There are two major strategies to the game: multiball, or city modes.
For multiball, hit Ted's bulldozer mouth guard to advance through days of the week; at Friday, lock is lit. Lock two balls in the left lane, then lock the third in Ted's mouth. During multiball, jackpots alternate between Ted's mouth and Red's mouth.
For city modes, shoot ramps and loops to gain miles until the game tells you that Start City is lit, then shoot the Start City hole or the Blast hole. Bumper hits switch which city is lit; the goal is to make it to the West Coast, not play every city.
The skill shot is a very short precise-power plunge into the back of the Blast hole, as pointed to by the arrow on the playfield. The skill shot scores 5,000,000 points and 75 miles toward the next city, plus one additional award, which is either Start City, Souvenir, or Light Flying Rocks, depending on game settings. The skill shot is available at any time and is not limited to just when a ball is plunged. Skill shots after the first score 5,000,000 more points than the previous, up to a max of 25,000,000.
Everything in the game awards some number of Miles. The biggest sources of miles are the lower left loop (150 miles), either ramp (100 miles), the right loop (75 miles), the Blast hole and Start City (75 miles), and the left lock lane (50 miles plus 5 miles per spin). After collecting 400 miles, Start City is lit, and the next city mode can be started at the Start City scoop or the Blast hole.
At first, your two options are New York and Miami. After playing one of the two, your options will be one of the next 2 cities travelling from east to west. Which of the two you will play alternates whenever a bumper or standup target of the other city's colour is hit. For example, New York (white) is lit by default, but hitting the orange bumper or any orange target will switch it to Miami (orange). The lone exception to this are the three West Coast cities (Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles)- any of the three can be selected if you make it that far. Starting any mode scores 5,000,000 points directly.
There are 18 possible city modes in total, so get ready for a very long list of bullet points as I describe what each mode is, from east to west. Mentioned within each city's description is a Magic Target: this is the target that a ball will hit if it is allowed to roll out of the lock shot and hit the post below the upper left flipper without using said flipper. It's hidden from view unless you lean forward and look closely at the area just below the lock lane entrance. This Magic Target does cool things once per mode in basically every city, so make the lock shot in a pinch.
The final three modes in the list- Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco- are the West Coast modes. They do not have a Magic target award, because instead, they are the key to Super Payday, the game's wizard mode. During a West Coast mode, lock 1 ball at the standard lock lane in the upper left to get a new ball in the plunger, then lock a 2nd ball at the lock lane, Start City, or the Blast Zone before the mode runs out to start Super Payday.
Super Payday is a 4-ball multiball. During Super Payday:
When no mode is running, hitting the Bulldozer in front of Ted's mouth advances the day of the week. Make it to Friday, and a lock will be lit at the upper left lane, just below/left of the left ramp. Locking a ball scores 10,000 points times the total number of miles earned on the current ball. Lock 2 balls here, and Ted will fall asleep with his mouth hanging open. If you've played Funhouse, you know what to do: make Ted eat the ball to start multiball.
Jackpots alternate between Ted's open mouth and Red's mouth. The bulldozer will move up and down constantly, blocking Ted's mouth some of the time. The jackpot starts at 40,000,000 points. Hit the bulldozer to raise the jackpot by 5,000,000 points, up to a maximum of 75,000,000. Keep alternating between the two for as long as multiball is running.
For the first multiball, advancing to Friday once lights both locks, and the max jackpot is 75,000,000. For the second multiball, the day of the week must be advanced to Friday once for each lock, and the max jackpot is 100,000,000. For the third multiball, it takes 2 hits to the bulldozer to advance a single day, and Friday must be reached for each lock separately; this time, the max jackpot is 125,000,000. Multiballs after the third continue this trend: it takes one more hit to the bulldozer to advance each day, and the max jackpot is 25,000,000 more than in the previous multiball. The jackpot value does carry over between multiballs.
Hitting the bulldozer in front of Ted when a lock is already lit scores the Overtime award, which starts at 1,100,000 and increases by 100,000 on each subsequent Overtime. If there is a max Overtime value it is at least 1,800,000. Locking a ball resets the Overtime value.
Souvenirs are collected by making a Skill Shot, from Bob's Freebie Wheel award, or from Bob's Souvenir Bunker at the lock shot. The Bunker is lit by making the far right in lane, but can only be collected if Lock is not lit and a mode is not running; souvenirs from the Bunker must be bought with points, and you can decline the offer, whereas the Skill Shot and Bob's Freebie souvenirs are free. Some souvenirs correspond to certain cities; if you have a souvenir for a city you played, you will receive 10,000,000 points in end of ball bonus, which can be multiplied by the standard bonus multiplier and by the number of that souvenir you have, since it's possible to collect more than one. Souvenirs can also be sold during Albuquerque's Trading Post mode: the racially insensitive Native American caricature will let you sell all of your souvenirs for points equal to the sum of their buy prices times the current bonus multiplier.
The list of souvenirs, their buy price, and the city they correspond to is as follows:
The following souvenirs are able to be sold in Albuquerque but do not correspond with a city:
The following three souvenirs are very rare and expensive; they cannot be sold at Albuquerque, instead providing the player an instant major award:
When entering Bob's Bunker, the sign on the front of the building on the DMD can have many different displays. If it is advertising Uranium Ore for $3 a Chunk, hit both flippers to start Construction Mania. This forfeits your ability to buy a souvenir on that trip, but instead you get a 20-second frenzy mode with all targets in the game worth 3,000,000 points each.
