Scooby: Right — rhet's go.
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (often simply called Scooby-Doo) is a wide-body pinball machine released by Spooky Pinball in February 2023, based on the iconic Long Runner cartoon franchise. Designed by Luke Peters and Corwin "Bug" Emery, the game features music by Matt Montgomery, artwork from Matt Frank and Jeff Zornow, and custom speech from the main cast's then-standard voice actors.note
Up to five players assume the role of one of Mystery Incorporated's five members, each of which has character-specific perks that affect gameplay in various ways. The primary goal is to collect clues and investigate various cases straight out of the original series, discovering a number of villains along the way, consisting of Charlie the Robot, the Black Knight, the Space Kook, Captain Cutler, the Miner 49'er, the Creeper, and the Swamp Witch and her Zombie (and potentially unmasking them for extra points). However, each character can only take so much before their nerve fails them — represented by the Bravery Meter, which acts as both a timer and a Score Multiplier. In addition, there are optional objectives during each mode that can be fulfilled for even more points. Other modes include various multiballs that can be achieved in a number of ways, including locking balls in the Mystery Machine after fueling it up and repeatedly hitting Captain Cutler's helmet.
The game comes in three different versions: Standard, Blood Sucker's Edition, and Collector's Edition. While all of them are identical in terms of gameplay (with features like an upper playfield with an oversized, L-shaped "bookcase" flipper and two mechanisms for storing balls on the apron), the latter two add a number of cosmetic upgrades. The Blood Sucker's Edition features enhancements like a shaker, lights in the speakers, and a metallic powdercoat finish. Meanwhile, the Collector's Edition boasts a custom green powdercoat, several extra figurines on the playfield, more elaborate artwork on the sides of the machine, and a topper with LEDs (among other things). The total production run was limited to 1,969 machines (in reference to the year the original show premiered).
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! provides examples of:
- Adjustable Censorship: Parodied. In the machine's settings, there is an Adult Mode; however, trying to turn it on immediately turns it back off, while Fred tells the player, "It's not that type of game!"
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Miner 49er's mode requires the player to crack open a safe by shooting four shots in a specific pattern. Green arrows mark the right shot, while red arrows indicate an incorrect one.
- Mythology Gag: If the ball hits anything that's not lit, it will play a random sound effect from Hanna-Barbera's library (used in the original show, among many other series).
- Oxygen Meter: The first stretch of Captain Cutler's mode requires the player to fill up an oxygen tank before going underwater to search for clues. The oxygen meter then serves as a time limit that can be refilled by hitting a specific set of targets.
- Painting the Medium:
- The playfield lights will often change to fit the visuals being shown on the display. For instance, the mode based on "Foul Play in Funland" opens by making each light flash either blue or yellow, reflecting the many blue and yellow lights used to decorate Funland's rides.
- One Collector's Edition-exclusive feature is a model of Scooby hiding in a barrel, his head sticking out. If the player picks Scooby as their character, this model mirrors to reflect the Bravery Meter's status — his head will slowly sink back into the barrel as it decreases, representing his waning courage.
- Safecracking: The primary goal of Miner 49er's mode is to crack open a safe by guessing the combination (in gameplay terms, figuring out a specific sequence of shots to make through trial and error).
- Score Multiplier: In addition to functioning as a timer, the Bravery Meter increases point values in accordance with how high it is at the moment.
- Shout-Out: During Charlie the robot's mode, achieving one of the extra objectives plays an animation of Shaggy and Scooby on a roller coaster. The message accompanying it reads "Ride the Comet!" — the name of the roller coaster in the aptly-named pinball machine Comet.
- Skill Shot: One of the game's primary shots is highlighted in blinking red before plunging a ball, awarding points when hit. The player can change the required shot by hitting the flipper buttons to move it around the playfield.
- Timed Mission:
- The Bravery Meter acts as a time limit whenever the player's on a case — it slowly depletes and causes the mode to end in failure should it bottom out.
- Successfully finishing a case starts a short phase where the player must make a certain sequence of shots within 30 seconds to unmask the villain.
- The Space Kook's mode has a 30-second time limit that can be reset by shooting a spinner.
- Title Drop: Shortly after beginning Captain Cutler Multiball, a frightened Shaggy exclaims the game's title verbatim: "Scooby-Doo, where are you?"
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The Miner 49er mode downplays this trope. Four areas on the playfield are highlighted, and the player must shoot them in a specific order to progress — only there's no way to tell what that order is without making one of the shots, and shooting the wrong one will reset one's progress. However, shooting near one of the areas in question will cause the light next to it to flash either red or green (indicating a wrong or right shot, respectively). While this gives the player an edge in guessing the right order,
Word of God still describes it as "either the hardest mode in the game or [...] the easiest
" depending on luck. - You Meddling Kids: Mentioned, unsurprisingly, if you get the Wizard Mode by defeating all seven villains.
