Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation
http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=2357&picno=19076
1 play for $0.50 | 5 for $2.00
High Score: 7,030,426,690 RML
Replay at 271,000,000

Perhaps, unlike me, you were not raised by a computer programmer. And, perhaps, you were not fortunate enough to watch Star Trek growing up. Perhaps you don't have fond memories of being allowed to stay up until Midnight on Saturdays so you could recored (on VHS!) a rerun of Star Trek, back before it was "The Original Series", to help your dad complete his collection. Perhaps you don't remember when The Next Generation premiered, or watching Captain Picard in his brother's vineyard during the final episode. Perhaps you don't remember the premier of spin-off Deep Space Nine, being disappointed by Voyager, or when Enterprise became the first (only?) Star Trek series to have sung lyrics in its themesong. Yes, I may be a huge nerd; but you're reading a blog some guy playing pinball.

My wife and I have been watching The Next Generation via Netflix. She was fairly resistant to watching it in the beginning, but she's since turned into a Trekker. So, I think by now, I've made my point that I'm pretty excited about this one.

Stepping up to the machine, the first thing you notice is that your hands are slightly farther apart. ST:TNG is a W?idebody, and is 25" wide instead of the more-standard 22.5". It feels very "open", especially because there are few targets in the lower half of the playfield. The plunger is actually a phase-pistol handle attached to the machine; it feels out-of-place on a ST:TNG machine, very few episodes begin with violence.

There are quite a few ramps to shoot here, and quite a few lights to let you know where you should be shooting. There are sink-holes near the center for "Command Decision" and "Star Mission", and you can choose to what mode to start. These modes are generally timed and will light certain ramps, daring you to collect the whole set. I think an experienced player would earn a lot of points by picking the right mode, but since the rules scorecard didn't list how the modes work, I picked at random. I scored most of my points via destroying asteroids and banishing that dastardly Q. And by advancing rank, which is somewhat nice because it carries over from ball to ball.

This is a complex game, and I think you could play it for a long time before discovering all of its nooks and crannies. On my sixth game I scored 339,106,750 and gave my free game to Rebecca. I was a little disappointed with this machine for a couple of reasons. First, it was relatively easy; there is a lot more to the machine than I had to figure out to get my free game. And to figure it out, you need to make semi-arbitrary decisions about what mode to choose. This is a problem with many pinball machines, but seemed moreso here. My feeling are somewhat conflicted here, because I like that the ramps-to-hit for that mode light up, but on the other hand it makes the machine feel condescending. I also didn't like the widebody design; the machine was very sparse at the bottom and didn't seem to take advantage of the space that being wide-body allowed. It did have several ramps at the top, however. Finally, this machine suffers from being between the loud Lord of The Rings and the loud South Park.