"You're telling me you built a time machine... out of a pinball table?"
Back to the Future is a 2015 Digital Pinball Table by Zen Studios, released many months after the 30th anniversary of the original film as part of Pinball FX 3.Based on the Back to the Future series, the table boasts an emulated dot matrix display, a variety of more advanced table mechanics (including a slew of various targets and toys that best capture the atmosphere of each major time setting visited and the integration of the machine's iconic flux capacitor), full voice acting and the ability to time travel to each major time setting, which is a "mission" in of itself.
Not to be confused with the Physical Pinball Table by Data East, which has its own page.
This game features the following tropes:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- At the start of each ball, you are given a 30-second ball saver. The ball saver also activates when a multiball begins. Plus, the table will prevent unfair drains from hitting drop targets crucial for missions, so if you bounce the ball into the outlane off of one and have no kickbacks available, the ball saver will activate immediately.
- Draining the ball during a main mission will not cancel it, unlike most tables. In fact, you can't fail a mission at all. You can pick up right where you last left off when you shoot the next ball in play.
- Burning Rubber: Balls can catch on fire and leave behind iconic burning tire trails, just like the ones the DeLorean leaves when it time-travels.
- Not Quite Starring: Both Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd's voices or likenesses were not used.
- Power Up Let Down: For those of you who care about getting to the wizard mode, whatever you do, think carefully about when you want to activate a multiball mode. You certainly won't want to activate one when you're almost finished with a mission (or when you're trying to start the next one), because any active multiball modes, once started, will block you from continuing to the next one if you just finished a mission.
- Score Multiplier: Raise the score multiplier by spelling MCFLY on the return rollovers, then quickly shoot a lit multiplier lane within a brief time limit. Be aware that each lane can only be used once, making it more and more difficult to push the score multiplier up to the max of 10x!
- Skill Shot: The player must launch the ball with just enough force that it lands on a very short crossramp. This is called a "crackshot" in-universe.
- Spelling Bonus:
- Spell DOC to change the random award that will be granted once the bumpers are struck enough times.
- Spell TIME on the target posts to raise the amount of time available for bonus hurry-up modes.
- Spell DELOREAN to get bonus points, plus an extra ball the first time this happens.
- Spell MCFLY on the return rollovers for a chance to raise the score multiplier.
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Suspiciously Similar Song: the game's background music features substitutes for the BTTF theme, "Power of Love" and other songs used in the movies, corresponding to different time periods or events. - Wizard Mode: Finishing all 6 main missions will grant you access to the Time Paradox wizard mode, which is simply a huge victory multiball where you can score oodles of points as long as you keep at least two balls in play. Plus, if you finish all missions in the order of the films, you get an even larger multiball - seven balls to be exact!
