Theatre Of Magic - Mortal Kombat 3 Easter Egg

[Sir.Safester]

I couldn't find anything about this on the PA discussions so thought I'd share my 'discovery'.

Ironically, this happened to me on Easter Sunday whilst playing Theatre Of Magic. I was tapping the flipper keys as I started a new game and the in game announcer said 'Congratulations' and the display showed something about Mortal Kombat 3. I pressed my PlaysTV recording key so I could view it later. As I was playing I noticed some other images show up periodically, again I recorded them.

Afterwards I made some images from my recordings of what was displayed in game:
http://imgur.com/a/0kIMv

Now, I know that holding the left flipper while starting a game will make video pinball mode start the first time you enter the basement, so I tried holding the right flipper instead and it activated the hints again. It turns out that when you shoot the ball up the left lane to spell a letter of THEATRE, you have a chance of one of these hints being displayed.

You can see I'm missing hints '4' & '5' and I've played a number of games but they just won't pop up. I played a few games today purely to try and get the remaining 2, but not even 1 single hint showed up. I'll keep trying, but it seems like quite a random event. The first 2 seem quite common, the 3rd less so and the last one I've only seen once, maybe they get rarer from left to right?

Does anyone else know about these? I'd be surprised if no one did.

[n3tizen]

Holding the left flipper when pressing the START button initiates a game of Digital Pinball.
Holding down the right flipper button when pressing START reveals on the display some useful codes for the Mortal Kombat 3 video game.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c28/boywithstars/mk3.jpg

[Sir.Safester]

Originally posted by n3tizen:

Holding down the right flipper button when pressing START reveals on the display some useful codes for the Mortal Kombat 3 video game.

Technically that's a wrong description. Holding the flipper key while starting the game only activates the possibility of finding the hints, it doesn't actually reveal them, these have to found in game. I have no idea what the hints mean (nor do I care), I just want to find them. I've played Theatre Of Dreams since about 1995/6 so it's nice to discover something new about it after all these years.

[shawnsdada]

Originally posted by Sir.SAFeSTeR:

Originally posted by n3tizen:

Holding down the right flipper button when pressing START reveals on the display some useful codes for the Mortal Kombat 3 video game.

Technically that's a wrong description. Holding the flipper key while starting the game only activates the possibility of finding the hints, it doesn't actually reveal them, these have to found in game. I have no idea what the hints mean (nor do I care), I just want to find them. I've played Theatre Of Dreams since about 1995/6 so it's nice to discover something new about it after all these years.

I really wouldn't try correcting someone when you don't even know the name and you've been playing it for 20+ years and still haven't seen all the hints.

It's called "Theatre of Magic" NOT "Theatre of Dreams" ;)

A lot of the people involved with the Mortal Kombat games also worked on a lot of the machines released in the late 1980's and early 1990's. You can hear sound effects and similar music in the Williams tables. Not to mention that Steve Ritchie, creator of Black Knight and many other machines, voiced Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat 2 and 3.

Someone who has played these tables for 20+ years should know all this ;)

[Sir.Safester]

I do know the name, it was just an error. Don't know why I said that, it's the name of Manchester United's stadium and I'm not even a fan of them!

I may have played the game since it's release, but that doesn't mean I should know everything about it. I just play it, I don't delve into the history of things, wasn't a fan of Mortal Kombat either!

Anyway, I stand by my 'correction' ;)