Silverball guide · Guns N' Roses
The multiballs are the soundcheck
Guns N' Roses looks like it is about starting multiballs. The official rules chart says otherwise: four of them exist mainly to build meters that decide what a song is worth, and a song played before you have built them is a cheap song.
Four meters, and what they are for
There are four booster multiballs and each one feeds a meter. Make Some Noise builds the Crowd meter, and is qualified by making skill shots and the shot under the right upper flipper. Throw the Lights builds the Lights meter, from the LIGHTS target and spelling LIGHTS. Ignite the Flames builds Pyro, from the PYRO target and spelling PYRO. Turn It Up! builds the Amp meter, from the first left inlane and spelling AMP.
All four meters do the same thing: they increase song scoring. That is the whole reason the chart groups them together and labels them boosters rather than modes.
So the order matters. A song mode started with four empty meters pays what it pays; the same song after a run of booster multiballs is a different proposition entirely. If you are going to play one multiball before your first song, make it one that raises a meter.
Songs are also timed, and the chart notes that you earn seconds for each album during a song, which is the other reason album progress is worth having before you start singing.
Seven band members, seven different shots
Each member of the band is tied to an instrument and to one way of qualifying them. Dizzy and Melissa are the keyboard insert. Richard is the centre spinner. Duff is the bass ramp. Axl is spelling A-X-L on the top lanes. Slash is spinning the record. Frank is the jets or the right ramp.
For each instrument or member you then lock a ball at the centre scoop, and the centre scoop is where Song Mode starts.
If you are missing someone, Jam is the shortcut: complete the right inlane, then hit the lit jam target, and it spots the band members you are short of.
Everything comes back to the centre scoop
Song Mode starts there. Every album mode starts there. Tour Multiball starts there. Slash Solo starts there. Mystery is collected there. The final wizard mode starts there.
That makes it easily the busiest shot on the machine, and it is worth practising in its own right before you worry about anything else on this page. A player who cannot reliably hit the centre scoop cannot start most of the game.
It also means the scoop is frequently offering you a choice rather than a single award, so know what is queued up before you shoot it.
The road, the albums and the tour
Travel shots put cities behind you. Visit enough and On the Road opens; visit all of them and the centre scoop lights for Tour Multiball. The chart also notes that band member power-ups are discovered around the world, so travelling is not only a route to the multiball.
The four album modes each have their own subtitle and each starts at the scoop: Appetite for Destruction is Thirst for Carnage, Use Your Illusion I is Desert Demolition, Use Your Illusion II is Tear Down the Wall, and Chinese Democracy is Shall We Play a Game. Slash Solo sits alongside them and is reached by spinning the pickers and the record.
Work through those and the scoop lights one final time for Not In This Lifetime, subtitled No Sympathy for the Devil.
Patches, Coma and Mystery
Patches are collected by switching the lit patch with the action button and then spelling G-N-R on the inlane. What they do varies: spotting Axl, increasing scoring, unlocking a further song. The chart says there are dozens to find.
Coma is its own sequence. Light Coma a number of times, take the left outlane with Coma lit, hit any switch to empty the bag, then complete the shots for Coma Multiball. It is the only feature here that wants you to drain.
Mystery is qualified by spelling Guns N' Roses and shooting the bullet logo shots, and collected at the centre scoop. It can light an extra ball, hand over a random patch, or add a tilt warning, among other things. The extra ball itself is taken at the centre top lane as a direct flipper shot, and is lit by a concert and t-shirt patch combo or by a mystery award.
A note on this source, and what is deliberately missing
This guide was compiled from the manufacturer's own rules chart for the machine: one printed sheet, laid out as a diagram, published by Jersey Jack in 2020 for the Standard Edition.
It contains no point values whatsoever. Not one shot on it carries a number. So this guide is about shape and order, which is what the chart genuinely tells you, and it stops there. Anything on this page claiming what a jackpot is worth would have been made up.
A diagram also gives requirements without conditions, so where it says a feature needs a number of shots, the exact count is not something we can state. If you have a fuller rules document for this machine, we would like to see it.
It is also specifically the Standard Edition document, and UK floors carry both the LE and the SE. Nothing here was written against an LE, which is why this guide is tagged for the Standard rather than left claiming to hold on both.
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.
- Guns N' Roses: Not In This Lifetime official game rules chart, Jersey Jack Pinball, 2020 (a diagram, with no point values)
