Pinball Genie ← Back to the app

Avatar

Stern, 2010 — shot-by-shot rules and strategy guide.

Open Avatar in the Pinball Genie app →

Avatar's playfield looks empty compared to its contemporaries, and that's by design: almost everything worth shooting is fanned out across the upper third of the table, feeding six parallel features that all report back to one progress ladder. There's no single correct order to play them in. The game just wants every insert on that ladder lit before it will let you anywhere near the finale, so the real skill is juggling six short-term goals instead of grinding one long one.

Getting rolling

The R-D-A lanes at the top hold the skill shot — the D lane flashes by default, worth 250K on the first ball and climbing after. Those same three lanes matter for the rest of the game too: every full R-D-A completion adds to your bonus multiplier and lights one of seven shot multipliers, 2x at first and then a roving 3x once you've doubled all seven. Below that sit the pop bumpers, which build their own value from 3K up to a 20K cap the longer you can keep the ball bouncing.

Na'vi Scoring and the characters

The N-A-V-I bank on the left is the fastest way into the game's main collection mechanic. Spell the word, shoot the bank again, and Na'vi Scoring opens up six flashing arrows — both orbits, the ramp, the link lane, Eywa, and the seeds targets — each one paying a countdown value and lighting a character on the vertical ladder as you go. The Bond inlanes offer a shortcut: roll through all three and one uncollected character's shot flashes on its own for just a couple of seconds, worth grabbing on reflex if you happen to be lined up for it.

Collect all six characters and the N-A-V-I bank itself changes jobs, flashing for Na'vi Multiball instead of Na'vi Scoring. Six jackpots at 150K, four double jackpots at 300K once those are gone, then a Super Jackpot worth the sum of everything — over two million even before any shot multipliers get involved, and it restarts the whole cycle at higher values once collected.

Eywa, Banshee, and the link lock

Eywa's captive ball is worth checking constantly. It lights after a rising number of switch hits and always pays something useful — bonus multiplier bumps, timer extensions, and the game's only source of extra balls, which get collected at the ramp. That same ramp spells out Ride a Banshee (three of its seven letters are given free by default), then turns into a 25-second scoring run in its own right once the word is complete.

The lock lane under Jake's pod is a different kind of commitment. One shot traps a ball there and launches a second into play; hitting the trapped ball free starts Link Multiball, where five shots trade off which is lit for a 250K jackpot (unobtainium always pays double) on the way to a Super Jackpot worth three million or more. Land the re-trapped ball fast enough afterward and that Super doubles before the mode settles into open-ended victory laps.

Amp Suit and Bomber Battle

The motorised three-bank in the middle is the biggest mechanical set piece on the table. Lower it, then land five hits on the battle targets behind — either side target covers the first four, but the fifth has to be the bullseye, which pays two million and launches Amp Suit Multiball. From there it's six single jackpots, three doubles, and a Super Jackpot that can climb past sixteen million with the right multipliers running — and a second Super is available right after the first, at values raised again.

Away from all that, shots to either orbit outside of multiball quietly count down toward Bomber Battle, worth an instant 500K just for qualifying before its own 25-second run even starts. The seeds targets above the right outlane work the same simple way: enough hits to qualify, one more to start, then every switch on the table scores for a fast, low-effort frenzy.

The unobtainium trick, and Final Battle

Here's the one genuinely counterintuitive shot on the table: hitting the forward-facing unobtainium target lights an outlane insert for a growing points award, and the only way to collect it is to actually drain that ball down the lit outlane on purpose. Do it to both sides in the same ball and you double the target's own value in the process.

That same mechanic becomes the whole final act. Qualify all six feature-ladder inserts and the unobtainium target kills the flippers, launches all four balls, and opens Final Battle — a round built on switch-hit thresholds where the modest reward is a points jackpot at the target itself, but the real money is in deliberately losing balls down both lit outlanes for ten and fifteen million apiece before cashing in the fully built target, which relaunches everything you just drained and starts the next round even bigger.

Goals in Avatar

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

Pinball Genie is an independent, solo-built project operated by Pinball Genie LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any pinball manufacturer or theme rights holder.