Silverball guide · Beatles
Do not collect the super jackpot yet
The Beatles is a small, fast machine that scores in thousands rather than millions, and it hides one genuinely large number behind a decision most players never realise they are making.
The super jackpot grows if you leave it alone
Complete any of the five modes and a super jackpot lights at the target behind the F-A-B drop targets, worth the entire value of the mode you just finished. Take it and it pays once.
Leave it, complete a second mode on the same ball, and the arithmetic changes. The first mode's super jackpot is now paid at double, and the second at single. Push on and it keeps stacking, up to five times over for completing all five modes on one ball.
The risk is plain: draining unlights it and you get nothing at all. On a machine where ordinary shots pay in tens of thousands, this is the only place the numbers get genuinely large, which makes deciding when to stop the most interesting thing you do here.
A reasonable rule for a first serious game is to take it after two, and to only push for three when the ball is behaving and you have a ball save in reserve.
Five modes, each with one thing to shoot
A mode is lit at the start of every ball and the selection alternates every five seconds; the flippers change it, and once it has been lit during the ball the pop bumpers cycle it too. Each runs sixty seconds, and each has one objective printed above the flippers which you repeat to climb through five levels.
Drive My Car is loops, and anything that goes around the upper magnet counts, at 25,000 a loop times the current level. I Should Have Known Better is complete drop target banks, 7,500 a target times the level. Ticket to Ride wants thirty spins across either spinner per level, at 10,000 a hit times the level. It Won't Be Long wants ten pop bumper hits per level, at 5,000 a pop, and orbit shots feed the bumpers while it runs.
Because every value is multiplied by the level, the last level of a mode is worth more than the first three put together. Finishing what you start is the whole scoring idea here.
The inserts tell you where you are without any menu: solid means completed to level five, a slow flash means played but not finished, and a fast flash is the one currently selected.
All My Loving is the free one
The fifth mode is a two-ball multiball, and it enters the rotation either once you have played the other four or automatically on ball three as a consolation. It has no timer.
The jackpot builds on switch hits from a base of 250,000 and is collected at the upper magnet, and everything scores double for as long as it runs. Mystery hands over an add-a-ball.
Untimed, doubled and with a ball in reserve, it is the safest place on the machine to be holding an uncollected super jackpot from an earlier mode.
Two wizard modes, two thresholds
Reach level two in all five modes and a shot to the upper magnet starts Hard Day's Night, better known as Beatlemania Multiball. It opens with thirty seconds of single-ball play in which every completed drop target bank adds 50,000 to the jackpot, then four balls arrive.
Reach level five in all five and the same shot starts Taxman Multiball instead, a four-ball affair with all four single-ball modes running at once. Completing the four Beatles standup targets adds a ball.
In both, F-A-B and F-O-U-R light the jackpot at the top magnet, and clearing all three banks including 1-9-6-4 lights the super jackpot behind F-A-B. Both reset the modes when you drain to a single ball, so a wizard mode is also the machine handing you a fresh start.
The drop targets do three jobs at once
There are three banks, and each carries three inserts: Advance Loops, Advance Multipliers and Score Bonus. Progress towards them does not carry from ball to ball, which is the single most important thing to know about them.
Advance Multipliers is the one to chase, because Bonus X does carry between balls and climbs to 7x. Complete whichever bank currently has the X insert lit.
Advance Loops raises the loop value by the number shown on that bank's insert, and loops then pay 2,000 for each lit insert. Be aware that a Beatlemania award which multiplies loops resets the loop value you built, so the two do not simply add together.
The extra ball is a one-ball job
Complete all three drop target banks on a single ball and the extra ball lights at an inlane, alternating between them with slingshot hits. Since bank progress resets at the end of every ball, this cannot be assembled gradually.
A lit extra ball is lost if you drain without collecting it, so take it as soon as it appears rather than finishing what you were doing.
Do all three banks a second time on the same ball and a further bonus is awarded. The special is a separate matter: it lights at the left outlane once you reach 7x bonus and alternates between outlanes with slingshot hits.
Beatlemania, spinners and the skill shots
Every shot to the upper loop or the right orbit spots a letter in BEATLEMANIA, and spelling it lights the upper magnet for an award. They arrive in a fixed order beginning with 2x spinners, then 5x loops, then collect bonus.
The right spinner has its own ladder: completing any of the four Beatles standup targets lights a star in front of it and advances its value, though that value resets at the end of the ball.
The skill shots are worth repeating rather than varying, because hitting the same one again pays more each time. The most valuable is the plunge into the hole below the top magnet to hit the top pop bumper, at 100,000. There is also a secret one during normal play: roll through the left inlane, then shoot the lit star rollover in time.
Mystery is lit by the two standup targets in the top corners and collected below the F-A-B bank. It prioritises an add-a-ball during any multiball and added time during any timed mode, which makes it worth saving for a mode you are trying to finish.
A note on the cabinet
Our source is a Gold edition document and says nothing about the Silver or Diamond cabinets, so this guide is tagged for the Gold rather than claiming to hold on all of them.
That matters here rather than being a formality: UK floors carry Diamond machines as well as Gold. Nothing above was written against a Diamond, and we have not checked whether its rules differ.
Where this came from
Silverball wrote this, but not from scratch: it was compiled against the published rules below and checked against them, rather than written up from one person’s games. None of the wording is theirs. Machines get code updates that move the right shot, so a guide has a date on it for a reason.
- The Beatles rule sheet, Gold edition (author not recorded in our copy)
