# Elton John Pinball Gameplay

**Source:** Jersey Jack Pinball  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2023-11-02  
**Duration:** 25m 47s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAaS9ufATdc

---

## Analysis

Jersey Jack Pinball releases gameplay footage of the Elton John pinball machine, with Joe Katz and Bill Grub demonstrating core mechanics including song selection, multiball stacking (Rocket Man and Crocodile Rock), wardrobe collection systems, hurry-ups, and the Signature Stage multiballs. The machine features 15 songs with individual rule sets, combo systems, and a Final Tour wizard mode. Notable design elements include skill shot variants, add-a-ball targets, and Easter eggs like the stacked multiball animation (crocodile riding a rocket).

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The Elton John game features 15 songs, each with their own distinct rule set — _Bill Grub: 'The 15 songs each have their own set of rules, and we're just about to start a new song here'_
- [HIGH] Skill shot graphic will change based on Pinball Expo feedback before release — _Joe Katz: 'based on some Pinball Expo feedback and some observations we made, the skill shot graphic is going to change a little bit'_
- [HIGH] Signature Stage consists of four different multiballs with varying difficulty and point value trade-offs — _Joe Katz: 'the piano will be lit for locks, which will lead you to Signature Stage multiball, which is actually four different multiballs'_
- [HIGH] The game includes approximately 23 shot combos that can be extended — _Bill Grub: 'There's about 23 shot combos in the game that you can achieve, and some of them even allow you to extend them'_
- [HIGH] One Signature Stage multiball (far right) features no ball saver for retro gameplay experience — _Bill Grub: 'on the far right one, you will get no ball saver, so it'll feel like a bit of an older school game'_

### Notable Quotes

> "The idea is to collect all of the notes to get the glasses, the shoes, and the outfit. Each of those wardrobe pieces you collect by completing a certain number of notes and then making the Backstage shot to collect the wardrobe piece."
> — **Bill Grub**, ~4:30
> _Explains the wardrobe collection system and its progression mechanics_

> "Something really fun about the supers is that they are repeatable, and if you can keep looping the side ramp you can keep getting multiplied supers."
> — **Bill Grub**, ~11:00
> _Describes the repeatable Super Jackpot loop mechanic on side ramp_

> "So something I really like about this game is stacking those two multiballs together, which makes it 2x value."
> — **Bill Grub**, ~12:45
> _Highlights multiball stacking as a key strategic element_

> "So now a little fun Easter egg is when you're seeing the jackpots now. Since it's stacked, the crocodile is actually riding the rocket now, and they share animations instead of having their own individual animations like they normally would."
> — **Bill Grub**, ~14:15
> _Describes Easter egg integration with stacked multiball mechanics_

> "before you lock a ball in Signature Stage, you are able to use the action button and switch which Signature Stage multiball you want to play"
> — **Bill Grub**, ~10:30
> _Explains player agency in choosing difficulty/reward tier for Signature Stage_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Joe Katz | person | Jersey Jack Pinball presenter/designer demonstrating Elton John gameplay and explaining UI/rule basics |
| Bill Grub | person | Jersey Jack Pinball presenter/designer playing ball two and demonstrating song modes, wardrobe mechanics, and multiball stacking |
| Elton John Pinball | game | Jersey Jack Pinball licensed game featuring 15 songs from Elton John catalog with multiball, wardrobe collection, and Signature Stage modes |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Manufacturer producing the Elton John pinball machine |
| Pinball Expo | event | Event where feedback was gathered that influenced skill shot graphic design changes |
| Rocket Man | game | Multiball mode in Elton John game qualified by earning fuel |
| Crocodile Rock | game | Multiball mode in Elton John game with three stages and lock system |
| Signature Stage | game | Four-tier multiball system reached by collecting all stars and locking balls in piano, with difficulty/reward progression |
| Final Tour | game | Wizard mode in Elton John game reached by completing milestones across Signature Stages |
| Goodbye Yellow Brick Road | product | Elton John song selected as example song mode in gameplay demonstration |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Multiball mechanics and stacking, Song-based rule sets and mode progression, Wardrobe collection system, Signature Stage multiballs with difficulty tiers
- **Secondary:** Skill shot mechanics and variants, UI design and information display, Easter egg integration in stacked multiballs, Pre-release design iteration based on feedback

