As I got my new phone while I was in the hospital I figured I'd look for something to make the time pass that wasn't considered work. With newer phones being a bit more evolved and able to handle games that require better hardware I was first thinking of the usual first person shooters but then I also had a bigger screen now. As I was checking through the playstore on what looked cool, getting spammed by ads to test the new Clash on Clans or Coin King or whatever they're called, those ads are so annoying, I came up with something I hadn't played in a very long time; Pinball!
At one point I used to play PinOut which estethically looks amazing and has this "moving forward" idea that I loved, unfortunately they stopped building on the game and with only 8 levels (or was it 6) it got a bit boring in the end. Here's what it looks like, can recommend giving it a try if you're into these kind of games:
So I started downloading a few different pinball games and then landed upon Williams Pinball and while I wasn't a big fan of the way they let you unlock new tables, I think they were trying on forcing players to buy them (which is fine) but the one table that you got to play for free as the starting one was Attack from Mars. And damn did this one get me hooked! I wasn't able to record me playing on the phone, didn't even try cause once I got home I had to do some more researching about the table, but this is what it looks like on the phone uploaded by a youtuber called BlahCade Podcast:
During the couple weeks I was still staying there I started playing it for a bit daily and I think I managed to get to 11 billion points on the phone. One thing that annoyed me there were the tilt settings, as in being able to push the table if you see it going to the sides which some times is unavoidable and some times the tilt makes it go there even if it wasn't. The fact that you could use gyroscope but having to either move the phone on the side real quick was not a good solution and I couldn't get into it. The other options were to touch the screen but that only worked if it was above half of the screen and moving my thumbs from all the way down on the screen close to the flippers quickly to the top was also very difficult and I never got into it so I just played without tilt being an option to save my ass now and then.
While looking for some tricks & tips online I realize that this table exists on real Pinball Machines as well and they had just remade it for the app which was really cool, and then I also realized it exists for the PC as well. When I got home first thing I did was download Pinball FX3 but Attack from Mars was not one of the free to play tables there. I really wanted to test this on the PC as well though and figured maybe it could be cool to also stream this in the near future as it's something a bit unique I don't see many others playing (maybe there's a reason for that) but I think it's a really cool and addictive game. So I purchased the volume with Attack from Mars on and honestly I haven't even tested the other two tables that came with it cause I've been too busy playing this table whenever I find the time to game a little.
I decided to record a couple attempts and upload them to youtube, they are recorded in 1440p and 60fps so you might enjoy looking at the gameplay a little more than the phone version of the game. Here's the video of my best attempt during this (not in the beginning my high score is 25 billion (it shows it on the pinball screen)):
Here is a video that shows you how brutal this table can be, had a pretty perfect run without losing any balls up to 4 billion and then lost all 3 in a matter of a couple minutes:
Alright so here's some info about the table, what I usually try and how I play:
There are a lot of things that can happen here, I'm not gonna go look at a guide and write down exactly all of them but I'll just say some of the important ones that come to mind as I'm writing this.
In the middle, the 3 lit up lights are the barrier, you need to hit it thrice for the door to come down and then you can shoot the UFO (although I guess it is indentified in this case cause it belongs to the Martians), the amount of times you need to hit it increases with every city, once you shoot it down it will eat the ball and drop it back from the left side after the animation is over and then you move onto the next city at random.
The green walls with the word MARTIAN from left, up and to the right will enable the "Martian Attack" mode, the 4 martians will start to rattle and you're goal is to hit one of the 4 different spots once to make them stop rattling, once that is done you get another ball on the table and you attempt to hit as many martians as possible for a big bonus.
Left arrow goes around and drops into the bumpers to give you extra point and then comes out of the hole on the right side of the letter "I" in MARTIAN, that is also where you want to shoot when the yellow light is lit as it will trigger one of many events, the martian lite attack I discussed above being one of them. Others are 25-50 M points, remove the lightlock from the 3rd arrow from the left, strobe multiball which will give you an extra ball if you hit the barrier in the middle 10 times in a row as long as you have more than one of the 4 balls still on the table during it and many more things.
