# Flight 2000 tutorial and gameplay

**Source:** Straight Down the Middle  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2018-04-21  
**Duration:** 59m 33s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS_GbgF5Lss

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## Analysis

Greg Bone from Straight Down the Middle provides an extended tutorial and gameplay demonstration of Flight 2000, a 1980 Stern pinball machine. He covers all major game systems including the right spinner, drop targets, bonus multipliers, spelling BLAST-OFF, the five-bank countdown sequence, and multiball. The machine features significant mechanical and electronic modifications, including aftermarket LED boards and customized drop target behavior.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Flight 2000 has a maximum bonus of 10,000 points with up to 15X multiplier possible, yielding a maximum bonus total of 150,000 points — _Direct rules explanation: 'your bonus is indicated by the blue lights in the center the max your bonus can be is 10,000 points but like I said you can have a bonus multiplier of up to 15 so your max bonus total with 15 X multiplier would be 150,000'_
- [HIGH] The right spinner value can be increased from 500 points per spin to 5,000 points per spin by completing the right drop target bank multiple times (approximately 7-8 times) — _Rules tutorial: 'you can get the spinner to five thousand a spin if you complete it however many times that takes like seven or eight times'_
- [HIGH] The purple insert bonus (50,000 points) is awarded for sweeping all three right drop targets in a single shot — _Rules explanation: 'there's a purple insert in front of the drop targets if that's lit and you sweep all three drop targets in one shot you get an extra 50,000 points'_
- [HIGH] Drop targets on this particular machine have chronic mechanical issues including inconsistent resetting, failure to drop reliably, and problems with auto-coils — _Gameplay commentary: 'they would drop upon reset so they would reset and then a few would drop down every time... I still have bricking problems if you hit him dead on... the four and the two of this one have a tough time dropping think the spring just a little too late'_
- [HIGH] Greg removed the post at the top of the outlane guide to prevent closing off the outlane, making the game more difficult — _Gameplay discussion: 'I took the one at the top of the lane guide out because it looked like that closed off that out lane like way too much like you'd be able to nudge and everything out of there'_

### Notable Quotes

> "you can get the spinner to five thousand a spin if you complete it however many times that takes like seven or eight times"
> — **Greg Bone**, early tutorial section
> _Explains the progression mechanic for spinner values on Flight 2000_

> "I definitely seen this happen before on this game sometimes foz weird is sometimes when you hit a strong ball up into the lock like like when they locks trying to drop down it actually like pushes the ball you just hit up there back out of the lock it's pretty crazy"
> — **Greg Bone**, mid-gameplay
> _Describes an unusual multiball lock mechanism behavior specific to this machine_

> "I had never really played this game until I had this one and I have really grown to love it it didn't really interest me before because I didn't really care for the playfield layout"
> — **Greg Bone**, mid-stream
> _Personal perspective on Flight 2000 design appeal after hands-on experience_

> "dumping it up top is never a bad idea because you're gonna get thirty thousand just rum more than that will happen when you come back out of the top"
> — **Greg Bone**, gameplay strategy section
> _Safe strategy recommendation for Flight 2000 play_

> "I definitely like this game a lot once I got to play in real life really learn to love it"
> — **Greg Bone**, mid-stream commentary
> _Contrasts digital (Pinball Arcade) vs physical machine experience_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Greg Bone | person | Host of Straight Down the Middle, pinball content creator, providing Flight 2000 tutorial and gameplay demonstration |
| Flight 2000 | game | 1980 Stern pinball machine being demonstrated; subject of tutorial and gameplay analysis |
| Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Flight 2000 (1980) |
| Straight Down the Middle | organization | Pinball content channel hosting this tutorial and gameplay video |
| The Pinball Arcade | product | Digital pinball simulation platform where Greg played Flight 2000 digitally before acquiring physical machine |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Flight 2000 game rules and mechanics, Drop target reliability and mechanical issues, Multiball progression and strategy
- **Secondary:** Aftermarket modifications and LED boards, Physical vs digital pinball experience

