Thardus' move pattern is a bit awkward - if the ball is on the upper screen, it will roll up into an invulnerable ball and attempt to ram the ball otherwise, it will summon rocks and launch them at the ball. Two of them are on the bottom part of the stage, and I hit them while Thardus is still awakening, and get back up using some creative bouncing (and a lot of nudging) with the Triclopses down there. There is a hidden Artifact on this stage, and it is triggered by hitting certain icicles along the edges of the stage. #METROID PRIME PINBALL ROM UPGRADE#
You need to hit them twice and then collect the upgrade in order to trigger the boss' appearance.
The item capsules (such as the one containing the Power Bomb here) have a deceptively long invulnerability period after being hit. This would normally end up the ball in the zone with bumpers and rollovers, which are always slow to get out of, but proper nudging causes the ball to bump into one of the 'gates' and bounce back, which also sets it up nicely to be shot into the Mode Saucer to leave the stage. To complete the Hurry-Up!, I just need to enter the top passage from the right. Clearing a Hurry-Up! fast enough (before the score timer starts counting down) unlocks an Artifact. Hurry-Up! is a minigame which is triggered after hitting the 5 small orange arrows around the upper half of the screen, which are positioned at the edges of lanes and the Mode Saucer. After collecting the final Phazon Multiball piece (and trigger Super Jackpot), I discard the blue ball in order to progress with the Hurry-Up! and leave the stage after defeating the last Metroid. They are each defeated with one direct hit and two bombs. The Metroids are destroyed the instant they come down and make themselves vulnerable. I use the down-time to collect some of the unlocked Artifacts and clear up the remaining parts of the Phazon Multiball mode. The third activated mission, Metroid Mania, takes a substantial time before one of the Metroids even comes down and becomes vulnerable. Then the blue ball enters the Mode Saucer again before the red ball even got time to land on the flippers after it left the Mode Saucer. I use the two balls for good cooperation here - the red ball triggers the mission, while the blue ball lays a bomb and gets set to kill the Space Pirates in just barely over a second. Soon after finishing Parasite Purge, I start off the next mission - Space Pirates Panic, which has three Space Pirates appear on the upper half of the table. I use both Phazon Multiball balls to clear off the Parasites quickly, and collect a number of Phazon Multiball spheres in the process. During this mode, it is possible to enter the Mode Saucer and do missions, but not leave the table or activate Hurry-Up!. It ends when either ball is destroyed the remaining ball will turn back to the orange Samus ball. Collecting these in both colors causes a final red-and-blue Phazon Fragment to appear, and collecting it with either ball triggers a Super Jackpot, unlocks an Artifact and repeats the same again (sans Artifact in further iterations). 
Collecting all spheres of a color causes a large Phazon fragment of that color to appear (which trigger a Jackpot when collected). The goal is to collect all randomly-placed blue and red spheres on the table with the respectively colored ball (the other ball instead bounces hard off these spheres).
Phazon Multiball is a special game mode where the ball is split into two balls a blue and a red one. The Reward Scanner is activated by entering it twice, and allows one to get a (pseudo-)random bonus, such as points, force fields, health restoration, or in this case, Phazon Multiball. The first thing I do here (aside from entering the Mode Saucer) is to trigger Phazon Multiball, which can only be done in Pirate Frigate through the Reward Scanner. This can save up to a whole second at times. Nudging is also useful when entering saucers such as the Mode Saucer to reduce the amount of time the ball spends to reposition itself to the center of the saucer. This way, instead of having the ball circling around the table, I send it directly into the Mode Saucer instead in order to immediately start the first mission, Parasite Purge. Nudging the table at the exact moment the ball enters gameplay allows me to change its direction somewhat. 
Nudging is used everywhere throughout the run, as it allows giving some extra momentum to the ball when hitting it with a flipper, or extra momentum when bouncing off a wall or enemy, or just to make it bounce in useful trajectories.
0 kommentar(er)
