Nudge Circle of Honor Nominee: Jack*Bot
A deep cut nomination for Nudge’s most prestigious prize
Maybe you haven’t yet gotten to experience a Jack*Bot in person. Maybe you’re not familiar with this game at all. Maybe you’re wondering why there’s an asterisk in the game’s title. (I am as well.) Jack*Bot isn’t a particularly common game. A quick IPDB check shows that the third installment of the PINBOT series produced only 2,400 copies, compared to 12k for the original PINBOT and 8k for Bride of Pinbot. It’s a shame, because the first two games aren’t very fun. (If you need proof, go watch Eric Stone play Bride of Pinbot for days straight. Literally.)
But - Jack*Bot’s fun value is off the charts. This game is about playing casino games against Pinbot, and the Machine - or with them? It’s unclear. You get to “cheat” in your games by aggressively hammering the extra ball button and pulling aces out of your sleeve. (Editor’s note: this act is SO LEWD looking that I’ve given it the term “fingerblasting.” I take no pleasure in it, it’s simply the most accurate descriptor.) Or one of the robot’s sleeves, per the DMD’s animation. It’s still unclear. Maybe you’re a robot too. Who knows. But it’s fun as shit! In addition to “cheating,” why else is Jack*Bot worthy of dollar after dollar? (And, a pro tip - save your dollars by playing Casino Run first, and cash out some specials to keep playing for free. Gotta be economical, baby.)
Everybody loves to gamble
Gambling rules. There is a reason why casinos stay in business. This scratches that itch. This is gambling in an extremely low-stakes situation - you’re playing pinball, and you have the opportunity to double or nothing your piddly casino game points. Why not? Go for gold! Jack*Bot successfully taps into that reward mechanism of our brains whenever we have a good cheat or a boss Casino Run,. You know, without the real-world gambling realities of potentially losing your Trans-Am from betting on the Vikings.
The best part? Even though it’s inherently low stakes, you do start to sweat a bit in a good Casino Run after you’ve successfully killed off your first bomb - you know another one’s coming soon. How far are you gonna push it? Is 900 million, two specials, and lighting an extra ball enough? Probably not, and you’ll probably push it too far and lose everything. But getting that Casino Run champ is so, so tasty.
The best playfield validation rules in all of pinball
(Editor’s note: this is some serious nerd shit, so if you’re a normal person you can prob skip down a para or so. Respectfully.)
Jack*Bot has a standard ball save. Fine. You know how these work. But there is also another form of ball save, in the form of playfield validation. If you soft plunge just beyond the metal gate but do not trigger a switch - you have a total of three unique switches to play with before your playfield is validated. If you drain before the playfield is validated, you get a ball back in the plunger lane. For free! Theoretically, you could open your visor (assuming you missed your one crack to open it) by soft plunging, and hitting the same switch or two over and over until it opens. And if it goes down the middle, fine! It’s coming back! You have three switches! Once you see that display change from your skill shot values to your score, you know it’s time to stop farting around and actually play pinball.
It KILLS me to see players go for the vortex skill shot in competition. You’re throwing away what could be more than one free ball, in exchange for an attempt at 30 million or so and a terrible pops feed (which in addition to it feeding dangerously at the bottom, it can also kick up and over into the visor to screw up your multiball progress). It’s Jack*Bot blasphemy. I mean, you do you. But I’ll take what effectively amounts to extra balls every day of the week.
It’s easy to learn, hard to master
You don’t necessarily need to watch the half hour Bowen tutorial to learn this one though if you’re into it, you should watch. It’s one of his best. Sure, in some ways all games are easy to learn, hard to master, but this one really is especially simple — even for the era. Play multiball, or play casino modes for Casino Run. That’s it. There are absolutely some deep cut nuances - deciding on which casino games to save and use your cheats on, bobbling the plunger for some extra vortex millions when the ramp returns the ball to the shooter lane, probably some multiball stuff throughout Mega Visor that I don’t know of because I don’t get that far… but it doesn’t matter. Learn how to open the visor in one hit via the flashing vertical Keno line, and play multiballs. (If your Keno card is flashing all crazy and looks like an OTA TV channel with no signal, you blew it.) Or, play some casino games and mash the extra ball button in the saucer when you inevitably fuck up opening your visor. That’s kinda all you need to know.
The forbidden dance between man and pinball
Doc and I were at Expo and relatively deep into a shenanigans-filled evening, and at some point we split up. Who knows where he went, but I was playing Jackbot solo. This is after I’d also been hyping it up to Doc all weekend. Doc walks up during maybe THE most unfortunate moment. His eyes are wide with horror as he gets closer, finding me mid-Casino Run as I’m going eyehole, annihilating the extra ball button, then catching, and repeating every 5 seconds or so. (Editor’s note: I don’t know that Rick is doing a great job conveying the aggressive sexual nature of this act, but let me just say that it was, well, I didn’t look Rick in the eye for a while after this.)
Doc looks the game up and down for a second and says, “This sucks! This is it? And what are you doing to that extra ball button? It’s totally obscene.”
I’ll say this, it might be obscene — but only if you think about it in the wrong way, like Doc does. (Editor’s note: fair) If all you see is the motions, okay. But it’s about what’s behind those motions. It’s the magic. The fun. The gambling. The way the game inserts flirtatious robots. You know, the stuff dreams are made of. And that is why I nominate Jackbot to the Nudge Circle of Honor.
