Pinball Genie ← Back to the app

Family Guy

Stern, 2007 — shot-by-shot rules and strategy guide.

Open Family Guy in the Pinball Genie app →

Family Guy packs a surprising amount of interlocking rules into a fairly compact layout — a ramp, a captive mini-playfield, six character shots scattered across the table, and a scoop whose job changes completely depending on what's lit. Almost nothing here stands alone: the same pop bumpers drive two mode rotations, and the same Evil Monkey target feeds two more. Learning the table is mostly learning which shots pull double duty.

The opening moves

Every ball opens with the bottom F-A-R-T target lit for the skill shot: 500K the first time it's collected in a game, climbing 250K with each repeat no matter how many balls that takes. Few players ever find the alternate route — the lane running beneath the mini-playfield is a hidden second skill shot, and taking it instead of the F target doubles whatever the current value is and bumps the next skill shot's starting point up by 250K on top of that.

Outside of any mode, Meg, Chris and Stewie each pay their own climbing value on every hit — 100K to start, with a fixed bump per shot that differs by character. Lois builds a smaller rising total on the spinner. All six main characters also feed the end-of-ball bonus at their own flat rate rather than a shared ladder: Meg's hits are worth the most there, Lois's the least. Clearing the X-X-X bank under Peter pays a rising value of its own, up to 250K, and nudges the bonus multiplier toward a 5x ceiling.

Beer Can and TV modes

Two mode tracks share one control — any pop bumper hit rotates both the flashing Beer Can mode and the flashing TV mode forward. Hit the Beer Can standup enough times, five to start and one more each time after, to cash in whichever mode is lit: Collect Beers pays your running hit total, Giggity Giggity maxes the bumpers outright, Happy Hour doubles every score for 20 seconds, and Remember When opens a countdown Jackpot at a random character, starting at 3M and growing a million with every repeat. The fifth slot is Lard Multiball, a two-ball mode built around six Jackpot shots on a ten-second relight timer, paying a 3M Super Jackpot if all six go out at once.

TV modes work off the Lois spinner: ten spins lights TV at the scoop the first time, five more each time after, up to a cap of thirty. The lit scoop banks 500K and starts whichever 30-second mode is flashing — Good Old Boys climbs 500K to a 1M ceiling per shot, Super Griffins tops out at 6.75M for working all six characters, Chicken Fight turns every switch into a punch until a life bar empties, Sexy Party climbs 300K toward a 750K cap per Stewie hit, and Ipecac Contest pays more per shot per extra character worked in, up to 1M with all four. Finish all five and the scoop stays lit for TV Wizard instead of resetting.

Fart Multiball and Crazy Chris

Clear the F-A-R-T bank three times and Fart Multiball begins with two balls and a short save; every restart after needs one more clear, up to six, and starts with three balls instead. Jackpots are priced by demand rather than a flat number — twenty thousand points for every switch hit a given Jackpot requires — so the tougher ones pay more.

Crazy Chris runs on a different pairing. Chris hits knock the Evil Monkey target down in front of the ramp and raise its value; hitting the dropped Evil Monkey while its light flashes banks that total and, if the light says so, opens a 20-second run where every lit shot pays 200K per Evil Monkey hit landed since that run began, up to a 1M ceiling per shot. Drawing Crazy Chris from the Drunken Clam instead skips that math and pays a flat 400K a shot.

Stewie and the mystery saucer

The Drunken Clam rewards shooting it whenever it's lit — nothing it offers is wasted on something you hold. One trick lights P-I-N-B-A-L-L at the scoop, handing control to Stewie's own mini-playfield. Clear its five characters — Lois needs four hits and pays best per hit, the rest need three to five — and your first completion raises a playfield multiplier that holds for the rest of the ball, capping at 3x (it resets when a new session begins). Finish all five and you drop into Stewie Multiball: each character needs a second completion on the real table, both captive balls spell letters toward add-a-balls, and a maxed-out set lights an Evil Monkey Super Jackpot worth 2M. Hit it twice and the second pays 3M, briefly opening the Clam for a Triple Super Secret Jackpot worth three times that.

Sperm Attack

The finale asks for six achievements spread across the whole game — 5 Evil Monkey Jackpots, 10 lit shots inside one Crazy Chris run, 15 Fart Multiball Jackpots, every Beer Can award, a Stewie Super Jackpot, and 25M or more during TV Wizard — before MULTIBALL lights at the scoop. Once it starts, the mini-playfield spends eighteen seconds building a shared Jackpot, then the Clam and the scoop trade a locked ball for two million a shot, sending you back to build the total higher each time you keep the chain alive. None of the six requirements ask you to play differently than you already would — they reward spreading your game around, not camping one shot all night.

How Family Guy plays

Family Guy is built for chaos around the Griffin house -- pound every character, spin up its stack of multiballs, and roll TV episodes into their own wizard rounds. The long haul is meeting six scattered milestones to light Sperm Attack, the final showdown waiting at the scoop.

The loop

  1. Pound the character standups -- Meg, Chris and Stewie -- for values that climb with every hit and quietly load your end-of-ball bonus.
  2. Knock the FART drops toward Fart Multiball and rap the two captive balls to spell PINBALL for the Stewie mini-table.
  3. Rip the Lois spinner until TV lights on the scoop, and bump the pops to spin which episode and which Beer Can prize is waiting.
  4. Cash the flashing episode at the scoop or the flashing prize at the Beer Can; chain all five episodes into TV Wizard and all five prizes through Lard Multiball.
  5. Tick off six milestones spread across the game and the scoop lights MULTIBALL for Sperm Attack.

