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Rapid Fire - Pinballs lost lovechild!!


cardini

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Recently, I held a couple of meets and thought it would be a good opportunity to wheel out Bally's Rapid Fire from April 1982 to gauge the reaction from the modern day pinball players.

 

Watching the players - the feedback was the same. "I don't know what I just did or what just happened?!?!?". Most did not have another game!!

Alas this is the usual reaction to these games. But I believe modern pinball would not be the same without these attempts to be different - really different...

http://i1358.photobucket.com/albums/q766/68Pinball/TOBY-HP/Rapid%20Fire/20140126_194024_zps366bcdb2.jpg

Sorry I looked back at this 'essay', it is a little verbose - but I just had to get it out???

 

 

Thought I would put down the history as I have been able to piece together and get others to provide their thoughts on these games and their effect on the natural progression of pinball?

 

I think Bally's 'Rapid Fire' & William's 'Hyperball' hold a special place in pinball (if you can classify them as pinball) history. Even though they ended up in a dead end, this episode in pinball history does have a bit to tell about how the big manufacturers follow one another, even if it is to obvious failure.

 

It also shows, that in the heyday of pinball, at least the big manufacturers provided carte blanche to the (young) designers. Allowing them to run with extremely different and creative games. Whilst the demand for pinball may have been higher back then, I wonder whether such designs would never see the light of day now. Such is the grip of management (read commercial success over creative expression).

 

Chalk and cheese (times have changed and it?s a different word), I hear you say. Maybe. But think about this, Hyperball is a Steve Ritchie design. He is responsible for some of the greatest games ever made and still producing. He was in his late 20's when picked up by Williams from Atari to produce, Flash, Firepower and Black Knight. There may have been some experienced guiding hands like Wayne Neyens or Steve Kordek, but the manufacturers obviously saw the potential of the next generation. Shame the current 'bigger' pinball producers couldn't follow this lead (or if they are, at least advertise the fact).

 

Anyway, By way of background, Williams released Hyperball in December 1981. It was an entirely different game, instead of flippers, the player interacted with the game with a canon shooting mini pinballs to stop advancing lightning bolts. On top of this, the player had to spell out words by hitting letters of the alphabet fanned around the playfield.

 

Williams must have been taking a huge gamble on this new concept. Not only was the game play completely different, the game spawned a completely different cabinet, and backbox. Even the top glass was a different size.

 

What did the accountants say? or were they overruled?

 

In that era, demand to get games out meant little changed as each new game was released. Minor features were the difference between games back then. Cabinets remained the same, only the artwork on the cabinets differentiated games.

 

Hyperball got a completely new cabinet , backbox and backglass. 5000 cabinets were ordered for this new design. Hopes must have been high. A huge cost impost from the start.

 

How the game worked inside was a engineering marvel as well. The whole package involved a complete re-tooling of manufacturing.

 

By now the cost must have been escalating - through the roof!! A lot would have been riding on the success of this game.

 

And the gamble did not pay off!!

 

Operators didn't bite and soon it was apparent, it wasn't the hit they expected. It is reported only 1000 odd sold. The leftover cabinets were used in future games such as Firepower II, Time Fantasy and Defender (pinball).

 

Despite this backdrop, Bally released Rapid Fire in April the following year, some four months after Hyperball. Surely they would have seen Hyperball 'fail' in the test sites (they probably had common test locations) and yet they continued to deliver the game!! They too issued the game in a funky cabinet with a short backbox and smaller backglass. Were their accountants hog-tied as well?

 

Why did Bally follow so blindly? they too had 5,000 cabinets ordered for this new strain of pinball. the excess ended up as Baby Pac-Man, EBD Ltd Ed, and Centaur II.

 

Another example of manufacturers following each other is the in-playfield display. Bally presented this feature first in Medusa in September 1981 (only months before Hyperball). Williams trumped that with an alphanumeric display (I think a first). Again blindly following......

 

This cannot all really be a coincidence? or is it some form of collusion!!!

 

 

Rapid Fires internal workings are just as unique as Hyperball. The balls return to the canon via a huge vertical carousel. The cost of producing this must have been immense?

http://i1358.photobucket.com/albums/q766/68Pinball/TOBY-HP/Rapid%20Fire/20140126_193250_zps23c3c54e.jpg

 

 

More colourful & more inline with the common description about both games - its 'Pinball meets Space Invaders' - Rapid Fire doesn't provide much improvement on Hyperball despite getting a four months head start?

http://i1358.photobucket.com/albums/q766/68Pinball/TOBY-HP/Rapid%20Fire/20140126_194446_zps1f49fa5d.jpg

 

Another shortcoming, they both lacked real instructions. The panel does explain how it works, but not the real object of game play. As a result the games are often too short and very unfulfilling.

http://i1358.photobucket.com/albums/q766/68Pinball/TOBY-HP/Rapid%20Fire/20140126_193610_zps0271ddba.jpg

Can't be too harsh on the lack of instructions - thinking about it, instruction cards on pinball machines are probably the least used feature on the whole machine. Who reads them???? Trial and error is probably the most popular method of learning a game and its strategy.

