Get to Redline Mania

01What the game is asking for

Run red lights to start multiball, then collect jackpots to escape the police. That is the whole premise, and the machine is unusually direct about it.

The route runs through the gearbox. Five gears, and the gear awards are what open everything else up — so a game that never shifts never sees the good parts.

02The gearbox is the spine

You advance gears by collecting RPMs, and the RPM shots are the two orbits, lit almost all the time. First gear needs one shot, second needs two, third three, fourth four, fifth five.

The awards are the point: first gear pays 3M, second holds your bonus, third lights video mode, fourth starts Supercharger Mode, and fifth lights Redline Mania.

You must actually shift up before you can collect RPMs for the next gear — either direction on the shifter works. Shifting also relights Burn Rubber, and raises your bonus multiplier through 2X, 4X, 6X and 8X. That multiplier resets each ball unless you have earned Bonus Held from second gear.

A ball spent forgetting to shift is a ball spent going nowhere, and it is the most common way players stall on this machine.

03Stoplights light your locks

The stoplights work in banks. Green first — you must complete all three greens before yellow or red hits count for anything. Completing each bank lights a lock at the back ramp, and you can have more than one lock lit before collecting any of them.

On your first multiball only, hitting the tunnel or the supercharger spots one of the unlit stoplights, which makes the first one noticeably easier to reach than the ones after it.

During any multiball, Supercharger Mode or Secret Mania, all nine stoplight targets flash at once, and clearing all nine normally lights the extra ball. That is the most reliable extra ball on the machine.

04The supercharger is the jackpot engine

During multiball, jackpots are bought with loops through the supercharger. Ten loops lights the jackpot, which is always 25M and collected at the back ramp.

The loop counter is more generous than it looks. Putting a ball in makes it loop ten times, but if the machine thinks two balls are in there it loops twenty, and if it thinks three it loops thirty — and it can be convinced there are three when you only have two in play.

Collect that jackpot and the supercharger then lights the super jackpot, which needs at least twenty loops and pays 50M, then 75M, then 100M, climbing without any real limit. The requirement grows too: ten more loops per jackpot already collected, capped at twenty for a jackpot and fifty for a super.

One rule that catches people: you must keep at least two balls in play to light and collect a super jackpot. Drop to one and you are done, whatever the display promised.

05Redline Mania is the mode to plan around

Completing fifth gear lights Redline Mania at the supercharger entrance, and it is a different animal from a normal multiball.

It arrives with a shopping list attached — 10M, extra ball lit, Freeway at 5M, all targets at 500K, kickback lit, jackpot lit and multiball — but the number that matters is the super jackpot, which starts at 100M with no extra loops required to get there.

So play it deliberately. Get the ordinary jackpot out of the way immediately, ideally on one of the two free shots you are handed at the start, and then treat the 100M super jackpot as if it were the regular one and go and get it.

One piece of ordering to remember: light the extra ball on the Freeway before you collect Redline Mania, because you cannot light it afterwards.

If you have already collected a super jackpot of 100M or more earlier in the game, Redline Mania starts its super jackpot 25M above your best.

06Blowing up the helicopter

This is the most underrated shot in the game. Once you have collected the regular getaway jackpot, and while you still have at least two balls in play, put a ball into the tunnel to collect the Helicopter Bonus.

It has been seen as high as 75M, which makes it worth considerably more than the getaway jackpot you just collected. Most players never shoot it because nothing tells them to.

The tunnel is useful during multiball generally: a ball sent in is credited as a tunnel shot and parks there for about eight seconds, and when it comes back out you have a clean look at the jackpot from the upper flipper.

07Getaway time

If all but one ball drains while you are still working on the regular jackpot, you get roughly twenty seconds of getaway time in which you can light and collect it as normal. It is a real second chance and worth playing hard.

The equivalent for the super jackpot is much less generous — a very brief grace period, and if it pays at all it pays base value, which in Redline Mania may be well short of the number you were chasing.

08Secret Mania, and why you can skip it

There is a hidden mode. When the lock animation shows your car outside Donut Heaven with three police cars parked there, shift up and down a couple of times quickly for twenty seconds of frenzy with all targets at 500K. In tournament mode there are always three cars.

It is a curiosity rather than a strategy. Twenty-odd million is a good result from it, which is less than a video mode pays for no risk at all, and the lighting scheme flashes so aggressively for those twenty seconds that simply staying alive is difficult.

Worse, it tends to confuse the machine about your locks afterwards — the stoplights often reset to flashing green while the display still tells you to run the red light. The upsides are a possible extra ball from the stoplights and, sometimes, a free lock. Take it if it appears; do not build a game around it.

A general note on this machine: the supercharger's behaviour varies a lot between ROM revisions, particularly whether the 1-2-3 targets feed its boost value. If the machine you are on does not behave as described, that is usually why.