Reading the lights

  • FART Drop Bank (letters) — lit: Each standing drop in the FART bank is one to flatten, and the lowest target starts every ball lit for the skill shot; sweep the bank and it pops right back up for another pass. · then: Clear the whole bank as many times as it asks -- three to open, one more per start up to a ceiling of six -- to spin up Fart Multiball. Once it runs, jackpots are counted in switch hits rather than fixed points, so the more clears it demanded, the fatter each one pays.
  • Character Targets (status) — lit: Meg, Chris and Stewie each hand you a value that climbs on every strike and quietly pad the bonus, while sweeping Peter's XXX bank ratchets the bonus MULTIPLIER itself up toward its five-times cap for the ball. · then: Keep tapping the characters between modes for cheap points and a swollen bonus, and finish Peter early so the higher multiplier rides your whole ball. These hits do double duty -- Meg arms the Pirate target and Chris drops the Evil Monkey -- so they set up other toys as you go.
  • Beer Can Awards (mode) — lit: The Beer Can shows one of five rotating prizes at a time -- a points dump, a table-wide double, on up to Lard Multiball -- and whatever is showing is what a cash-in will collect. · flashing: The prize currently strobing is the one you will get; a pop-bumper hit rolls the selection along to the next prize. · then: Rattle the pops until the prize you want is up, then rap the Beer Can enough times -- five the first go, one more each cycle after -- to bank it. Work through all five and they reset for another lap.
  • TV Scoop (mode) — lit: Enough rips of the Lois spinner light TV on the scoop, and the scoop changes jobs with whatever is lit on it -- TV starts the flashing episode, PINBALL launches the Stewie table, MULTIBALL opens the final wizard. · flashing: Pop-bumper hits spin which of the five episodes is up, the same way the Beer Can wheel turns. · then: Shoot the lit scoop to run the showing episode for a half-minute scoring round. Play all five and the scoop parks on TV Wizard instead of rolling back to the first.
  • PINBALL Captive Balls (letters) — lit: Every rap on either captive ball adds a letter toward PINBALL, a lit letter is one already banked, and finishing the word arms the scoop to throw the Stewie mini-table into play. · then: Complete the word, shoot the lit scoop, and the main flippers stop cold while a small separate table takes the same two buttons. Clear its five characters to jack a playfield multiplier up for the rest of the ball and tip straight into Stewie Multiball.
  • Death Target (status) — lit: A lit Raise Death inlane will stand the Death drop back up for another crack, and Death itself pays 200K the first time it falls each ball, a little more after that. · then: Roll the lit inlane, then flatten Death again -- each knockdown lifts a protective post into the gap between your flippers for a short grace window against a bad rebound. Standing it back up is the one route to a repeat, so the inlane and the drop trade back and forth.
  • Evil Monkey (shot arrows) — lit: Repeated Chris hits keep dropping the Evil Monkey target and building what it is worth, while the lane beneath the mini-table pays a rising Evil Monkey jackpot whenever its own arrow is lit. · flashing: When the Evil Monkey target's lamp is strobing, striking it opens Crazy Chris rather than just collecting its value. · then: Take the strobing Monkey to start Crazy Chris, a twenty-second sprint where each lit shot pays 200K times your stored Monkey hits, up to a million apiece. Feed the lit lane between times for its jackpot -- and off a fresh plunge that same lane hides a doubled skill shot.
  • Drunken Clam (status) — lit: The mystery saucer glows whenever it has an award waiting, and on this game that award is always something worth taking rather than a throwaway gag. · then: Shoot the lit Clam to grab whatever it is offering -- points, a bonus bump, a lit feature, an extra ball, even a multiball or Crazy Chris. It is also the only thing that lights Not Special at the left outlane, so a drain down that side becomes an extra ball instead.

Lane change: not verified for this machine yet.

Start scoring

  • Ball one — Bank the safe, repeatable points first: take the skill shot off the lit FART target, grind Meg, Chris and Stewie for their climbing values, and sweep Peter's XXX bank early so the five-times bonus multiplier rides the whole ball. Flatten Death off its lit inlane for points and a save post. — F Target Skill Shot, Work The Base Values, Clear The Peter Bank, Raise And Knock Down Death
  • Building — Start stacking features. Clear the FART bank for Fart Multiball, rotate the pops to cash the Beer Can prizes and TV episodes you actually want, and finish PINBALL to launch the Stewie mini-table and the multiball behind it. — Fart Multiball, Beer Can Modes, TV Modes, Stewie Pinball, Stewie Multiball
  • The big one — The ceiling is Sperm Attack, the last wizard at the scoop. Meet its six milestones -- a run of Evil Monkey jackpots, a big Crazy Chris, a stack of Fart jackpots, every Beer Can prize, a Stewie super and a huge TV Wizard -- then build a jackpot you assemble yourself on the mini-table and cash it in repeating rounds. — Sperm Attack, TV Wizard

Does Family Guy have an action button?

Stern had not started putting a button on the lockdown bar yet in 2007, so there is nothing extra to press. The closest thing to a second control is the Stewie mini-playfield — your same two flipper buttons drive its tiny flippers while the main pair goes dead.

Goals in Family Guy

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.