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Avatar: The Battle For Pandora Pinball Tutorial (Flip N Out Pinball, 2024)

Flip n Out Pinball·video·23m 34s·analyzed·Oct 1, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

Avatar: Battle for Pandora (JJP) tutorial covering layout, modes, arrows, and progression mechanics.

Summary

Joel Engelberth from Flip N Out Pinball provides a comprehensive tutorial of Avatar: The Battle for Pandora (Jersey Jack LE edition) running code 0.93, covering playfield layout, skill shots, mode types (Song Chord and Savaco), multiball mechanics, arrow/multiplier systems, and progression toward the Pandora mini wizard mode. He notes that Mark Seiden (the designer) recently appeared on their stream and indicated future code updates with additional movie/sound clips and mode balancing.

Key Claims

  • Code 0.93 is the current release code for Avatar.

    high confidence · Joel states directly: 'This is kind of the release code.'

  • Mark Seiden (the designer) confirmed on their stream that future updates will include more movie clips, sound clips, and mode/score balancing.

    high confidence · Joel: 'Mark last night did say they're planning on adding a lot more to the game, more movie clips, more sound clips, some mode and score balancing, tweak a few things.'

  • Avatar features UV-printed playfield elements that are normally invisible and light up during certain modes like Total Eclipse.

    high confidence · Joel demonstrates UV lights on playfield: 'there's a stand-up target...you will see some of the inserts will light up and you'll see symbols that are UV that you normally don't see.'

  • There are 22 Song Chord modes and 8 Savaco modes in the game.

    high confidence · Joel states: 'There are um 22 song chord modes um they're all very I mean at least all the ones that I've played are very different and very fun to play.'

  • The Hallelujah Mountain shot is described as the toughest but most valuable shot in the game due to a spinner that cashes out the Eclipse jackpot.

    high confidence · Joel: 'Hallelujah mountain shot this is the toughest shot in the game but also the most valuable shot in the game because there's a spinner back here.'

  • Arrows mechanic: rolling through in-lane without going through wire form grants 3 arrows; going through wire form grants 1 arrow; 6 arrows per side reaches 4x multiplier.

    high confidence · Joel demonstrates: 'If you go through a wire form, you get one arrow. If the ball just goes into the in lane on its own, you get three arrows.'

  • Unlimited Arrows is an in-lane perk that allows players to maintain their multiplier without losing arrows during flips.

    high confidence · Joel explains: 'unlimited arrows...you're just you're always there whatever your multiplier is you just stay at that level.'

Notable Quotes

  • “Mark last night did say they're planning on adding a lot more to the game, more movie clips, more sound clips, some mode and score balancing, tweak a few things.”

    Joel Engelberth@ 0:47 — Confirms post-release development roadmap for Avatar code updates

  • “If you hit the action button, and you can control, though, where you want that skill shot to go.”

    Joel Engelberth@ 8:31 — Explains interactive skill shot mechanic unique to Avatar

  • “Arrows are very valuable, that's how you build up your multiplier, as well as you can turn in arrows, you can exchange arrows. So three arrows, you can turn them in for a song chord token.”

    Joel Engelberth@ 2:38 — Key resource management mechanic: arrows can be exchanged for Song Chord tokens

  • “Hallelujah mountain shot this is the toughest shot in the game but also the most valuable shot in the game because there's a spinner back here.”

    Joel Engelberth@ 7:05 — Identifies the hardest/highest value shot in the game

  • “In a perfect world you would get max toxin and unlimited arrows and for that entire mode or multiball you will be at 4x.”

    Joel Engelberth@ 2:08 — Describes ideal multiplier scenario for maximizing scoring

  • “There are 22 song chord modes um they're all very I mean at least all the ones that I've played are very different and very fun to play.”

    Joel Engelberth@ 16:55 — Confirms content depth and variety in Avatar's mode design

Entities

Joel EngelberthpersonMark SeidenpersonAvatar: The Battle for PandoragameJersey Jack PinballcompanyFlip N Out Pinballorganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Jersey Jack leveraging designer appearances on community streaming platforms (Flip N Out Pinball) to answer player questions and build engagement with Avatar playerbase.

    high · Joel: 'Last night we had an amazing stream with Mark Seiden, the designer of this game right here...and he was able to answer a ton of questions in chat'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Avatar employs hidden/unconventional mechanics requiring community discovery: interactive skill shot control, backhand shots on unexpected ramps, UV-printed playfield elements visible only in certain modes, upper playfield access via non-obvious scoop mechanics.

