That one, you kind of have to nail it perfect or just hit reset. I had a hell of a time with it, then on a later attempt I got a perfect. If you miss and wind up with a ball rolling around the middle, I feel like it's too much of a battle getting it back into one of the square areas. 

 

The issue I have is with the balls right next to the walls. 

I got a perfect stage 3 once and don't know how I did it.


 

I noticed a pattern to each of these stages, kind of like a puzzle game. Since there's no real randomness, a certain set of shots will perfect each level(like Bea said a long time ago). Try thinking less like Billiards, and more like a puzzle.

I wound up having to work through my lunch, so my score will likely have to wait. 

You've got to be fucking kidding me. My nearly 5K score was done without realizing you could extend the shot length (!!!). I really need to start reading the manuals for games, or at least go brute-force with control permutations.

You never thought to press up or down?
 

1770

There is a very, very minor element of "randomness" in the shots, actually.
The power gauge. Each point represents 8 different levels of force, but due to how physics on this game works, you will only see a difference of small significance in behavior between the very first frame of the power gauge and the last.
And even then the correction you have to apply for the next shot is very minute and usually irrelevant in most tables. Only on a few stages (like 40) you will notice it.

 

Starting to get the hang of this. I got a perfect on stage 2 - wow that's worth a lot of points when you compound the bonus with how high your rate gets.

Bea, I know that you can make repeatable shots, but I can't even get Level 1 to be repeatable. What works one time doesn't seem to work again. Driving me crazy, and I'm more concerned about figuring this out than posting a score!

...yeah I have my moments.
 

edit: new score below, old score 19,590

Was on a great run and blew level 09 (I think? Circular level with 6 balls, 2 holes). Fun times

I've finally cracked stages 2 and 3 so I can get consistent perfects.

I still haven't worked out a consistent method for getting a perfect on stage 1. I just keep resetting until I get it right. If I wasn't playing on an emulator where I can just hit shift+T, I'd need skinny's reset gadget.

You have to time your shots because each dot in the power gauge can represent 8 different shot powers.
It increases a bit every tick, but your input doesn't have to be tick perfect. It being 3 to 4 ticks within the range of the shot you did will give you a repeatable shot.
Otherwise, you will end either a few pixels too far or too short from where your first shot ended and to repeat the next shot you will need to do very minor angle adjustments.
I only found that out last night while trying to record my run, but my 103F fever meant that my input timing wasn't as precise and I was having to do angle adjustments way too often.
So I did what any sane person burning with fever would. I reset and did a few hundred shots with the same power gauge level, mapping the results in a spreadsheet then studied it and reverse engineered what was going on with the shots.  

Same advice goes to you as well mbd39.
 

If you're going to post a video, everyone would love to see it, but you should probably wait until tomorrow night when the contest is over. It would be a strategy guide for the entire game.
 

I will definitely going to post a video, but it will likely take a bit longer than that.
I am having to nurse a flu and a high fever since yesterday, so this will have to wait. I hope to have it up by Tuesday.
 

I've been using the same power level each time, but I've noticed that I'm varying whatever the up/down control is.   I can sometimes get a perfect on Stage 1, but even when I write down the angles, etc, I can't duplicate it after resetting.  I just took 10 consecutive break shots using the same settings, resetting each time, and I can't get duplicate breaks.  I see that the game can be cracked, but apparently not by me!  Eventually, I may need to just post a score here.

Try to replicate from a fresh hardware boot rather than a reset.
We have found distinct behavior after a reset during the week, as if the system was retaining the last rng seed rather than reseting it to the default value, but I am suspicious that it has more to do with the fact that each power level has 8 stages rather than the reset itself.
I will test that as soon as I am feeling well enough, but till then, try to make note of where the white ball has stopped from your shot and if needed adjust the angle for the next shot if it is too many pixels away from the original spot.
 

I made it to stage 16 or something like that. I think I'm done. The game gets tedious after awhile. I'll have 20 lives and wonder how fast I can burn through them so I can do something else. It would be a real chore playing through all 60 stages.

Pretty nice score, Mdb.  
And yeah, it can get tedious after a while. Burning 99 lives can take a long while.

Mbd39 might get his first medal of the year!

Go get 'em man!

Unfortunately, I am too drunk (and on vacation in Maine right now) to post a proper update tonight.

I'll try to post a reputable one from the beach tomorrow afternoon.

Tally-Ho!

Maybe I should even request my score to be considered an honorary entry for this week, since it is so far off the curve, and he might even get a well deserved top billing for this week.  

Nah. You put in a monster effort. You deserve it. 

 

Doing high school math for fun barely counts as effort.  

 

And the thing is, I don't care much about the competition. I am only doing this for fun.
And you guys put in the effort within the spirit of the competition for this game whereas I "cheated" with angle measuring tools, vector mathematics and reverse engineering of the game mechanics through more mathematics and booze. It was a bloody lot of fun, but it wasn't a display of video games skills.  
So, going by the spirit of the competition, which is to display video games skill prowess, your score is more deserving of the first place for this week than mine.