Bats and Rats pay out on every ball you have left

01The two bonuses that keep paying

Bats is triggered by Castle Ramp shots, Rats by Altar shots, and both work the same way: about fifteen seconds to clear about fifteen of them, where every switch you trip clears one. The outlanes clear three at once, which the source dryly notes is one of the few times this machine is kind to you.

Miss the count and you get nothing at all. Complete it and the bonus is banked and paid at the end of every ball for the rest of the game. A Rats completed on ball one pays on balls one, two and three.

And both are multiplied by the multiball jackpot multiplier that was in effect when the mode began. A single Bats bonus can therefore reach 150M, and Rats during a multi-multiball is routinely worth over 100M. The order is the whole trick: get the multiballs running first, start Bats or Rats inside them, and do it as early in the game as you can.

02Multiballs stack, and that is the machine

Castle, Mist and Coffin multiballs are non-exclusive. You can light locks and start one while another is running. Two running doubles every jackpot; three triples them, and the multiplier also covers Bats, Rats and the carriage bonus.

That produces Coffin jackpots up to 300M, Castle jackpots up to 480M, and, because Mist Multiball makes every significant shot a 10M jackpot, up to 30M for essentially any shot on the playfield.

You only need to keep two balls in play to maintain every multiball you have running. Once all three are running and the brief ball save has expired there is no way to add more balls, so those two are what you have.

03The Castle Ramp is the engine

Almost everything is counted off this one difficult ramp, and the count persists across the whole game. Bats arrives at three shots, Mist Multiball lights at five, a bonus at six, and an extra ball at reflexed intervals, with each repeating at roughly ten more each time. The status report tells you what the next award is and how far away it is.

That bonus award alternates usefully: it lights a Castle lock, or advances the Coffin Ramp, and if the one it wants is unavailable it gives the other. Loops are 1M, consecutive loops 5M. A weak shot that falls into the Castle Lane without the lock lit pays 5M for the secret passage and still counts as a loop, so a mis-hit ramp is rarely wasted.

04Castle Multiball, and the second lock

Three locked balls start it. During it, relocking one ball on the Castle Ramp lights the Castle jackpot at the Tunnel, starting at 20M and built by jet bumper hits.

With three or more balls in play, relocking a second ball lights the double Castle jackpot even though the lock light may not show it. That does three things at once: doubles the value, parks two balls safely out of play, and restarts the twenty-second timer. It is the single best habit on this machine.

Collecting a Castle jackpot resets its base to the next multiple of 20M, up to 80M. The timer does not begin until a target is hit, which matters when a ball is hung up somewhere.

05Coffin Multiball spells for its jackpot

The Coffin Ramp climbs 500K, 1M, 1.5M, 2M, 2.5M, and the left inlane lights the ramp for 2x, which pays double without costing you a step. Collecting the top value raises the ramp so balls can be locked underneath, and the third lock starts Coffin Multiball.

In the multiball, jackpots are collected by spelling D-R-A-C-U-L-A, and each ball into the Coffin spots a letter, or two if 2x is lit. 2x is lit when the multiball starts and after every Coffin shot made without it, or by any pass through the left inlane, so the practical route is four shots for the first jackpot and often three thereafter.

Jackpots run 20M, 30M, 40M to a maximum of 50M, doubled if three or more balls are still in play, and the letters carry over between Coffin Multiballs.

06Mist Multiball is a shot you have to knock loose

Mist is lit by Castle Ramp shots and started at the Tunnel. A ball then crosses the playfield slowly on the magnet, and another is fed to the left inlane; you have to knock the travelling ball free with it, without simply swapping one for the other.

If a previous attempt was missed the ball starts from the left gate and travels in reverse, which the source considers the easier shot. On normal settings, if Mist is not lit by the start of ball three it is lit for you.

It is only a two-ball multiball, but it is the one that makes everything else pay, because during it every significant shot on the machine is a 10M jackpot: both ramps, the Coffin, the Tunnel, the right orbit, the Asylum, the top sinkhole and the Altar.

07Skill shot, mystery and the small print

The skill shot is pure timing: three gargoyle faces flash in turn and the one lit when the ball hits the drop target decides the award. The centre face pays 1M rising to 5M, spots a VIDEO letter, and advances the Coffin Ramp if the Coffin is not already open. The machine is slightly generous about the centre face, awarding it if it has just changed.

The Tunnel mystery, lit by the right inlane, can light a Castle lock, a Coffin lock, video mode, bonus multiplier, an extra ball or points. The Castle lock it gives does not time out, unlike a normal one, which makes it worth more than it appears.

Video mode is lit by right orbit shots or skill shots spelling V-I-D-E-O in reverse, and started at the right orbit. The rollover lanes advance the bonus multiplier to 10x, and on newer ROMs the multiplier holds from ball to ball.

08A note on this source

This was compiled from a community rule sheet whose author is not recorded in our copy, and it is unusually careful about the machine's variations. It distinguishes prototype, P-11 and L-1 ROMs repeatedly, and several of the behaviours above differ between them, including whether Rats continues as a frenzy after fifteen and how the bonus multiplier carries.

It also documents machine faults as part of the rules, because on a machine of this age they are: a disabled mist magnet starts Mist Multiball immediately with no ball crossing, a coffin ramp stuck up or down changes which sensor does what, and the multiballs occasionally deliver two balls instead of three. Difficulty settings move many of the numbers quoted, and the source says so.

Its opening line lists destroying Dracula, his concubines, his werewolves and his rats, and then washing his car. That is the register of the document, and it is worth reading in its own right.