Shatsing, looks cool but is it useful?

[Jay Walker]

The thread seems to be drifting a little, but the occurrence Fantazia describes was the norm on the awkward article that was Bally/Midway Hardbody; what could at a push be called return frames were very short, and led to a yawning outlane gap. The intention was that the player used extra buttons alongside the flipper buttons to operate 'flexors', curved sections of rail which altered the outlanes into a smooth path to each flipper. Going by pictures (of the very similar but much earlier BMX and the contemporary Dungeons & Dragons), these were built on the baseplates for the linear flipper, but with weak single-winding coils. They moved into place for a few seconds on pressing the button. So a ball rolling up from the flipper needed the flexor deployed to avoid draining, but if it hung around at the top of its run, the guide could drop out from beneath it. Pressing the button again was a lottery whether the coil could push the ball back onto the return frame. It was possible to earn 'Auto-Flex', switched by star rollover buttons, but they didn't help with a roll-up situation.

 

[AlanJ]

I shatz at least once a week

 

[thelab]

THIS

You mean the "Walmsley Backhand".

THIS a Walmsley Backhand.... (turn volume UP!)

https://packaged-media.redd.it/c8enpo25ns761/pb/m2-res_240p.mp4?m=DASHPlaylist.mpd&v=1&e=1730239200&s=7442888e5cfd43e24b0decd4c0dfe04a65d956d1

 

[M4carp]

I Shatz myself whenever playing a top comp player

 

[Asiapinball]

Useful in Gottlieb Monte Carlo. To build bonus and rank up the target hits to get the 10m points shot lit.

Will taught me this at Northern League meet last year.

 

[cyberkryten]

The 2 modern games were it is probably most useful, and intended to be used in the code, are Foo Fighters and Iron Maiden.

Yep, that's how Josh got the 1B collect on Foos: New Orleans, get it set up with max van and then shatz both targets.

Pulp Fiction is another. Josh spent a while doing it in the PBR Final, going left to right to left again and again - I had to explain to Matt why as he was building bonus multiplier (though he didn't manage to collect, so high risk/reward).

Also, if you can't post-pass between flippers because of the way the slingshots sit above the flippers, a shatz is another way of moving the ball across from one flipper to the other: not going for a target but an alternative to a tap pass.

As has been said, there's risks and each game plays slightly different, so, like a tap pass, it's well worth trying on the actual machine before you go for it in competition!

If you want to know which particular skills/shots are most important on any machine, watch a stream of a top-level finals where there's a ~30sec practice before the game - the shots/skills those players are testing in those 30 seconds are the ones that they'll absolutely be using when the game starts for real.

 

[Jay Walker]

A late query about this technique, regarding Star Trek Next Gen;

• is it particularly worthwhile?
• would the lack of resistance/braking effect from a rollover wire make it likely for the ball to escape completely?

In the second instance, the wide-body makes the lanes themselves longer, so that may be a counter to it.

 

[roadshow16]

I've never really used the shatz that much on STTNG, the most important skill that I find on STTNG is the ski pass.

The shatz is really useful on games when the inlane has value, like The Shadow where it spots a Khan letter, or on a game where the post pass doesn't work to transfer. Gorgar is another example where its super useful, where the inlanes advance the bonus, at Pinfest I must have shatzed the inlanes 100+ times on my qualifying game, I think the best game from Andreas playing it the 'normal' way was about 600k, I think I was around 900k.

The key thing for a safe, effective and most importantly repeatable shatz is usually the inlane post rubbers. On the Gorgar at Pinfest the inlane rubbers were big and a shatz would go all the way up the inlane, hit the rubber and come perfectly back down (that was before the dastardly @Arv removed them for the finals and my plans were scuppered ).

Here is an example of what I'm talking about, Eric Stone is the master, 5 hours 50 mins

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