Total Nuclear Annihilation Pinball Tutorial (Flip N Out Pinball, 2025)

Flip n Out Pinball·video·15m 51s·analyzed·Feb 6, 2025

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Comprehensive TNA tutorial highlighting design, gameplay mechanics, and co-op appeal.

Summary

Joel Engelbert, co-host of Flippin' Out Pinball, provides an in-depth tutorial on Total Nuclear Annihilation (TNA), a Spooky Pinball title designed by Scott Denise. He covers playfield layout, game modes (reactors, multiball, co-op), skill shots, and strategy, emphasizing the game's accessibility, social appeal, and design simplicity. Engelbert expresses deep personal attachment to TNA and credits Denise's comprehensive design work (music, coding, playfield) as central to the game's success.

Key Claims

Scott Denise designed every aspect of TNA except the art (music, playfield, coding, light shows)
high confidence · Joel states: 'Scott Denise did every aspect of this game except for the art. So he did all the music. He built the game. Like he designed the whole play field, built it, all the light shows, all the coding.'
TNA was originally a homebrew that Spooky Pinball approached about commercializing after it gained a following at shows
high confidence · Joel: 'And what's really cool about this game was it was a homebrew, and he built it, and he was taking it to a bunch of shows, and people had the opportunity to play it, and they loved it. And so it kind of built up this gathering or this following of people that really liked the game. And then Spooky Pinball approached them and said, we want to make this game happen.'
Total production run of TNA is approximately 500-750 units across two production runs
medium confidence · Joel: 'And so they did an initial run of, I think, it was either 250 or 500. And then just recently, like within the last, I think it was like a year ago, they did another like 250. So there's either 500 or 750 out there.'
TNA features co-op gameplay mode where two players work toward shared goals with matching scores
high confidence · Joel demonstrates: 'the way you do co-op is you push and hold... and now i'm going to hit a second player... you're going to see those scores are going to match play this game as a co-op game'
TNA has nine reactor levels that progressively increase in difficulty and required shots
high confidence · Joel: 'see if you can get through all nine reactors' and demonstrates progression through reactors 1-5 with increasing shot requirements
Each reactor in TNA has its own distinct song/music theme
high confidence · Joel: 'every single reactor has a different song'
Ball save mechanics are built around spelling SAVE and leveling up through lane rollovers
high confidence · Joel demonstrates the ball save system and explains: 'you're going to spell save, and then you're going to have one dot that's lit'

Notable Quotes

“This is my game. This is my game. I own this game. I love this game. It would be one of the last games to leave out of my collection.”
Joel Engelbert@ 0:17 — Establishes Joel's deep personal attachment to TNA and positions him as a credible, passionate advocate for the game's quality
“And what's really cool about this game was it was a homebrew, and he built it... and Spooky Pinball approached them and said, we want to make this game happen.”
Joel Engelbert@ 1:02 — Describes TNA's origin story as a homebrew that gained community following before commercial production
“It's such an amazing game to teach people how to play pinball because you're playing it together, you're working through it together.”
Joel Engelbert@ 4:42 — Highlights co-op as a key design strength for accessibility and social play, positioning TNA as a community-friendly title
“I love the simplicity of it. I love the decision making in it. I love the music in it.”
Joel Engelbert@ 14:26 — Summarizes design philosophy: accessible yet strategic, with strong audio design
“The way you have to get back into multi ball is you have to hit these drops down... you can steal each other's locks.”
Joel Engelbert@ 12:30 — Explains multiball relighting mechanism and competitive/co-op interaction depth
“Go find a TNA. Go play it. Go love it. And if you buy one, I'm sorry, but you're welcome because the game's amazing.”
Joel Engelbert@ 15:13 — Closing enthusiasm reflecting personal investment and strong endorsement for collectors

Entities

Total Nuclear Annihilation (TNA)gameScott DenisepersonJoel EngelbertpersonSpooky PinballcompanyFlippin' Out PinballorganizationZach MinneypersonNicoleperson

