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AC/DC

Stern, 2012 — shot-by-shot rules and strategy guide.

Open AC/DC in the Pinball Genie app →

The playfield doesn't look complicated: a pair of ramps, a pair of loops, three standup banks, a spinner, a lane feeding the bell, and some bumpers rounding it out. What isn't obvious from the layout is Lyman Sheats's code running underneath Steve Ritchie's design — it wires nearly every one of those ordinary shots to whichever song happens to be playing, so almost nothing on this table scores the same way twice.

Starting the ball

A plunge nearly always lands in the top saucer, which kicks out into the AXE lanes — flip to move the blinking lane and land in it for the easy skill shot. Hold the right flipper as the ball exits the saucer instead, and it drops straight to the flippers for a harder, more valuable option: any major shot from there pays more and hands you two VIP passes instead of one. Passes matter more than they look — in regular play, pressing Fire just spots a hit toward your song's key feature, which is fairly minor, but during multiball it spots one of the five major shots toward an add-a-ball, and that's worth holding onto.

Choosing, and changing, your song

Twelve songs, twelve key shots, and picking one at the start of the game is not cosmetic — it decides which shot pays extra for the rest of the ball, through multiballs and everything else, until you deliberately change it. Hitting the key shot for a song you aren't playing lights it on the jukebox in the back of the cabinet; light eight of them and a shot into the top saucer — reachable off the right loop, or free on the plunge at the start of a new ball — offers you the choice to switch. Keeping your current song instead just resets the count back to zero. There is genuinely nothing wrong with picking one song, like Hells Bells or War Machine, and never touching the jukebox all game.

The Song Jackpot

Every point you score in your current song mode is quietly added to a separate running total. Spell F-I-R-E on the inlanes and outlanes three times — one shot is free at the very start of the game — and a lit cannon insert appears above the flippers. Shoot the right ramp to feed it, then press Fire to aim at the blinking AC/DC target. Land it and you bank the whole jackpot, easily worth fifteen or twenty million before any multiplier gets involved; miss, and the value holds while you spell F-I-R-E again for another try. Aiming the cannon at the bell instead, when you have the choice, is the safer play — it builds toward a playfield multiplier rather than risking the drain a target shot invites.

That risk is real. The bell is responsible for every playfield multiplier in the game — three hits light 2X for twenty seconds, three more during 2X light 3X — but it's also the riskiest shot on the layout: come up short and you're almost certainly draining, and even a solid hit doesn't guarantee safety. Build your multiplier before you cash in a big jackpot, not after.

Multiball, stacked

Three multiballs correspond to three playfield features: Jam to the ramps, Album to the three target banks, and Tour to the two loops. All three start the same way — shoot the lit right ramp — and Jam usually lights first anyway — not because it needs fewer shots (fifteen ramps is far more than one bank of targets), but because the ramps are safe, repeatable shots you can backhand and combo all day. Album and Tour share a neat trick: jackpots are named chronologically after AC/DC's albums or tours, and landing one while playing a song that actually belongs to that album or tour pays a full song bonus on top, no reset required.

You can't work toward one multiball while another is running, but you can light two or three ahead of time and start them all together the instant the right ramp comes up, for a Double or Triple Multiball. Twenty jackpots into any of them — fourteen for Album — lights the cannon for a Super Jackpot worth the lump sum of every jackpot you have scored to that point, and Triple Multiball adds its own bonus jackpot at the bell once you've landed one of each type.

Hidden depths, and the encore

Premium and LE cabinets hide a second playfield underneath the first. Any song with "Hell" in its name — Hells Bells, Highway to Hell, Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be — drops you down there the first time you make that song's key shot. It's a minor detour, not a second game, but it's easy to miss if you don't know to look for it.

The real finale is Encore, unlocked only after completing all twelve songs — changing away from a song completes it, whether or not you ever shot its key feature — and choosing to change one final time. Three balls walk you back through the shot sequence of your entire game, song by song, re-scoring each one as you land it. It's built to reward finishing the achievement, not to compete for high score, so don't feel obligated to chase it if you're just trying to put up a number.

Goals in AC/DC

Every goal below is tracked step-by-step, with shot paths drawn on the playfield map, inside the app.

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