Guns N' Roses (sometimes referred to as Guns N' Roses: Not In This Lifetime) is a Physical Pinball Table released by Jersey Jack Pinball in the fall of 2020. Designed by both Eric Meunier and Slash himself, with rules by Keith Johnson, it is the second pinball game based on the band Guns N' Roses. While its 1994 predecessor followed the successful Use Your Illusion tour, this machine is instead themed after the band's Not in This Lifetime...
tour from 2016 to 2019.
The game aims to emulate the concert experience by focusing on "song modes", each of which plays one of 21 songs from the band's history. Once the player gathers every member of the band to start one, they must keep making shots for as long as possible to keep the "Rock-It Meter" up, facing a choice between cashing out a Song Jackpot to finish the mode or continuing to play for more points. Getting past a certain threshold of time for every song on a given album lights its corresponding Album Mode, which in turn is key to getting the final Wizard Mode. Furthermore, the player can lock up to 6 balls to turn any given song mode into a multiball – to this end, the Limited and Collector's editions include an upper playfield with a locking mechanism shaped like a Gibson headstock
◊. Other points of interest including visiting various cities to light Tour Multiball, collecting patches for various perks, and stacking "booster" multiball modes to help out during songs.
The game's physical features vary significantly depending on the version. Every edition includes a ramp featuring a pair of actual drumsticks and several hexagonal "stage" lights. The higher-tier "Limited" and "Collector's Editions" add hotrail lighting for unusually intense light displays, a wireform ramp shaped like a 4-string bass, and 2 miniature moving spotlights, among other things.
From Appetite for Destruction:
- "Welcome To The Jungle"
- "It's So Easy"
- "Nightrain"
- "Out Ta Get Me"
- "Mr. Brownstone"
- "Paradise City"
- "My Michelle"
- "Sweet Child O' Mine"
- "Rocket Queen"
From G N'R Lies:
- "Patience"
From Use Your Illusion I:
- "Live and Let Die"
- "Don't Cry"
- "Double Talkin' Jive"
- "November Rain"
- "Coma"
From Use Your Illusion II:
- "Civil War"
- "Estranged"
- "You Could Be Mine"
From Chinese Democracy:
- "Chinese Democracy"
- "Better"
- "This I Love"
This game contains examples of:
- Adjustable Censorship: The first game JJP has produced that required an explicit mode toggle. The default "Family Friendly" mode not only disables explicit voice and video clips, but also removes five songs with inappropriate content from the game's soundtrack.note "Adult" mode re-enables all of these.
- Awesomeness Meter: During song modes, the Rock-It Meter (which steadily decreases when the player isn't making any relevant shots) drains faster if the player holds the flipper to trap a ball, encouraging more active and flashy playing.
- Big Red Devil: "No Sympathy for the Devil" centers on combating a traditional horned red devil who's stolen the band's instruments.
- Collection Sidequest: Band members to light songs, patches and patch sets to add perks to the game, locations to travel to, and roses to add to bonus.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
- The seven band members each have their own color on the playfield and display: Dizzy Reed is purple, Richard Fortus is dark blue, Duff McKagan is yellow, Axl Rose is red, Slash is orange, Frank Ferrer is green, and Melissa Reese is light blue.
- During "Shall We Play a Game?", positive shots flash red, white, and blue (representing America), while negative shots flash red and yellow (representing China).
- Combos: During "Shall We Play a Game?", hitting sequential America shots will increase their value.
- Context-Sensitive Button: The action button on the lockdown bar serves several purposes at different times – switching between patches, selecting a song right before starting a song mode, collecting a Song Jackpot to end a song mode, activating a Power Hit during "Thirst for Carnage", and awarding a jackpot during Ignite the Flames Multiball.
- Dem Bones: Every member of the band is portrayed as a living, clothed skeleton in the game's artwork (alluding to the replacement cover of Appetite for Destruction, which depicted the group as skulls).
- Eagleland: "Shall We Play a Game?" suggests a positive portrayal of America (type 1), since the goal is to spread traditionally "American" values like freedom and justice to Red China.
- Fission Mailed: After a short intro animation showing the POPR, "Shall We Play a Game?" briefly cuts to the screen showing the game booting up, with the lights turned off, before the mode starts properly.
- Homage: "Shall We Play a Game?" is heavily modeled on WarGames – instead of the WOPRnote supercomputer simulating nuclear war, however, it involves POPRnote spreading American values to Red China while fending off their own propaganda. The mode's aesthetics and name are all direct references to the film.
- Interface Screw: The Wizard Mode switches between seven different control penalties (one for each band member), ranging from reversing the flipper buttons to making specific flippers only respond to the action button.
- Life Meter: "Thirst for Carnage" includes life meters as part of its emulation of a Fighting Game UI, with the mode's goal being to deplete the Dirty Robot's health by making shots.
- Match Sequence: On a post-apocalyptic highway, a massive tank drives into the word "MATCH" and leaves behind a single digit for the match number (and electrocutes a nearby road sign).
- No Plot? No Problem!: The game is themed around Guns n' Roses' touring circuit and has no real plot, with the various Wizard Modes briefly delving into different scenarios inspired by the band's music.
- Number of the Beast: The Match Sequence is set on Route 666, fitting the animation's ominous, post-apocalyptic imagery.
- Painting the Medium:
- The rock band theme is hammered in by various parts of the playfield resembling instruments or other relevant objects, including spinners shaped like guitar picks and the higher-tier versions' bass neck ramp.
- When certain targets are hit during modes where they aren’t lit, they will make sounds appropriate to the current objective. During Tour Multiball, they sound various horns representing the different types of vehicles, while they play audience applause during song modes (represented by live performances).
- Red China: "Shall We Play a Game?", loosely themed after Chinese Democracy, situates the player in a war of propaganda between America and China. The former is visually suggested to be spreading values like freedom and justice to China, implying that the latter is repressive.
- Set Bonus: While patches already provide perks on their own, getting certain sets bestows further bonuses upon the player. For example, collecting the band's four primary albums doubles the level of every album mode for the rest of the game.
- Skill Shot:
- The regular skill shot requires softly plunging to any Crowd Meter insert.
- One Crowd Meter insert blinks at the start of a ball; plunging into it awards a Super Skill Shot.
- Spelling Bonus:
- A-X-L lights Axl (progressing towards starting a song mode).
- J-A-M lights the Jam target, which counts towards collecting any missing band members.
- A-M-P lights Turn it Up! Multiball.
- G-N-R rewards a patch.
- Wizard Mode: Starting all the Album Modes, Tour Multiball, and "Slash Solo" lights the wizard mode, "No Sympathy for the Devil" (also referred to as "Not in This Lifetime"). The devil in question has stolen the band's instruments, and the player must retrieve them one at a time by shooting a specific shot twice, cycling every few seconds. This is complicated by the fact that a different Interface Screw messes with the controls for each band member.
