No Good Gofers is another creative design from Pat Lawlor and his team. This game is fast fun and has (surprise) great flow. Pat's fastest game ever!
The Pros: The hole in 1 shot is the first multiple level jackpot. Super Jackpot with bugging gopher eyballs still cracks me up! 3 pop bumpers snuck into the playfield on the outsider of the lenft orbit add quite a bit of lateral action to the ball's entrance to the pf. better be ready. One of the best multiball start sequences ever. I think I like this Multibal starting sequence it even more than TAF's. Pat Lawlor is a createive pinball genius! Popping one of the gophers and hearing him say "OWWWWW!" is always satisfying. The fireball disc in the PF is back, and this time it gives you awards! A classic character study of the wisecracking crank and the ideeeeot with rocks in his head as a comedy team. Pinball is theatre on this table and you are... the golfer.
The Cons: Lighting the kickback is a chore (is this a Steve Ritchie game???). The deck HAS to be operating and set up correctly to make critical ramp shots. This game should have been one of the all time best... software bugs keep it from the absolute pinnacle of pinball greatness. "Calling mystery programmer! Please de-bug this table!" No super wiz mode (or incrementally increasing awards) for completing 18 (or other multiples of 9) holes...
The Takeaway: The game is called No Good Gofers... that means the gofers are MEANT to annoy you and get in the way of your shots. Get used to this blocking and mocking, knowing that the joke is on you... or play another game, (in Bud's voice) "ya pinball sissy!". Personally, I'd absolutely love to own one of these tables.
Don't Chooooke! Don't Chooooke!
Update:
After Acquiring a very nice copy of this game in a trade and really playing it and taking some time with the rules somethings became apparent. First of all, maxing out the bonus at 5x when she know what to do is incredibly easy. The second thing is that the Ripoff multiball is much too powerful for such an easy feature to start, to the point of being unbalancing for such a minor goal of the game. Unfortunately this game suffers from being Koziar'd. The rules man... the rules. Software is rando-buggy to the point of it not being multiplayer tourney worthy. Good thing that zydeco music makes for great pinball tunes!
I have also come to the conclusion that this may be Pat Lawlors most creative layouts. Ramps that throw the ball above and open to reveal subway holes below the playfield (in the same shot, twice). The skip ramp leads to 2 targets, a ramp and the incredible hole in 1 shot that even acknowledges ricochet shots into it. A great game to practice multiball skills on and between the angled geometry the evil and random exit out of the pops and the horizontal spinner on the lower pf, the ramps and the orbits are the only safe shots on the game.
Update v.2:
Owned it. played the heck out of it. Sent it off to a good home. It's the rules man, it's the rules... Another great Lawlor game that got Koziar'd. A damn shame, the copy I had was a frikkin' museum piece!
Milwaukie, OR
Villejuif
Kangaroo Point
Y Felinheli
Abbotsford, BC