Iron Maiden Pinball Tutorial (Flip N Out Pinball, 2024)

Flip n Out Pinball·video·19m 12s·analyzed·Aug 23, 2024

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

Iron Maiden Pinball Pro tutorial covering layout, modes, multiballs, and power features.

Summary

Joel Engelberth provides a comprehensive tutorial of Iron Maiden Pinball (Stern Pro model), designed by Keith Elwin. He covers playfield layout, shot mechanics, modes (spelling EDDIE to access various challenges), multiball modes (Mummy, Trooper, Cyborg), power features with multipliers, and the wizard mode (Run the Hills). Emphasis placed on the game's horizontal and vertical flow, accessibility, and balanced design that keeps players engaged across multiple gameplay objectives.

Key Claims

Iron Maiden Pinball is Keith Elwin's first game at Stern
high confidence · Direct statement from Joel at video start: 'This is Keith Elwin's first game at Stern, and he's gone on to make other amazing games.'
Spinner shot lights both outlanes as ball save (free ball effect)
high confidence · Joel explains: 'That spinner is how you light your outlane ball saves um yeah it's not i don't think it's used in any modes but a very important shot i know a lot of tournament players prioritize that shot because it will light both outlanes as a ball save'
Pro and Premium have different mechanics for certain shots (e.g., target vs. captive ball on left side)
high confidence · Joel states: 'On the pro is a stand-up target on the premium i think it's a captive ball' and later 'This mech is a little different on the Premium because you can actually lock balls behind it.'
Central ramp shot doesn't have an opto sensor; detection is based on targets in the back
high confidence · Joel explains: 'The Ramp up the Middle doesn't have an opto. It doesn't know you hit the ramp. What it knows you hit are the targets in the back. There's actually a big target, a smaller target, and then a bullseye target.'
All shots on the playfield flow horizontally and vertically; very little backhand capability
high confidence · Joel notes: 'you really can't backhand anything the only thing i can backhand in the game is i can backhand that otherwise no you got to be looking across the play field everything's going across you got a lot of horizontal action a lot of vertical action'

Notable Quotes

“This definitely feels like an Elwin game. The flow, the shots, the layout, all of it is awesome.”
Joel Engelberth@ 0:43 — Establishes Joel's design assessment and validates Elwin's signature style on the machine.
“I love it because... the fact that Keith is really good at dangling the carrot, making it seem like you could work your way through this game is awesome.”
Joel Engelberth@ 18:17 — Highlights Elwin's game design philosophy of maintaining player engagement and possibility across multiple objectives.
“You're going to see a bunch of white targets here that are lit. That's how you spell Eddie.”
Joel Engelberth@ 4:55 — Introduces the core mode progression mechanic of the game.
“Once you get all the tomb treasures that's how you get to two minute or the very last run the hills that's like the big big wizard mode”
Joel Engelberth@ 7:33 — Identifies the wizard mode and the path to achieving it.
“So it's, you know, to me, I feel like it's possible. It's possible that I could get all four cards in one game.”
Joel Engelberth@ 18:11 — Reflects on the game's balanced difficulty and accessibility for skilled players.

Entities

Joel EngelberthpersonKeith ElwinpersonIron Maiden PinballgameStern PinballcompanyFlippin' Out PinballorganizationRun the HillsgameTwo Minutes to MidnightgameCyborg Multiballgame

Signals

?
design_philosophy: Keith Elwin's design philosophy emphasizes horizontal/vertical flow, accessible mode progression, and balanced difficulty that keeps players engaged across multiple objectives without requiring wizard-mode completion.
high · Joel's repeated praise for flow, layout, and the 'dangling the carrot' approach to game progression; observation that players can focus on different objectives (cyborg multiball vs. wizard mode) and still feel progress.
?
product_strategy: Iron Maiden Pinball has notable mechanical differences between Pro and Premium models (stand-up vs. captive ball, captive ball locking mechanics), suggesting tiered feature distribution strategy.
high · Joel explicitly notes: 'on the pro is a stand-up target on the premium i think it's a captive ball' and 'On a premium, you have to hit this shot to lock a mode.'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.058