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.75) — Greg expresses genuine enthusiasm for Flight 2000 despite acknowledging significant mechanical problems with his specific machine. He appreciates the game's design and strategy elements while being honest about frustrations with drop target issues.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Greg Bone is actively streaming pinball content and community interaction through Straight Down the Middle channel, with regular scheduled broadcasts and viewer chat engagement. (confidence: medium) — Multiple references to viewers in chat, streaming schedule notes: 'I will not have my Tuesday stream this week because I'll be out of town on work but yeah I'll try and stream some other time during the week'
- **[product_strategy]** Greg's Flight 2000 has been customized with aftermarket LED boards and modified outlane post configuration to adjust difficulty. Lamp boards have been replaced as part of the LED upgrade process. (confidence: high) — Gameplay commentary: 'this game has after Martin after market board in it... there's LEDs everywhere inspecting that slingshot... I'm pretty sure he went the route of replacing the whole lamp cord' and 'I took the one at the top of the lane guide out'
- **[product_concern]** Flight 2000 machine exhibits chronic drop target mechanical issues including inconsistent resets, failure to drop reliably, and auto-coil problems. These issues persist despite extensive tweaking by the owner. (confidence: high) — Detailed gameplay commentary: 'they would drop upon reset... a few would drop down every time they register fine but I had to do a lot of tweaking... I still have bricking problems if you hit him dead on... the four and the two... have a tough time dropping... the auto coils they're supposed to drop the drop targets down' and 'these drop targets need a lot of tweaking'

