Getting one or more of the balls out of your way during multiball is extremely useful, as it allows you to concentrate on making more difficult shots which score a lot of points.
On most machines, shooting the ball into the bumpers and gently shaking the table from front to back, you can get it to just sit there and bounce off the bumpers and any nearby rubber for a while.
Some machines also have specific features that make it easy to get one or more balls out of the way during multiball. For example:
- Creature From The Black Lagoon: Shoot the left ramp, and the ball takes an interesting roundabout course, winding up spinning in a little vortex-shaped thing that drains into the right inlane. This process can take up to 10 seconds!
- Earthshaker: Shoot the shelter, and the machine will hold the ball. This won't give you one-ball multiball; it'll just take you from three to two. When one drains, it will kick this back out to the right inlane, resuming 2-ball multiball.
- Twilight Zone: During Powerball Madness, battle The Power. If you get two or more balls onto the Powerfield, the balls bouncing off each other is VERY likely to push one of them through the victory hole at the top, defeating The Power.
- The Addams Family: The way the bumpers are set up on this game is awesome. A good hard shot to the right orbit will take anywhere from two to five seconds to come back out, cranking up the Grave value as it does.
- South Park: This isn't really related to one-ball multiball, but worth trying out anyway... The plunger is an auto/manual type, like that on Data East's Checkpoint, and will usually send the ball somewhere just above the bumpers. Pulling the manual plunger all the way back and releasing it during the brief delay the machine allows for the ball to settle on the pickle fork will fire it right into the jackpot targets. In addition, the machine will relaunch any ball that drains before it has all five in play. I suppose this is all dependent on how your machine is set up; YMMV.
- Pin*Bot: Re-lock one of the balls while the visor targets are still down. This will automatically lower the ramp to allow you some time to shoot it.