0:00

Hello, my name is Joel Engelberth, and I stream on the Flippin' Out YouTube stream, or the Flippin' Out Pinball stream on YouTube. Yeah, feel free to check. If you look at the top, there's tabs for live, and you can see all the past live streams from myself, or myself and my brother, as we stream different games, provided by Flippin' Out. Thank you so much, Zach and Nicole, for letting us borrow games to continue to stream them. It's a ton of fun, so feel free to check us out live. We stream every Wednesday from 10 to midnight. super interactive chat. It's really, really a great time. But speaking of a great time, this Iron Maiden Pinball. This is the Pro Model by Stern Pinball. This is Keith Elwin's first game at Stern, and he's gone on to make other amazing games. This definitely feels like an Elwin game. The flow, the shots, the layout, all of it is awesome. The rules are great, so I'm going to do the best I can to try to explain them to you. If I miss anything, forget anything, leave it in the comments. If I'm wrong, leave it in the comments. Any comment like that so that we can all learn together is greatly appreciated. So I'm going to go ahead and start it just so we can have some background music here. Let's do shots and layout. Shots and layout. We'll start on the left or down at the bottom. There are in lanes, in lanes, out lanes. To light the out lane ball save, you basically have to hit this spinner. There's a spinner right here. So that's kind of our first shot. There's a target right here as well. So target there, spinner here it's going to go up in the pops and fly out um that spinner is how you light your outlane ball saves um yeah it's not i don't think it's used in any modes but a very important shot i know a lot of tournament players prioritize that shot because it will light both outlanes as a ball save so it's kind of like a free ball um so very important shot if you can figure it out or find it um this on the pro is a stand-up target on the premium i think it's a captive ball This is the orb shot or your mystery shot. Very powerful as well as to cash out your power jackpots, which are all these things, which I'll get to in a second. The left ramp is a great shot, but you've got to feed it through those pops, which is very challenging but very satisfying when you hit it. There's a target right here. This is the extra ball target as well as the skill shot target, which you see it's flashing on his fore. Then you've got this upper loop. Oh, man, this upper loop. You almost forget it's there, and then you find it. What a satisfying shot. There's a whole loop jackpot system in this game. You do use that shot that upper loop shot for For some of the modes, but it's super satisfying shot to hit. There's an upper flipper, which is awesome It's a mini flipper to hit some of the shots this way This shot right here is probably the most consistent shot in the game It's actually the left orbit even though it's basically in the middle of the play field There's a spinner here, which is super valuable and useful But you're going to use this in the mode you're going to use this for power orbits power spinners It's just a great, nice shot right there. Feels good right in the middle of the play field. Then you have the Captive Ball that's used here for Mummy, Mummy Locks. This mech is a little different on the Premium because you can actually lock balls behind it. But that's just a Captive Ball that you're going to be bashing throughout the game. Then you have the Ramp up the Middle. The Ramp up the Middle doesn't have an opto. It doesn't know you hit the ramp. What it knows you hit are the targets in the back. There's actually a big target, a smaller target, and then a bullseye target. And that's how it knows that you've hit that shot. And you can, depending on how you hit that shot, you actually get more or less points, which is pretty cool. Then you have the upper flipper shots. This mini flipper, there's a stand-up right here. So that's kind of a, that's the super jackpot shot in trooper multiball. But then there's also an upper loop and another upper loop that's very satisfying to hit. You have three drop targets here. The three drop targets are on both the pro and the premium. They're used to light mystery, which is light orb, bonus axe, and to light locks for trooper multiball, which is awesome. the right ramp is the right ramp feeds the right flipper nothing crazy and then you have the right orbit which actually comes out here in the middle and then you have this right flipper this is how you're going to hit that shot you can hit that loop you can hit this loop um yeah it's an awesome it's just a really well laid out game um ton of fun you really can't backhand anything the only thing i can backhand in the game is i can backhand that otherwise no you got to be looking across the play field everything's going across you got a lot of horizontal action a lot of vertical action it's it's just it's really well done so let's do it there's uh i think i last tutorial i said three m's so modes multiple multi balls and then memorable moments somebody in the comments said multipliers so we're just going to end up with all the m's and in pinball so let's start with modes the modes here right here in the middle you can see they lit so if i was to start a mode right now I be starting Howl Would Be Thy Name If you wanna change your mode you do that over here with the spinner The spinner is going to change the mode You have to change the mode before you lock it in To start a mode you have to hit white targets You're going to see a bunch of white targets here that are lit.

