TMNT Pro can be brutal brutal brutal.

5,4,3,2,1...Eskaybee where are you?

Never have tried lightning flippers myself

Can you imagine putting lightning flippers on Ghostbusters? I double dog dare you!

Sorcerer. Without a doubt. If I only have 5 min to kill, I can get in 3 or 4 games.

ACNC is my hardest game but it keeps me coming back and pressing start. Very addicting.

Star Wars (literally went to 5 balls. I know I suck.)

BSD and TWD

I have also set MBLE up very hard and it may haves my quickest games now.

Of all my games the most brutal are Flash Gordon (of course) and the Ice Fever I got from the PAPA collection! Ice Fever has no outlane rubbers and has 3" levelers on the back cracked to the max with a hairpin tilt. Its gnarly, but great practice. Of the new games Rick and Morty and TMNT are pretty rough.

own now..ghostbusters. also-deadpool in some situations. when boss battles start the ball coming out of the scoop hit can the slings and make quick and cheap drains.

owned in past-walking dead. cheap drains right thru flippers after the bumpers. frustrating game.

In order hardest first:

Quicksilver
Paragon
BSD

I'm surprised to see Fish Tales being mentioned several times in this thread. Granted, I don't own the title but have played it a few occasions and while I would not call it easy it' doesn't feel super hard either imo.

I usually have a problem locking the balls to the fishing-reel for no apparent reason, and sometimes it feels like I can't get the ball out of the lower half of the pf, but apart from that the game plays pretty much like all the usual 90's games.

What's the part/shots you find hard? Simply a drain monster? This is an honest question and I'm curious about your reasons as I'm thinking of getting one and I might chicken out if it will kick my balls daily

Thanks

Got the same one. It's the meaniest MotherF$#$% I have ever played.

...and I love it.

I have Quicksilver and BSD....both can be brutal as hell games too.

I would say my walking dead. I have that game set up evil pitch is maxed no outlane rubbers. Tilt is set up crazy tight gets a lot of people off guard.

In regards to my Fish Tales, 2 things make it a tough playing game for me: 1.) The boat ramp posts and captive ball being so far down the playfield closer to the flippers than a lot of ramp entries. 2.) The fishing lure targets on each side of the playfield that allow you to "catch fish" and increase your stringer. I'm sure the game also plays harder due to the shorter lightning flippers, but I like the challenge.

You can easily get in a rhythm groove and just nail boat ramps back to back, but if you're off a fraction of a second, and you'll eventually get there, the ball will hit one of the boat ramp posts or captive ball, then instead of sailing effortlessly around the boat ramp as you expected, that ball will be coming back at your flippers, heading towards an outlane, the slings, or SDTM, like a rocket! You don't have much time to take evasive maneuvers depending on where that ball ricochets to, and if your flippers are each 1/8" shorter to begin with, you can be in for a battle.

The fishing lure targets get bounced into and you could largely ignore them, but it's fun to get a stringer completed both for points and a chance at advancing to "Feed Frenzy", so sometimes when you see 1 lure target that needs hitting to catch a fish, you're tempted to hit it, and when you do, that ball goes side to side like crazy and you've often got a battle on your hands to regain control.

Lastly, I should say that captive ball being straight up the middle can lead to a SDTM drain when you're trying to collect a valuable award or a Super Jackpot.

For me, it’s a toss up between royal guard, and gorgar. The old rg w it’s massive outlanes, and gorgar...I talk back to him and say some nasty shit back. Both games thou, satisfying to play..

Ironman still has to be one of the most brutal games as far as outlane drains. Never owned TWD, but those pops always left me nudging to prevent a drain. GBLE can be cheap with the magna slings, not to mention the subway eject....

That game looks like fun for sure.

BSD for sure. Lightning flippers always.

Setup. On hardest settings, you have to open the ball lock for each Jackpot...adding another lock shot for each one and a bunch of wonderful spn on each successful shot to the drop target.

You can make Fish Tales pretty mean with setup / rules.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park. I hate this game. Would love to get rid of it, but no one else wants it either haha! After that, BKSOR -> IMDN -> Playboy. Playboy is my go-to need to feel good about myself game, *insert joke here*

Catacomb can be brutal!

