Meanwhile… WHATS GRAHAM FIXING NOW? Graham McGuiness – The EM Doctor. This week Graham is working a Williams GRAND PRIX from December 1976. This is the first time Graham has had the opportunity to work on one of these games; it seems there are not many of them about…despite the large production numbers. 1976 was the last big year for these older style electromechanical pinballs. Solid State games had already begun appearing on the market, but numbers were few and most were from smaller companies trying to get in on the pinball craze that was at its peak at the time. By late 1977, that trend would turn and EM games were on the slide to extinction. All the big manufacturers had released their first Solid State version by then and would never look back. When we said it was the last “Big” year, we meant it. Some of the production numbers from these last EMs reached over 10,000 units; something that was unachieved for the previous decades since the 1940s. GRAND PRIX reached a production run of 10,554 units. Williams’ AZTEC and SPACE MISSION from the same year were 10,150 units and 11,652 units respectively. Gottlieb’s ROYAL FLUSH (1976) was 12,250 units, and Bally’s CAPTAIN FANTASTIC, also from 76 was a huge 16,155 units. As a point of note, these high numbers favored the 4 player games. There is a theory on that – we won’t go into it now… Four player games from this era had reached a design dead end in some ways. The complexity of the game and amount of features meant that the inside of the cabinet was beginning to get too small for what the designers wanted to fit in. If you ever get a chance to look inside a GRAND PRIX just by opening the front door and peeking inside, you will see that it is jam packed with relay banks and stepper units (this game has 2 bonus units even!), all neatly arranged so as not to foul each other. Back to the game in question. Yes GRAND PRIX had 2 bonus units. This was the games main feature. It also had 4 drop targets, 2 spinners, 3 kick out holes, collect bonus during play feature, extra ball feature, double bonus feature and Special. Why wouldn’t you want to play this game?! Without doing hours of research, we can safely say that pinballs with 2 bonus ladders were rare as Graham’s faithful dog Max NOT barking during our visits. :-) The two bonus units are indeed the main feature. Only one bonus can be collected at the end of ball in play (whichever big red arrow is indicating on the playfield), however, if one is lucky enough, you can collect one bonus by making the respective kick out hole, and the other when the ball drains on the lit ladder opposite. Game design by Steve Kordek. He was the inventor of the single drop target back in 1962 on a game called VAGABOND. GRAND PRIX has 4 single drop targets. You have to remember that by this stage Gottlieb was already using the drop target bank (first used in 1971) with a lot of success on their games. Williams had not incorporated such a feature as yet. That would come in 1977 with a game called BIG DEAL. Art was by French artist Christian Marche. Not specifically mentioned anywhere, but the scenery is unmistakably that of the Monaco Grand Prix on the French Riviera (see Monaco pic). At a guess one would say that Christian Marche had somewhat free reign on the artwork and obviously being French this is what he wanted to do. And even these days, as it was then, the Monaco Grand Prix is perhaps the most famous of all the grand prix races, and has been run since 1929. Reportedly, five of the games were converted into Solid State prototypes by Williams. Check out link. ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=5647 The owner of the game has hinted to Graham that he would like to bring the machine to Pinfest 2015…so hopefully our followers might get a chance to see and play it later in the year. Enjoy! What will Graham have in his shed next week? NPA will keep you posted :-) MR
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 11:06:50 +0000
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