applecinnabun

One thing I love about the Dungeons & Dragons pinball table is that it's just so different. The playfield is not any kind of familiar shape, and there's so much wall everywhere. It's a bit claustrophobic. When the early '80s experimented with widebody layouts that had targets at extreme angles from the flippers, this one is basically a narrowbody. There are familiar elements like inline drop targets and ball locks, but with unfamiliar constraints on how you get the ball to them.

Another thing I appreciate about it is the rad soundtrack. It's very bit-crunchy but it's got some hot jams, including the end-of-ball theme that you'll be hearing a lot.

The theme works, I guess. I've heard people say about this table that Bally didn't quite get what D&D is, but then I've heard the context that, look, it's based on first-edition D&D, it is this kind of stuff. I'm not that familiar with D&D myself, and certainly not with different editions, but here you've got a warrior, a wizard, and a barbarian and they're fighting a dragon. In a dungeon. There you go.

The combined inlanes and outlanes, featuring "Magic Save", are not unique to this table, but I think D&D uses them in interesting ways. The "Magic Save" is an extra button next to the flipper button on each side that puts up a gate that directs your ball to the flipper instead of the drain. You need to hit it in time so that every lane isn't an outlane.

But, more generously than previous incarnations of this feature like Bally's BMX, there are also features that can activate the save for you when your ball passes the rollovers above it. This is particularly relevant for new players, who may not realize how to use Magic Save yet, so auto-save is always on when you have less than 200,000 points.

The rules of how to get multiball and make progress on this table frequently slip my mind, so I'll link to Pinball Primer. It's a fun and different experience. The machine seems pretty rare in real life, so VPX is a great way to experience it.