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Presenters demonstrate enthusiasm for game mechanics, highlight fun/satisfying elements (looping supers, stacking, Easter eggs), and speak positively about design decisions. Tone is informative and celebratory rather than critical.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Jersey Jack using gameplay demonstration video format to educate players on rule depth and mechanical systems, consistent with educational outreach approach (confidence: high) — Detailed UI explanation, rule walk-throughs, strategic tips on multiball stacking, and Easter egg callouts throughout gameplay video
- **[design_philosophy]** Easter egg integration strategy embedding Elton John theme lore into multiball mechanics (crocodile riding rocket animation in stacked play) (confidence: high) — Bill Grub describes stacked multiball Easter egg where crocodile animates riding the rocket, sharing animations instead of independent ones
- **[design_philosophy]** Jersey Jack prioritizing song-based modular rule design with 15 distinct rule sets and difficulty/reward tier choices in Signature Stage, emphasizing player agency and replayability (confidence: high) — Each of 15 songs has own rules; players choose Signature Stage difficulty from four options with explicit point value trade-offs
- **[announcement]** Jersey Jack Pinball officially demonstrating Elton John machine gameplay with rules explanation, indicating game is in advanced stage of production/near release (confidence: high) — Full gameplay video with detailed rule explanations from designer Joe Katz and presenter Bill Grub
- **[product_strategy]** Pre-release design iteration on skill shot graphics based on Pinball Expo feedback, indicating responsive design process (confidence: high) — Joe Katz: 'based on some Pinball Expo feedback and some observations we made, the skill shot graphic is going to change a little bit'

