Pro Pinball

I was just playing Timeshock and doing really badly (as ever) and I almost sank a ball. I managed to recover it, but I had an active ball saver and the game jumped the gun a little bit, shall we say. It gave me a fresh ball when I already had a ball in play. I don't know how realistic this is, but it's an interesting "feature" nonetheless.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I've been playing TS! a lot lately and learned while experimenting with nudging that bangbacking outlane'd balls is totally possible. Once you get the timing down, you can save at least 15% of the drains. I actually avoid doing it during ball save time though, since each up-nudge is almost guaranteed tilt warning and you eventually end up draining one the balls with the trapping flipper leaving a huge hole in your defenses.
I also managed to do it in FJ just about an hour ago. BRUSA is obviously impossible since it lacks the center pin (not sure if possible with airbag though).

In order for a real machine to give a "normal multiball" , the ball saving would have to be programmed to launch another ball the moment the current ball rolls over a outlane trigger (instead of only after an actual drain), just like in TS!. Technically it is realistic, but I have no idea how many (if any) real machines behave like that.

This stuff happens during testing - it's not a mistake I'd say.
It's not unique either. You can make a ball fall out of the borg lock in ST:TNG during a death save and get another ball to play with and the game copes fine with it.

Make it an archievement

With Fantastic Journey this is also possible by catching a ball with magnosave that drained while ball save was active when it bounces the left outlane high enough.

This is normal. A few real games do this too, replace a ballsaved ball as soon as it hits the outlane switch before it reaches the outhole. Attack From Mars is one.

Bangbacks and death saves are quite possible on all four Pro Pinball games. The center pin is not necessary. I do them regularly, can save probably about 50% of outlane drains, although it always costs at least one and usually two tilt warnings.

The trick is to use two nudges: nudge upwards first, then just as the table is running out of momentum from that about a quarter-second later, then also do a sideways nudge. That will pop the ball from the outlane wall up to the flippers pretty reliably.

Ah! There is where I go wrong, I do upward and sideways nudge at the same time. Thanks