Game of the Week – September 9, 2009

For reasons that remain unclear to me, immediately after PAPA 12, I became
obsessed with Corvette. I don’t believe Corvette was a hugely successful
title, nor do I remember caring much for it when it was in the arcade,
for several reasons. Now, I’m going to blog about it, and I’m mostly going
to complain, despite my obsession.

First, I’m naturally biased against kickbacks. I don’t think any pinball
machine can include a kickback and still qualify as “great”. I find the
necessary playfield layout for a kickback to be a huge, unfair drain
opportunity, and the relights are usually ridiculously difficult. In my
opinion, worrying about the kickback is an unpleasant distraction from
just playing the damn pinball game. (Also, on Corvette, it sometimes takes
two hits to relight the kickback, but there’s no way of knowing this until
you find out the hard way.)

Second, the LT-5 engine is a pretty useless gimmick, which I’ve since
learned can also be a technician’s nightmare. “Rev Mode” is especially
egregious – you’re supposed to flip repeatedly to keep the ball bouncing
back and forth as a preamble to Multiball. This idea simply doesn’t
work very well, and even when it does seem to be working well, the game
often just arbitrarily ends the mode.

Third, some of the features are useless – a bank of Turbo Boost targets
that light a central spinner, which is almost as unshootable as the Pit
Stop next to it, for slightly more points than the spinner normally awards.
Also, there’s a Million target to the left of the engine, and a RAUCOUS
target below the side ramp, which is lit by the side orbit, and the letters
just add to your bonus. It feels like these features could have been
replaced with something more significant to gameplay.

But worst of all, in my opinion anyhow, is that the main Multiball isn’t worthwhile!
Sure, at PAPA 12, collecting locks and starting Multiball was pretty much all the players did, and it gives you plenty of Skill Shots, but the Jackpots are fairly difficult and not especially valuable. When I put up my personal best of 8.2 billion points a couple of weeks after PAPA 12, I only had one regular Multiball, and really it was a distraction from shooting the right ramp (Route 66) and collecting racetrack combos, which max out at 99,000,000 each – more than the default Jackpot values, and the combos are always available.

Now, the positive. The game does have a nice flow on most shots, which
makes the combos really fun, and the right ramp, difficult as it is, is
satisfying and rewarding. In fact, if you have the ball on the left
flipper, you’re always going to want to shoot the right ramp, assuming
you don’t have to worry about relighting the stupid kickback. The game is
solidly built and Puzzle Multiball is definitely worthwhile. You can
expect to see Corvette featured in future PAPA competitions.

IPDB listing: IPDB.org
Rulesheet: Pinball Archive