---

## Transcript

1 I'm Elton John welcome to my world hello everyone my name is Joe Katz I'm with Bill Grupp and we are going to play one game to give you a little uh insight into the game play uh before I start I want to point out a couple of things on the UI just so you are familiar with the different areas on the UI and then I will flip around a bit um the first thing a player will obviously do with an Elon John game is pick their favorite song So in this case I'm going to pick Goodbye Yellow Brick Road goodbye Yow and before I plunge I just want to point out uh all the different sections of the UI so in the top left that is for the three bank which is essentially collecting albums and earning Awards and modes in the bottom left you have the current songs mode which shows you some information regarding the three different stages and the value of those stages and how many shots you have left in the bottom right we have the Rocket Man multiball area which is used to qualify Rocket Man multiball by earning fuel we'll get into that a little bit later in the upper right we have the Crocodile Rock multiball area which will show you the status of the locks and once you're in the multiball it'll show you information about the multiball in the center at the top we have the spellout rule of elen John which is related to all the stars on the Playfield all right so now I'm going to play a little bit before I plunge I just want to point out something about skillshot so essentially in the shooter Lane you have five inserts that are roving and you want to plunge the ball and cross the opto that's right above that when you want to lock in the award if you short plunge you'll be given the opportunity to get a super skill shot by hitting any of the pink shots from the upper flipper uh one other thing I want to point out is based on some Expo feedback and some observations we made the skill shot graphic is going to change a little bit so don't get too caught up on what it's doing on the screen just want to give that as a warning in case you get the game and it looks different and I'm going to plunge and typically on my first plunge I will go for rocket [Music] Fuel and I did not short plunge it enough to get an opportunity to make a super skill shot so I will just start possibly playing until I do that so the first thing you're going to notice on this Playfield is all the blue stars and those blue stars are going to light locks in the piano once you complete them all and as you are making them the Elton John in the middle of the Playfield will light up in red showing you which stars you already have and which stars you don't have once you have gotten all those Stars the piano will be lit for locks which will lead you to Signature stage multiball which is actually four different multiballs but we can get into those details at another time so I'm going to go for some of these Stars a little bit and see how this [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] goes so that's a Croc lock so on this plunge I'm going to actually do spot star to help me complete the Stars try to get the N try to get the J [Music] so right now I have all of them but the O and the T so I will be trying to end the L so I'll be trying to feed the upper flipper to take some shots with the side flipper at it I could also try to backhand the [Music] L I just hit the second lock for Croc so if I go into Croc now I will have a [Music] multiball multiball this is a three stage multiball where the stages change once you've earned a Super Jackpot current stage has a bunch of green and yellow shots lit for you to shoot as the stages progress shots start to change a little bit so the super is over at the crocodile which is currently lit which I will try to make here once I get some [Music] control there it is and something new I've recently added is the ability to get a double super if you can get there fast which I just messed up ad ball is this so another thing you're trying to do is to earn as much fuel as possible to First Light the multiball and secondly to earn some additional Powers inside the multiball earning fuel is pretty straightforward it's basically do do something in the game making shots gives you a little bit of fuel making combos gives you more you can use skill shot to get fuel making hurry UPS get you Fuel and I'm going to let Bill play ball [Music] too all right this is uh Bill Grupp let's see what I can do um I'm going to talk a little about the rules for each of the songs the 15 songs each have their own set of rules and we're just about to start a new song here so you can see all of the yellow notes are flashing um the idea is to collect all of the notes to get uh the glasses the shoes and the outfit uh each of those wardrobe pieces you collect by completing a certain number of notes and then making the backstage shot to collect the ward see if I can [Music] do so I need need to get four notes to um go [Music] get so I need to get four notes to qualify the glasses um and this particular song has quite a few of the shots lit at the start [Music] so [Music] not done [Music] shot now you can't hold forever I didn't look is lit all right so I'm going to go for some notes here and try to light the first wardrobe item and once it is lit I will try to shoot backstage to collect it which will start double song for me at that point all the note shots are 2x [Music] value there's a super skill [Music] shot so I got three shots [Music] left got two now make that one all right so now on the Playfield the shoe insert is blinking because the Wardrobe item is now lit I'm going to try to short plunge it and take a shot at Backstage which is the upper shot from the side [Music] flipper so there you go that's that's collecting the first item in this case it was the glasses now I have double song running for about 30 seconds or so and when you have double song Running the notes are flashing the color of the stage and white instead of just the color of the stage and black of course I'd like to make a couple [Music] [Applause] shots there you go there's one so again I'm making progress towards the second wardrobe item which will give you another award which is called double notes at that point the note shots are counting as two instead of one in terms of progress to light the final wardrobe item if you get the final wardrobe item you will have Victory laps for the remaining of the time left in the song which can be very valuable especially if there's a lot of time left at that point all the notes are lit until the song is over so it might make sense to want to bring a multiball in if I'm in Victory