 

 

Summary

Merit should be given to the Big Manufactuers (back then) for allowing young designers have their way with outlandish designs. it spawned some crap games and more importantly, some amazing games.

Consider Python Anghelo's 'Pinball Circus', Ballys 'Spectrum', Williams 'Banzai Run' & Gottliebs 'Rocky' or 'Haunted House'. I'm sure you can name others that are sufficiently different from the archetypal design making them collectable.

why should these be any different?

 

Why did Bally chase Williams down a dead end despite so much advanced notice?

 

Compare the pair here

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=3568

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=3169

 

After Hyperball failed, Williams dropped from producing 4 machines a year on average, to 2 per year.

For Bally, the yearly production remained unchanged at 5 titles per year throughout this period. The production numbers may have been lower, but the variety was certainly there.

 

PS.

There is a lot of misinformation out there. Until recently, Both machines are listed as four players, in fact both are two players.

Pinside states Rapid Fire was released in June 1981. It arrived publicly in April 1982.

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Looking at things from an operator and site owners perspective rather than a collectors view.

 

One reason they "blindly" built any old machine back in the day was, by way of example, the operator I worked for in Brisbane (one of the largest ones) had a standing order for five of EVERY new pinball that was released regardless - the operation could easily absorb them no matter what. It would have been pretty easy in the day to sell 1000 machines before they were even built regardless of the theme (world wide).

 

Any new machine was seen as better than an old one and kept us on top of the opposition as far as sites were concerned. It was an easy "sell" to the sites - "here is your BRAND NEW pinball - nobody else has this".

 

If a game proved to be better than usual, more were ordered. Flash was one example where we received the usual five machines and realised pretty quickly it would be a hit and ten more were ordered straight away.

 

Others were a disaster from day one and I still have no idea why five Gottliebs were still ordered regardless - most were a complete flop earnings wise and within a week had site owners ringing and demanding we change the machine "or else".

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Caerdini - I always liked rapid fire / hyperball when I was 12, the reason I only have one or two games at your place is 30 odd years on I get RSI in my wrists from playing one or two games, O L D I know.

 

Merit should be given to the Big Manufactuers (back then) for allowing young designers have their way with outlandish designs. it spawned some crap games and more importantly, some amazing games

Now, with the creative designs that the big manufacturers produced in the day, all I can do is wonder what designs got shelved...

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I've had a couple of games of this and like you said @cardini , it's very hard to figure out what's going on. I think one of it's cool designs actually made this worse; the 'rapid fire' balls fire out so fast and at such a pace that you feel there's nothing to it other than throwing balls all over the place without a care, then suddenly the game ends and you are not sure why. I could be wrong but I get the feeling that if the game was slowed down some, then it would encourage people to actually aim for stuff and figure out what's going on.

 

I do like it though and think it's a really cool collector item of gaming. I also think it's really important to innovate and try new things. A lot of people have criticised JJP for what they have done on Wizard of OZ, with the outlanes both offering a way to get your ball back with little 'mini games' almost. But I applaud this. Trying new things and giving something back to the casual player is really important and I hope they keep trying bold new stuff for The Hobbit and whatever Pat will be doing.

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Wonderful observations and well critiqued,

verbosity is a luxury of information available to the enlightened.

:applause:

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Others were a disaster from day one and I still have no idea why five Gottliebs were still ordered regardless - most were a complete flop earnings wise and within a week had site owners ringing and demanding we change the machine "or else".

 

Re: Homepin Mike's outrageous comment regarding Gottlieb.

The only Pinball that was there at the opening of Space City and at the closing 5 years later was Gottlieb Count Down every other machine had been cycled, including the coke machine. The Count Down now sits proudly in my games room beside Buck rogers Surf champ and Jungle Queen and yes okay Fire Power but its got problems again even with the rottendog board in it.....

 

Regards Rawdon

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I have both hyperball and rapid fire in my collection I'm really looking forward to getting the time to rebuild the hyperball and have both set up together. A great write up with lots of great info.

Mine doesn't get played very often but then i rarely play any of my machine which is why I like the unusual machine more than good players

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  • 1 year later...

Hyperball is cool,

wouldn't want one in a small collection or in a small room either for that matter (loud)

Fits well in the Shed pin collection.

Was rumoured by Richie that Williams was hoping to sell 50k of these so I'm betting Bally wanted a piece of the action too.

I'm sure design tooling etc would have been set in stone for RF long before HB hit the arcades..

Best thing I did with mine is use the Internet posted ruleset mods to slow HB down a bit and give the player a chance to have a half decent game.

Was waaaay to punishing in default settings and I recon players put their money in,

Got their ass kicked in 30 sec and walked away thinking What just happened!..

Petes .02

 

 

FP-F14-T2-NF-TZ-TAF-STTNG-CFTBL-HYPERBALL

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