    high · Joel demonstrates multiple discovery moments: backhand left ramp feeds left in-lane, UV lights reveal symbols during Total Eclipse, scoop position changes unlock lower playfield access

  • ?

    product_strategy: Mark Seiden confirmed post-release development roadmap for Avatar including additional movie clips, sound clips, mode rebalancing, and score tweaks beyond the 0.93 release code.

    high · Joel: 'Mark last night did say they're planning on adding a lot more to the game, more movie clips, more sound clips, some mode and score balancing, tweak a few things.'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.071

0:00
Hello, my name is Joel Engelberth and I stream here on the Flippin' Out YouTube channel. My brother and I stream every Wednesday night from 10 to midnight Eastern Standard Time. So please come check us out live sometime. Otherwise, you can click the live tab and you can see all of our past streams. Last night we had an amazing stream with Mark Seiden, the designer of this game right here. This is Avatar the Battle for Pandora. It's Jersey Jack's latest game. This is the LE edition. and we had Mark on and he was able to answer a ton of questions in chat, answer some of the stuff that we were doing wrong or explain some things. So definitely check out that stream.
0:38
But yeah, I would like to today kind of do a little mini tutorial based on the current code. This is 0.93. This is kind of the release code. Mark last night did say they're planning on adding a lot more to the game, more movie clips, more sound clips, some mode and score balancing, tweak a few things. I think mode wise there's some more stuff to add to the game as well So if you're watching this, you know way at a later date, hopefully what I'm explaining I'm assuming the core of it's still gonna be relevant but some of this stuff they may have tweaked or improved or changed so yeah, let me let me start off with what I normally do and Talk about the layout. We have a normal kind of Italian bottom down here in lane out lanes The in lanes and out lanes do have very unique perks We'll get to it, but when you hit the kid targets over here You will light an in lane or out lane perk which you can control with the flippers So the one on the far left is the left hand combo Which is kind of a unique mode where you're trying to only use the left flipper To get more points and as soon as you hear you use the right flipper it kills the combo This one max toxin is very useful toxin is the equivalent of your multiplier So to get max toxin will max you out of 4x So if you hit down the kid targets and then light that one you'll boom you'll be at 4x for your next mode or multiball Over here unlimited arrows. We're gonna talk a lot about that as well arrows are how you keep your multiplier up So if you have unlimited arrows, you're just you're always there whatever your multiplier is you just stay at that level So in a perfect world you would get max toxin and unlimited arrows and for that entire mode or multiball you will be at 4x Your arrows are down here with these you can see the inserts or the lights there. You can get six arrows per side, and you get arrows based on the ball rolling through the in lane. So if you go through a wire form, you get one arrow. If the ball just goes into the in lane on its own, you get three arrows. Arrows are very valuable, that's how you build up your multiplier, as well as you can turn in arrows, you can exchange arrows. So three arrows, you can turn them in for a song chord token which I'll explain more when we talk about the modes.

Completing modes grants Pandora letters; collecting 3 Pandora letters also grants a Pandora letter.

high confidence · Joel: 'If you complete a mode, you get a Pandora letter. If you've played three modes, you get a Pandora letter.'

