Scoring is so balanced and mechanics are so interconnected on Twilight Zone that a quick summary is difficult. Two things you should know how to do well are shoot the Piano from the upper left flipper (it's both a mode start shot and the jackpot shot) and make a left ramp -> right ramp combo to light both mode start holes and spell Gumball. Completing Gumball lights lock in a narrow lane just right of the right ramp. The pop bumpers are very dangerous since they like to lead to both center and out lane drains due to being so close to the lower flippers.
The skill shot is a very soft precise power plunge where the goal is to get as close as you can to the scoop at the end of the lane without falling in it. Making it to the Red scores 2,000,000 points and advances one bumper; making it to the Orange scores 5,000,000 and advances two bumpers; making it to the Yellow scores 10,000,000 and advances three bumpers. Making it to any of the three puts the ball into the Rocket, where it's then shot across the playfield into the Hitchhiker's lane before falling into the pop bumpers. If you miss the skill shot too long and fall in the hole, you get a mere 1,000,000 points, and the ball is kicked out of the Slot Machine scoop in the front right.
Given how dangerous the pop bumpers can be on Twilight Zone with their tendency to whip the ball into the left out lane or the center drain, it may be worth it on some machines to avoid the skill shot entirely, intentionally shoot the hole, and get control of the ball out of the slot machine kickout instead.
Around the outside of the Door graphic in the middle of the playfield are 14 door panels corresponding to this game's modes. There are two ways to start a Door Panel: shoot the Piano from the upper left flipper, or the Slot Machine from either lower flipper, when they are lit. The Piano is lit by the left ramp if it was not lit already, and starts the currently flashing door panel (which rotates with each pop bumper hit). The Slot Machine is lit by the right ramp and starts a random door panel, not always the lit one. Shooting the Piano or Slot Machine when they are not lit awards Odd Change: this gives a random amount of score, which can occasionally be a few million points but is less than 100,000 more often than not.
Starting at the top left corner and going clockwise, the 14 door panel modes are:
Multiple Door Panel modes can be lit or running at once. Playing all 14 door panels qualifies the ? on the doorknob; this is Lost in the Zone, the game's wizard mode, discussed later. Be mindful of which modes you've played and whether or not their scoring is counted in your bonus when deciding how much to nudge the game.
The center panels of the door- Gum, Ball, Lock 1, and Lock 2- are just to show the player's progress toward multiball.
Shoot the left ramp to light Gum. Shoot the right ramp to light Ball. Completing Gumball lights a lock just to the right of the right ramp and also lights the right orbit for Load Gumball. You can't work on spelling Gumball again until the lit lock is made. After locking 1 ball, you can either start multiball at the left ramp with a base jackpot of 15,000,000, or you can lock a second ball to increase the starting jackpot all the way to 40,000,000.
For the second multiball, spelling Gumball only lights 1 lock, and a second Gumball must be completed to light lock 2; also, the left ramp no longer starts multiball at all. For the third multiball, you need to spell Gumball a third time after locking two balls to light the lock shot for Release.
During multiball, the 5 Million standups around the game each increase the jackpot by 5,000,000 points. Collect the jackpot at the Piano shot from the upper left flipper. After collecting a jackpot, relight it at the Camera, a shot from the upper right flipper that requires holding up the left flipper as well to shoot behind it. Multiple jackpots are available; each one starts at the previous jackpot's base value plus 10,000,000. If you shoot the Spiral orbit during multiball from either direction, a magnet will stop the ball on the left side if Jackpot is lit or on the right side of the jackpot needs to be relit, allowing for an upper flipper shot to the desired target at a controlled speed.
If no jackpots are collected, multiball can be restarted (with 3 balls, and carrying over the jackpot value from the initial multiball) by shooting the Lock shot within 12 seconds.
The upper right flipper or the Rocket kickout put the ball into the Hitchhiker lane. This scores 1 Hitchhiker. Hitchhikers are worth 500,000 points toward the end of ball bonus, and give an additional 2,000,000 award if the Hitchhiker door panel has been played on the current ball. If you shoot the left spiral (just left of the left ramp) and combo that into a Hitchhiker lane shot, you receive a Triple Pickup worth 3 Hitchhikers. Also, one of the Camera awards is 10 Hitchhikers. When you reach 3 Hitchhikers or any multiple of 10 over the course of the game, the right ramp is lit for Battle the Power. (The Battle the Power door panel also lights the right ramp in this way instantly.)
Shooting the right ramp when The Power is lit drops the ball in the weird-looking upper playfield, fittingly called the Powerfield. Here, the large circles are actually magnets that you operate with the flipper buttons. The Powerfield score starts at 5,000,000 points and increases by 500,000 each time you hit a wall (or 750,000 or 1,000,000, if you've defeated the Power once or twice in the game already). If you use the magnet "flippers" to put the ball in the hole at the top, the Powerfield score is doubled, and you're instantly awarded the next Door Panel mode. After 10 seconds, or if the ball drains out of the bottom of the Powerfield before the time runs out, the round ends. Powerfield scoring is added to your total score in the end-of-ball bonus, not immediately.