Hitting either ramp when Bridge Out is not lit sends the ball to the near right in lane. The left in lane lights the right ramp's Bridge Out, and the near right in lane lights the left ramp's Bridge Out. Making a Bridge Out ramp lights the Wheel and advances the bonus multiplier, alongside shifting each ramp's diverters: A Bridge Out left ramp goes to the left in lane, and a Bridge Out right ramp goes around the back of the game and drops the ball off in front of the mini-flipper in the lower left loop. The max bonus multiplier is 6x, but once per game, an extra ball can be lit by making one more Bridge Out ramp after already reaching 6x bonus. If you visit Albuquerque on the same ball as when you light an extra ball in this manner, you can sell your souvenirs back for 7x value instead of 6!
The Wheel is a group of 12 awards seen at the top of the table. To light the wheel, advance the bonus multiplier by making any Bridge Out shot. Collect the wheel value by shooting the lock shot or the Blast hole. Which Wheel award is lit rotates one position with each spin of the spinner or each bumper hit. Once a Wheel award is collected, it cannot be picked up again until after all 12 have been earned. There is no bonus for collecting all 12 Wheel awards. The list of awards is:
During Las Vegas, the Wheel will constantly be spinning, and any award other than Bad Weather can be collected by making the lock shot, even if it's in award you already got on the current run through the Wheel.
During Super Payday wizard mode, the lock shot and Blast hole are always lit for Wheel until the multiball ends.
The Blast value starts at 1,000,000 points and is increased by exactly 208,430 with each bumper hit, up to a maximum of 10,000,000. To light the Blast targets, shoot the Blast hole just above these targets with the left mini-flipper. To light the Blast targets for 2x Blast, shoot the lower left loop and then hit a Blast target with the mini flipper. To score a 3x Blast, shoot the right ramp when lit for Bridge Out, then hit a Blast target from the mini flipper. To score a Super Blast, shoot the lower left loop or right Bridge Out ramp, then shoot the Blast hole just above the targets instead. The first Super Blast scores 5,000,000 points, and subsequent Super Blasts score 5,000,000 more, up to a maximum of 25,000,000.
Regardless of the multiplier on a Blast shot, credit for one Blast is given. Making certain numbers of Blasts lights other awards. At 3, 20, 40, 60, and every 20 Blasts after that, Flying Rocks is lit. At 8 and 50 Blasts, Extra Ball is lit. At 25 Blasts, the out lane specials are lit. (The EB and Special numbers can vary widely based on machine settings.)
Shoot the upper right loop, which enters between Red and Ted and exits into the bumpers, to light one additional Flying Rocks award. When Flying Rocks is lit, shoot the left ramp, and the ball will be diverted into a separate plunge lane on the left. There are 4 possible awards here depending on the power of the left flipper plunge. From near to far, they are:
The extra ball can only be collected once per game. At first, only 5x Blast is lit, and upper right loop shots must be made to light more awards. If your Flying Rocks shot does not hit Ted, you will receive 10,000,000 for a lit award, and 5,000,000 for an unlit one.
Any time the ball is kicked out of the lock, you can use the upper flipper to shoot at Red for Big Millions. This scores 5,000,000 points the first time and an additional 1,000,000 each subsequent time, up to a maximum of 25,000,000 (and it's good practice for the second jackpot). After a certain number of Big Millions hits (starts at 6, but can be much more depending on how many times it's been won), Red will award a one-time Cheeseburger Bonus of 20,000,000 points.
Road Show has a conventional in/out lane setup, with two in lanes on the right instead of one. The out lanes are lit alternately for a Special by the Wheel, buying the gold pinball, getting 25 Blasts, or starting Super Payday. Only one special can be lit at a time; the out lanes are never lit together, and if a second Lite Special is awarded while the first one is still lit, the second one will effectively be lost.
The left in lane lights the right ramp for Bridge Out. The near right in lane lights the left ramp for Bridge Out. The far right in lane lights the lock shot for Bob's Bunker, where a souvenir can be bought.
Bonus is scored as 2,000,000 points for each city mode played, plus 10,000,000 points for each souvenir collected that corresponds to a city mode that has been played, plus 1,000 points times the number of miles collected on the current ball only, plus 200,000 points for each blast made in the game so far. All of this is added together and multiplied by the bonus X, which is incremented toward the maximum of 6x every time a Bridge Out ramp is made. If you have a good bonus multiplier and a couple of souvenir-city matches, bonus can be extremely valuable, on the order of several million points for sure.
The manual indicates that Specials score 1,000,000 points when set to a score award, but I am nearly certain this is incorrect- 1 million is far too few points to be meaningful, and the Jackbot manual from around this time says the same thing when Specials are actually worth 500,000,000 in that game. I would expect a Special on Road Show, then, to score between 100,000,000 and 250,000,000 points, but have not been able to verify this number. Extra balls cannot be set to a point value.
The game can be set to start on any day of the week, including Friday, which would mean multiball locks are lit at the start of the game. There is also a setting that allows for the first multiball to have the advance-to-Friday-for-each-lock rule, instead of that feature starting with the 2nd multiball.
2 Bridge Out ramps can be required to light the next Wheel award instead of 1. Also, the Wheel can be reset at the start of each ball, instead of building over the course of the game.
The number of Miles required to light Start City can be set to anywhere from 100 to 1,000: default is 400.
There is a "longer path" setting that forces players to play more cities before reaching the west coast. I believe that turning this on is what forces only the 2 closest cities to be eligible for the next mode, rather than 3, which would be the next closest westward city of each colour.
The first Blast extra ball can be set to between 5 and 10 Blasts. The second Blast extra ball, and the Blast Special, change drastically based on the percentage of games that have won EBs or specials in the machine's history.
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