Appendix 4. Tables with MagnaSave Buttons

Most virtual cab builders include a second set of flipper buttons, located just behind (or sometimes below) the regular flipper buttons. Virtual pinball people usually call these the "MagnaSave" buttons, named after the trademarked ball-save feature that Williams used in a series of machines in the 1980s. The extra buttons on those machines activated magnets under the playfield that could catch the ball when it was about to enter one of the side drains.

When I was building my cab, I was torn between, on the one hand, wanting to include the extra buttons for the sake of playability for those tables that need them, and on the other hand, wanting a more authentic look to the machine. The extra buttons aren't at all common on the real machines built in the 1990s, or indeed those built in any era, so I was leery about the aesthetic impact of including them. Some virtual cabs I've seen go so overboard with extra buttons that they look more like video games or slot machines than pinballs, and I didn't want to go too far down that road.

To help decide, I figured I should get a better idea of how many games would actually be affected if I didn't include the buttons. I knew there were a few MagnaSave titles from the 1980s, but I didn't know the exact number, and I didn't know if there were any other machines over the years that had similar buttons for other features. So I started digging through IPDB and asking around on the forums.

The results surprised me. A little IPDB research reveals that the actual MagnaSave games amount to a rather modest seven titles. That much was in line with my expectations. What I didn't realize was how many other games were out there with other extra-button features besides MagnaSave. It turns out that dozens of real machines over several decades had extra flipper-like buttons. We really should stop calling them MagnaSave buttons, since the actual MagnaSave machines are only a small minority of games with similar buttons. But I have to admit that I don't have any better ideas for a name; "extra side buttons" just isn't as catchy.

The other thing I learned was that a rather large number of Visual Pinball tables rely on the nominal MagnaSave buttons to substitute for other, unusual types of special controls that were used in the original tables they're re-creating. I didn't realize before how many pinball machines have their own unique extra controls. This really shouldn't have surprised me, since pinball designers always want to make their games stand out from the crowd, and novel interactive controls are a good way to do that. But if the whole point of these extra controls is to be unique, they present a problem to the virtual cab builder, which is that we can't possibly include physical replicas of all of the novel controls from hundreds of different machines in a single virtual cab. There's just not room. And so, Visual Pinball table authors have adopted the convention that the MagnaSave buttons should serve as stand-ins when a table has unique controls beyond the standard flipper, Start, and launch buttons. This is another point in favor of including MagnaSave buttons on your virtual cab.

The results of my survey are presented in the list below. In the course of compiling this, it became apparent that there are two separate categories of MagnaSave usage that are important to virtual pin cab people, so the list is divided accordingly:

For my own build, this list settled the question for me, easily in favor of including the extra buttons. As you can see, a lot of games take advantage of them. But there's no reason you have to come to the same conclusion; you might read through the list and conclude that you're just not interested in enough of the titles that use the extra buttons. That's why I thought it was useful to present a list of specific titles, to make it more concrete than just a vague claim that there are lots of such games.

Originals
Game	Flipper button color	Extra button color	Function
Black Knight	White	Red	MagnaSave
Black Knight 2000	Red	White - right side only	MagnaSave
Blackwater 100	White	Red	Buttons move flashing selection and lower start gate
BMX	White	White	Flex-Save
Bone Busters Inc.	Red	Green, right side only	Controls extra flipper on upper ramp
Defender	Navy	Red	left is "Reverse" (left lane kickback), right is "Smart Bomb" (scoring feature)
Devil's Dare	Red	Green, left side only	Ball save (manually activated outlane kickback)
Dungeons & Dragons	White	White (varies: also pictured on ipdb as navy or red)	Flex-Save
Fireball II	Red	White, right side only	Raises center post between flippers
Freedy: a Nightmare on Elm Street	Red	Red, right side only	Raises center post between flippers
Grand Lizard	Red	Red	MagnaSave
Harley-Davidson (1999)	Red	Red, right side only	Raises center post between flippers
Hardbody	White	White	Flex-save
Haunted House	Red	Red	Secondary flipper buttons
Heavy Metal Meltdown	Unknown	Unknown	Lane change
Johnny Mnemonic	Red	Blue	Control magnetic data glove
Jolly Park	Red	Red	Mini-playfield magnetic diverters
Judge Dredd	Yellow	Red (large square button rotated 45 degrees)	Mode selection
Jungle Lord	Yellow	Red	MagnaSave
Medusa	Red	Red, right side only	Raises "Shield of the Gods" center post between flippers
Nip It	White	White, right side only	Activates "balligator" (diverts ball to special scoring lane)
Party Animal	White	White	Left button changes P-I-G lights, right changes O-U-T lights; scroll through high scores in attract mode
Pharaoh	White	Red	MagnaSave
Revenge From Mars	Red	Red (Pinball 2000-style combination button)	Mode selection, aligns crosshairs in attack mode
Rocky	Red	Green, left side only	"Instant Win" (scoring feature)
The Rolling Stones LE (Stern)	White	Red, right side only	Activates pop-up outlane blockers
The Shadow	Red	Blue	Control ramp diverters ("phurbas")
Sharkey's Shootout	Red	White	Raise ball-saving posts in outlanes, and between flippers when pressed simultaneously
The Simpsons Pinball Party	Red	White, left side only	Unknown
Solar Fire	White	Red	MagnaSave
Special Force	White	Orange	Rocket buttons
Speakeasy	Red	Unknown, left side only	"Sacrifice" scoring feature (cancels cards collected out of sequence at cost of 25000-point score penalty)
Spirit	Red	Green	Outlane ball-save flippers
Star Light	Navy	Blue, right side only	Lane change
Starship Troopers	Red	Red, right side only	Controls small secondary flipper
Star Wars Episode I	Red	Red (Pinball 2000-style combination button)	Mode selection
Strange Science	White	Blue	Manually controlled outlane kickback
Striker	Red	Green	Side-to-side passes (scoring feature)
Viper	White	Red	Buttons control turret in center of playfield when ball enters it (left button reverses direction of rotation, right fires ball)
Volcano	Red	Green	Left controls manual outlane kickback; right controls shooter guide
World Cup Soccer	Yellow	Red, left side only	MagnaSave

