If that’s what had happened, there wouldn’t be a Blondihacks post about it, so this is where things get interesting. With the glass off and a few minutes to kill, I thought to myself, “Self, I’m-a-gonna replace that switch real quick”. This case that I have is the worst of both worlds- the switch works often enough to reset the error counter, but fails often enough to really mess up your game. Yes, that means it’s possible to simply play really badly and legitimately never hit particular switches. If a counter reaches a certain number (calibrated for each switch, but usually in the 30-70 range), the machine decides the switch must be bad, and throws an error code. When a switch is hit, the counter is reset to zero. The way the computer detects dead switches is simple- each ball that is played increments a counter for every switch. Clearly this ( and only this) is the reason my scores are low. not totally dead), but infrequent enough to harsh my buzz in gameplay. That’s why the confusion- it’s frequent enough that the computer wouldn’t detect a malfunction (ie. I popped off the glass, fired up switch-test mode, and sure enough, the switch that detects the ball rolling down the right ramp was only firing about 40% of the time. I knew I was hitting that shot correctly, and I knew it wasn’t being recorded. There was no such error reported, so I had been assuming the switch was okay. However, when a switch stops working, normally the computer detects this and lets you know (as I’ve explained previously). It could also be that my shot wasn’t being detected because the ramp switch wasn’t firing. There are certain game modes where you can’t collect some items, so maybe I was just using the spikes incorrectly. For a long time, I figured I must be misunderstanding something. There’s a very satisfying sound effect and animation when a spike is collected, and I was getting… nothing. The ball will come down the left inlane, start the timer to collect a spike, and if all goes well, I sweep that ball straight up the right ramp with authority. Why am I explaining all this? Well, I’d been noticing lately that I’ve been getting robbed (robbed, I tell you!) of Throwing Spikes. Lots of good stuff to acquire there, strategically speaking. The Throwing Spikes are center-right in this photo. This combos very strongly with some other things, such as Hold Bonus and Bonus Multiplier, leading to really big points if you play your cards right. With this lit, you get a million points every time the spinner goes around once (until the end of this ball). Probably the best reason to collect Throwing Spikes is because when you have three of them, it lights the Spinner Millions. There’s a multiball mode, there’s an extra ball, there’s extra points, all sorts of stuff. For each Throwing Spike you collect, you gain progressively more interesting rewards. If done quickly, you get a Throwing Spike. You then have a couple of seconds to fire the ball up the right ramp or around the right loop. There was a lot of Japanese gangster stuff in the movie, okay? Anyways, when the ball runs down the left inlane on to the left flipper, it lights the Throwing Spikes shot. Johnny has a particularly lucrative shot called the Throwing Spikes. Once in a blue moon, that actually turns out to be true. I, on the other hand, take the much more rational position that something must be wrong with the machine. An outside observer might suggest that perhaps I suck at pinball. My scores haven’t been great on Johnny lately. To make progress, sometimes you have to make tools.
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