- High Speed
Infobox Pinball | title = High Speed
manufacturer = Williams
system = Williams System 11
designer= Designer:Steve Ritchie
Programmer:Larry DeMar
Artwork: Mark Sprenger,Python Anghelo
Music: Bill Parod, Steve Ritchie
Sounds: Bill Parod,Eugene Jarvis
Players = 4
release = January1986
production = 17,080High Speed is a 1986
pinball game designed bySteve Ritchie and released by Williams Electronics. This game was based on Ritchie's real-life police chase inside a 1979Porsche 928 . [ [http://www.mattwalsh.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/SteveRitchieIRCInterview IRC Chat with Steve Ritchie] ]"High Speed" was one of the games (along with 1986's "
Pin*Bot " and 1984's "Space Shuttle") that helped revitalized the stagnant pinball industry which was the result of the video game market.During its design, "High Speed" was jokingly called "High Cost" by some rival Williams designers due to its then-high production cost. The advances in the mechanical design that went into "High Speed", coupled with the machine's popularity, led to many machines being kept in service much longer than was previously the norm. The play surfaces of the machine were not initially given as much attention, leading to many High Speed machines seeing service to this day in extremely worn condition. Williams rapidly addressed this issue by making
mylar playfield covers available and later adding hard clear paint coats to their playfields.Notable features
The game was noted for the following firsts:
*First pinball to play a complete song
*First Williams pinball game to use alpha-numeric displays
*First diverter in a pinball
*First "Kick-Big" (kicker and scoop) in a pinball
*First use of Auto Percentaging (for replay scores)
*First "Jackpot" in a pinball, during multi-ball
*First Jackpot that carried over between gamesequel
A sequel to this pinball was released by Ritchie in 1992. Called "", the game also featured some new pinball innovations.
NES version
"High Speed" was ported to the
Nintendo Entertainment System by Rare and released byTradewest in 1990. This game runs on the samegame engine as Rare's version of "Pin*Bot", which was released in 1988.Resources
External links
* [http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1176 IPDB entry for "High Speed"]
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