4:59

That's how you spell Eddie. So let's actually just start the game. Let's start with the skill shot. The skill shots that I know, you can plunge straight into the skill shot target. You can actually short plunge and then hit that. I think that's a skill shot. And then kind of a super secret one is you got to plunge all the way into that outline 20 million points You'll see at the beginning of the game. You can select a song. It doesn't matter what song you select. It's just music So let's let's go with this one. Why not? So let's act like I did that perfect plunge all the way over boom super secret skill shot pretty awesome If you look right above us we have the Eddie letters So the Eddie letters E and D is already spelled so that means I need three white arrows to start a mode. So there's one, there's two, and if I wanted to change that mode, I'd hit the spinner. And you see now I've changed it out of Flight of Icarus. I actually don't want to show off Flight of Icarus. It's just pretty easy to show off. Let's try to show off, uh, let's make my life easier. Okay, Rhyme the Bantam Air is a good one to show off. So third eddy letter, now to actually start a mode. You can see battle is flashing. On a premium, the ramp actually pops up in shard of mode you go right up the middle so rhyme of ancient mariner is actually pretty cool it's a multi-ball so step one look at the thing that's freaking out we want to go right up the middle once you go up the middle it's going to kick out another ball you can see i have teal shots here over here on the left that means i gotta hit one of the left shots so once you hit one of them i think i've now lit revive because i've hit that spinner enough you see the shots are slowly working their way towards the center once they've gone to the center you want to hit the center, the ramp shot, and now the shots are on the right, so you got to work the ship over from the right side, so I have a ball in my hand, so this is all during a multi-ball, this is the challenging one, even throwing it is challenging, come on, come on, there we go, upper loop shot, and now I can go right up the middle, and that would be completing the mode, now it is a multi-ball though, so the mode is just going to continue until you lose a ball. Um, being that I completed the mode, I have a soul shard lit. Soul shards you collect, that's right up the, right up in the middle. Soul shards are worth a lot of points. And depending on which target you hit, you get more points. Um, so yeah, that's actually how you do a mode in the game. You're going to relight Eddie. You see only E is lit this time, so it would take more white shots. Um, I also have a feral ward, which is why the right orbit is yelling at me in red. if you get all the tomb treasures that's how you get to two minute or the very last run the hills that's like the big big wizard mode um yeah so that's that way i would say that is modes just spell it work your way through that's how you'll light two minutes to midnight and you'll have to hit eddie again um and yeah you'll be good to go i did show off how it would be that name in rhyme of the mariner but ace is high basically everything's going to be lit and you just have to hit a certain number of shots and you'll beat the mode. So, um, it's two ball multi-ball though, and you have to keep the ball alive. As soon as one of them drains the modes over. So just hit all the shots, fear the dark, fear the dark. You're going to see a bunch of purple shots. You hit a purple shot, then you have to hit a spinner. So I think it's worth more if you hit that spinner. Otherwise you hit that spinner. So purple shot spinner, purple shot spinner, purple shot spinner. I think the mode's over, uh, pretty simple. Um, Ryan, the Mariner talked about steering the ship. How would be thy name's all about breaking out. And then fly to the Icarus is all about ramps. You're gonna hit ramps, combo it to get to your 20 million and then you can cash up the middle. So yeah, I think that explains the modes. Let's talk about multiballs. Multiballs. First one, mummy. We have to spell mummy. So you just have to keep hitting mummy.

