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Who fixes my machines when I can't
Great Pinball Links
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Williams JubileeIn college at the University of Toledo I qualified for the All-Campus Pinball Tournament Finals on a Jubilee. Everyone thinks it's an easy machine to play since all you need to do is to get the five captured balls all to the lit side. Well it's not as easy as it looks. I found this pin on the Mr. Pinball Classifieds web page. Scott Carlson in Highland Heights, Ohio in May 2003 was selling it for his dad. Kristy and I went to pick it up on a Saturday and got it back and had it set up in near record time. This one is now housed at my Brother-in-law Tim's condo in order to make room for the 4 Million BC.
The backglass of the machine is nearly perfect and the playfield is just as good with only a bit of wear at the flipper travel end points. The cabinet was a bit of a concern however. Scott had to repair the floor of the cabinet where someone had tried to kick it in. He applied a sheet metal covering which he wrapped up each side. He repainted the metal at the border and touched up the cabinet artwork some and unless you are studying for flaws, you can't tell the difference. It's good enough for our family room so I don't mind too much. I shopped the machine and it plays great now. I had one of my most embarrassing repair moments with this machine. I was unable to get the 50 point relay to score or the double bonus to work. While Dr. Scott was on site repairing the Little Joe, he found the problem. I hadn't pushed in the backbox connectors all the way! Stupid me! We have the free balls set up to the original instruction card levels with free balls awarded at 55,000, 76,000, 92,000 points.
Strategy While the game has a very simple strategy, it's not always easy to accomplish high scores. Everyone seems to concentrate on the captured balls. Putting them all on the lighted side will get you a free ball. Unfortunately, more often than not, in attempting to hit the captured balls, you will drain to a side outlane or down the middle. Each slingshot also has a shooter that will catch and shoot the ball toward the captured balls. The key is to catch the ball in the proper shooter so as to not shoot balls to the unlit side. Easier said than done since the ball always seems to land in the wrong shooter. Scoring advance bonus is the key to making scores here. Bonus is advanced by moving a captured ball to the opposite side, through the top rollovers (three advance for the lit one), through a pass-through gate above the captured balls, by two playfield buttons and by the outlanes. Bonus is only collected when the ball leaves the playfield. Double bonus is awarder on the last ball. There is very limited playfield scoring. The game strategy can take two paths. First, you can attempt to knock the captured balls to the lit side with the associated risks involved there. Or you can attempt to keep the ball in play at the top of the playfield and attempt to rack up bonus. Game Rating This game was always a favorite of mine in my college days. Some people like it, and some people don't because of it's simplicity. I'm glad we picked it up, but after you rack up 20,000 bonus points for a full rack and get a free ball through high score plateaus or captured ball movements there isn't anything else to do. I think it needs an on field bonus score hole or a triple bonus or some other feature at a full rack of bonus. Give it a 6.5 out of 10.
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