Any shot to the left ramp or the lock shot scores a Robot. At 8 and 45 robots, extra ball is lit at the lock shot. At every multiple of 10 robots, the Camera is lit. The Camera can also be instantly lit by the Door Panel award.
The Camera is a shot with the upper right flipper. It is an almost impossibly tight shot on its own; however, if you hold up the left flipper to get it out of the way, the width of the shot increases dramatically. When the Camera is not lit, it will advance one bumper. When it is lit, it will give one of the following eight awards:
When you collect a Camera award, the game shows you what the next one will be. The awards are given in a random order, but you won't see an award duplicate until after you collect all 8 of them.
One of the balls in the Gumball machine is white. This is the Powerball, a ceramic pinball that's about 30% lighter by weight than a standard steel pinball. If you shoot the right orbit to load a Gumball and the Powerball comes out, the Powerball mode begins. While this ball is on the playfield, pretty much everything except Battle the Power is in play, with a 10,000,000 Powerball Loop bonus on the orbits, but your main goal is to put the Powerball back in the gumball machine with another right orbit shot. The Powerball Payoff starts at 10,000,000 points, increases by 5,000,000 any time a 5 Million target is hit, and is collected if you successfully reload the Powerball. Once you do, Powerball Mania begins.
Powerball Mania is a 3-ball multiball (all 3 balls are steel, since the Powerball itself is safely tucked away in the gumball machine). The Powerball Mania mode score starts at 5,000,000, and for one revolution of the clock, every switch hit in the game adds 250,000 to the mode score. Once the clock ends, there's only one way to build it up further: shoot the right ramp to Battle the Power. During Powerball Mania, you only get 5 seconds of Powerfield time, but defeating the Power adds 50,000,000 to the Powerball Mania mode score! You can even get multiple balls into the Powerfield at once. After a 50,000,000 is collected, you must shoot the left ramp to light the right ramp before being able to access the Powerfield again. Powerball Mania's mode score- including all those 50,000,000 jackpots- is added in end-of-ball bonus, so definitely don't tilt away this ball.
There are two other things you can do with the Powerball other than reloading it to start Powerball Mania. Option 1: if the Powerball drains, it's now in the trough, and will eventually be kicked out at the start of a future ball. When this happens, that player gets to instantly start the Powerball mode for free. Option 2: if you lock the Powerball toward multiball, it will be one of the balls in play during multiball proper. If this happens, all orbits shot during that multiball score a 10,000,000 point Powerball Loop until the Powerball drains, and if you shoot the Powerball into the Piano when jackpot is lit, you score a double jackpot! It's usually not worth the trouble, but it's interesting anyway.
In many tournaments (or even just generally on location), the Gumball machine will be disabled, meaning no pinballs can enter or leave it. This permanently locks the Powerball out of the standard playfield. The compensation for this is that every 2nd time the gumball machine will be loaded, Powerball will begin, just with the regular steel ball instead. Downsides to disabling the Gumball machine include the fact that the double jackpot easter egg is unavailable and the fact that Lost in the Zone wizard mode will be just a 3-ball multiball instead of 6.
The Town Square value starts at 7,500,000 points at the beginning of each ball, unless the Hold Town Square award was collected from the Camera. Each bumper hit adds points to the Town Square value: 100,000 for an off bumper, 200,000 for a lit bumper, and 300,000 for a flashing bumper. To upgrade the bumpers, make a standard skill shot to advance up to 3 of them at once, or shoot the unlit Camera to advance a single bumper. All bumper lights reset between balls. The max Town Square value is 25,000,000.
To collect the Town Square value, shoot between the bumpers up to a hidden saucer in the back corner of the game.
To collect a double Town Square value, make the above shot through the bumpers after having lit Dead End by rolling through the right in lane. The game also keeps track of the number of Dead Ends you've collected: 3 Dead Ends lights an extra ball, and the 8th Dead End is also a Collect Bonus. If there's more than that, I haven't seen them.
A triple Town Square value can be collected, but only from one specific Camera award.
During single ball play and as long as a mode that uses the Clock target is not running, hitting the Clock target between the ramps lights one of the seven 5 Million targets around the game, which are worth 5,000,000 points one time, as you'd expect. Once per ball, you can collect a 10,000,000 point Clock Bonus by hitting this target when all 7 of the 5 Million targets are lit.
