The Pinball ArchiveSpecial thanks to Noah Davis for the gameplay in this video.
Skateball 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!
We have this game at my league, and one of the guys there likes to build up bonus by using the 1-2-3 lanes, which award 2 bonuses when lit. He likes to use that to get up to his 20K bonus, then work on the multipliers. Even if you don’t like that strategy, getting 2 bonuses is a nice consolation prize for not hitting your lane change correctly.
Interesting idea – I could see doing that on ball 1 to get insure your “20″ for balls 2 and 3. Also handy if you’ve got your 5x but bonus has not been maxed yet.
Awesome video and explanation. I recently played Skateball for the first time and loved it, but I couldn’t get the rules/sequence down. Thanks Noah!
When you complete the left S K A T E bank of targets twice, the right collect bonus target will award 100K points each time you hit it. If you complete S K A T E one more time the Extra Ball will light. However, not a good strategy, because If you get the extra ball, the right target resets to 20K points. Avoid the extra ball and just go after 100K shot over and over. Bonuses will eventually go up due to inlane bonus and other shots while controlling the ball to setup 100K shot again.
Also note the right inlane on many machines will have the switch cut in half to avoid backhanding the ball up the right inlane repeatedly to increase bonus count. In this video, the switch is not cut so the ball will travel all the way up and through the right inlane. That is one way to quickly get bonus locked into 60 which is why many vendors originally cut the switch in half (thus the ball going upwards hits the stub end of the switch and stops, thus it doesn’t trigger the switch).
If the flippers have been rebuilt, you can’t back it up and over the B lane from a trap on the right. I can see why operators would cut the switch – means they don’t have to rebuild their flippers! I think it would mess with the flow of the game too much. Shatz the B lane from the left and you’ve got a 50/50 chance of a right outlane drain or it floats back to the middle of the playfield and you have to recover. It’ll be interesting to see if people go for 100k’s over and over at Showdown. The kickout is inconsistent so you have to take a fly shot with the upper right flipper and anything can happen. If you don’t take the upper right flipper there’s a good chance of a right outlane drain. If you hold the upper right flipper up, sometimes it feeds the far left inlane, sometimes the left inlane/outlane, sometimes the left sling!
Also – if you’re playing with EB’s on, here’s a way to milk EB’s over and over and over.
Spell SKATE 3 times and collect EB.
Spell Skate again and “pre-qualify” the right saucer for an EB. While you can’ relight EB after you’ve already collected it, you can set it up so that you only have to spell SKATE once when starting your next ball to light EB (might be twice depending on your settings). Either way you can set yourself up to make EB easier on the next ball after collecting it on your current ball.
I appreciate the rules explanation at the beginning of the video, and great playing thereafter!
Thanks!
Kevin – you’re absolutely right about the 100′s!!!!! I never thought of playing that way on the machine w/ my home settings – maxing/collecting bonus is so much more fun. However, when I set it up for the Showdown, I didn’t think to change the saucer to max at 50k. On my first qualifying attempt on it I dropped skate twice – saw the 100 and tagged it a bunch to get a score. Not a very fun way to do it but when you need a score you need a score – it’s a totally valid tournament strategy and I learned that if setting it up for a tournament – set it to max at 50k.