Epic Pinball is an arcade game from 1993 developed by Epic Games. A total of thirteen tables were released; this movie specifically completes the racing themed table, Crash and Burn.
Sync info
This run uses the US version 2.1 of the
Enhanced CD edition of Epic Pinball. Run the
.cue file as a ROM.
Goal
The goal of this run is to achieve all bonuses and max out any multipliers as fast as possible.
- Complete all three laps and achieve first place.
- Complete all three pit stops and then obtain the Mystery Bonus.
- Activate all green lights and then get the Green Light Bonus.
- Obtain the double jackpot by entering multi-ball mode.
- Light the Extra Ball marker and get the maxed out wheel sinkhole bonus at 30 million.
- Max out the MPH multiplier at 6x.
Other counters, like those that raise the jackpot and Mystery Bonus, seem to increase indefinitely and therefore aren't included.
Limitations
As explained in the resources page, multi-ball mode is very glitchy. The game basically won't allow you to have two balls in sinkholes at the same time, and even when it does let you do this, the second ball's sinkhole won't actually trigger.
If any event happens while the other ball is in a sinkhole, the first ball will eject with a ghost ball left behind. Internally, there is a timer that dictates when a ball is supposed to be released. If a ball is ejected before the timer hits zero, its sinkhole will have a ghost ball in it and the timer will be paused. During this phase, no other sinkhole will work. The only way to fix this is to put a ball back in the ghost ball sinkhole, which resumes the timer.
Because of these glitchy mechanics, the optimization is centered around letting the release timer run out and having the other ball travel to its next destination while it's waiting. Ideally, one ball is just about to enter another sinkhole just as the other ball's release timer expires.
The deflections from the paddles are also somewhat limited; for example, upon ejection from the pit sinkhole, it may not be possible to hit the ball directly up the left ramp no matter what frame you flip the paddle on. Some of these limitations can be mitigated by using the table bump mechanic. Whenever the ball hits a surface, its interaction with the surface can be slightly changed with a well-timed bump. This can not only be used to increase the amount of possible paddle deflections, but bumps can also be used to speed up the ball's passage around curves.
Routing
- For the initial settings, the amount of balls is set to 3 from the default of 5 to shorten the ending, where the balls have to be intentionally lost to end the game.
- The first order of business is to get a second ball on the board, which you do by going through the left ramp at over 240 MPH, and then hitting the right ramp. The first time you do this it locks the ball, and the second time you get the other ball on the board. This increases productivity by quite a bit.
- There is a lot of multitasking you can do since the ramps and sinkholes are part of multiple goals. The lap counter is increased each time the entire set of ramps and sinkholes are hit (along with getting +1 on the MPH multiplier), and the Finish Line lights up one arrow after hitting both ramps and then running through the paved section. This means you can basically ignore the 1st place goal since it completely overlaps with the lap counter, as long as you hit things in the correct order. In addition, the pit stops are activated by hitting the left and right ramps. The requirements for the pit stops are all different as well, and they are integrated into the other requirements wherever possible.
- The primary bottleneck is the wheel sinkhole. You need to fall into it 8 times for each stage, so to max it out you need to enter it a total of 48 times. One ball is almost completely dedicated to this sinkhole while the other ball completes other tasks, and it's sometimes being juggled while waiting for the second ball to finish what it's doing. Once all other tasks are done, one ball is juggled to push the other ball back in the wheel sinkhole.
- The MPH multiplier is increased whenever the "DRIVER" drop targets are all lit up. It's fairly easy to hit these whenever a ball need to travel to the top or the bottom.
- The green lights are lit up every time the small passage with the racecars near the bottom flippers are passed through. These can be cheesed a little bit and hit multiple times per pass with some well-timed table bumps.
- The actual final score is up for debate. The score counting is very buggy for this table. You can first notice that the 15 million refuel bonus for the third pit stop doesn't display (but still gets added internally), but the main problem is that the bonuses from the wheel sinkhole don't get added properly. They also severely break the score display. The ten million bonus, for some reason, ends up subtracting 26855 from the score internally, which does not get reflected properly in the score display. The fifteen million bonus subtracts 7515 internally and then the display shows a score over one billion. 20 million adds 11825, 25 million subtracts 34370, and finally 30 million adds 50505. The final score shown in the movie is the actual internal score, but if the wheel bonuses were added correctly, the score should actually be 364420000.
- The movie ends in the same way as the other publications by intentionally inducing a game over and then playing the credits in the main menu.
Improvements
Due to the multiple goals involved, there is a lot of complexity here. I can't feasibly check every permutation of events and possible shots, so maybe there is a better sequence of events possible. However, as noted before, the main bottleneck is the wheel bonus, so there is probably not much meat left on this bone.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: I was one of those gamers who got to experience the “shareware” version back in the early ’90s. The game was so impressive that I had to track down the full version — and I’m glad I did! The full release features some truly remarkable tables, each offering a real challenge when it comes to completing their objectives.
This TAS was a blast to watch (I even watched it twice!) and absolutely crushes the goals in an incredibly short time. The most impressive moment was how you handled the bonus at the “Wheel Sinkhole.” Using both balls to attack that area was a brilliant and creative strategy.
Excellent work — a fantastic effort and thoroughly entertaining run!
Accepting to “Standard.”