Signals

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sentiment_shift: Strong positive sentiment toward TNA within enthusiast/collector community; game gained following as homebrew before commercial production, indicating organic grassroots support.
high · Joel describes game building 'a gathering or a following of people that really liked the game' at shows, prompting Spooky's commercial approach.
?
community_signal: Joel Engelbert's extended TNA tutorial and strong personal endorsement signal healthy community engagement and content creation around the title.
high · Joel dedicates full tutorial video to game, states it would be 'one of the last games to leave out of my collection', and actively encourages others to seek out and play TNA.
?
design_philosophy: TNA exemplifies accessible yet strategic design: simple rule set with depth, co-op first, progression-based difficulty, minimal ramps/complex toys favoring elegant shot sequences.
high · Joel repeatedly emphasizes 'simplicity' and 'decision making' as core strengths; contrasts TNA's straightforward mechanic (fill keypad, overheat reactor, destroy target, repeat) against more complex modern designs.
$
market_signal: TNA production limited to 500-750 units and noted as scarce on location play; signals either supply constraints or deliberate limited run strategy by Spooky.
medium · Joel: 'unfortunately it's not a game that's out there very much' and specifies production numbers as 'either 500 or 750... there's not a ton of them'
?
community_signal: Scott Denise's comprehensive design ownership (music, playfield, code) suggests high degree of creative control and iteration typical of boutique designer-driven games.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.047

0:00

Hello, my name is Joel Engelbert and I stream for the Flippin' Out YouTube channel. I stream with my brother every Wednesday night from 10 to midnight, so feel free to come and join us live sometime. We have a ton of fun, and I'm really excited today because I get to film a tutorial for, honestly, one of my favorite games. This is my game. I own this game. I love this game. It would be one of the last games to leave out of my collection, and yeah, so I'm excited to talk to you about it. And that game is Total Nuclear Annihilation. This game is the child, the brainchild, or the just this is Scott Denise's game. Scott Denise did every aspect of this game except for the art. So he did all the music. He built the game. Like he designed the whole play field, built it, all the light shows, all the coding. Everything is Scott Denise except for the art. And what's really cool about this game was it was a homebrew, and he built it, and he was taking it to a bunch of shows, and people had the opportunity to play it, and they loved it. And so it kind of built up this gathering or this following of people that really liked the game. And then Spooky Pinball approached them and said, we want to make this game happen. And so they did an initial run of, I think, it was either 250 or 500. And then just recently, like within the last, I think it was like a year ago, they did another like 250. So there's either 500 or 750 out there. There's not a ton of them, but it's a game that I remember when it was released, I was a little surprised. Like I don't know anything about this game. There's no ramps. Like why are people freaking out about this game? And then I had a chance to play it and fall in love with it. And since then, it has been a part of my collection. So yeah, let's do our normal thing. Shots and layout. It's a single level play field. So pretty easy in lane, out lane. You know, nothing crazy there. What you will see is the save letters. There's an aspect to that of basically building those up to get your ball save going. There are three stand up targets over here. The rad targets. when you spell rad that's how you light mystery mystery you collect at the scoop you have the orbits on the left orbit there's a spinner uh which is awesome uh and then on the right orbit it's just a right orbit there are two control gates here so depending on when you hit that orbit there are certain times that it will drop the ball up here and the way you determine whether or not it's going to drop the ball is actually these symbols if they're pink that means that the ball is going to go and drop down. If they're not pink, the ball is going to go all the way around. There are two destroy targets. There's one here. It's a stand-up target and one over here. You're going to use those to destroy a reactor. Then you have the main scoop of the game. Super important scoop, super frustrating scoop, but it's an awesome, it's just, it's really gratifying when you hit it when you need to hit it. But the ball shoots out of it so fast and you got to be prepared for that. Right here in the middle, that's the keypad. There's three stand-up targets there. Then you have the inline drops. People are calling this the Denise lock. I have that camera up here that shows that, but these drops, this is where you hit one in a lock a ball and hold it. You hit the next one in a lock a ball and hold it. And then the third time you hit that drop, it'll drop them all. And that's how you start multi-ball. There is a scoop back here. If you're in multi-ball and you happen to hit the drops down again and get the ball into that scoop, it'll actually kick out a fourth ball. But otherwise you have to drop it. When you're not multi-ball. If you've played multi-ball, you have to hit those down, hit in the scoop, and that's how you relight the drops to start the locks again. Then you got this pop bumper down here. That pop bumper, where it is, adds so much chaos to the game, and it's a really incredible and enjoyable aspect of the game. Two-flipper game, but if you look down here, there's actually a display that'll show your ball save timer, and it's super helpful, and I love everything about it. Up here, I would say it's an upper play field, but it's not. It's a mini play field, but it's in levels, so it's not an upper play field. But up there you have one flipper it a mini flipper and then that a sling that a sling there a sling right here that just creates a lot of chaos as the ball bounces around up there you have the one two three targets you going to use those to maximize your reactor jackpot and then you have the main core rollover lanes at the top and that's about it that's about it super simple but that's what makes it awesome so let's actually talk about the game this is a normal game if i hit the start button i will play you can play one two three four but what's cool about the game is there's co-op there's co-op in the game and that's something that i absolutely love about this game the way you do co-op is you push and hold push and hold i'm still holding i'm still holding and right there it said co-op mode activated i've let go of the button and now i'm going to hit a second player just because i want to show if you look up on the screen you're going to see those scores are going to match play this game as a co-op game it's so great it's such an amazing game to teach people how to play pinball because you're playing it together, you're working through it together. So, skill shot, there's three that I know of. One would be you plunge and you happen to perfectly land it in whichever one is lit, so that one is lit. If you realize that it's not going to, let's say it's gonna go through the R, you can use the flipper buttons to move it to the R and then get a skill shot. So, if you happen to perfectly plunge into the lit one without touching the flipper buttons, it'll fill up your keypad. So right now, that's one of the core objectives of the game, is to work through reactors. So to start a reactor, you have to fill up the keypad. So I have one shot here, one shot here, and then you can see I have two shots still to hit on the left side. Well, if you perfectly dropped it in there, it would fill up the keypad. That's your advantage. If you have to move the lane, then what it does is it gives you an in-lane, out-lane ball save. It gives ball save level one. How ball save works, I'll show that. But basically, you're going to spell save, and then you're going to have one dot that's lit. So another advantage. Or the third skill shot, which is the one that I love going for, all it's for is points, is what you do is you let it go all the way around. You let it hit this left flipper. It's going to bounce over, and you get one flip with the right flipper to, boom, backhand it into the lock. If you do that, I think it's worth 100,000 points. But really, it's just fun. It's just fun, and it's just cool. So I'm going to give that a shot here and see what happens.

