Silverball guide · Hurricane
The multiball is not the scoring. What follows it is
Hurricane pays you a second of multiplied scoring for every second your multiball lasted, at up to five times everything. Holding a ball on a flipper, the standard way to control a multiball, stops that clock while you do it.
Multiball is a bank you are filling
When a multiball is over, Hurricane gives you one second of multiple scoring for every second the multiball ran, with a floor of fifteen seconds, at a playfield multiplier of 2x, 3x or 5x. It multiplies everything that scores, including the skill shot, and excludes only the jackpot.
So the length of the multiball matters more than what you scored during it, and here is the trap: while a flipper is held up, that timer does not advance. It does not reset, it simply stops. Trapping balls on the flipper is the ordinary way to control a three-ball multiball, and on this machine it quietly costs you the payout. The source records thirty ramp shots in one multiball turning into fifteen seconds of multiplied scoring.
If you want ball control without paying for it, put a ball in the Juggler instead. While you are working on Comet millions it will not kick the ball back out.
The Mystery Score, not the jackpot, is the biggest shot on the machine
The jackpot looks like the prize. It starts at 5M, grows 130K a ramp and tops out around 15 or 16 million, and it is collected at the Juggler once PALACE is spelled.
The Mystery Score is also at the Juggler, and it can pay 1M, 2M, 3M or 5M. On 5x multiplied scoring that 5M is 25 million, which beats a maxed jackpot, and the jackpot is specifically excluded from the multiplier. So the first thing to shoot when multiple scoring begins, if Mystery is lit, is the Juggler for the mystery rather than anything else.
It can also pay an extra ball, a special, a Palace letter, an instant lock, a bonus multiplier, its own 2x, 3x or 5x playfield for twenty seconds, Clown Time, or nothing at all. The Palace letter it gives is never the final E.
Shoot the ducks
The three drop targets on the left light the Juggler for ball locks, and two locked balls plus the third launched is multiball. For the first multiball, clearing the ducks lights both locks at once; after that it is one duck completion per lock, though you need not lock one before lighting the next.
The source's own practical line is worth repeating: knock the bottom targets down, catch the ball again on the right flipper, and the last target will often rebound straight into the Juggler for the lock. Done that way the skill shot is then worth two Palace letters, one for the skill shot and one for the ducks, which is the quickest route to lighting the jackpot.
The four cats on the right do the complementary jobs: they relight the Hurricane and they light the Juggler's Mystery Score.
The two ramps escalate differently, and one is fragile
The Hurricane ramp pays 200K, 225K, then unlimited millions, each a timed shot you can recover if you miss. Once you have the first million it also pays a Palace letter each time, so seven million shots light the jackpot on their own. Miss and let it time out and it stays dark until you clear the cats, and each relight costs one more ramp shot than the last to reach millions again.
The Comet is the fragile one. It runs 100K, 200K, 300K and then millions, but its millions are an accuracy shot as well as a timed one: after the first million, touching anything other than the Comet or the right return lane switch switches the millions off. Once it has been lit and lost it stays dark until you hit the Ferris Wheel. Draining resets it for you, and after your first million it restarts at 50K, one shot further from millions than before.
That fragility is why the source advises holding the Comet millions back until your first multiplied scoring, where each one is worth two, three or five.
Clown Time, and the fact that it survives you
Six targets light the clown's face: the Ferris Wheel, the Hurricane, the Dummy, the ducks, the cats and the Comet's 300K shot. With all six lit the next Hurricane shot starts Clown Time, twenty-five seconds where everything pays 50K and the major shots pay 500K, then 750K, then 1M each.
The best use of it is one shot repeated: take the Comet as soon as the ball returns from the Hurricane and keep taking it, which the source puts at around 12.5M for a clean Clown Time. A second Clown Time on the same ball continues where the first left off, so every major shot is worth 1M from the start.
The strange part is that neither Clown Time nor the Palace jackpot resets between players, or between games. A face left five-sixths lit by the last player is still lit for you, and a game can begin with PALAC showing and a jackpot near its maximum. The one exception is a fully lit face that nobody cashed, which comes back missing the nose.
The Ferris Wheel, the Dummy and the quick score
The Ferris Wheel bonus is lit by the ducks, starts at 250K and grows 15K on every bumper or duck hit, capped at 1M; collecting it turns it off until the ducks are cleared again, and it does not grow while unlit. The quick score is separate and does not need the wheel lit: shoot the Ferris Wheel immediately after the ball passes the right return lane switch and it pays 250K, rising 100K a time to about 750K.
The Dummy advances the bonus multiplier and lights an extra ball when the multiplier reaches the flashing value, usually 3x and then 6x, which is two extra balls available from it. But the source is blunt that it should not be shot for on purpose, because a miss is usually a drain. Shoot it when the next multiplier lights an extra ball, and not otherwise. It lights itself for about twenty seconds whenever a ball comes down the left return lane from the Ferris Wheel.
Inside multiball
The Hurricane ramp is the shot: 1M, then 2M, then 5M, then round again, so every three ramp shots is 8M. The Comet loses its accuracy requirement and becomes a plain timed shot, and it is lit at the start of multiball even if it had been switched off.
The Ferris Wheel pays 750K, then 1M for a second ball soon after, then 2M for a third, with no wheel bonus during multiball. Ducks and cats still work, so the Palace can still be spelled and the jackpot still lit; a jackpot lit at the very start is held until every ball has left the Juggler, and its timer waits too.
And if the ramp is falling easily, the source's advice is to keep shooting it rather than cash the jackpot, because the jackpot will time out and the ramp keeps paying millions. Cash it when you are missing.
A note on this source
This was compiled from a rules compilation marked version 1.2.1 and dated 10 June 1995, whose author is not named in our copy. It carries an explicit permission: the guide may be redistributed and changed provided it stays freely distributable and no charge is made for it, which is a more generous grant than most sheets in our library and worth recording.
It is a document about one machine in 1995 and says so in places, marking values it is unsure of and noting where its own machine's tilt was generous. The bonus is capped at 500K times a maximum 6x, which the author finds meagre and which is worth knowing before you chase it.
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.
- Hurricane rules compilation, version 1.2.1, 10 June 1995 (author not recorded in our copy)
