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Emporer Ming Awaits... The early 1980's produced some great pinball games from all manufacturers, and was possibly the heyday of Bally pinball production. Bally ended 1980 with the classic Xenon, and started 1981 with their first (of only 2 as it turned out) two-level game in FLASH GORDON. This was based fairly closely on the film of the same name, as the backglass artwork shows. |
Ball entry... The ball enters on the upper playfield via a tight 'crook' shaped lane. A bank of three drop targets on the left is in direct firing line with the small, right hand, almost vertical upper flipper. A solitary drop target also springs up to protect the plunger firing lane as soon as the ball enters the upper level. A half-hidden Thumper Bumper adds a little zest to the small playfield and nicely hides a yellow static target which is virtually impossible to hit directly, but does light to score 'special'. To conclude, the upper playfield also sports its own 'MINI BONUS' system. Completing all three arrows in front of the upper drop targets lights the mini bonus 50,000 lamp. Changing levels... The ball can exit the upper playfield by one of three metal ramps. The left and right hand ramps simply send the ball into the main playfield arena. However, the centre ramp deposits the ball into two-way kicking saucer. From here, the ball will be kicked either back onto the upper level, or down into the main area. Each successive kick will be in the opposite direction to the last.
Lower playfield... The lower playfield has a bank of four colour coded drop targets on the far left, related to the two red static targets on the right, and the two flipper feed lanes. Lighting all eight coloured lamps awards 100,000 super bonus. On the right is a bank of three in-line drop targets, guarding a static target. The first target simply scores 10,000 points, the second, though, awards bonus multiplier 2X, followed by 3X on the third target. After completing all three in-line targets, the static target lights to score an extra ball, although the game can be set to allow just one extra ball per game. The 4X and 5X multipliers are awarded by completing the upper and lower drop target banks, when lit, respectively. The key to really high scores comes in the form of double, triple, and even quintuple playfield scores. After completing the lights in front of the upper or lower drop target banks, an arrow lights indicating multiplied playfield scores will be activated when the ball lands in the two-way saucer. After activation, the multiplier timer begins, giving players 15 seconds of 2X, 3X or 5X scoring - so you miss every target on the playfield in that time. |
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Bonus scoring...
The main level bonus can scored by returning the ball to plunger. First though, the solo
target guarding the plunger must knocked down. With this the way, a nice clean shot right
hand ramp will secure a bonus, but retain the value further scoring.
Conclusions...
Flash Gordon has great sounds and speech ('Ignite death rays - 15 seconds', 'Emperor
Ming Awaits', etc) and was the first Bally machine to use the Squawk And Talk sound board.
The story is that a few games were produced with the sound board used in Xenon (and indeed
the flyer does advertise that the game has TWO voices) if this is true these machines would
be pretty collectable today. The game features good artwork, and is a pretty good game to
play, however I feel it suffers when compared to Williams' quartet of double level games
(Black Knight, Pharoah, Solar Fire and Jungle Lord) in at least two ways - first the lack
of multiball, and secondly the fact that the upper playfield, with just one small flipper,
is not used as effectively as might have been hoped. So, I would say it's not a classic,
but the film tie-in adds extra interest to a reasonable game, and as they're not the most
popular game from this era prices seem reasonable. If you want an early 80's machine
you could do worse than to look at one of these.
