The Simpsons Pinball Party

The Simpsons Pinball Party
board layout | More Pictures
Free Game at 4,000,000
Current High Score

This is the first pinball machine I've played from the company Stern. In keeping with its comic-book theme, it is a cacophony of primary and secondary colors and is very busy. You'd have to be busy to get in references to as many characters as the inspiring TV show has. I had serious misgivings about this machine being too crowded, but those quickly melted away when I started playing. A great deal of the busy-ness comes from the painting of the playing field. It has a lot of cartoon-flames painted on it, which in actuality are helpful trajectories for aiming the ball. As per the rules, I haven't looked up any instructions for this game and don't really know what I'm doing. Since I haven't discovered the best way to score points, I didn't win my free game.
The Simpsons theme provides a lot of material for this table. I'm sure a lot of great ideas never made it out of the creator's sketchbook. Ultimately, The Comic-Book Guy and Otto the Bus Driver are over-represented while Lisa and Marge are underrepresented. Unfortunately, all of the material they had to include means that there wasn't a way to tell a simple, cohesive story. I think the goal is to get through the garage into the living room, but of all the crazy things the Simpsons have done over the years, coming home to watch TV is pretty mundane. I feel they really missed out by not bringing Mr. Burns in as the bad guy. It would have provided some much-needed Conflict and villany and created a story. I still have my fingers crossed that one of the Multiball modes will begin with him saying "Release the hounds".

Playing Tip:
So far I've scored the most points when I've gotten the ball into the upper-deck playing field, the Living Room. There's a bumper between the two useless looking flippers in the living room, which give you a decent chance of getting something good once you get up there. And having Homer's head rotate so you know you the ball will come out there is great. Next session my plan is to figure out a way to consistently get into the living room. There is an extra-flipper on the right-hand side of the machine which may be useful for that, but I've had the most luck simply bashing the garage a bunch of times.