Quarterback

Quarterback, with its football theme, and its sister game Kick Off, with a soccer theme, are not common competition games since they’re both geared more towards extra balls and replays. I have seen them, though, so they’re here.

In Quarterback, the goal is to move the ball down the field to score a touchdown. The top lanes, drop targets on the right and spinner on the left award progress. Touchdowns score 5K. There’s not much to do here other than flip at the spinner, the drop targets or go up top on the right. Drop targets reset every ball.

Bonus goes up to 15K, advanced 1K every 20 yards. It’s normally automatically doubled on balls 3 and 5 and cannot be doubled during other balls.

The skill shot is to get one of the two lit lanes at the top; they’re always lit in pairs, 1st and 3rd or 2nd and 4th, toggling on switch hits.

The game has staggered pairs of flippers with a bounce-back area underneath. Balls going into either outlane behind the upper flippers can hit the rubbered posts below and bounce back up onto the ledges next to the lower flippers. This works best if you hold the upper flippers up. The configuration also means you have attempted-cradle drain risk: if you hold the lower flipper up as the ball approaches and it hits the upper part of the flipper and rolls upward, the ball can go up that ledge and into the outlane.

The flipper setup tends to make these “flow” games since it can be difficult to get the ball cradled on either an upper or lower flipper. Since few of your shots will be precise controlled ones from a cradle, you’ll need to learn to aim on the fly.