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Written by Wotto, published November 3rd, 2011. No comments.
A mate came to my place one day and said " oh , I see you bought a SH*T HAND".
2 hours later he left with a completely different opinion of this older Stern game.
This game gets rubbished and I believe it gets rubbished unfairly.
I bought the machine as a reminder of times when a good friend and I played it in our youth - we played it a lot. I also wanted another card themed game to go alongside Joker Poker.
The aim of the game is to light all the cards in the centre of the playfield, and this is not as easy as it seems. Various switches placed around the playfield change the 'suit' of the cards you are currently collecting ( these switches are the slingshots, ONE of the 3 bumpers , the spinner , a rollover and some other switches behind rubbers ).
EG - if the Hearts suit is lit on and you collect the Jack and King then you get the Jack and King of Hearts cards lit, then if you hit a "suit change switch" you start collectiing cards for that new suit.
Due to all the switches that activate suit changes , the suit changes a LOT and what makes it more difficult to fill the entire centre card is that the ONLY way to get an ACE for ANY of the suits is via the ACE drop target. So imagine if you have a near full card and only need one more ACE to fill the card, say it is the Ace of Diamonds that you need BUT the lit suit is on Hearts......you have to send the ball off try to hit something that makes the suit change to Diamonds and THEN drop the ACE target before the ball hits a switch that will change the suit again.......on top of this if you hit the ACE target accidentally before you have been able to succesfully change the suit to the one you need then you have to drop all the targets so they reset for the ACE to be available again.
The whole set of cards can be filled once and then on your next ball it holds a Super Bonus and the individual cards are reset for you to start to light it all up again, at the end of the ball you get ALL the scores for your first card ( the super Bonus ) as well as any other points you have collected on your second card and all times any X Bonus you have scored along the way.
The central cards are also your way of building your X Bonus.
2 of any kind lights 2X, 3 of any kind lights 3X, 4 of any kind lights 4X
On top of this each suit has an award of its own.
Eg - if you light all the Club cards and the Ace of Clubs then Extra Ball will light in the 'drop in' on the left of the playfield. If you get all the Diamonds then the spinner lights for 1000 points a spin etc etc etc
Combine all of the above with the fact that this game has an Extra ball shot that is impossible to actually shoot for and the shot has to come from a bumper rebound ( a bumper that alternates the EB on and off by the way ) then I think this game deserves a lot more respect than it currently gets.
My mate has never again called it SH*T HAND
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