1972 WILLIAMS WINNER

Picked this game up in Grand Rapids from a nice collector who really didn't want to tackle this game. I don't blame him now that I did it. The game is sort of a dog and not a real interesting game. The collector who bought it was happy to get it due to the unusual nature of the game The game is unique as far as pinballs go. It has two player operation, a horse race under the play field, four flippers, plastic playfield cover, and unusual game play. The photos were taken before I had a good camera, so large detailed pics are not avalible.

Game play was started by putting one or two players up. The machine would pick a horse by "random" and light it up on the backglass. Random numbers were not really random, but where ever the stepper unit stopped that chose the numbers. The game had no plunger, but a ball "shooter". In the center of the playfield was a shooter which would move back and forth until the player hit the big button on the lockdown bar. The ball would then shoot up to the targets. The player's goal was to get his horse to win. There was only one horse race per game, so each player was trying to get the horses to the finish line. A new game would reset the horses. Horses were moved by hitting the target on the top of the play field. Speed could be doubled by hitting the "A" target (for horse 1,3,5) or "C" target (for horse 2,4, or 6).  The player who got his horse to win got BIG points (adjustable), but this hardly ever happens. The ball was too hard to aim with the lower flippers to get decent shots. The best way to "win" is to get the most points you can. To do this, the object is to get one horse to win (any horse at this point) and then continue to hit the target after the race is over. The player who keeps hitting the winning horse's target gets 5000 points (I think). Another way to get points is to hit the "A, B, C, D" targets to light other items to increase the value. This happends anyway since it is hard to get the ball where you want it to go. The lane guides are kickers, so the ball seems to always be bouncing around. Flipper action seems to be totally random. The top two flippers are almost useless since they hardly ever get used in game play. The problem with this game is that there is nothing in the PF to do. Hitting targets is the only goal. This gets very boaring after awhile.

I sold this game to a collector in Detroit who was interested in animation games. I really don't think the collectability of these games has a market, but that is my opinion. The game didn't need much other than a PF glass and a little cleaning. Most of the electricals worked after I rebuilt a relay that was robbed for parts. Not a sweet game, but for some reason this game would irritate the players so bad that they would come back for more. At one party I had, people played this one more than any other pin I had. Ick! For this reason alone I had to get rid of it. That, and it looked like someone puked in my game room when this one was in there!