It was recently revealed in some online forums that a bug was discovered in the Wizard of Oz program code, that allowed very lucrative shots to be done repetitively, racking up large amounts of points.  This exploit was observed being used by a high-level pinball player and attracted the ire of WOZ software developer Keith Johnson, who was quite upset he had to find out about the bug from others after it was used in a competitive environment.

Keith was understandably upset, and I don’t blame him.  But once there was a bug known, those that were aware decided to keep it secret until it was patched.   Unfortunately with some people knowing the bug and actively taking advantage of it in competitive situations, some of us felt keeping the exploit private was unfair and counterproductive.

With the assistance of Marcus Trevino, tournament director at the Texas Pinball Festival and Houston Arcade Group and Josh Tidmore, I did some research and discovered the exact nature of this bug, which I’m revealing in the video below.   I’m doing this in hopes of making everybody aware of what the bug is and how to spot it being exploited.

Note that it’s NOT easy to even get to the point where it can be exploited.  It would take a pretty experienced player to use this glitch, but it’s definitely doable and very profitable when executed.

In a nutshell, the exploit has to do with the second phase of Emerald City Multiball Jackpots.   In order to use the exploit you do the following:

1.  Start ECMB (Emerald City Multi Ball) by lighting all the character letters and locking 3 balls in the center/right ramp.

2.  Complete the first phase of ECMB jackpot shots by hitting a character rollover and then shooting the right/center ramp.   After all three characters are collected, you then shoot the throne room to approach the Wizard.

3.  The second phase involves rolling over each character button (Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion) and then shooting the throne room to collect the jackpot/reward

You’re supposed to hit each character + throne room to get a jackpot.

The Jackpot starts at 20k and then increased by 10k for each subsequent Jackpot, so ideally completing the second wave would yield:

20k + 30k + 40k = 90k total points for all three character jackpots in the second phase.

However, if you avoid hitting the second and third character rollovers, and instead keep shooting the throne room, you can rack up consecutive, cumulative jackpots in perpetuity (20k + 30k + 40k + 50k + 60k, etc.) theoretically scoring endless amounts of points and jackpots that keep increasing.