Virtuals
Table	Flipper button color	Extra button color	Function	Original control style
AC/DC (Stern)	Yellow	White	"Fire"	Stern-style lockbar button
Apollo 13	Red	Yellow	Ball launch	Rotating handle in place of plunger
Austin Powers	Red	Red	"Fire"	Medium circular red "fire" button left of center on top of lockbar
Baby Pacman	Red	Red	Joystick up/down on flippers, left/right on MS	Video game style console with joystick
Black Rose	Red	Red	"Fire"	Rectangular button on lockbar
Caveman	Red	Red	Joystick up/down on flippers, left/right on MS	Joystick on top of triple-deep lockbar
Demolition Man	Red	Red	Launch balls & move crane	Joystick type buttons on handles sticking up from sides of cab
The Getaway: High Speed 2	Red	Yellow left, Green right	Gear shifters	Up/down shift lever in place of plunger
Granny and the Gators	Blue	Green		Video game style console with large circular "paddle" left/right buttons and "fire" pushbuttons
The Hobbit	White	White	"Fire"	Stern-style lockbar button
Jurassic Park	Yellow	Red	Smart Missile	Gun-like launcher with trigger and large circular red "Smart Missile" thumb button
Last Action Hero	Red	Yellow	Smart Missile	Gun-like launcher with trigger; large square yellow "Smart Missile" button on front of cab just above gun
Mac Attack (Mr. Game 1990)	Red	Red	Unknown, possibly used in video mode	Handles on either side of cabinet with red buttons on top
Mustang LE (Stern)	Blue	White	Fire?	Stern-style lockbar button
Odisea Paris-Dakar (Peyper)	Red	Black	"El Movimento"	Knobs on side of cabinet near flipper buttons
Riverboat Gambler	White	Red, Navy	Place bets on roulette game with flippers+MS	Four rectangular buttons on top of lockbar
Sir Lancelot (Peyper)	Red	Black	"El Movimento"	Knobs on side of cabinet near flipper buttons
Star Trek (Stern 2013)	White	White	"Fire & Select / Punch It!"	Stern-style lockbar button
Star Wars (Data East)	Red	Orange	Fire, Shift	"Shift" handle (pulls up) in place of plunger, with Fire thumb button on left side
World Cup '90 (Mr. Game 1990)	Red	Red	Unknown, possibly used in video mode	Handles on either side of cabinet with red buttons on top
Wolf Man (Peyper)	Red	Black	"El Movimento"	Knobs on side of cabinet near flipper buttons

Stern-style lockbar button: Many of the Stern titles from the mid "aughts" (around 2005) to present feature an extra button on the top of the lockbar that activates special features at certain points during the game. We usually call it the "Fire!" button because that's how it's labeled on several of the titles. It's so ubiquitous on newer Stern games that I think it's on the verge of joining the set of standard controls you expect to find on a virtual cab, but so far it's not common. For more, see the notes on the Fire! button in Cabinet Buttons.

"El Movimento": A few games from Peyper (a Spanish manufacturer) had a feature known as "El Movimento", which used knobs next to the flipper buttons that moved the playfield. The VP re-creations of these tables approximate this by mapping the MagnaSave buttons to a special non-tilting nudge function.