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Favourite display sequences

J

Jay Walker

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A lot of creativity must go into programming displays. Not to mention memory space; the early Wpc games with alpha-numeric displays had 512K of memory, but dot-matrix Wpc games are at least double that, presumably due to the display images. I think Williams led the way with FirePower's 'countdown' and Black Knight's multiball sequences and 'Mystery Score'. Before that, the 7-segment displays of the time had simply been used to show the scores, and Highest Score during attract mode.

Anyway, I'm curious about people's favourite display routines - not video modes (a seperate topic) but the animations shown on achieving playfield objectives, such as;

The Extra Ball animation for Roadshow, a demolition ball swinging towards the player. Nowadays you might picture 'wild' young one miley cyrus perched on it, but I always expect to hear the opening bars of 'All Along The Watchtower', as used in the film 'Withnail and I'.

The Castle Jackpot on Bram Stoker's Dracula, with one of his brides shrivelling away into dust. The trouble with that one is finding the time to look away from the playfield to enjoy it.

100K skill-shot on Pinbot - the display segments circle around to mimic the ball's path into the Vortex. This also appeared on Taxi, when picking up PinBot as a fare.
 
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Monster Bash is chock full of gems - for example Drac doing the John Travolta dance for the EB .... or the start of the Monster Bash mode

EB on AFM always gets my attention, with the martian getting hit upside the head
and i'm always a sucker for the semi-hidden video sequences as well, like on CFTBL where you can punch the peeping Tom's head off, or choke the pretzel seller
 
Absolutely loads of them in MB as Dan said. Favourites of mine are the extra ball he mentions as well as the Mummy coming out of the sarcophagus. There are loads of others which are absolutely superb though.
 
Dis-interring this thread, a new favourite of mine is the start of 'Tyrell' (jousting) mode on Game of Thrones; apart from reminding me of the Black Knight games, the animation extends to the horse's mane moving as it gallops towards the viewer.

And I'd forgotten the replay animation of Fish Tales, featuring the Monster Fish on drums.
 
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Start of multiball on AFM always puts a smile on my face. One of my fave Easter Eggs is in SST. If you get bored listening to the newsreader at the start of each planet double tap the flippers and he dies in a suitably gory way.
 
Good animations on an alphanumeric game impress me more, as it takes more effort to be creative with the alpha displays than it does with a DMD.

I think the Torpedo Alley jackpot sequence is one of the best I have seen
 
lukewells said:
Good animations on an alphanumeric game impress me more, as it takes more effort to be creative with the alpha displays than it does with a DMD.

I think the Torpedo Alley jackpot sequence is one of the best I have seen
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I agree.
Dr Dude has a great one that is the Excellent Ray firing up.
 
The pineapple animation on Gilligan's Island is by far the best animation in all DMD games... it rotates so smooth it must be 60fps+
 
lukewells said:
Good animations on an alphanumeric game impress me more, as it takes more effort to be creative with the alpha displays than it does with a DMD.

I think the Torpedo Alley jackpot sequence is one of the best I have seen
Click to expand...

An excellent point. Is it Bride of Pin-Bot which has a 'voice pattern' simulation of rising/falling bars, when the Bride says 'I can speak'?

And it must've been more difficult again with just 7-segment displays. Perhaps the finest there was the optional 'Fancy Match' on Space Shuttle, which helped newcomers to understand what the Match feature's about
 
The scared stiff sequence when you complete the wizard mode. Whole machine just goes nuts, firing every flasher, solenoid and light like a demented machine gunner. The Dmd also goes nuts displaying varios snapshots from the game's animation


8m 10s

Also scared stiff "airhead"
 
WhiteWater had a predecessor of that routine, when the Vacation Planner was completed, awarding the Vacation Jackpot. It's begun by the machine going totally dark, which worried me when I first saw it, since I'd just set the machine up in a new location.

The animation I'm fond of on Scared Stiff is for 'Stop The Spider', where an eyeball falls onto the web, and looks to the right as the spider moves up the screen.
 
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