Not to be confused with Joker Poker (Gottlieb, 1978) or any of the other various pinball games with Joker in the title.
Your best friend shot on Jokerz is the one way gate between the upper left drop targets and the bumpers. This will spot upper playfield royal flush cards for you and give easy access to the top lanes for bonus and bonus multipliers. Complete all three banks of drop targets to start Million Round, where you have 15 seconds to clear any bank again for 1,000,000 points. Hit the center standup target to raise the center ramp, then shoot it to lock a ball; 2 locks starts multiball; 4 ramp shots during multiball scores jackpot. Center target is a very high drain risk. Ignore the left and right ramps entirely unless you absolutely need to double your score on the last ball (hit both within 20 seconds).
On any plunge (at the start of a ball or after a lock), two of the five upper playfield top lanes will be lit, which is indicated by the posts on either side of them. If you plunge the ball into a lane where both posts on either side are lit, you receive the Wild Card Bonus, worth 100,000 the first time, +100,000 each subsequent time up to a maximum of at least 500,000 points. The Wild Card Bonus is in addition to all other scoring the upper playfield top lanes would give.
The ball ends up here after a full left or right ramp shot, or on the plunge. The lanes correspond to the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 10 playing cards. All lanes score 10,000 points and a bonus advance as well as adding 5,000 points to the jackpot. Roll through an unlit lane to light it. Lit lanes can be rotated in either direction via flipper lane change. Lighting all five lanes scores the Table Bonus, which is equal to 100,000 points plus the current unmultiplied end of ball bonus, and lights on of the bells on the jester's hat near the flippers. (The Table Bonus seems to be able to exceed 199,000 points if more bonus advances are made after the end of ball bonus is maxed out.) Lighting all 5 bells over the course of the game will in turn light the right saucer for a special.
The lower playfield left saucer is a long shot between the center and left ramps that goes through a one-way gate, hits a standup target, and falls to the left. This scores 10,000 points and spots one of the royal flush cards at the upper playfield top lanes, then ejects the ball toward the lower playfield top lanes. During multiball, making this shot starts 2x playfield scoring for 20 seconds; the 2x playfield applies to all scoring in the game except for the jackpot.
The lower playfield right saucer requires a similar shot as the left one, going between the center ramp/bumpers and the right ramp. Going through the left in lane lights the saucer for Draw Poker. If Draw Poker was already lit, the left in lane lights the spinner. The spinner scores 3,000 points per spin when lit, or 100/spin when not lit. The saucer scores 10,000 points when not lit. When Draw Poker is lit, the saucer will cause the hand of playing cards on the backbox to spin, giving you 3 random cards to combine with an ace and a king to form a poker hand. The possible poker hands and the score you get for each are listed below. This saucer also ejects the ball toward the lower playfield top lanes.
The lower playfield top lanes spell Bet. Lanes always score 3,000 points and a bonus advance. Just like the upper playfield top lanes, you're trying to light all 3 of them and both directions of lane change apply. Spelling Bet increases your bonus multiplier by 1, up to a maximum of 7x. Further completions past 7x bonus award 100,000 points each. If you reach the bonus multiplier that is flashing on the playfield, an extra ball will be lit at the in/out lanes; this threshold is usually somewhere around 4x at the start of the game, and will jump up to 7x or be turned off after being collected once.
The B and T lanes' placement directly above the pop bumpers make them very good candidates for up-and-down action, and you can sometimes get one or even two entire bonus multipliers in just one trip to the top lanes.
All three banks of drop targets follow the same rules. Hitting any target down scores 5,000 points and a bonus advance. Target banks reset immediately once cleared, and there is no point bonus for clearing a bank. When a bank is completed, the white light in front of that bank will turn on. Complete all 3 banks to light all 3 lights and Million Round will instantly begin. During Million Round, the lights in front of all three banks will flash for 12 seconds. Completing any of the three banks during this time limit scores 1,000,000 points.
The ramp value starts at 10,000 points. Shots to the left ramp increase the ramp value in the sequence 10,000 - 25,000 - 50,000 - 100,000 - 250,000 - 500,000. A shot to the right ramp scores the current ramp value and resets that value back to 10,000. It is somewhat common for a ball to roll up the ramp and back down it, and there is no software protection against this; a rejected left ramp will advance the ramp value twice, while a rejected right ramp will score the ramp value twice (with the second collect always being 10,000 points since the first collect reset the value).
At the beginning of the final ball of the game, you have one chance to double your entire current score. To do this, you must shoot both the left and right ramps once each within a time limit. This time limit is usually 20 seconds by default, decreases by 5 seconds for every 1,000,000 points you have, and cannot be lower than 10 seconds. The timer does not run if the most recent switch to register in the game was a lock, one of the top lanes (either playfield), or pop bumpers, so you frequently have a bit more time to line up a shot than the display would indicate.
