The Wiggler is surprisingly complex and interconnected for a game of its era. The saucers on the right are locks for multiball; the points listed near those saucers are only awarded when balls are released and multiball begins. The blue mushroom bumper zips the flippers together, unless there is at least one ball locked, in which case it releases balls for multiball. Yellow mushroom bumpers change the value of the Wiggle Alley (zigzaggy lane entered from the far upper left) and the Wigglesville (side lane directly above the left out lane), as well as possibly qualifying the right out lane gate. As a strategy, zip the flippers together with the blue mushroom bumper, let the ball rest on the tips of both flippers, and then hit one flipper button immediately after the other to safely shoot at the Wiggle Alley or one of the lock saucers.
All three top lanes score 10 points be default. In the top funnel area of the table, a light will be on next to one of the two wall rubbers. There are switches behind these rubbers that score 1 point. Hitting the switch with the lit playfield insert next to it will light the center top lane for 200 points instead of 10. This center top lane will stay lit until the end of the current turn, even if you get additional plunges by way of locking balls for multiball. The left and right top lanes never change from their 10-point values.
The yellow bumpers always score 1 point and the blue bumpers always score 10 points.
The blue mushroom bumper will zip the flippers together, unless there is currently one or more balls locked, in which case it will start multiball by releasing those balls.
The yellow mushroom bumpers do the following things:
Unlit rollover buttons score 10 points. Lit rollover buttons score the displayed value: 100, then 100, then 100, then 200. Hit either yellow mushroom bumper to light the next rollover button. Possible score values for the Wiggle Alley as a whole are 40, 130, 220, 310, or 500 points. Advancing the value of the Wiggle Alley will light the Opens Gate When Lit rollover button in the lower right of the game. Traversing Wiggle Alley when the Opens Gate When Lit rollover button is lit will also open the gate. Going through the Wiggle Alley when it is lit for the full 500 points will completely unlight it, and also close the right out lane gate if it was already open. The Wiggle Alley is supposed to reset its value at the start of each ball, but this does not seem to be implemented in the VPX version of the game.
Two saucers in the upper right of the table are always able to lock balls. When a ball is locked, a new one will be fed to the plunger immediately. To release balls for multiball, hit the blue mushroom bumper. If there are balls to release, the blue mushroom bumper will NOT close the zipper flippers; instead, it will only serve as a multiball start. Hitting the blue mushroom bumper again, however, will allow the flippers to be zipped together during multiball. The point values listed in front of the lock saucers are only scored when a ball is released from that saucer, so you get 100 points for starting 2-ball multiball from the lower saucer; 200 points for starting 2-ball multiball from the upper saucer; and 300 points for starting any 3-ball multiball.
There is a fifth set of score reels on the backglass of the game, with the digits labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the display as a whole labelled "Wiggle Jet Super Bonus". When a player starts any multiball, the digit of this display corresponding to their player number will increase by 1. I believe that when you start multiball a 4th, 7th, or 9th time, you are supposed to receive either a special or an additional score bonus equal to the current Wigglesville value. However, this does not seem to be included in the VPX rendition of the table, and I have been unable to confirm how this works on a real machine.
Balls can be relocked during multiball. Relocking a ball is effectively the same as draining a ball during multiball. If one ball gets relocked and another ball gets drained in quick succession or vice versa, watch the backglass closely to see if the game registered the drain or the relock last. If the drain was registered before the relock, your turn will continue, but if the relock registered first and then the ball drained, your turn will end. This is largely an issue in multiplayer games, especially for tournaments.
Locked balls are never kicked out on their own. If a ball is locked, it will stay there between players, between balls, and between games until it is kicked out via the blue mushroom bumper.
This is a side lane on the left immediately above the left out lane. The rollover switch in this lane is cut off, so the ball cannot travel up through the lane. The Wigglesville is worth either 100, 300, or 500 points, with the value rotating each time the left yellow mushroom bumper is hit. On some copies of The Wiggler, a post has been placed at the very left edge of the game between Wigglesville and the left out lane, giving players a chance to nudge the ball back into play. However, this was not a feature on the original table, where Wigglesville unavoidably drops the ball into the left out lane.
As discussed in the previous section, the instruction card for the game implies that the Wigglesville value should be scored after starting a certain number of multiballs, but I have not seen this feature in action on any physical or virtual version of the machine.
There are no in lanes. The flippers back up directly to the slingshots. The flippers are zipper flippers, which can be "zipped" together to block the center drain by hitting the blue mushroom bumper when no balls are locked. One shotmaking strategy in this game is to zip the flippers together, then let the ball rest in the middle of the table on their tips. If you press the two flipper buttons on quick succession, you can make relatively consistent shots to most of the table's major features; press the right flipper immediately followed by the left to send the ball toward the Wiggle Alley, and press the left flipper immediately followed by the right to send the ball toward the lock saucers. The closer together you press the two flipper buttons, the more straight-up the ball's trajectory will be.
There is a gate in the right out lane that directs the ball back to the shooter lane. To light it, hit a yellow bumper when the Wiggle Alley's value is not maxed out. To open the gate, go through the Wiggle Alley or roll over the button in the lower right of the playfield when lit. Going through the gate, collecting a 500-point Wiggle Alley, or collecting a 200 point skill shot will close the gate if it is open.
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