Palace Guard

This is the add-a-ball version of Royal Guard. Scoring on it is different, but it’s still a “deferred UTAD” game.

The primary feature here is the moving center rail of four colored disk targets, blue, red, yellow and green. Each disk lights a feature of the same color in the upper playfield when hit. When the rail is on the left side, the hit target lights a stand-up target above; when the rail is to the right, it lights a bumper. Once lit, any of these stay lit for the rest of the game unless you get an extra ball from them (see below). Hitting one of the stand-up targets on the sides of the machine near the center rail shifts the rail back and forth.

Strategy: hit as many of the rail disk targets as you can to light upper playfield features. Once you’ve got most of the features lit, especially the stand-up targets, go UTAD. Nudge the ball when in the bumpers to try to direct it into any lit stand-ups. If the opportunity arises to nudge to get the ball to go up a top lane [A-E], by all means do it.

The ball will rarely drain directly from the upper playfield; it’s a tight angle to the sides, and a relatively small portion of the drop-downs from above go clean down the center without a chance to bounce them off a flipper or post. Most drains happen because you are unable to get control of the ball and it deflects around the lower playfield until going down the center or sides.

This is another back-loaded game as far as scoring, i.e. most of your score will come on balls 4 and 5 since you’ll have the most features lit then. Don’t let a bad ball 1 or 2 get to you; if you can get enough things lit later on, you can make a good comeback.

This add-a-ball version gives a ball for lighting all 4 bumpers, another for lighting all 4 stand-up targets, and one for getting all five A-E lanes, whether from the top lanes or the bottom outlanes. You can thus get an extra ball when you drain if you have four of the five letters and drain through the one you lack. Whenever you add a ball, the bumpers, targets or lanes you completed reset.