Silverball guide · Guardians of the Galaxy
A mode's points are the least valuable thing it gives you
Completing a mode pays three times over: an untimed super mode for the rest of the ball, ten per cent of the mode total into every end-of-ball bonus for the rest of the game, and a 5x jackpot shot in Groot Multiball. Timing out costs you all three and none of the progress.
What completion actually buys
Finish a mode and three things happen that finishing it halfway does not. A second level of that mode starts, untimed, and runs for the rest of the ball or until its shots are done. Roughly ten per cent of the mode total is added to your end-of-ball bonus for the rest of the game, not just that ball. And the character shot belonging to that mode becomes a 5x jackpot shot in Groot Multiball.
That last one compounds hardest, because Groot Multiball lights every shot for three jackpots each. Completing modes beforehand is what turns it from a modest multiball into the biggest thing on the machine.
The consolation is that failure is cheap. Progress is saved if a mode times out or you drain, in every mode except Sanctuary, which has to be restarted from scratch. So there is no reason to avoid starting one, and every reason to come back and finish it.
Choose the mode, and upgrade it
At the start of any ball with no mode running you can pick any uncompleted mode with the flipper buttons. Mid-ball, the right scoop starts one. The timers are tied to the length of the film scene each mode represents, which is why they vary so widely: Yaka Arrow gives you 54 seconds and Quill's Quest gives you 166.
The right scoop also upgrades the running mode, once, and the upgrade is not cosmetic. In Knowhere and Pod Chase it lights all the shots at once, which is often the difference between finishing and not. In Antiquities Shop it lowers the switch threshold that spots your shots. In Escape Kyln, Sanctuary and Yaka Arrow it raises base scoring or opens up spotting. Combos score double the shot value throughout.
Three modes started and six completed light the scoop for an extra ball.
The super modes are worth choosing for
What each completion leaves behind differs enough to shape the order you play them. Knowhere gives Super Loops for ten shots with the orbits always feeding the flippers. Pod Chase gives Super Ramps for ten, doubled if made as combos. Escape Kyln gives Super Lanes, Yaka Arrow gives Super Pops for fifty bumper hits, and Sanctuary gives Super Targets for twenty, where a flashing target is worth five times a lit one.
Two of them are collects rather than frenzies. Sibling Rivalry lets you shoot the right ramp once to re-collect everything the mode scored. Yaka Arrow lights the dead-end shot to recollect its total, though taking it disables super pops. Quill's Quest lights the scoop for a hurry-up starting at ten per cent of your score. All three can be multiplied by everything else you have running.
Stack the multipliers, because they multiply each other
Rocket's Rampage is the easy one: hit the Rocket shot to spell RAMPAGE for 2x playfield for 45 seconds, and since RAMP is spotted free only three shots are needed. Hitting Rocket again while it runs extends it by ten seconds.
Nova Corps is the durable one: complete the five red rollovers, then shoot any pulsing shot to lock it solid at 2x for the rest of the ball. Qualify every shot and a strobing 3x moves around the playfield. Note the rollovers lane-change independently in three groups, so the flippers only move the light within its own group.
These multiply each other rather than adding, so a combo on a Nova Corps shot is 4x before anything else is applied. The exception is Rocket's Rampage, which adds its 2x playfield to the others rather than multiplying.
Groot Multiball has a playfield multiplier hidden in it
Jackpots start at 300K and climb 25K each, with a super at Groot after the ninth and eighteenth worth the running total up to 25M, and a double super at his mouth once all 24 are collected.
The part worth planning is the re-lock. Hit Groot during the multiball to open his mouth and lock a ball there for 2x playfield scoring for twenty seconds; do it again for 3x. Up to three balls can be locked this way per multiball, so you can run 2x then 3x and a separate 2x afterwards, or three separate 2x periods. A temporary ball save catches balls that drain straight out of the release.
Orb Multiball works on a locked-in value instead. A hurry-up counts from 2M down to 500K and the drop target locks that number in as the value of every jackpot in the multiball, so hitting it early is worth four times hitting it late. Miss the window entirely and the target lowers and you get a two-ball multiball instead of three.
The Hadron Enforcer, and what it cannot do
Completing the five standup targets lights the action button with three charges, and each spots a shot in the running mode or multiball, prioritising the leftmost side of the playfield and giving credit for multiplied scoring.
It has deliberate blind spots and they are all at the moments you would most want it. It cannot make the final Rocket shot in Escape Kyln, cannot be used at all during Sanctuary, cannot collect the final super jackpots in any multiball, cannot take Orb Multiball's initial drop target shot, and in Cherry Bomb it ignores solidly lit shots. Sanctuary completed pays three free charges back.
The three wizard modes, and what qualifies them
Cherry Bomb Multiball needs four modes completed, excluding multiballs: six balls, sixty seconds, unlimited ball save, every shot at 3M and a super at Groot's moving mouth. When the minute is up the flippers die, the balls drain, and normal play resumes with another mode.
Immolation Initiative needs at least half progress on all eight modes and both multiballs started. Save Xandar, the wizard mode proper, needs every mode and both multiballs completed. Both add balls without limit on their super jackpots.
Because multiballs count towards wizard progress the same way modes do, and modes can be stacked into both multiballs, the efficient game is to bring a mode into every multiball you start.
A note on this source
This was compiled from a community rule sheet whose author is not recorded in our copy. It is detailed about timers and shot counts, which is unusual, and those are quoted here as it gives them, including the note that RAMP is spotted free as of code 0.87.
The sheet is silent on differences between cabinets, so no edition is claimed here. Every Guardians of the Galaxy listed on UK floors is a Pro, and the machine is on Stern code that has continued to move, so treat specific values as a snapshot.
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.
- Guardians of the Galaxy rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