2:49
There is, well, if you see these green, or not these green, these kind of triangle things, these are UV lights. So there is UV printed on this play field. It's kind of hard to see in this video because I have the external lighting need to capture, but you will see some of the inserts will light up and you'll see symbols that are UV that you normally don't see. So it's actually a very cool effect when we get to Total Eclipse and some of the other cool modes in the game. Right here, though, you can see with this insert, there's a stand-up target. That's the spider target. It's a very useful mode as of right now in multi-ball, but also in certain modes. Then we have the RDA ramp. This ramp actually feeds this upper left flipper. So it's a fun shot, easy shot to find once you get it dialed in, but very useful for setting up the multitude of shots that you can hit with that upper mini flipper. Then you have the scoop. The scoop here is how you start your song chord mode. So you can backhand that scoop you can hit it from the right flipper, but it is very important You will need to find that scoop to progress through the modes There's a huge sling right here And what's cool about that sling is sometimes there are certain modes where you have to hit that sling you have to And you can't really shoot it directly from down here You can shoot it directly from over here with that flipper But otherwise you kind of have to shoot and hope to get a rebound into that sling. So it's cool it gives you some action and the amp suit will actually, you'll see the arm moves based on hitting the sling. Then we have this little mini flipper up there. Then we have a left orbit. The orbit will go all the way around. Or right here, there's actually a magnet back there, and it will drop the ball into this lock. This is like an infinity mirror kind of thing. This is where you're going to lock your balls for the first movie's multi-ball, which I think is that one. I'm not even going to try to say it.
4:38
Then we have two stand-up targets. There's a stand-up target on both sides of the ramps. That's how you light your mystery award. So once you've hit those two targets, you can hit this left ramp, and you'll get your mystery award. This left ramp, which I didn't believe marked, but we did prove it last night. You can backhand that left ramp. That left ramp will feed your left in lane, so that's a good way to reliably get your max toxin. What else? I know it's kind of dark up there. it'll be a little more clear once we start the game which here I can actually I can do that let me give ourselves just a little bit of music where yeah there you go okay I said it would be lighter it's not that much lighter okay so there is actually right here there is a buck a vertical up kick that you can hit that's the home tree shot and that's what actually feeds the right flipper which is a pretty cool shot and then there is actually a very fat ramp that's the width of it you can hit that ramp from three flippers but it's a turn or loop back ramp which will also feed the left wire form very fun shot to hit very consistent shot to hit and then right here you can see this green arrow there actually another shot and this is an inner loop That is a challenging shot for sure We have two stand targets right here in the middle the Jake and the Terry shots Those are very useful. That's how you light your lock. You can actually see it says light lock. That's how you get into your first multi-ball. After you light lock, you're going to go with an orbit or this inner loop, anything to get the ball to roll over the magnet back here. That's how you lock your balls. then if we keep working our way around there is actually a loop shot right here um that you're going to hit with that right flipper that is the metakai met met kaina metakai met met met kaina metakai met met met met kaina shot um but that's also the scram which is this so that shot um right now the scoop is down i'm trying to show it on this camera right there but the scoop is down so if i hit the shot right now it's going to do that but when the scoop is up that's how you get to these lower play fields if the scoop is also up if you come at it from this way that's what feeds it up the ramp up into this wire form and feeds down here to the right flipper then we have the hallelujah mountain shot this is the toughest shot in the game but also the most valuable shot in the game because there's a spinner back here um you have to hit that shot clean and if that's how you cash out your eclipse jackpot it's a very valuable shot uh it feels good when you hit it um but yeah you're not going to backhand that it's got to be from the left flipper and you just got to drill it and then you have the right orbit we have this right flipper so just to say this left flipper you basically can hit there up to there there there that's the upper left flipper upper right flipper you're going to either do that you're going to hit it straight into that or you can actually go all the way around so some pretty cool shots with the upper flippers and then you have the four kid targets you're going to spell those to get your in lane out lane awards and yeah that's about it for around the play field what you're going to see with the lower play fields when we get into that multi ball is this is a pop bumper and there's actually five or three or four targets down here that you're going to try to bounce the ball around to light those targets, and that's how you can beat this play field, and that's how you go down to the other play field. And when you get down here, there's actually three stand-up targets under him, and then there's a whole orbit down there as well. So there you go. There's your shots and layout. Let's talk about the game. We'll start with skill shot. First off, you should see a purple shot that's kind of moving around. You can see right up there, it says super skill shot, and then the words are changing pretty quickly. If you hit the action button, and you can control, though, where you want that skill shot to go. So right now, the skill shot is right here. I like moving it to the home tree, which is right there. So now this is lit, and the reason being is I can short plunge and either try to drop it in from the back or short plunge it or roll down here and then hit it with this flipper. What I will tell you, though, is you can sneak a ball in. You can sneak a ball into the lock, or if you plunge it just right, you can