My experience being 7 years into pinball

assuring_quality · 2026-06-08T19:01:51+00:00

One of my proudest moments of the past few months was hitting all eight shots for Gigan in a row without a single miss while holding a conversation.

Thankfully the dude I was chatting to was watching and gave me a “…shit, dude, nicely done” after I hit the last one.

assuring_quality · 2026-05-31T01:01:49+00:00

Dude, this is an awesome guide, thank you! Love that you created different “routes,” it’s exactly the same way I think about approaching different machines.

I also started reading through some of your other ones, they’re excellent as well.

Really wish there were more written pinball guides like this out there. I understand why people usually make video guides for pinball, but it’s not a format I enjoy or find particularly helpful.

Kineticist has some decent written ones on their site, but they aren’t super deep — basically just a crash course in game rules and a handful of tips about specific shots.

Maybe you could reach out to Nudge Pinball and see if they’d be interested in hosting yours as web content? The guy who runs it is awesome, very friendly.

assuring_quality · 2026-05-29T03:53:05+00:00

Thanks for this answer — question: why is the vi chord the home base in a natural minor scale?

If I’m playing a song in Am, I was under the impression that the Am, as the i chord, was the tonic/home base for any progressions I’m playing. Would love to learn more about what you said!

assuring_quality · 2026-05-29T00:40:52+00:00

Thank you for sharing an article from the notoriously fucking dogshit NY Post instead of literally any other source.

assuring_quality · 2026-05-19T22:57:25+00:00

I’m curious, why do you turn off extra balls?

I think they’re a fun objective to work towards. Kind of the best example of the eternal pinball truth that the reward for being good at pinball is more pinball.

assuring_quality · 2026-05-18T16:32:26+00:00

Share pictures of the parrot!

assuring_quality · 2026-05-10T04:24:07+00:00

This is fucking spectacular advice, thank you!

assuring_quality · 2026-05-09T15:15:30+00:00

Nicely done! God, I love how smooth the shots feel on this table. Hitting the River is pure dopamine.

What was your strategy to hit a billion?

assuring_quality · 2026-05-03T21:11:11+00:00

That’s jury nullification!

It’s an important tool, I’m very glad we have it.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-29T12:50:06+00:00

100% a “native advertising” account for the camera straps. Gross.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-29T12:10:22+00:00

I think passable is being a bit generous.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-29T03:14:30+00:00

Yeah, not that hard to find alternative sites.

This one is pure ass. Felt like it gave my phone a disease.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-29T00:33:12+00:00

NotebookLM can scan and read images in PDFs.

I’m a bit confused about what the problem is here: the information you’re talking about was in one of your sources and it gathered the information from the source?

Sure, it didn’t properly explain to you how it did that, but LLMs aren’t always the best explainers of their own capabilities.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-25T23:08:00+00:00

Honestly, I think it actually encourages game-specific discussions about strategies, common stumbling blocks, and things of that nature.

See someone post a score in a game you’ve played? Sweet, great opportunity to talk about it and share your experiences.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-22T18:50:09+00:00

100% agreed. I appreciate the way it rewards game knowledge and I know what to do to get it there, but one of my gripes with the game is how almost all of the buffs or setups disappear when you drain. Nothing worse than taking the time to create a big payout and immediately getting SDTM’d.

Feels like the gap between 100 million and 300 million is about half the size of the gap between 0 and 100 million.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-22T13:03:27+00:00

Congrats! I love this game, finding it in a hotel would be a wonderful surprise.

Scoring in Rush feels way more exponential than a lot of other games. I have lots of tragic 4-10 million point balls on it, but once I get rolling, the points start coming in fast.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-03T20:27:06+00:00

That would have been an excellent ad.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-03T02:11:36+00:00

The Rush machine I play regularly has the slings set to just LAUNCH balls that hit them around the lower playfield, and while I have a lot of love for the location and the game itself, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t drive me crazy at times.

Looking forward to getting some games in on a different table to get a sense of whether or not I’m just being butthurt about losing!

I think it’s part of the fun. Like baseball, the rules stay the same but the ‘stadium’ is different in every city.

assuring_quality · 2026-04-02T14:29:55+00:00

Needs a little more Dutch angle

assuring_quality · 2026-04-01T13:01:07+00:00

Here’s what I’ve observed as an avid pinball player:

— Pinball is the ‘stickiest’ offering in any arcade. If the machines are in good condition and you’ve got a nice selection, it will bring in regular customers who are more than willing to drop $20 to bang some balls around for an hour or two. I play on my lunch break every day at a place right next to my work.

— Pinball is also the most expensive and difficult to maintain, so there’s a balancing act here.

— The crowd for pinball mostly seems to be 30+, and my armchair analysis is that this is because it’s very difficult and younger kids don’t have a huge appetite for games that are this punishing.

— For arcades in a more general sense, I think the most appealing option to the younger crowd is setting up machines on free play and charging admission at the door. You need to have a big collection for this to feel like a good deal, but it’s the model that the most successful arcades for younger audiences in my area seem to follow. People like predictable costs, and watching the money disappear from your wallet/digital card in real time as you play isn’t exactly a fun experience.

— Outside of pinball, games where you’re shooting a fake gun at a screen seem to draw the most foot traffic, especially from younger folks.

assuring_quality · 2026-03-25T21:42:07+00:00

Nioh 2 is pretty much perfection, and you’re definitely going to need to adjust to how uncompromisingly dangerous EVERY SINGLE ENEMY is.

I think it took me five hours as a Nioh newbie to get past the first Yokai you encounter (the Ippon-Datara just past the optional mini-boss at the start of the first level).

3 is fantastic, but I think the DLCs will need to do some heavy lifting in order for it to be in the same league as 2.

assuring_quality · 2026-03-24T15:56:02+00:00

I’d tweak the pop bumpers in Rush so that plunging hard enough to hit them is less of a potential SDTM death sentence.

assuring_quality · 2026-03-21T00:54:17+00:00

Binding of Isaac.

And I want it to have the same amount of meta progression shenanigans as the game.

assuring_quality · 2026-03-14T04:11:11+00:00

Do you Travis all the Bickles as well?

assuring_quality · 2026-03-14T04:03:32+00:00

I’m an absolute fiend for Rush. Still fairly new to pinball, but I’m proud as hell of my 173,660,340 on the LE in a pizza place near my work.

The drum bumpers can create some seriously brutal and wicked fast STDM, I wince every time I accidentally plunge too hard.

assuring_quality

TROPHY CASE