Funhouse Pinball

Someone gave me a nudge the other day and said "It's ages since you did an entry about coin-slots and pinball." They were right too - so here's one I didn't prepare earlier...

Funhouse was a brilliant game. Produced by Williams in 1990 it had an animated mannequin head on the playfield whose eyes swivelled towards whichever target had last been hit by the silver ball so it appeared to be watching the ball. Using an extra flipper positioned on the left hand side of the playfield halfway up, it was possible to send the ball to hit the head upon which it would say "Ouch!" and "Stop that!" in a very aggrieved tone! If you could time the shot to hit the mouth whilst it was open (you could get him to go to sleep upon which his mouth opened to snore!) then the ball disappeared down his throat to the accompaniment of a gulping noise and he came awake hurriedly and "heaved" the ball back at you with an appropriate sound effect to start a multiball sequence.

It had two plungers also - a second plunger on the left came into play if you could get the ball down a particular chute. Extremely funny to play, lots of skill needed to get some of the trickier shots and superb fun. One of Williams' staff told of the time when he was alone in the factory with lots of the games plugged in on test and in the eerie silence every now and then a voice would come from one of the games to say "I'm watching you"!

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Road Racer

An early driving game from the 1950s or early 1960s by Williams. Road Racer had a small model car on a rolling drum which had a road painted onto it.

The car had to be steered along the road as the drum rotated, passing over the correct contact points to score highly on the speedometer-like scoreboard. "Accepted by every type of location" it says on the flyer - points don't mean prizes with this game so it could be placed in sites which did not have a gambling licence.

This was one of many driving games I remember from Blackpool arcades. Another simulated driving at 100mph at night where bends in the road ahead could only be seen at the last second, testing the driver's reactions. It was to be a while before they came with foot pedals, gear levers and seats!

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Coin Slot Mini-Golf

The other day I mentioned a 1959 tenpin bowling game housed in a pinball cabinet.

Today it's the turn of golf to come under the playfield glass. Again, this is a game made by Williams, one of the big three pinball manufacturers. It was released in 1964. The player turned the mini golfer towards the intended hole by twisting a golf ball shaped knob on top of the cabinet. The 9 holes had to be shot in order and the game ended when all 9 had been sunk, or the player had used up the 27 balls allowed. Two buttons allowed the player to decide to play a hard or an easy putt. It was a two-player game. We take them for granted now. With electronics it's easy to remember all the current scores and settings for two or more players but on these electro-mechanical games the electricity merely moved reels or shot solenoids and the ability to play against someone else during the same game was novel at the time and required real ingenuity on the part of Williams' designers and engineers.

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Williams' Ten Strike

Carrying on the series of entries on coin slot machines from Blackpool and other seaside town amusement arcades of the 1950s-60s.

This is a 1959 Ten Strike, made by Williams who were one of the big three pinball manufacturers (the others being Bally and Gottlieb). Based on a pinball style cabinet this game featured a small mannikin figure which could be swivelled to aim his bowling ball. A push on a lever caused his arm to bowl the large steel ball (coincidentally the same size as a pinball!) towards the miniature pins at the far end of the playfield. These were attached by strings to the mechanism above allowing them to be hoisted up and dropped back down ready for the next frame.

Ten Pin bowling was never quite as big in the UK as it had been in America although for a while it featured on TV every week during the main Saturday afternoon sports programmes. At a time when the only available channels were BBC and ITV (no numbers necessary as they only had one channel each) this made it quite a popular sport!

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