10:44

And so let me try to burn through this pretty quick. Switch hits, switch hits, spinners are your friends spinners pop bumpers all those things anything to get you switch hits there we go sarcophagus there's this one we have one more letter so lots of switch hits lots of switch hits until our y is lit there we go and i missed it there it is so then the super jackpot right up the middle and that's it that is how you get the mummy card so those are the eddie awards so that's multiball number one. Let's go ahead and drain out of that. Let's talk about multiball number two. Multiball number two is going to be trooper multiball. The way you do trooper multiball, it's all about the drop targets. So I've already hit down the drop targets. I probably, I don't know, I haven't been aiming at them. I've been throwing the ball around, but yes, I need to hit the drop targets one more time. So let me do that. And now what you're going to see is my shots are lit green. So either one of those will lock a ball. So I can lock a ball there. I'm going to get the ball back. I'm going to do it again. So basically clear the drops twice. That's what you need to do. There we go. There's the second ball lock. What's awesome is there's inserts on the play field that actually tell you how many balls are locked. Super helpful. There we go. There's my second one locked and then either one of those green shots will um will start the multi-ball so uh to do the multi-ball you want to hit blue shots i love it that it feeds this it's all automatic and then they're all going to drop off at once so blue shots you get enough blue shots in the super jackpot shot up here is going to be lit that is how you get the eddie color so we're just going to keep doing this hit some blue shots the super jackpot shot is lit up there it's hard to see on screen but it feeds it and then if i can hit it come on even just throw it come on there we go i have the eddie card so that is how you do this mode and then you can do it again with green and work your way through build it up more and more and more and so i have these two cards and the eddie cards um we're going to go ahead and drain out of that so those are the two main multiballs there are other multiballs in the game ace is high as a multiball um uh yeah i already showed you the rhyming ancient mariner multiball let's actually show you how it would be that name i'm going to go ahead and get this tomb treasure so that's another red one so let's actually spell some white white letters here eddie's lit up the middle and we're going to do how it'll be that name the reason i want to show you how it'll be that name is it's kind of a complex mode you see all the orange shots so orange shots you have to hit a few of them once you've hit them then i have to hit the captain ball and then the next one is hit uh more orange shots and then you have to break out by hitting the drops and then you have did another orange shot and then you can finish the mode by going up the middle so it makes it seem easy but it's a lot you got to do a lot you got to do um i think yeah so that's multi-ball um let's go ahead and collect this whole card why not um so yeah if i spell daddy again and i got through two more modes and i could get to two minutes of midnight but what i want to show you next is the power features The power features I been doing these but basically as you go throughout the game you are going to get a certain number of everything you can see them above right here so like pops I need four more pops I got one there we go and then I'm on level two so level two I need 14 pops let's do those once you get all those there we go power pops is done so power pops not particularly hard power targets isn't particularly hard it's the ramps ramps are the ones that take the most ramps and orbits so I'm just going to keep hitting orbits. So this counts as an orbit. I think orbits are now complete. What do I have left? Targets.

15:12

Targets would be that, that, any stand-up target counts. Well, maybe this would be a good time to talk about multipliers. You can see there's little orange X's around the play field. So there's one here, there's one here, there's one here, and there's one way up here, and one way up there. those are the multiplier targets so if we hit enough of those so i need to hit that one now i have 2x lit it would be activated if i roll over that in lane and you can change that with the flipper so let's hit them again if i don't activate it i hit all four of them again 3x is lit and to activate it all you do is roll over the in lane so once i roll over now it's activated so that means I have 3x scoring. So we have the power targets going. We could keep building up that jackpot, but I want to go ahead and cash it out at that target. So now all of these are done. So you basically follow through it twice, and once you've done all three of them, you can start cyborg multiball up the middle. So that's an awesome, memorable moment in the game. but I'm going to go ahead and drain and let this finish because yeah, I think I've explained pretty much everything in the game worked our way through it so just to review modes, you're going to spell Eddie if you want to change your mode, you do it on the spinner you start the mode up the middle once you get through all the modes, you can get to 2 minutes of midnight that's the only thing I didn't show and that would have given you your 4th Eddie card Multi balls mummy multi ball bash the target enough once you're in that multi ball You're gonna switch hits bash the target. That's how you get that that card Trooper multi ball blue shots you hit it enough until the super jackpot shot is lit Which is that one and that's how you get that card Cyborg multi ball you have to complete all the power things They're explained on the this side of the screen how many of each thing you need to hit which I love because it's something you Kind of chip away as you're playing the game um so you look up and you're like oh i'm only two shots away from this or i'm i need to get some more targets i need to do that or i need to do this pretty great and then that cyborg multi-ball um and if you get all four of those that's how it lights number the beast um and then the the like the big big wizard mode is run the hills which is getting all the feral wards feral wards is all about or the tomb awards is all about basically completing every mode like completing it getting the soul shards um there's just a whole lot to it um but i think that was it i think that was it if i forgot anything please let me know leave it in the comments this is a great game it's a great game i love it because when we were streaming it one time all i was doing was focusing on cyborg multiball um then there was another time all i was focusing on was trying to get to two minutes to midnight and in the in that particular game i actually almost got to cyborg multiball and i I actually got the Trooper multiball card. At another point, I got the Cyborg multiball. So it's, you know, to me, I feel like it's possible. It's possible that I could get all four cards in one game. And so the fact that Keith is really good at dangling the carrot, making it seem like you could work your way through this game is awesome. So much side-to-side action, unique shots. It's a ton of fun. So I hope I didn't forget anything. I appreciate you guys watching the tutorials. Check us out live sometime. Otherwise, leave a thumbs up. follow like all the things and uh yeah appreciate you guys watching the video so have a great day