Labs just so I can everything I touch will basically be giving some really good point [Music] value so I'm in Kaka as [Music] well so I got adab Bal here on the left it's the green Target on the left side of the Playfield in the art it says at of ball right above it if I hit that I will be able to get an additional ball on the Playfield I can maybe hit that real quick nope maybe I can get it in Grace almost so I'll take a signature stage lock now that all the stars have been [Music] made see if I could get another lock now now that the locks are lit I'll try to short plunge again but to no avail so now I got to feed the upper flipper which you can do from the orbit or you can do it from the J ramp another thing you'll notice is sometimes the stars are lit up as yellow that means it's a combo there's about 20 thre shot combos in the game that you can achieve and some of them even allow you to extend them so for example if a combo ends with the side ramp well then you could just keep hitting the side ramp and keep extending the combo for additional points which is kind of fun to do especially on the side ramp or even backstage that's kind of fun to do lock is L I'm going to feed the side ramp get the second lock so I'm one lock away from signature stage and something I'll point out is before you lock a ball in signature stage you are able to use the action button and switch which signature stage multiball you want to play this time generally I tell people that from left to right they go from easy to hard but the point value will typically reflect that in addition for example on the far far right one you will get no ball saver so it'll feel like a bit of an older school game but the points will be worthwhile assuming you can survive and in comparison the the one I'm about to start if I can get it started has all the shots lit basically as jackpots and they don't go out so this one is pretty much a free-for-all of jackpots which a lot of you are probably used to so in this case this is the 1970 signature stage which is a celebration of his first Big Show at the [Music] trador and there I got a milestone which is an important aspect to completing the game and getting to the final wizard mode of final tour someday we'll have another video that goes into more detail about that so what I'm trying to do here is to light the Super Jackpot which all the signature stages share the same Super Jackpot being the side ramp because that's how you get Superstar letters and that's how you get the Superstar jackpot which is a carryover from game to [Music] game so Super Jackpot is lit I'm going to try to cradle here so I can get get a little control something really fun about the supers is that they are repeatable and if you can keep looping the side ramp you can keep getting multiplied supers eventually it will stop you if you earn the Superstar jackpot it will it will kick into the piano and prevent you from looping more forun I just drained see if I can get one really quick here at the end nope got an addab ball which is nice so I'm going to try for that super again back hand the J and one oh and I missed the second one unfortunately but looping the supers is super satisfying to do and will really blow your scores up over on the left side of the game where the cyan arrow is blinking with hurry up is the hurry up rle and it's an important rule because it is what lights Kickback so if you get a hurry up up you really want to hit it because that's how you're going to get your Kickback relit I'm going to try a hurry up here just cuz it's fun to go for those there we go so it'll briefly tell you where it is before it kicks the ball out just to try to help you understand that you got to shoot in this case the left drop Target like I just did right there and I have Rocket Man lit and at the same time I'm actually one lock away from Croc so something I really like about this game is stacking those two multiballs together which makes it 2x value so I'm going to try to get those running together I typically unfortunately I drained but typically I like to shoot the rocket first it's easier to get the rocket with single ball than it is with [Music] multiball all right so down to my last ball I really want to get this stacked so I'm basically just going to focus on getting this stacked uh going of multiball I'm going to shoot bonus X here just cuz I know if I'm about to start a bunch of multiballs chances are I'm going to get a lot of albums from the grid and bonus X is a good thing from the grid so let me see if I can make the rocket here fortunately I missed challenging shot but very satisfying once you make [Music] is so I'm going to try to get Croc going now if I can get Croc going I'll be in good shape to be putting up a pretty good [Music] score shoot the crocodile yeah she really wants me to shoot the crocodile so I'm going to try [Music] there it is so now a little fun little Easter egg is when you're seeing the jackpots now since it's stacked the crocodile is actually riding the rocket now and they share animations instead of having their own individual animations like they normally would just a little something to kind of lean into the stack aspect of it and who like seeing a crocodile ride a rocket I don't think anybody doesn't like seeing that so make some of those and now I got Rocket Man super lit so I'm going to try to get back into the rocket which is a really cool Challenge and multiball to do and there it [Music] is and unfortunately I am draining out if I can maybe get an addaball here uh for unfortunately no add a [Applause] [Music] okay [Applause] replay [Music] [Applause] [Music] song Take me to the pilot skill shot Croc lock [Music] lit and I'm a here again your [Music] Pres in your I am through a glass is the one danger Z take me to the pilot control take it to the P of your soul take me to the P leave me to the T take me to the p [Music] n well I know he not and I'm and gles is the take the ball one is G the of the song [Music] the the the Str [Music] the the Str n n n n ALB [Music] [Applause] collected front lock [Music] is home the take me to theol take to the to [Music] the [Music] take it it's the [Music] rocker combo [Music] completed one [Music] the danger zone take me to the power Fall control take to [Music] the game [Music] over 3 2 1 stat of the machine that did of fall that blind close time to [Music] Dan count the heads on the [Music] high [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

_(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v1)_

---

*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: f7ccfcdd-24d6-4957-a49e-b3c9aa9fc128*