The Pokémon Pinball Slot Machine: CAVE Lights, Rewards and Draws

The Slot Machine is the most varied source of rewards in Pokémon Pinball: points, Ball Savers, Capture and Evolution Modes, multipliers, extra balls and direct access to the Bonus stages. It’s triggered by lighting four indicator lights, then getting the ball into the central hole. It follows a precise sequence of rewards, which this page details.

Lighting the four lights

Four lights spell CAVE (HOLE in the Japanese version). They sit at the top of the two exit lanes and the two return lanes, at the bottom of the screen. The ball lights them by touching them: each light earns 1,000 points, and the fourth adds 4,000 points, for 5,000 in total. The lights reset when the ball is lost.

The flipper buttons shift the lights over by one position, with the last one wrapping around to the other side: a badly placed light can thus be moved to a lane that’s easier to reach. When all four are lit, they flash for a moment, the central panel displays SLOT and the bonus hole opens.

When the machine is available

• It doesn’t start during Capture, Evolution and Travel Modes, or when a Bonus stage is available.
• If all four lights are lit during one of these modes, the machine remains available once the mode ends, and only once, even if you’ve relit the lights several times.
• After a pass through the machine, the lights can be lit again to get a new draw.

The draw

The ball enters the hole, the wheel spins and stops on a reward after a few seconds. Pressing a flipper button makes the wheel slow down and stop faster, without changing the list of possible rewards. That list depends on how many passes through the machine you’ve made since the start of the game: this counter doesn’t reset when a ball is lost.

The reward is drawn at random from the four or five offered on each pass. The table below gives these offers for the first 25 passes; from the 26th, the sequence resumes at the 11th pass.

Reward details

• Small points (Small): from 100 to 900 points, in steps of 100.
• Big points (Big): from 1,000,000 to 9,000,000 points, in steps of 1,000,000.
• Bonus Multiplier: raises the end-of-ball multiplier by 1 to 5 notches, up to a maximum of 99. Crossing a multiple of 25 can also grant an extra ball.
• Ball Saver: 30, 60 or 90 seconds of protection: see Ball Savers.
• Pikachu protects both sides: Super Pikachu protects both exit lanes until the ball is lost, without any charge on the Thunder gauge.
• Capture or Evolution Mode: directly starts the corresponding mode. If no Pokémon has been caught in the game, Evolution is replaced by Capture.
• Ball Upgrade: moves the ball up one level; the machine shows in advance which ball you’ll get. See Ball Upgrade.
• Access to the next Bonus stage: sends the ball straight into the table’s next Bonus stage, without the three Poké Balls.
• Extra ball: one more ball in reserve; it only appears on the 25th pass, then every 15 passes (40th, 55th, 70th and so on).

Reading the sequence

The sequence is highly structured. Within the first 25 passes, Catch’em Mode is offered on passes 2, 7, 12, 17 and 22, Evolution Mode on passes 4, 9, 14, 19 and 24, and direct access to a Bonus stage on passes 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25. Ball Upgrade only appears on passes 10 and 20, the 90-second Ball Saver only on the 15th pass, and Pikachu on passes 1, 3, 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, 18, 21 and 23. The rest of the sequence then repeats this pattern from the 11th pass. A player who counts their passes therefore has a fair idea of what to hope for.