8:15

Boom! My reactor's started. New song. And then you have to hit either orbit. to try to overheat it. So 24, 37, let's see if we can keep it going. 99, oh see, 99, still not overheated. I have to get all the way back up there. There we go. So now that I'm in reactor two, there are two shots. So that's red and that's red. So two shots are needed to destroy the reactor. So let's go ahead and hit both. Same thing. That's it for the game. Rinse and repeat. But what am I seeing now I'm on reactor three but I have more key shots that need to be hit for me to light that reactor when you get up top it's going to take more shots up top uh for that to work what's cool about reactor three is once you start reactor three you're gonna see um extra ball I'm gonna end up with an extra ball because it's reactor three come on oh there's no extra balls in co-op That's why I was like, why is that not saying extra ball? It's because I'm playing co-op. All right, let's see if we can overheat this reactor. And the reason I want to do that, I want to show you why this game gets difficult. So let's, or it gets even more difficult because this game is brutal. There we go. So now that I have three, I have three shots I have to hit. So pop bumper one, pop bumper two, and then the R target. So you got to go from this flipper, R. There we go. So now I'm three reactors in. So now even more key pads to get to reactor four. So let's fill these out. Boom. Those are all super dangerous shots that want to go down the middle. So the safe way to play those is in multi-ball. So let's actually talk about reactor four here. What I want to show in reactor four is only one of them is lit pink. So if I go this way, it's going all the way around. So you got to get it on this flipper and you got to go that way. Now it'll drop in up top. Now we can see if we can overheat reactor four. But here's the deal. If you hit a sling, it moves. So now it's lit over here. If you hit a pop, it moves. So there's the pop. So now I'm over here. Just that little change in the rules adds so much more chaos to these reactors. Let's talk about multi-ball though. If I hit this shot, which this is a shot that it should be relatively easy to backhand. Okay. So the safe thing here is you actually want to short plunge a little more than that short punch that's too far what you want to do is you want a short plunge and then you want to slap this out of the cabinet so the ball doesn't hit the top and then basically catch like that and then you want to backhand that's the safe way to try to get multiple going so you can see I have two balls so here we go let's slap the side of the cabinet and then try to if you're good you'd be able to catch the ball so to start multi ball you're gonna hit those three and I'm in multi ball so what's cool about multi ball one ball save to 3x playfield when you're in multi ball what you want to do is you want to try to hit if you care about points if you can hit these drops down and what's funny is one of them about to pop back up see that one pop back up so you really have to focus on it there we go and then if you can get that scoop back there boom it kicks out a fourth ball and now I have 4x playfield because your your playfield multiplier is based off how many balls you have in play so So that thing, I can still try to overheat my core. Let's send multiple balls up there and see if we can get this thing overheated without flipping.

