirlwind, and Funhouse, some of the earlier Steve Ritchie's like FirePower, Gettaway (I've never played it), and High Speed. If you want a more modern game look into "Munsters".
No matter what you end up with... it will be pinball and it will be fun.
It's on the other side of DC, but if you've never been there check out the High Speed, F-14, Firepower, Munsters, and Taxi at Mom's Organic Market in College Park https://pinside.com/pinball/map/where-to-play/11547-mom-s-organic-market-college-park-md... They've got like 40 games.
Good luck!
Thanks! I’ve only been to Mom’s once, as itis pretty far from me - but they had a great lineup!
A good SS pinball set up well with a polished PF to add the “fast” to your question. Love those. Every game is set up and plays different due to condition of PF and mechs though and steepness, so hard to recommend a specific title.
IM. I bought one NIB when I was just getting going in pinball and it crushed me with it’s toughness. I had anxiety that it was even down in my basement game room. IM was likely sitting there laughing at me, mocking me. I stuck with it and it made me a lot better player all round. When I sold it thousands of plays and years later I was relieved it was gone. It was love hate for IM and myself.
Now I don’t really like playing IM anymore. My training is done. I don’t want to go back and play IM like I don’t really feel the need to go back and visit my intense High School coach who worked his players really hard, but made us better players.
I like Beatles more and more. I think like is turning to love?? Kicks my ass but the theme and music is so harmless it doesn’t make me mad at all and I keep hitting start again and again. I can’t walk away from it. I don’t love the up-charge on the game to purchase though.
Ottawa, ON
OP...I am a fellow Whirlwind owner that’s a big fan of the play. if you are looking for the same thrill of multiball that WW offers in a modern DMD, you should strongly consider Indy 500. It’s a fast, fun, quick game shooter. Constantly going in and out of 2- and 3-ball multiballs. Tons of modes, including a secret one. Fast orbits. Not the most common game around. I500 would be this guy’s recommendation.
F14 Tomcat is the first game that comes to mind.
I think Taxi is a pretty good example as well.
Quoted from ita47:Modern: IMVE, BSD
Classic: Stars, Flash Gordon, Paragon
This is spot on. I would add The Shadow and F14 into the mix as well.
I found T3 is a good fast and fun shooting game. It has three metal ramps and Arnold indicated you where to shoot at the beginning of the game. Plus it is a relatively new pinball machine and not very expensive as well. You could make the game harder by setting the game with 0 to 1 extra ball and remove the out lane pole on the right as well as disabled the kick back on the left.
C368E127-54FD-43CA-8279-4CDEC6024D83 (resized).jpegQuoted from TheLaw:I think people are forgetting the "short" aspect of it.
There's nothing aboot Shadow, I500, Maiden, DH etc etc that are short.
I guess relative to the long games he listed Maiden is fast (also skill level).
I firmly stand behind Alice Cooper being a short brutal game though.
We have LOTR, Wonka, Stern SWLE, and Beatles. So, 2 longer playing games, and 2 shorter playing games. SWLE is a fast shooting game, and can be over quickly, but once you get good, a 3-ball game with some extra balls can get quite long (10-15 minutes?) if you advance a lot of the modes and quests.
I'd vote for Beatles as a "a good fast shooting, fun short game." With its single level, it looks like the old SS that it's based upon (I've played Seawitch), but the geometry is tweaked just a little bit. Between trying to string together multiple clockwise loops, the strong pop bumpers, and the magnetic spinning record disk, the ball can really zoom around.
I put some data together for a post in the Beatles club...
The average complete game time on our Beatles pinball for 3 ball games is 4 minutes, 17 seconds
We use default settings: 3 ball games, a max of 3 extra balls per game, and new modes start by knocking down FAB-FOUR and hitting a loop. We do have outlanes set easy (closed down as much as posts allow), and the data below only includes complete games, not restarts, so reduce our average a bit for true "default" settings.
Most games have been played by me, probably ~70%. I'm good, but not great. I can get to Hard Day's night multiball once every ~5-8 games (hard to quantify). I've been able to get to Taxman multiball ~5 times.
Beatles Pinball stat table (resized).pngBeatles Pinball bar chart (resized).pngReply
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