actually sneak it in there. so let's see what happens here when i uh try to plunge and nope okay so i tried but yes that is how you would uh potentially do a skill shot once you've started the game let's talk about modes you can see there's a whole bunch of inserts on the play field that are rainbow right now that is every one of the rainbow shots relates to a song core token so let me actually hit one of the kids targets here you can see that's freaking out so i've collected you can see it on the screen I've collected the kids song chord token um now some of those shots are no longer flashing rainbow because there is no combination of song chord tokens that would complete a mode but like the RDA shot over here or spider so there's another one so RDA is still hit so I have two so now I have three three of the tokens you can see a whole bunch of rainbow shots are still off this is lit though there we go so have i collected enough for a mode um no i need jake and natiri there we go and then i think it looks like i'm spelling out the most complicated song chord because that's five there's actually one of them that takes six um and i don't know right off top of the bat which one it is so what i can do is i can actually collect some arrows so if i just roll over it without it going through the in lane, I get three arrows. I can exchange my arrows for a Songcore token. So Amp Suit, Amp Suit was lit and I didn't see it. So that is now, we now have a mode lit here. So to start the mode, you just go into the scoop.
10:38
So I'm in a mode here, so the thing's gonna tell me what to do, plus, normally red shots. So for this particular mode, I see I have a red shot here, and then two red shots flashing at me there. So let me go ahead and hit, or try to hit those. There we go, there's one. There's two. There's three. Now what does it want me to do? Hit spider target? Okay. There we go. Seven shots remaining. So now it's basically just shoot all the red things. So let me see what I can do here.
11:07
Let me try for... Oh, it looks like certain shots will relight. Let me try a home tree shot. Home tree is where you collect that, the meiuya. it's like honor it's um there's some useful stuff that you can get out of that like bonus x and whatnot all right let's see if i can get all seven shots here so still two shots remaining there's one oh i locked a ball because i had hit these two targets so like lock was lit you can see the ball is now down there so it looks like i only have one shot left it telling me to shoot the rainforest for my final shot There we go So I have completed the mode Let see what it says Yep mode complete Being that I've completed a mode, I got a P. I got, you're trying to spell Pandora. So the way you get modes there, if you complete a mode, you get a Pandora letter. If you've played three modes, you get a Pandora letter. So I've hit these targets enough that I actually have something lit. Oh, well it detected it because I put my finger down there. This is the left hand combo so I'm just trying to use my left flipper and
12:20
Then the longer you can see on screen the longer that I keep this combo going the more points It's worth the reason for this is the Navi are left-handed. You can see I did not do too well there Let's say I hit all four of those again. I can control this So let me go ahead and get it on unlimited arrows. I got to get it to roll over that though so I'm going to go up that boom so that means I have unlimited arrows and then in a perfect world we get them all maxed out again and then I want to get max toxin so the best way to get max toxin is to go up one of these ramps there we go this should feed my left in lane and then we could either pursue another so if you look right there I have 4x and I'm going to be locked in at 4x for this entire mode. I could try to get more Songkord tokens and do that way, or there are other modes where you just hit the same shot three times. So being that I had already hit RDA twice, I'm now in a mode. This is called a Sabaco mode. So in this one, shoot home tree. Now this mode, I currently have 4x, and I'm at max tox of 4x, and I'm like my flips, you can see my arrows are not going anywhere. I'll show you later when you don't have unlimited arrows what that would mean. So shoot home tree. There we go. So one thing I have started now, because the lighting is changing, if you look in the far right above me, the total eclipse is happening. So everything, every point that I'm scoring is building in a jackpot way up there in the upper right. The UV lights are coming on, so I still have this mode going. I actually would like to start a multiball because I have 4x locked in. Let's go ahead and start a multiball. So this is, I'm going to have this mode going and the first movie multiball going. The first movie multiball, it's kind of chaotic. So basically I hit those targets and then I hit the out of orbit. basically in this mode you shoot everything you're gonna hit a bunch of stuff i don't want to hit that right ramp though because i want to build i want to build that jackpot up so i'm basically just hitting any yellow shot um normally i would suggest keep hitting the um the kid targets because you can get more lane awards the other lane award we haven't done is skill save on the right side that's a great award to um to save your ball if you look right up in the middle I have red shots. That's the jackpot shot. You hit a jackpot shot. It kicks out another ball And then we just keep going We just keep hitting shots here Now let's look at my I want to look at my jackpot my jackpots at 12 million because i'm still locked in at four 4x so let's just keep Um, let's just keep doing stuff here Um, we got to keep the multi-ball going so i'm holding the ball in my hand Okay jackpot now is the spider shot over here there we go jackpot kicks out another ball so we're just hitting literally all the shots i don't want to hit that ramp yet my jackpot value though is at 44 million 44 million just just sitting there building up my jackpots lit again spider shot i want to get that thing now it's at 60 million we're still we're just keeping this ball alive keeping the ball alive let's just keep hitting yellow shots trying to hit safe shots you know if you're actually playing and not throwing the ball around and then here we go the fact that the rda ramp is lit this is the end of the phase there's three phases in the multi-ball so um we can keep going that's why this is now lit is we could keep building this up but here's the deal if i drain out that eclipse jackpot is done being that i beat a phase i got another level so let's show what this would look like Let's go ahead and get it to 100 million. Let's go ahead. You can see that jackpot in the way upper right. I'm at 100 million points. So let's cash out. Let's cash out here. The way we cash out is we hit that right ramp. Look at that.
