Pinball Arcade - Diner (Dine Time earned, Ramp Bonuses earned)
3Yikes, it's been over half a year since my last Pinball Arcade video. Well, here's something for the...what, less than a hundred of you guys who follow these videos?
Diner is a rare theme that, theoretically, shouldn't be: This is the only release by a major pinball manufacturer whose topic is food, despite food being something enjoyed by all nationalities, cultures, and demographics. My guess is that, by then, pinball had already become pretty associated with bars, and bars were already starting to serve actual food (rather than, say, peanuts and potato chips), and pinball designers chsoe to stay away from food-related themes out of fear that operators for dining establishments wouldn't want them. Well, there are a number of restaurants out there right now that have still-working Diner pinball machines, one of them being the Corvette Diner in San Diego, CA, which also has, unsurprisingly, a Corvette pinball machine. (Not yet in Pinball Arcade--they need to get the rights from the car company first!)
Diner is Williams' spiritual sequel to Taxi, released 2 years prior: Like Taxi, the premise is a mundane job, the playfield designer is Mark Ritchie with his signature criss-crossing ramps, and your goal is to serve five customers, one of whom is the then-leader of the Soviet Union. Unliike Taxi, though, Mark Sprenger took over artist duties from Python Anghelo, who probably would've been delighted to mock Boris Yeltsin (and would've been elated to do the same to Vladimir Putin if he was still alive). There are other similarities, but I don't have the description space for that.
The most obvious goal in this game is to serve the five hungry guests seated in this diner. In addition to Yeltsin, there's Babs (Margaret Thatcher), as well as three ethnic stereotypes as Haji, Pepe, and Buck. The order that you serve them is randomly decided, but they will each order two items, represented by the drop targets on the left, for the root beer, iced tea, and fries; and in the middle for the burger, the hot dog, and the chili. Knocking down all six drop targets will serve that customer, and you receive a 1% tip for each customer you've served. (That percentage of your score will be added to your end-of-ball bonus.) After you've served all five, they will reset, but your tip will continue to increase by 1% for each patron served. Despite them telling you to hurry up, there is no time limit to serving customers.
To help you, each time "EAT" is completed at the top, both ramps will be lit. Shooting either ramp will automatically finish one of the two items ordered by the current customer.
Once you serve the fifth patron, Dine Time will then be available for about 18 seconds on the right lane, between the central drop targets and the right ramp, or the far right scoop. Shooting this will earn Dine Time, 1 million points times the number on the hour hand on that clock. It begins at 1 and increases by 1 each time the ball enters an inlane with the white light on (one of which turns on when "EAT" is completed--as you can see, that's a helpful word to complete), up to 12.
This being from 1990, when rules weren't that goal-oriented, there are a bunch of other unrelated modes to earn more points. Multiball is a staple and is here in a 2-ball Lunch Rush, activated by locking a ball underneath the left ramp (I don't know what triggers it), then shooting the right lane. During Lunch Rush, shoot the right lane, then the scoop, and the ramps will be worth 500,000 points each. Do it well (that is, unlike me), and this can be worth more than Dine Time. Ignore the customers already sitting in front of you! Serve the people walking in! That will make everyone happy!
There's also a coffee cup up in the back. The ball will travel there once you make enough right ramp shots to spell out "DINER" in the middle. The cup is a whirlpool saucer, and each loop the ball makes will earn 10 times the amount underneath the DINER letters. Once it reaches "R," each loop awards 100,000 more points. You can easily get about 3 million points in this way.
The last high-scoring thing worth mentioning is the skill shot: When you plunge the ball, it will pass by the jukebox on the upper right corner. Whatever panel is lit when the ball passes by, you'll get that amount multiplied by the ball number. As the highest-scoring one is 150,000 points, you can get up to 450,000 points simply by putting the ball into play.
As anything not mentioned here is worth peanuts by comparison, Diner is a pinball game revolving around building up toward huge point awards. Because of this, you can get a large score pretty quickly, or you can play for a while and not get much. You also stand a good chance of losing your last ball before you can reap any of your work, making this a machine for more advanced players and those who know the rules.
The next table will be Attack from Mars.
Other Videos By Overhazard
Other Statistics
The Pinball Arcade Statistics For Overhazard
Overhazard presently has 15,123 views for The Pinball Arcade across 19 videos, and about 4 hours worth of The Pinball Arcade videos were uploaded to his channel. This makes up less than 0.44% of the total overall content on Overhazard's YouTube channel.