The Pinball Archive
Barracora at IPDB
Please leave tips, suggestions for strategy, and rule considerations in the comment section below. If you have questions regarding gameplay, PLEASE ASK! Someone out there is bound to know the answer.
If you have advice for other players, please share!
Dude, you stink at this game! It’s all about the 25x bonus collect. Might be tutorial time! And no, pay no attention to my 60,000 qualifying score on it at PAPA 13 Classics
I am more than willing to admit this game baffles me. Definitely tutorial time.
I think the Barracora lane (left spinner lane) gets to be worth obnoxious points at some point too.
OK . . . here we go!
The big points all focus around building bonus, collecting that bonus which clears it out, rebuilding, recollecting, rebuilding, recollecting.
There are two factors to the bonus . . . first is building up the bonus itself, the other is increasing you bonus multiplier and your Super Bonus multiplier.
Bonus – Pretty much every switch and target around the playfield grows the bonus up to a max of 30K. You’ll notice the background music change when you are getting close to maxing out bonus as a cue to get that cleared so you can start rebuilding. In addition to the random switches and targets that build bonus, there is one way to build your bonus quickly. The Spinner lane (it’s actually the exit switch on the top of the spinner lane) increases your bonus by 1,000 X the number of targets in B-A-RR-A-C-O-R-A you currently have knocked down during the ball in play. You’ll see inserts up in the spinner lane that shows you the ones you have already made. If you’ve successfully made both sets of drop targets in a ball, every shot up the spinner lane increases your bonus by 8,000. Pretty much 3 shots up the spinner lane, and you’ve re-maxed out bonus.
Bonus Multiplier – Completing either bank increases your bonus multiplier, which is the orange 2X, 3X, 4X and 5X inserts on the bottom of the playfield. This resets ball-to-ball
Super Bonus Multiplier – Completing BOTH drop target banks increases your Super Bonus multiplier which is the green 2X, 3X, 4X and 5X inserts just above the regular bonus multiplier inserts. You’ll notice the green circle inserts just in front of the drop target banks. This shows you the progress of advancing to your next Super Bonus. You can’t stack left sides and then polish off right sides later to make up for that. Super Bonus multiplier is held through the game, and not cleared ball-to-ball like the regular bonus multiplier.
Bonus Collection – So you have all this bonus built up . . . how do I collect this thing, so I can clear it and start building up more bonus?!?! Well . . . the right orbit shot leads to a kickout hole on the upper left. If you complete both sets of top lanes (1-2-3 AND 4-5-6) this opens the gate and lights Collect Bonus. Total bonus collected is however many thousand, X Super Bonus multiplier, X regular Bonus multiplier. So max multiplier is 5 X 5 . . . or 25X!
That’s pretty much the game strategy wise, although there are some other scoring opportunities.
Target Bonus – The two spot targets in the center of the playfield you can hit to increase the value. Left target represents however many thousand points, and the right target represents the multiplier. Collect that amount via the mini loop in the upper right portion of the playfield. This resets the target bonus back to base value (5K X 2, or 10,000). It is possible to build this up to 250,000 points . . . and if you have the left and right side target at the same level, the mini loop allows you to collect that value TWICE instead of just once before resetting the target value. That’s a quick 500,000 points if you can max the targets and hit that loop twice.
1-2-3 Lanes advance the left kickout hole value from 30 to 60 to 90K
4-5-6 Lanes advance the right spot target in front of the mini loop from 20K to 40K to Extra Ball if you have them on
Game has a 2 or 3-ball multiball available. Left bank lights the left kickout hole, Right bank lights the top kickout hole (collect bonus shot). To get 3-ball multiball you have to lock the upper lock first. If you lock the upper lock and then drain, it serves you that ball to continue play, and resets your lock status if you happened to have the left kickout hole left. It’s nice to get that ball locked up in the top, and play for ‘free’, although it’s impossible to collect bonus with that ball locked in the top, so you can only cash in with the free lock for so long.
Enjoy! One of my favorite games of all time!
I noticed that the one way gates at the top have been removed. Is this PAPA hardcore mode? It created a really cool shot up the baracora lane, through bonus collect lane, off the left slingshot, into the drop targets either way.
Official request for a Sharp (or Bowen I guess) response video! I want to see some of these 25x bonus collects.
Bump for a Sharpe tutorial request.