Shoot the right orbit or roll through the far left in lane to light the right orbit for a few seconds. Shoot the left orbit or roll through the right in lane to do the same for the left orbit. Shooting a lit orbit scores and advances the Spiral Value seen on the bottom of the table, which goes in the order of:
Subsequent Spiral awards after completing the sequence always give 10,000,000 points, and every other Spiral will also re-light Battle the Power. Progress on the Spiral sequence is carried over from ball to ball, unless the sequence was completed, in which case the whole ladder will reset and 2,000,000 will be flashing at the start of the next ball. On standard 3-ball settings, the first two awards will be spotted at game start, so your first Spiral award will be 4,000,000.
The following are Three way combos, worth 10,000,000 points:
The following are Four way combos, worth 20,000,000 points:
Secret Passage is my name for the hidden connector lane that runs from just below the Piano to the right orbit, setting up an upper right flipper shot. On many Twilight Zones, a right orbit shot that is not caught by a magnet will bounce off a raised upper left flipper directly into the Secret Passage lane.
After playing all 14 door panel modes, the next shot that would start a door panel begins Lost in the Zone. This is a timed multiball with unlimited ball save for its duration; it is normally a 6-ball multiball, but this is lowered to only 3 balls if the Gumball machine is disabled. During Lost in the Zone:
Everything is lit! Go to town. (Not literally, since the Town Square is a real thing on the table...never mind.) The Powerball is part of Lost in the Zone, but I don't think Powerball Loop is an available score opportunity. The DMD will try to tell you that the time limit is 25 seconds, but it counts down much more slowly than once per second; typically 50-55 seconds is the real length. Just hit as many everythings as you can! When the time runs out, the flippers die and all balls are allowed to drain; you'll be paid off for all your Lost in the Zone awards while the game auto-plunges three balls into the Gumball machine again. You'll be shown all your points from Hitchhikers, Odd Change, Town Square Madness, Greed targets, the Super Slot, Left Ramps, Clock Millions, Powerball Mania, and a partridge in a pear tree. The game keeps track of Lost in the Zone-specific points, and has a separate leaderboard for it that you can be champion of! Then you're fed a new ball and everything starts over. Lost in the Zone should pretty much always be worth at least 250,000,000 points.
Twilight Zone has a conventional in/out lane setup, but with two in lanes on the left side instead of one. The left out lane is lit for Extra Ball, and the right out lane is lit for Special, by the corresponding awards from the Camera or the Super Skill Shot.
The far left in lane lights the right orbit for a Spiral.
The near left in lane, which is where the left ramp most commonly returns the ball, lights the Slot Machine for a random Door Panel.
The right in lane lights the shot between the bumpers for Dead End (stays on until collected), but also temporarily lights the left orbit for a Spiral award and temporarily lights the left ramp for Advance Bonus X.
A key feed on this game is when the ball comes out of the Slot Machine. Experiment/practice to see what the best way to get the ball under control is. A common answer is to deadbounce the ball off the right flipper for a trap on the left, but some games set up easy may just allow you to hold the right flipper up and trap the ball straight away. Of course, live and drop catches are available. Post transfers, while rarely necessary, are of easy-to-moderate difficulty.
Bonus is calculated as 500,000 points for each Hitchhiker collected in the game, plus 500,000 points for each Door Panel played during the game, all multiplied by the bonus multiplier; then, all scoring from modes is added, including Powerfield, Powerball Mania, Greed, Clock Chaos, Clock Millions, and Town Square Madness (but not Lost in the Zone, thankfully). General rule of thumb: don't tilt if you played a mode. Bonus can easily be worth 100,000,000 points or more after a mode or two is thrown in. Bonus multiplier cannot be carried from ball to ball. I believe max bonus X is 5X. Bonus can be collected mid-ball at the 8th Dead End or by the corresponding Camera award.
In competition/novelty play, specials score 30,000,000 points. Extra balls do not appear to have a point value.
The maximum number of extra balls a player can collect can be set from 1-10, or EBs can be off. If EBs are off or if the player has reached the maximum allowable number of extra balls, the Light Extra Ball door panel will be spotted after Lost in the Zone is played.
The ramp extra balls can be set from 3-12 (default 8) and 30-70 (default 45). The Dead End extra ball can be set from 2-7 (default 3).
The last multiball in which left ramp can start multiball at all or left ramp can start 1-lock multiball, as well as the first multiball to require additional spelling of Gumball for lock 2 or the release, can be adjusted.
Making a yellow Skill Shot can spot the 10,000,000 door panel. Lighting Battle the Power in gameplay from Hitchhikers or the Spiral can spot the Battle Power door panel. Spelling Gumball from the left or right ramps can spot the Lite Gumball door panel. By default, the first of these is true, but the others are not.
The Piano and Slot Machine are lit at the start of each ball, by default. This can be changed to being lit for free only at the start of the game, or never being lit for free with or without memory.
The number of robots required to light the Camera can be set from 6-15 (default 10).
Battle the Power can be set to be lit for free at the start of each game.
The out lanes can be set to both be lit at once rather than alternating with pop bumper hits.
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