Wow! I had to laugh..I owned BSD with lighting flippers for over 10 years and absolutely loved it, longestest lasting game in my collection..maybe I just got it figured and had to let it go..but would (most) always get high scores. Other people would play it and say it was brutal. Strange that my Munsters gives me less consistency in scoring then BSD in my own personal world.

TWD

Bird Man
Aladdin’s Castle
Frontier
Flash Gordon
Warlok
Jungle Lord
Dr. Who
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Wheel of Fortune
The Walking Dead

Most games with 2” flippers.
Four Square
Central Park
Cosmos
Star-Jet

Special shout out goes to Williams Beat the Clock. The game is so mean it has a “Star Hole” that starts multiball by shooting the locked ball between the post in the center of all 4 flippers to bounce randomly. (Has a manual plunger) Take a look at that flipper layout. There is nowhere to hide...

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Probably our Stern TRON with TNA in a close 2nd.

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That game can burn in hell. I fucking hate it. I really, really cannot stand that abomination. There's not a single satisfying shot in that game. Broken code, crummy modes, and the dumbass flipper layout. Of course, my local pinball bar owner bought one a couple years ago. League nights when it was on the menu he would just laugh as I would curse up a storm about how he needs to sell it.

Rudy just got done kicking my ass.... I'd like to add Funhouse.

Flash Gordon
Stars
Joker poker

All of my pins give me trouble, but Quicksilver and Funhouse routinely smacks me.

The BEST players, can experience a 1 minute game on bride of pinbot. Probably every day. (Especially with titan rubbers).

I think my hardest game is probably Stars. Love the brutality!

Wheel of Torture is awesome

If it was my pinball bar, I’d keep it about just for players just like you. Nothing personal, but as a “passionate player” myself... Entertainment like that can’t be bought. Watching other pinball players implode is a cathartic and hilarious experience. I also know that when I implode, the joke is on me. So I better laugh it up! If anything, as a competitive player, that’s reason for me to play it and learn it. If someone is in a tourney with me and they know I don’t like a specific game, guess which game they are going to choose? And they will choose it, every single time...

I do wish the code was finished on WoF. When was the last time you played a pinball game that didn’t have a standard flipper placement (with maybe a slight variant on inlanes and outlines)? Nordman’s games seem to have a high propensity for having interesting layouts and unbalanced/ incomplete code... a shame, really.
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High Speed. It is also the EASIEST NICEST game I own.
(High Speed is the only game I own)

Big Guns! The game doesn't have any shots that safely return the ball to the flippers and the outlanes are super hungry so you need to keep the kickback and gate open as much as possible. Mix the brutal playfield with the bombastic light shows and sound design and Big Guns is easily the most intense game I own, and I love it!

For new games, Beatles is unforgiving.

I've tallied no fewer than 8 consecutive right outlane drains on my Pinbot before. It's not hard, it's just mean.

I thought people considered this an easy game. Personally the original Pinbot is more difficult when I play.

Oh, he recently shopped it and added a color DMD so my torture will definitely continue once leagues resume. I can put up some decent scores on it, but I just never feel a bit of satisfaction. The contestants need shot quite a bit in the game, and it's just so lame shooting them. Maybe if they were drop targets it would be slightly better. Maybe part of it is I just like to bitch about how much I hate it.

BK2K but I only have three machines right now.

BSD

Fireball 1972. You can be in the middle of a good game and the spinner just throws it down the side. Some of my quickest games have been on this machine.

I really liked having WOF. It's different, but not wildly different. Always a challenge. Agreed if the code was complete, damn, it would've been really good.

True, it's odd, but that "center post bumper" thing should have been included on Ghostbusters, which flat out sucks.

Houdini was too tough for me, so it had to go. Surely Rob Zombie now. Not even the slightest chance to make it to the wizard mode.

Whenever I start to feeling a little good about my pinball skills, one quick game on my TMNT premium puts me back in place.

Ghostbusters Premium. Only thing i have done to it to help it the center pin mod.

AIQ specifically the right outlane. Mean is a nice word for it.

i love pins that are hard as hell but fair. Good examples of these are flash gordon and BSD. A good example of hard but kind of randomly unfair is black hole. Flash Gordon wins for me.

Is it because FB72 has a black/red/brown Rubber gripping disc that really chucks the ball and the POTC just diverts it? FB seems to be different from all the other games with a spinning diverter (Whirlwind, TMNT, etc.)