Game Rules found on Pinside:
https://pinside.com/...-and-cab/page/2
When the game starts, you have two roll over "skill shots", an H and a P. You have to pay attention to see which one the ball is going to go down, although half the time on any machine the up post rejects the ball down the orbit instead anyway. If you get the right roll over, you get an extra bonus X.
The shots that the game has are as follows (order always the same unless noted):
Left standup - Rotates between Light Post Save, 2 Miles and 5 Miles.
Left Orbit - Rotates between spell VIPER, 2 Miles and 5 Miles.
Left Ramp - Used to start modes when lit, use Cell Phone (for Mystery) when not.
Left Lock - Locks the ball.
Left Raccoon - A deadly standup.
Center ramp - Stupid easy ramp shot.
Right Raccoon - Same as the left.
Bridge Out Ramp - A little skip into the pops ramp that gives you Caution (250,000), Warning (500,000) and then Bridge Out. Bridge Out changes with how many times you've achieved it, I know the first is 1 Million, and somewhere in there is an extra ball.
Right Ramp - 1 Shot Triple Scoring, 5 Miles, 2 Miles - always starts with 2 Miles. Note - 1 Shot Triple Scoring is ONLY for points and does not triple your mileage (one of the few things I wish was different.)
Right Orbit - Like left.
Right Standup - Like left.
There are six modes, when lit, started on the right ramp. They are:
*Drag Race - Pound the flipper buttons fast enough to win the race.
*Invitational - Hit the orbit to go to different cities and score points.
*Hitchhikers - Hit a sequence of shots to score points and potentially light a surprise.
*Lights Out - Playfield lights go out, blacklights go on, hit anything with a snake head (all of the shots above except coons and locks) to relight the playfield and score points.
*Pedal to the Metal - Come on, you're only going XX miles an hour, my grandmother drives faster than that! Hit the lit shots to drive faster.
*Slash's Snake Pit - Hit the ramps to advance points, you can't hit the same ramp twice in a row. Bridge Out does not count as a ramp. Center ramp is only worth 1M. Sides are worth 2M.
There is also a Mancow or something Wizard Mode, never been there.
To relight the modes once played, you need to drive 20 miles.
You do that by continually hitting the stand ups or ramps that give you miles until you have enough. It's harder than it sounds because you can ONLY advance miles when nothing else is running. Advancing miles gives you the miles and 500,000 points. There is a "Miles Driven" champion set at 80. It's nearly impossible to beat, but fun to play the game just for miles sometimes.
Raccoons are lit with the inlanes, and the opposite side one will jiggle around for a few seconds. If you successfully hit a raccoon after an inlane three times, you will start raccoons. Hit them both three times in 20 seconds (I think) and you get a whopping 1 million points - but you also get an extra ball. No matter what, if you hit a raccoon the center post raises for a second... UNLESS you hit it too fast, in which case for whatever reason the Sega targets do not register, and you get an amazing impossible SDTM drain. Which I think is part of the charm of the game. Hitting the coon's not dead on is important to you keeping your ball *and* having the shots register. Also, note - this is NORMAL GAMEPLAY with these targets. Weird, but again - I find it charming.
When you light the Center Post, you can raise it by hitting the Ball Launch button. This is often overlooked by people with this game, but is quite important as MANY shots feed SDTM. But, you can prevent them by hitting the side targets before starting modes. If you start modes, they lock you out of the side targets.
Multiball you get by lock one ball in each ball lock. After that, the game will turn on the blacklights, shoot both balls back into play, and shoot two more balls into play. The center post raises for a decent amount of time. Your first goal is to hit the center ramp for 5 Million. This unlocks the two ball locks for 10 million, but if you don't relock the second ball in time the first gets kicked out. With more than two balls, it's tough. Collect those, and it opens the left and right ramps for 15 million, which if you successfully hit the center ramp reopens for three 5M jackpots before the sequence restarts with the side locks. If you don't collect both supers - and it's tough, you go back to the relock ball challenge, and if I recall right if you hit one Super then only the other is lit when you get back to it.
On Flow - The game is really cool in the way of flow. For instance, if you get it going with Slash's Snake Pit, you hit the center ramp, feeds left inland for a shot at right ramp, feeds right inlane for a shot at left ramp, feeds right flipper for a shot at center ramp, etc. When you pull this off, it feels AMAZING, but only the center ramp is easy to hit, so comboing it more than once or twice is near impossible. The game's flow is incredible though, and when you get it going with the settings right (Glo Balls in it, STEEL BALL SETTING ON!!) it's just stupid fast. Faster than Iron Man fast, easy.
