Flash (pinball)

Not to be confused with Flash Gordon (pinball).

Flash is a 1979 pinball game designed by Steve Ritchie and released by Williams. There is no connection between the game and the comics character.

Flash

Flash flyer, page 3
Manufacturer	Williams
Release date	January 1979
System	Williams System 4 & 6
Design	Steve Ritchie
Programming	Randy Pfeiffer
Artwork	Constantino Mitchell
Mechanics	John Jung
Sound	Randy Pfeiffer
Production run	19,505

Background

This was Steve Ritchie's first game for Williams after leaving Atari, after he finished developing the Superman pinball for Atari. This game was known for having the first background sound for a pinball game, as well as the first pinball game to use flash lamps.^[1]

Steve Ritchie designed about 90% the game on a cocktail napkin during a flight, while flying from Atari to Williams. The game also broke the factory production record at Williams and is still Ritchie's biggest seller.^[2]

The game used a 1 Mhz Motorola 6800 microprocessor tied to a 8-bit DAC. For storage it only had 2Kb of ROM, and 128 bytes of RAM so all the sounds in the game had to be expressed in compact algorithms. In that space using a sound recording only a mere 50ms would have been able to be stored.^[3]

Reception

Roger Sharpe reviewed the game for Play Meter and awarded it 4/4. Highly praising the game and saying it "opens a new era in the emphasis of sound in pinball". Overall finding it to be a remarkable game made for fast 3-ball play.^[4]

The game was the top earning pinball machine for operators in 1979, with Space Invaders the top video game for that year.^[5]

Legacy

This machine is the first to have all game adjustments made from the coindoor at the front of the machine instead of the backbox. There were also enhanced audit settings for operators.^[6][7] All future machines from Williams were designed to be controlled this way, and all other pinball manufacturers started using similar systems.