Damn, I came so close to beating tables' current score. One ball left on the table, I was down to no balls left, so I had to take a chance on the zone, and I completely fucked it up. Game over at 15, 700.

...

Btw, that score was done by looping the USA stage 3 times.
So if you adjust the rules, I will do a new, valid run Saturday.

Okay, I didn't even get enough points to get a trick shot attempt in my last run, but I'm now currently ahead of tables.

EDIT: I stupidly skipped a super ball in my last run. That could have given me more points. I wanted to try to sink all the balls in order for an even better score which did not happen.
 

Planning phase 3 of my evil plans of evilness has proving to be much more challenging than the previous 2 phases!

That was the point I was trying to make before.

Anyway, excellent score!

I guess I'm fine with the rules as they are. Likely it will only effect Bea and Daniel anyway.

If you want to change the rules, maybe do something like low scores rank higher if you beat the game, and high scores rank higher if you don't, with beating the game ranked higher than not beating the game. That's clear enough, right?  

I am actually hoping they don't change because if they do, I won't be able to get a cute score starting with 666 like the one I have now.  
But I am fine if they decide to change it. You can map all the tables easily since there are so few of them and keep doing the same thing over and over again without losing a single shot.  

At this point in the week it's best to leave everything alone, I agree.

Yeah. Progress/low score would be better rules for next time we play this, but keep it high score this week. It's too late to change it.
 

10,400

I get what you were saying Arn, but as mbd said, it is a bit late for such a drastic change. But, I will add a rule to prevent exploiting the USA stage cause it can be done infinitely, and this is just too much of a problem with the high score format.

EDIT : No change in the rules.

And that invalidates my score, as expected.  
I will do a new run tonight following the new rules.

It can be said that I brought this upon myself! It is all my fault!  

Hold on.  I don't think it is that simple.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.  I think you can also miss the score requirement for the USA stage, in which case you still get the bonus shot but not the trick shot needed to advance to the next class.  It doesn't matter if you make the bonus shot or not, you still have to repeat the class until you meet the point requirement in one rack.

Alternately, I think you can do these same loops on all other levels by failing to meet the point requirement.  I know I looped the State level many times for just making it through and not scoring enough points to advance.

If these above are true, then this rule change is too drastic and we should just go back to the original rules.
 

18700

You eventually run out of shots by doing that, so it should be fine.
But if you can make all shots in a row without losing a single one at the USA stage, you can abuse looping the stage to score almost 10K points per try and then just fail the trick shot to repeat it.
And that is easier to do than it sounds.
 

Indeed, that's really the point of forbidding this specifically. In other words, it is okay to exploit the stages by not getting the scoring requirement right away, but you can't pull the stunt that makes it possible to exploit the USA stage infinitely.

It isn't 100 % consequent, I concurr, but it is a good compromise to not alter drastically the way it was played so far, while addressing the endless loophole.
 

You might want to be careful gutting posts like this. Many forums frown upon that heavily, or even ban people for doing it.

Thanks for the warning.

Atariage has it so that you can't edit posts after a certain amount of time in order to deal with this issue.
 

What about the State and World levels?  Do they act differently than USA in this way?
 

I don't know about World, but I know from experience that State has a trick that you need to perform, and the level repeats if you mess up.


 

I can't personally test this out at this very moment, but the guideline will be like this :

Anything that opens a opportunity to endlessly loop a portion of the game will be forbidden. Any ways to exploit a portion of the game that is limited will be allowed.

I will confirm the behaviour of the state and world stages after I am done working out.
Yesterday I only abused the USA stage, but as soon as I can, I will post here.

Yet another NES game with weird scoring issues that make it hard to come up with decent rules.

Lunar Pool was so much more straightforward.