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## Transcript

here okay so fly mm tutorial starting right now you have multiple parts to the game we're going to start on the right side of the game first the right spinner is starts out of the value of 500 or spin you can advance the spinner value by heading down the three bank drop targets on the right each drop targets worth 500 but each time you complete the targets it advances your spinner value you can get to the point where you light up all the inserts in front of the spinner and they all add up so there's five hundred thousand two thousand and fifteen hundred if you light them all up you can get the spinner to five thousand a spin if you complete it however many times that takes like seven or eight times so so also to the right drop targets will advance your bonus multipliers which you're down here in your grid it'll tell you where you're currently at that works the same way as your spinner values over here to the right you can light up all the bonus x multipliers and they all add up together so 5x is not your your highest value of bonus multiplier you can have that added to if you have them all lit up it's 5 X 6 X 7 8 all the way up to 15 X okay so if all those are lit up you get 15 extra bonus so the drops on the right it's important to hit those because it advances your spinner value on the right and it also increases your bonus multipliers also there's a purple insert in front of the drop targets if that's lit and you sweep all three drop targets in one shot you get an extra 50,000 points in addition to what you normally would for completing the targets so the next piece of the game is spelling blast-off that's the letters up top and the letters down below all the yellow inserts so the B for blast is down here on the far left then the rest of blast is up top la st and then you have off spelled backwards at the bottom so the far right is o and then you go F and an F with the inlanes so spelling blast-off get you a certain amount of points either 3,000 or 5,000 depending on which letter you collect and they all advance your bonus a couple the Lane's also spot you a litt number in the five bank drop targets right here that run across the game so blast-off working towards multiball but we'll get into the multiball rules later but that's spilling blast-off there okay the next part of the game is our five Bank of drought targets there's five white drop targets that are numbered one through five in the center of the game and when you start the game off number five is lit if you hit the let target you'll get 5,000 if you hit a target that's not lit you'll only get 500 but the game wants you to count them down so if you can hit five then fourth and three then two then one you'll get 5,000 for each one of those targets if you hit them in that order next is this red spot target that's right in between some of the white drop targets here if you can hit that shot that will advance your bonus multiplier if you've already been through a multiball that target will also spot you blast letters the yellow blasts BL AST so you can hit that target and it'll spot you the next letter there but before you've been through a multiball all that target does is give you some points and an advance your bonus multiplier just like any other game of this era pretty much every Lane and certain targets give you a bonus advance so your bonus is indicated by the blue lights in the center the max your bonus can be is 10,000 points but like I said you can have a bonus multiplier of up to 15 so your max bonus total with 15 X multiplier would be 150,000 the last part of the game is multiball which is the its main purpose is this big I don't know what you want to call it curly Q portion of the play field up top it's a big complicated locking mechanism so when you start the game it'll let you lock balls right away shoot up the left lane locks one ball it'll light up your green light here for stage one and then if you lock another ball just hit another one up there it'll have your second lock then what the game wants you to do to advance the multiball is spell blast-off we talked about that the yellow inserts you collect all this once you spell blast off the game will start count whichever dropped target you're currently at in the countdown sequence you will have to count down the rest of the way to 1 once you hit the one drop target your left blast-off Lane will light and say all systems go and then when you hit that left lane multiball starts multiball is very lucrative but it's very difficult to get to if you can get to multiball this left spinner is worth huge points and also let's see what else I think each time yeah so each time you hit the blast-off Lane you get a lot more value for all your blast-off letters so it says when all systems are go 5,000 for each letter that is lit so I believe when you start multiball you get 5,000 for each letter that you've that you have lit and you might be able to continue to collect that but I'm not sure but I do know that that the left spinner lights for big time points and that's lit for at least the rest of the ball maybe the rest of the game I've only gotten to multiball I think on ball 3 so I can't tell you that for sure that's pretty much the game so we'll get started [Music] I will see if we can't get this multiball going alright so yeah what I'd like to do is just kind of let my blast off letters happen if I need more letters up top I will hit the left spinner lane to to feed the ball back up top because if you hit the left spinner Lane and you'll see when I start locking balls it always spits the ball back out of top throw blast letters if you need more blast letters always hit the left stuff I always want to work that right spinner as well so that's one lock so you can see my my Apollo one my green lock is lit so I know I have one ball locked so if you're playing a multiplayer game you should be able to know how many locks you have the steam can be pretty brutal it's got slingshots all over the place there's two slingshots of other flippers then there's another one here and another one here so those really can make things difficult on you so I have luckily I already still a blast off it's difficult to finish off because