At the start of the game, the center ramp is down. Hit the center standup target to score 10,000 points and 3 bonus advances, plus raise the ramp. Return feeds from this target are very fast and often send the ball into the center drain from a direct hit or an out lane from a glancing blow, but it is slightly safer to shoot it with the right flipper than the left. When the center ramp is up, shoot it to score 20,000 points and lock a ball. Locking two balls starts multiball. Lock stealing is possible in a multiplayer game.
On some copies of the game, it may be possible for ball search to begin by cradling the ball for long enough, and part of the ball search is to automatically raise and lower the center ramp. If you intentionally force ball search to start with a cradled ball and then whack it up the center ramp when it is raised, you can get credit for a lock without needing to hit the deadly standup target. This is an illegal maneuver in competition play, and may not even be possible in many cases since the game is typically not supposed to initiate ball search mode while a flipper is being held.
During multiball, everything on the table is in play, and there are two multiball-specific scoring features.
The first is the jackpot. Collect the four suits by shooting the center ramp four times to earn the jackpot. For the first jackpot, the center ramp will always stay raised. After a jackpot is collected, the ramp will need to be re-raised with a center target hit each time a suit is collected. In arcade play, the jackpot starts at 500,000 points, increases by 5,000 with each upper playfield top lanes royal flush card collected, maxes out at 4,000,000, and resets to 500,000 when collected. If the game is set to competition mode, the jackpot will always be the full 4,000,000.
The second multiball specific feature is double scoring, which is activated for 20 seconds by hitting the standup target behind the gate en route to the lower playfield left saucer. This 2x scoring applies to everything in the game except for the jackpot.
There is absolutely no grace period during multiball. However, if you shoot a ball up the center ramp after the second ball in multiball has drained but before the ramp can lower itself, that shot will instantly count as ball 1 locked for the next multiball, which can then be started with just one more center target and one more center ramp.
Jokerz! has a conventional in/out lane setup. Out lanes score 25,000 points and 3 bonus advances. In lanes score 5,000 points and 1 bonus advance. The left in lane lights the right saucer for Draw Poker, and also lights the right spinner if Draw Poker was already lit.
The extra ball that is lit by reaching the flashing bonus multiplier threshold can be lit at any in or out lane, and is moved between the four in either direction with flipper lane change.
Each ball starts with 10,000 points of base bonus. Top lanes on both playfields, drop targets, and in lanes all give 1 bonus advance. The center standup target and out lanes give 3 bonus advances. Completions of the B-E-T lower playfield top lanes increase the bonus multiplier by 1x at a time. Max bonus is 7x 99,000 = 693,000 points. There is no way to hold base bonus or bonus multiplier for future balls, and there is no mid-ball bonus collect.
Reaching the flashing bonus multiplier lights an extra ball at the in/out lanes. This is usually 4x bonus the first time, and 7x bonus (or the feature may be disabled outright) after the first extra ball has been collected.
In competition/novelty play, specials are listed to be worth 100,000 points. Extra balls cannot have a point value.
The time limit for Million Round can be anywhere from 4 to 99 seconds. Common values are 8, 10, 12 (default), or 15 seconds.
The time limit for Double Yer Score can be anywhere from 1 to 99 seconds. Common values are 10, 15, 20 (default), or 25. It is not possible to disable the functionality where the time limit decreases by 5 seconds for each 1,000,000 points the player has scored. The manual says that the minimum time is always 10 seconds, so I don't actually know what happens if a value less than 10 is programmed into this setting. Most notably for tournaments, however, Double Yer Score can be disabled entirely.
The time limit for 2x playfield scoring during multiball can be set to anywhere from 1 to 99 seconds, or off. Common values are 10 or 20 (default) seconds. If set to Off, all scoring for the rest of multiball will be doubled after the target behind the one way gate is hit.
Royal flush cards and Jester hat bells can be set not to carry over from ball to ball.
Center ramp suits can be held in memory. This would make it possible to work toward the Jackpot across multiple multiballs. By default this is not the case.
The center ramp may lower itself after each ball on hardest settings.
During multiball, the center ramp can be always up (easy), always up until one jackpot is collected (medium), or always be down after a suit is collected (hard). Default is medium.
The amount that the jackpot increases by with each royal flush top lanes card earned can be set to anywhere from 1,000 to 99,000. Common values are 5,000 (default), 10,000, or 20,000.
The bonus multiplier extra ball can be lit at anywhere form 2x to 7x, or disabled altogether.
The Jester Bell special can be lit after anywhere from 1 to 5 completions of the royal flush upper playfield top lanes. Default is 4. This feature cannot be turned off.
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