The key to achieving limitlessly high scores in Galactic Pinball is: “Play it slow and safe.”
Whenever the puck goes near one of your flippers, you want to try to “catch” the puck with the flipper instead of quickly hitting the puck away, meaning you raise and hold the flipper and allow the puck to come to a complete rest on the upheld flipper. Then, when you let go of the flipper button and let the flipper fall back down, the puck will begin to roll slowly down the flipper, allowing you high precision with your next shot. Basically, when you play a table, you want to take note of where the puck goes in each case when you shoot the puck off from a particular location on the flipper, after having allowed the puck to come to a complete rest on the upheld flipper. Then, you want to make sure that you keep track of which spots on the flipper are the “safe spots,” meaning if you let the puck slowly roll down the flipper and then shoot the puck away when it reaches the “safe spot” on the flipper, you will be sending the puck to a place on the table where you will rack up points and the puck is also guaranteed to return to one of your flippers safely after you have gotten your points.
For instance, let’s say you find out that on a certain pinball table, if you “catch” the puck with the lower right flipper and then let the puck slowly roll down three-fourths of the length of the flipper and then shoot out the puck with the flipper when it reaches the three-fourths distance point on the flipper, it will always enter a bonus hall where you will get points and then the puck will return to one of your flippers where you can catch it once more and even get it safely resting on your lower right flipper again in a short time, you could choose to use this method alone to rack up an endless amount of points over the course of a long period of playing time. The only thing you really have to worry about with this strategy is the timing of shooting out the puck when it reaches the three-fourths distance point on the flipper. If your timing is good each time, you know exactly what is going to happen after you send the puck flying, because the thing with Galactic Pinball is, due to the limited graphical capabilities of the Virtual Boy, there is actually a fairly limited number of places along a flipper that the puck can occupy at any given moment. The flipper might have 30 or so places on it, maybe even less, which the puck can ever occupy, and if you shoot out the puck when it is occupying one of these 30 or so places after having let the puck come to a complete rest on your upheld flipper, it will always do the exact same thing for that particular place on the flipper. Thus, all you have to do is memorize each pixel on a flipper that is a “safe spot,” and when the frontmost part of the puck is in position right over this pixel, you can shoot the puck away and know exactly what will happen each and every time that you do this, whereby you can then get the puck safely resting on your flipper again and repeat the process over and over again.
So, as a general strategy, you first have to play test each table in Galactic Pinball and learn how to safely catch the puck with each of the flippers. Then, you have to try shooting out the puck from each of the spots along the flippers and determine which spots are “safe spots” for each flipper and which spots will result in your puck ending up in one of the side lanes or going down the middle and draining off the table. Then, once you learn this, which might only take an hour or so, always try to catch the puck with a flipper and only shoot the puck away when it is over one of your “safe spots,” and the best thing to do is to constantly use the “safe spots” that get you the most amount of points in the shortest amount of time, which will allow you to rack up those points and blow away your previous high scores with ease.
To be honest, this strategy has worked for me on the three tables: “Cosmic,” “Colony,” and “Alien,” but I have not yet been able to find reliable “safe spots” along the flippers in the “UFO” table, which is why I still have not posted a high score on Planet Virtual Boy for that table, since my current high score for that table is admittedly embarrassing.
Attached are scans of all of the Virtual Boy sections on the Release Schedule pages across all Famitsu Magazines from the year 1995. The first time the Virtual Boy appeared on the Release Schedule was in Issue # 330, dated April 14, 1995. I’ve included the dates attached to each of the remaining issues of that year in the list below.
No. 330 – 4/14/1995
No. 331 – 4/21/1995
No. 332 – 4/28/1995
No. 333 – 5/5/1995
No. 335 – 5/12&19/1995
No. 336 – 5/26/1995
No. 337 – 6/2/1995
No. 338 – 6/9/1995
No. 339 – 6/16/1995
No. 340 – 6/23/1995
No. 341 – 6/30/1995
No. 342 – 7/7/1995
No. 343 – 7/14/1995
No. 344 – 7/21/1995
No. 345 – 7/28/1995
No. 346 – 8/4/1995
No. 347 – 8/11/1995
No. 349 – 8/18&25/1995
No. 350 – 9/1/1995
No. 351 – 9/8/1995
No. 352 – 9/15/1995
No. 353 – 9/22/1995
No. 354 – 9/29/1995
No. 355 – 10/6/1995
No. 356 – 10/13/1995
No. 357 – 10/20/1995
No. 358 – 10/27/1995
No. 359 – 11/3/1995
No. 361 – 11/10&17/1995
No. 362 – 11/24/1995
No. 363 – 12/1/1995
No. 364 – 12/8/1995
No. 365 – 12/15/1995
No. 366 – 12/22/1995
No. 367 – 12/29/1995
Attachments:
Benjamin Stevens wrote:
DogP wrote:
Looking at the Japanese text on the PVB page, it looks like there was a typo of タ (ta), rather than ラ (ra) (which is clearly correct in this scan).
I went through all of my Famitsu Magazines a short while ago and thoroughly checked all of the titles listed on the Release Schedule pages, and I remember seeing that all of the spellings listed on Planet Virtual Boy were correct and that there were no Virtual Boy games listed in the 1995 Famitsu Magazines that did not appear at all on Planet Virtual Boy. Thus, I am rather confident that “Signal Tatto” appeared on those Release Schedule pages as シグナル・タット, which means that シグナル・ラット must have been an earlier spelling that later got altered into シグナル・タット. I can check my magazines again to be sure if I remember to do so when I get home from work this evening.
Well, I went through and even scanned all of the Release Schedule pages of my 1995 Famitsu Magazines, and it does, indeed, appear that “Signal Tatto” is supposed to be “Signal Rat.”
“Signal Rat” first made its Famitsu Magazine appearance in Issue # 349 (August 18 & 25, 1995 Issue), where it appeared on the Release Schedule page as:
シグナル ラット
It also appeared this way in Issues 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, and 360/361. After Issue # 360/361 (November 10 & 17, 1995 Issue), it no longer appeared on the Release Schedule pages, so J-Wing must have notified Famitsu Magazine at that time that the game was definitively canceled. Thus, the game never appeared on any of the Release Schedule pages as シグナル・タット = Signal Tatto.
I don’t know if the attached picture is any clearer. It is the clearest picture of the front of the box that I have ever found on the internet. I’ve also attached a picture of the alleged, genuine back side of the original box.
Do you plan to have your brother make just a picture of the front of the box or an entire reproduction box with front and back? I would be very interested in getting a reproduction box made for Dragon Hopper, and I would be willing to contribute money towards that. I could even write up information that could appear on the back of the box.