to your letters the two F's are these two inlanes and there's really no way to get them outside of missing a shot and getting lucky so it's good that I've got that so far so I still need my B my L and my a for to finish blast off and then I need to lock another ball too because I only have one ball a lot Oh once again slingshots nasty that's what I get for missing let's get some more blast letters all right so now we got two balls locked so you can see my two green insert your lip there so now I need to finish gone blast off and then my countdown the start that's it so we get kind of close to multiball there you can kind of see there's a lot of a lot of parts to get into multi balls to it it's pretty tough so Joe I appreciated nudge a little bit there yeah yeah you definitely a juice the spinners on this game man and it's awesome that was the one of the first things I did when I got this game in the house was juice the spinner so it makes it even more awesome when you get to know if you all I gotta work on my pop bumpers a little bit there they are not I have them set sensitive but they're not they're not registering very consistently sorry look at that okay so I got I got my I knocked down my job targets over here once - now my stairs worth a thousand instead of 500 and that spinners jeez - so that's that's pretty good value if you can rip that a thousand of spin and it also saves for the whole game so if you can get that spinner value up on ball one you're gonna keep that for the rest of the game yeah that stinks I had trouble with the drop targets on this what would happen was they would drop upon reset so they would reset and then a few would drop down every time they register fine but I had to do a lot of tweaking and and and they still don't work absolutely perfect but they're they're better than they were before and I still have bricking problems if you hit him dead on they they don't like to fall down see if I get that for to fall down she's gonna barely hit it so it's pretty dangerous to hit anywhere in the center of the play field because more than likely it's gonna hit one of these what you call its slingshots it's gotta knock you out so another thing a couple of mine don't do is the the auto coils they're supposed to drop the drop targets down so right now I'm on drop target three in my countdown five and four should have dropped it to start the ball rolling five drop down it doesn't really affect the score see that at four likes to break a lot the four and the two of this one have a tough time dropping think the spring just a little too late oh come on damn thing is just not gonna drop yeah yeah sometimes like new targets will help but like I said these drop targets need a lot of tweaking or at least oh there either so it is possible to drop the floor but yeah at least in my experience with this game I haven't tweaked those drop targets a lot to even get them to where they're at now which is you're just getting random points for drop targets dropping for no reason you weren't even hitting them so I just wanted to eliminate that so I got into a spot where they're good enough I'd say oh yeah how much spinner on the right is Oh game over before I can even take advantage of my spinner BAM yeah this game has after Martin after market board in it so yeah there's LEDs everywhere inspecting that slingshot to fire and it scared me I did not do the modifications to this game to allow LEDs in the inserts but yeah I'm pretty sure he went the route of replacing the whole lamp cord there's multiple options but I'm pretty sure that's what he did and that's usually what I do too I mean just nice to have spare lamp boards around if you get a game that's missing boards and stuff like that see in this situation I usually just dump it back at the top if you can I'm trying it the rest of my leathers on top all three already and I almost died just that oh the - come on we need to now this needs a tea and we can start our countdown I'm playing time here you should have killed me a while ago it's letting me have extra chances so we're close that time nice to go so I haven't really found a foolproof way to play this game a safe bet you can get consistently on the right flipper on a trap is to just dump it up top cuz you're gonna get 30,000 points each time you're gonna get some grips on the spinner and you're gonna be advancing your bonus and clicking letters up top so that's always a decent idea to do that but in general this game can be pretty brutal oh yeah cheese is proving to be a [ __ ] too so right now I don't really care to advance my bonus anymore because like I said you could only get 10,000 max so not worried about advancing my bonus at this point just want to work towards multiball and advance my bonus X doing safe shots so that's hitting through this spinner hopefully the pops will hit down more drop targets to advance my bonus multiplier but until I get to multiball I usually don't like to purposely go for the red the red target because one it's just hard to hit and when you do hit it it could be deadly hey what's up James I need a tea yes now we gotta get off get him off me get off me oh yeah I I had never really played this game until I had this one and I have really grown to love it it didn't really interest me before because I didn't really care for the playfield layout and I played it on that that pinball arcade a lot didn't really care for it there either but I definitely like this game a lot once I got to play in real life really learn to love it let's see if we can't so we got off to a good start there now we're into trouble now aren't true we still need every letter of off trying to get the oh there oh I'll get the up - I wonder expert that's T brutal do I only have 10,000 points for I already got you oh one thing that happens on this game sometimes foz weird is sometimes when you hit a strong ball up into the lock like like when they locks trying to drop down it actually like pushes the ball you just hit up there back out of the lock it's pretty crazy I don't know if you've ever seen that get the tea hello there just did it s like I said dumping it up top is never a bad idea because you're gonna get thirty thousand just rum more than that will happen when you come back out of