Oh yeah, and the center ramp gives you SNAKE (100,000), RUMBLE (200,000) and ROLL (lights combo), which because it is so silly easy to hit are almost worth nothing. The only thing is that if you get Roll and then hit the right ramp, you light Double Scoring in the left inlane. Roll over that, and you get double scoring for the next 20 seconds. Unlike just about everything else, when double scoring is going on, the game doesn't tell you, but after about 15 seconds you hear it beeping down and it tells you "DOUBLE SCORING! 7,485,390!" or whatever you got.
A few other random things - When you start most things, everything else locks out. The exception to this is that Raccoons keep running under whatever is going on, although often will no longer be shown on the DMD (a good strategy for 'coons is to start the mode and then start multiball, and use the 15 seconds with the post save to just shoot them and hopefully earn an extra ball). The Bridge Out ramp does not lock out during multiball, but will not tell you what you're getting on the DMD (just sound), so except Extra Ball you never know.
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The ways to play:
Personally, I find VND has four strategies you can use to play. I sort these into Multiball, Modes, Miles and what I'll call "Balanced". Here's the nutshell:
Multiball - You just care about starting the multiball over and over and doing as well as possible. The problem is that the shots are dangerous, especially after a ball is locked, and the multiball mode is really hard to score highly in. I'd guess my average is around 15M for multiball, and it's worth a lot more if you can do the sequence in full. This isn't usually my strategy.
Modes - Modes are worth about 16M when completed, with two exceptions that are worth 10M. Modes are TOUGH to complete, but when the multi is only averaging 15M, if you can tack on 50M in modes, you're doing something right. Drag Race is the best mode to play because it's a guaranteed 10M if you can hit the flippers fast enough (actually, a surprisingly good challenge, unlike every other 'hit the flippers' video mode I know of) and will return your playfield in a state with everything unlocked.
Miles - Miles are worth 500,000 per shot and something or another in bonus, so shoot the shots to advance your miles over and over and over and over. In doing so, you can make your bonus X like 8X, and you can get surprisingly decent scores like this. Playing like this and getting your Multiball Jackpot to increase to 7M means your next jackpots are 14M and then 21M for Supers, which makes it more lucrative. You need to also AVOID modes so you don't lock yourself out. Oh, and this gives you shots at both double and triple scoring opportunities too.
Balanced - The goal is to get the ball under control, hit the side targets to light the center post, and then play the modes as you can, using the center post to help save the ball. I will generally try to start the multi once like this, but once you've started it once stop shooting for it because the risk outweighs the reward. If you start a mode and you don't have the center post lit, or you use the center post, you try catching and cradling and timing out the mode. Then immediately relight the center post and continue on.
To me, the genius in VND is that all of these strategies work and are nearly equal in risk / reward. It's darn near impossible to just catch a ball in the flipper because they are light so they bounce into the slings which are near certain side drains, so timing out modes is super dangerous even, far more than if you try doing it in something else.
I mix up my personal strategy a lot. I find that I have the most success either going for "Balanced" or "Miles" even though the game makes you think that "Multiball" would be the best way to go. I accidentally reset my audits a few months ago when I was doing some work on mine, but according to my machine with the plays since then, average ball time is 45 seconds, game time is 3:15. I have set two high scores, these are the only high scores I have ever set on the machine, they are: 212,373,380 (holy crap game, I think I made a post about it) and 168,273,530. If you set up your game right, good luck matching those.
A few final random notes:
- Viper doesn't say Compete in Local Tournaments like most pins do, it says "Compete in Local Autocrosses"
- The game seems to have video converted to DMD like what Stern did with SM and IM (for instance) years later.
- Music is by Slash.
- VND is the last credited game to Joe Kamikow.
- VND has a tribute in memory of Joe Dillon on the attract mode. I have always been confused about this - Joe Dillon was the Williams General Manager for years. Prototype RFM playfields had a similar statement on them too. Strange for the competition to THAT publicly tribute him.
- Sega had the Viper property licensed FOREVER and couldn't figure out what to do with it. Mini-Viper was created in 1996 (but never produced), and there is a DE branded Viper translite from who-knows-when before that.
- The idea behind the Glo-Balls was that glow in the dark air hockey was all the rage in the late 90s, and so they thought they could get this into the same places. The game instead was a disappointment from what I understand in the way of sales. They made a MILLION ramps and playfields however, as both are still plentiful today. On the flip side, I'd LOVE to find some NOS Raccoons, as those are IMPOSSIBLE to find. Have some? Contact me.
All right, that's all folks. Hope someone finds this some day and enjoys, it took a while but the info should be out there somewhere!
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