James Bond 007 pinball tournament strategy: first, check which Bond it is

Before any strategy, look at the machine. Stern has made two James Bond games that have nothing in common but the license.

The first is the 2022 game designed by George Gomez, sold as a Pro, a Premium and a Limited Edition. It has three flippers, a rocket in the middle of the playfield and a large screen in the backbox. This is the one you will find at Blainbrook and 56 Brewing, and it is the subject of this guide.

The second is the 60th Anniversary Edition, a smaller run designed by Keith Elwin. It is a single-level game with a retro look, a bank of drop targets that starts missions and a small screen set into the playfield. LITT Pinball Bar lists it on its floor. The rules are different from top to bottom, and the 60th Anniversary rulesheet is the place to start. We track some of its games on a separate machine page.

Tips written for one game are useless on the other, and they get mixed up often. If a tip mentions an MI6 drop target bank, it is about the 60th Anniversary game.

The short version

For the 2022 game:

1. Plunge into the flashing top lane, and do not touch the flippers while the ball is on its way.
2. Shoot the left eject, the scoop under the upper flipper, to light Jetpack.
3. Shoot the right ramp to start a villain mode.
4. Shoot the left ramp to start Jetpack Multiball on top of the mode.
5. Work on the drop targets and the center lane for Bird One, the second multiball.

The skill shot

The plain skill shot is the flashing lane among the MI6 lanes at the top. You can move the lit lane with the flippers, and doing so costs you: the award is 500,000 plus 200,000 for each skill shot already made if you leave the lane alone, and 300,000 plus 100,000 if you move it. Both add 1x to the bonus multiplier.

The super skill shot starts by holding the left flipper and plunging at full strength. Then hit the right ramp, the side ramp or the DB5 eject on the far right within five switch hits. It pays 2.5M and gives you a smart missile, a one-use award that collects the hardest lit shot for you.

The stack

The large scores on this game come from running a mode and a multiball together, with the scoring multiplier on. Every guide we read agrees on that, and it gives a tournament game a simple shape.

Modes. Villain modes start at the right ramp. The ball comes back to the right inlane and a post holds it there while the mode starts. Henchmen modes start at the side ramp, which is a shot from the upper flipper. Modes pay 2.5M a shot and up, on timers of 40 to 75 seconds. Any villain mode is fine to start with.

Jetpack Multiball. The left eject lights it and the left ramp starts it. A hurry-up counts down from 3M until you shoot the center lane, which locks the value in as your jackpot.

Bird One Multiball. Knock down the three drop targets in front of the rocket to light the lock at the center lane. The third lock starts it. After three jackpots the rocket pays a super jackpot. At the start, three shots up the side ramp from the upper flipper earn an extension that puts two balls back in play when you are down to one.

007 Scoring. Bond Women are collected at the upper loop after you qualify them with pop bumper hits, orbits, ejects or spins. Each one adds 1x to a scoring multiplier that runs on a timer. Start it while the stack is running. Bond Women you have collected and not used are lost when the ball drains.

System-J's advice on timing is to build the multiball first and start the mode when you are one or two locks away, so the mode timer is not running while you set up.

What to leave alone

Two features get in the way of the stack.

Q Branch, which starts at the DB5 eject, and the SPECTRE countdowns, which start at the Goldfinger target, both lock out villain and henchmen modes and most multiball progress while they run. In a three-ball tournament game, that is time you do not have. If the Goldfinger target is lit and a multiball is close, shoot around it.

The same goes for Feeding Frenzy when Bird One is what you are working toward.

Where the ball drains

The left eject is the shot to watch. Its kickout comes after a delay and is unpredictable. It can come back fast at the flippers, or dribble off a rubber and down the middle. Be ready for both.

Five hits on the Dragon Tank light a ball save on one outlane, and slingshot hits move it to the other side.

The factory default is two tilt warnings.

Ask about the settings

Operators can make this game much harder, and System-J lists the settings worth asking about: how many smart missiles are allowed, whether Bird One needs the drop targets for every lock, whether Jetpack needs three rounds of eject and ramp, and whether villain modes need several shots to light. With extra balls off, each one you earn pays 25M.

On a Pro the Bird One locks are virtual. On a Premium or LE the balls are held in the rocket gantry, and a magnet carries the ball during Jetpack.

What the tracked games say

Numbers are from late September 2026. The James Bond 007 machine page has the live ones. Tournament software does not always tell the two Bond games apart, so read these as covering games recorded under the James Bond 007 name.

The upset rate is how often the lower-rated player in a pairing finishes ahead. At 31.7% it is a favorite's game, in line with the other modern Sterns. The full ranking is in upset rates by machine.

The field on it is wide and thin. There are 268 players with a game on record, and only a handful have played it 20 times. Nathan Reardon has the best record among those who have, followed by Elizabeth Boelke and Aileen Beno-Lietz. That makes it a game where knowing the rules is a larger edge than usual, since many of the people you meet on it will be learning it as they play. The scouting report shows who in your group has history on it.

Where to play it

• LITT Pinball Bar in Minneapolis has the most tournament history, with 226 tracked games. Check which game is on the floor.
• Blainbrook in Blaine lists a Premium.
• 56 Brewing in Minneapolis lists a Pro. See the 56 Brewing guide.

Before your next game

The scores tab on the machine page includes Insider Connected scores from local venues. For the full rules of the 2022 game we leaned on the Pinball Rulesheets wiki and System-J's tactics page.

George Gomez also designed Deadpool, which follows the same pattern of a mode stacked into a multiball. The whole series is in the machine strategy guides.