the top but you doesn't kill you but you're getting you're getting some point about you're getting 30 K for just getting up top and hitting every little stop of the lock mechanism they're all that that weird little lock thing never happens down here yeah it definitely happens on this one oh no and I definitely seen this happen before I can't remember if this game yeah it goes through account I wonder if this is the first game of the ball search this is only 1980 that's why when I'm using this game for competition or for League I like to get a couple balls locked in that locking mechanism because sometimes it doesn't work quite right and I've found that it's it it works the best at least on this example if there's two balls in there already first Stern with speech and then use the speech really well in this it's all it's all like call-outs like telling you what to do you know like when the scalpel I ask when you spell blast off and you when it's time for countdown when you lock the ball like so it's really good use of speech in my opinion come on how'd you clip that where it clop Devon rock thanks man that was pretty funny hey Judah every goodbye on here have you ever broken a million on this game without getting the multiball I only had two scores I've ever made on this game and the ones where I got to multiball sometimes if you hit the one it will fall under the F but man it's like I have to purposely put the ball in danger to try and get that off yeah I I'd be surprised if somebody could grind out a million points score with it being on three ball and set up as difficult as I had this one do you have do you have both the posts in the outlines I took the one at the top of the lane guide out because it looked like that closed off that out lane like way too much like you'd be able to nudge and everything out of there but taking those half definitely made this game really hard oh yeah really yeah but I'm trying to just test switches and stuff I try to like reset the game or turn it off before the game finishes so it doesn't say the score man you know I thought about putting them back in and I'm like I'm gonna put those back in and then I'm gonna have like it's gonna see him way too easy for me I feel like the drains aren't cheap enough that I want to do something like that and put those back in I feel like most of times I drain in this it was definitely my fault and I could have saved it somehow get control of all the power outline shot was so powerful came back and got me anything I can't waste this okay where we yet oh if I can save that one for a countdown little nice so blast-off still on to lock a ball get up there oh you stink you deserve to drain all right close so right there I was down I just had to hit the one drop target and then hit it up the left spinner I would have had multiball four there's one during trying to practice alley passing the B but you really don't need to because you can get it you can get the bead from other stuff you almost always get it one thing I didn't mention there's two spot targets up top here there were 3000 points they advance your bonus and they also spot you the letter B down here so you don't have to run through the V Lane to collect hopefully this stream looks smoother than sounds good I'm still learning xsplit I recently purchased I'm normally a no BS guy but trying my hand at Xbox I really like I'd love to be an expert at both so I can know what one's good for what and what one's good for something else it seems like it's gonna be one of those quick ones oh man all right that's good let's get a couple of letters here all right I'll take it I have failed every mission so far come on yeah give me that oh my god give me that there we go come on we need the a man good one l every time now there we go mean off that left spinner unlit I believe is over 200 but then it's worth I think it's I think it says 500 per each lit letter when you're in multiball when that's lit so what's that there's eight letters and blast off so four thousand a spin I think that's great they're gonna light nice long ball here but like I said these off letters are tough to complete so I kinda have to pass through this and hope and bounces also in heads to F oh that was sick that's how we do in the pros so we just need our F here then we gotta do our countdown yuck actually I think this light will be lit as long as all three of those targets are up because obviously if more one of those drop targets is down one of those drug targets is down he obviously can't sweep them to that light oh girl I'm not sure why it's yes it's not on right now we need letters we need lettuce damn I already got those lettuce I don't need them are oh that was sick correction to the team I'll take that I will definitely take that I need that LLL give me that L sometimes it looks like it's coming right by that post but it hits a mess at the time so I need to just be trusting that that I'll nudge it back in but tough - especially was coming cross-court like that I have not mastered the alley pass the chat stay in lane shot it's a tough one now some of these order games if you can master it whoa baby I trusted it that sound did not did not work me that spinner for me it's tough too tough to hit that consistently brick brick brick brick Jean all right I need a lucky lucky F over here come on that's one way to pass the ball over you're lucky I still want to hit through that oh because then it'll come up and then or do that nothing is for sure in this game nothing is for sure stay with me I know if I had that posterior one of what have been okay it's gonna hope for a feed come down and give me this button sticky something no and I got house tombow three bad luck bad luck well better alright put a couple more in then I'll call thanks for the books that wash with me play with me Oh how's my shot through the spinner up through the S Oh all right he might call it everybody thanks for watching the few folks that we're out all right we I will not have my Tuesday stream this week because I'll be out of town on work but yeah I'll try and stream some other time during the week there and we'll see you again soon take care peace

_(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: aab1bbc3-84a2-4cfa-bf6b-158c72cb9621*