16:24
Boom. That's 126 million point shot. And being that I cashed out on Eclipse jackpot, I just got another Pandora letter. So yeah, this is the way the multi-ball works right now. We're going to go ahead and drain down to one. so I've shown you a song chord mode I've shown you which is collecting the tokens I've shown you a savaco mode savaco modes are you just hit the same shot three times so if I hit spider two more times there's one if I hit spider one more time there are three inserts now I'm in the spider savaco mode um there are eight savaco modes there are um 22 song chord modes um they're all very I mean at least all the ones that I've played are very different and very fun to play. This one is basically just survive until the time runs out. Now I still have, I want to show you the arrows. So what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to drain. I want to show you what the arrows. So I had max toxin. So I was locked in at 4x. I had unlimited arrows. That's, that's pretty much like perfect That what you want going into certain modes So let talk about let just talk about what the arrows mean so let me do that by actually getting into the other multi ball all right let actually talk about the second multi ball in the game you can see it down here with these three inserts um to do that the goal is to hit the dive shot first that's going to open the scoop and then that's how we get below so let's get the ball in play let's hit the dive shot so that pops the scoop open and then we hit the dive scoop to get down below. Now you're going to look at this upper play field here. I'm going to actually use the flippers to move the inserts. I'm trying to make sure that the inserts that I want get hit. So the yellow, I already did it once. Once you've done the yellow, at least for the first multi-ball, that's how you get down below. Now that I'm down below, I'm just going to bash that crab suit until, oh, he's exploded. So that's how you get into multi-ball. This multi-ball, it's very easy to get into it for the first time. After that it takes a lot more hits than the top of the lower playfields and the bottom of the lower playfields. This multi ball is very similar to the other one I showed. As of right now I'm pretty sure they're gonna change that and make them a little more unique but as of right now it's just hit enough yellow shots to light the jackpot. You can see the jackpot in the middle that was the red shot there and we just keep going here and that's how we work our way through the multi ball. Every time you hit a jackpot it's gonna kick out another ball. You do that enough, that's how you get through the phases of the multi-ball. So let's go ahead and drain out there. One thing I do want to show off real quick is the arrows. So to collect arrows, you have to, the ball has to go through the in-lane. So you see I just got three arrows right here. So let's go through this in-lane. Boom, three arrows on the right. Watch my multiplier. So right now I'm at 2.5x. If you go up and it goes this way, it adds one arrow. So now I'm at 2.75x. So you can keep adding. So once one side's maxed out, this is maxed out at three. If I max out the other side, I mean I can show you by doing this, that's gonna only add one, that puts me to 3.5. But once you get all six, boom, that's how you get to your 4x. So let's go ahead and start a mode. So to start a mode, you just hit one shot three times. So it looks like I've already hit that shot twice. You can see that right here. So let's go ahead and hit that shot one more time.
19:59
And, oh, reject. Mystery is lit. So this is a two for one. I'm getting my mystery ward, and I'm going to start a mode here. So this is a Savaco mode. You can see that here that I just started because I hit that shot three times. But now that I'm in the mode, watch my multiplier. As I flip, I will lose my arrows. Now, the only way to get your arrows back is to hit the targets right in the middle. So that put me back up to 4x. But let's say I shoot all six arrows on the right side here.
20:31
Once they're shot, I'm going to drop down. Let's shoot all six. See how I dropped me down to 3.75? I shoot all six again. It's going to drop me down to 3.5. If you actually hit a shot, though, that you need in the mode, you have the ability to collect your arrows with the action button. and that's a way to get your arrows back so when you're in a mode when you're in a multi ball if you don't have unlimited arrows you really got to watch how many flips you use um otherwise you'll just slowly move your you'll see here i'm slowly moving my mouth um and then you can always get arrows back um in the middle so it's a very unique way to play a mode and to try to keep your multiplier alive.
21:21
So yeah, I think that's about it for the game. We talked about song chord modes. You're going to follow the rainbow lights to collect the right tokens, and then you're going to start the mode at the scoop. Sabaco modes, you basically just hit any shot three times and you can look at the inserts to see how many more you have to hit. Multiball, you're going to hit the targets here in the middle, and then lock the balls in the back with any of those orbits. The other one, dive shot and then get down below, bleep the defeat, those too many play fields. And that's how you can get into those multi balls. Um, and depending on your progression in each one of those is how you spell Pandora. And then once you've spelled Pandora, that is how you, that's the, the mini wizard mode. You're going to hit that at the scoop. So, um, there's a lot in the game, but it's really not as complex as it seems. Uh, once you kind of start to understand little bits of it, but hopefully that was helpful. Uh, feel free to watch, um, anything that we put here on flipping out. Watch the live streams. Catch them on Wednesday night. Leave a like, subscribe, comment, all the things. Hopefully this was helpful. But yeah, really appreciate you guys clicking on the video. And go play some Avatar and have a good day.
22:46
Thank you. you