11:41

Just chaos up there. Okay, I'm down to three. I just lost a ball, so now I have a 3x play field. Oh it moved over here Let see Okay I overheated so this is number four So I have four shots So one two three and four I blew it up. So I'm going to go ahead and get out a multi-ball here just because I want to show you. I have, oh, my ball save timer was still on. So many more keypad hits. So many more. So it only gets harder. And being that I rolled over that in lane it turned on my ball save so that was helping me out But the question is I want I want to drain Let's go ahead and drain. It'll kill that but it's going to kill give me one more. All right, i'm down to one ball So how do I get back into multi ball? The way you have to get back into multi ball is you have to hit these drops down. So let's hit one down So you see how it's all blue blue means it's not going to lock. I can't even throw it. Come on There we go. Two three and then you have to hit it back in the scoop boom and now i'm green which means things are going to lock so this is what's cool about this game though is i'm playing co-op but it would be the same way as if you're playing a single ball game i'm going to go ahead and drain so what what you're going to see here is this ball stays and that's what's really cool when you're playing just 1v1 or a four-player game you can steal each other's locks so that ball is locked but this is co-op so if you look at the score up there it's it's two million so it's the same the same score the only thing that's different is the four that is because player one has destroyed four reactors player two hasn't destroyed any and that's what's neat is player two is picking off picking up where player one left off and uh which it's just it's such a great way to teach this game um where it's like hey we're gonna work in this together even if even if player two wasn't very bad but all they do is give me one keypad hit before they drain that's fine that helps that's we're working together towards this end goal so collectively we've played one ball and now player two would be on their second ball let's see if I can short plunge nope let's slap the cabinet control this ball but start reactor five there we go so that's it that's TNA in a nutshell you got it you got to be prepared with the safe so if you see the ball is getting chaotic and it's going over there you know if the ball is heading this way like let's make sure my ball save is flashing over there so i could possibly save my ball but at any point it's do i want to work towards multi-ball or do i want to work towards over uh overheating a reactor that's that's it that's all you're doing the whole game um but i love it i love the simplicity of it i love the decision making in it i love the music in it every single reactor has a different song um and honestly it's because of it it's it's one of my favorite games it's such a fun game to play socially and um yeah everybody should play it so unfortunately it's not a game that's out there very much um so if you ever have a chance to see one on location if you want in somebody's house or at a show grab somebody play the game play it in co-op see if you can get through all nine reactors and um just have a blast but yeah well um feel free to check us out sometime every Wednesday night, 10 to midnight, on this YouTube channel. And I appreciate Zach and Nicole for letting me stream here. And thank you, Scott Denise, for an amazing game. Go find a TNA. Go play it. Go love it. And if you buy one, I'm sorry, but you're welcome because the game's amazing. So have a good day. See you guys.