The 2nd arrow from the left doesn't do anything special, goes around and lands back on your left flipper, giving you a lot of points, though, and filling up the other circles under the "arrow".
3rd one is the multiball arrow, depending on how far into the game you are or how many cities you've already saved the light lock will need to be opened more often so that the next shot in there locks your ball. On the 3rd lock you start Multiball, 4 balls on the table at once, with some extra time in the beginning with the "Return to Battle" light above your flippers being lit meaning if you lose balls while that is on they'll return to the table. During multiball the Jackpot lights will be lit on all 5 arrows, your goal is to hit them all once and then there is a moving super jackpot that starts from the first arrow and moves to the next one after a few seconds.
4th arrow, the "cow" one will drop the ball down to your right flipper and give you the best chance to hit the 3rd one for multiball and at the same time the other left arrows are way easier to hit from that side obviously. One thing I have noticed in this game though is that it is a lot more safe to hit the barrier with the right flipper as with the left one it more often seems to want to go straight down or onto the sides and get lost. Bear in mind that during multiball and many other events you can't destroy the barriers, so always try and get them down first so that you can still destroy the UFO easier with multiball.
5th one is pretty similar to the first one, drops it down in the bumpers unless all lights are lit on the arrow which does the "around the world" thing instead where it goes straight around it and lands on your left flipper.
Posting the image again due to text length
This is just a very small fraction of everything going on in this table, it's a masterpiece (even though I haven't really played that many in total). Things such as having all lights lit on all arrows starts "Total Annihilation" which is another multiball but each arrow will give you a ton of points when being hit.
What I usually try and do is go and try to remove the first barrier without hitting the left light hole on the right of the UFO to save it for something else than removing the barriers, if I fail (the highest odds of you losing a ball is when you shoot in the middle) I can restart the game early without too much time gone by. Then after that I try and work in some ball locks so that next time the barrier is almost gone I can go for the multiball and save the 2nd city more safer with more balls. If things go well I'll have the barrier removed for the 3rd city and am ready to destroy the UFO with either total annihilation or another multiball. Remember that each UFO past each city takes more and more hits to get destroyed so always try working in a multiball to have ready for it. There are many ways to get an extra ball, even tho some of them don't happen again from what I've noticed, although I could be wrong as I haven't experienced end game that often but my best guess is that it's a one time thing. After the second city there will be a red light appearing under the yellow light "hole" that rewards you an extra ball, I don't think it happens after the 4th city again. Then there's strobe multiball, if you hit the middle barrier 10 times while you have more than 1 ball on the table you'll get an extra ball. Then there's the video mode where you have to shoot something close to 40 flying saucers down before they land and then defeat the big one, some times at random there's something else coming down from the sky that you can shoot down and it rewards you an extra ball but this doesn't seem to happen every time. So you can get at least 3 extra balls in total. Anyway, remember to try and mostly use the right flipper to hit the barrier and if it looks like it may fall down in the middle you have less than a second to tilt the table and hope it changes it's course (I'm very bad at using the tilt as I didn't use it at all on my phone).
Now end-game, I've only managed to get all 5 cities saved and access the "Attack Mars" light once, where I had to shoot the UFO 10 times in a row but it was rather easy cause it wouldn't just hit a barrier and bounce back but it would take your ball and drop it down onto your left flipper. How the game continues from there I have no idea as I haven't bothered checking other gameplay videos (yet) but I noticed on FX3 that the world record on Attack from Mars is 850 billion, so I'm only 825 billion points away!
Don't worry though, guys. I'm gonna take the record and make Hive famous! This is how we get mass adoption, right? By having our currencies name at the top of that list we're going to get so many newcomers to join! I'm sure it's fine the initials only fit three letters, I'll just leave out the "e" I doubt they'll have a problem figuring out what I mean.
Anyone up for beating my record? ;)