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).png
