Bally's 1986 Motor Dome Pinball Machine! One Of The Largest Ramps EVER, Wild!

all right ladies and gentlemen this is joe's video games back with another really cool arcade game or in this case a pinball machine this is bali's 1986 motor dome pretty interesting pinball machine so we figured why not shoot a video every time we get one like a game done that's uh kind of interesting we'll shoot a video of it so this came out in 1986 if you don't know about the pinball industry in 86 it was kind of hurting and bali was doing what they could to cut costs so this game and a lot of the games that came out in the mid 80s kind of they kind of try to make things cheaper to make that you know they didn't know which way the industry was going um so this is kind of in that era you kind of need to keep that in mind when you look at it when you play it the it's a fun game i like it um it's not considered one of the greatest games ever but it's interesting most pinball machines are a little different than the one next to it you know so this is certainly it has its own little spot if you've never played one it's kind of cool it's got a couple little interesting things so this cabinet the generic sideart on the on the uh game that just says ballet midway that's kind of a one of the ways they were cutting costs if they just made these instead of making high quality cabinets they were all kind of particle board they even have a little bit of t-molding on the front of them like the arcade games did and so they just instead of making a different art for each cabinet they were just making generic art that they put on every cabinet those are just stickers basically um i think the way they did it was they silk screened it on the they put the vinyl on the wood first and then they silk screened it right on the vinyl as it was on the wood already but they weren't the only ones this is a gottlieb uh genesis that i think also came out in 86 may have been 80 let's see yeah 86. so these came out the same year so gottlib you know which premiered by that time was her i don't know if premier bottom or if that was just the name that they were going by but uh gotlib was doing the same thing just generic art on the side because it was a cost cutting move so this is one of those cabinets they call this bali's 6803 system um that they used on a lot of those games which was the 6803 is the processor that's on the main game board in the back which resides about right there this game gets a lot of crap for two things one it's sound and two it's uh art i think the art's really nice i think they did a good job on the art you gotta remember was 1986 and the theme that they were going with was motor dome so it's kind of a futuristic post-apocalyptic motorcycle game but really i mean what is there to complain about with the art maybe you don't like that theme but the art itself is really nice it's got a nice full back glass whereas the gauntlet we were just looking at by that time they were they had moved on to using just uh trans lights which are just a it's just a piece of plastic behind a piece of glass well this is an actual silk screen back glass like the older games of course they had the alphanumeric displays which could show numbers like the old ones oh and letters and they just lined up four at the bottom but the artwork on the back glass i really like looks cool lights up really good at night and then on the play field we'll get a look at that you've got this biker guy and you're basically i believe that's supposed to be like uh he's coming towards you on a motorcycle so this would be the gas tank these big inserts here light up you've got four flippers you get two regular flippers down here got a little flipper over here in the sweet spot a lot of flippers are always there that can make that little loop over there you've got three pot bumpers you've got three lanes up top each with a light rpm you've got this weird little target here in the middle this one's kind of strange i don't know really what they were trying to do with this but the ball rolls under there and it hits the bottom of that target and when it does it plays the sound effect of somebody screaming and i just go ah but all it does is just wobble it a little bit there's a little spring on the left there that holds it and then on the right there's a switch so it can tell that you hit it so when you hit it it connects the switch and it makes the sound effect and of course you get the points but it looks like it's a spinner or something but all it does is just wobble back and forth but in reality there is a spinner over here and in reality you know all a spinner does is just flip upside down you know so i guess it's just a different way of uh making a spinner that doesn't completely spin so i don't know maybe it's just maybe they would call that a wobbler i don't know what that would be i just noticed it can kind of hit the ramp okay and so you've got gates all over the place too you've got this little gate over here so it can tell if the ball goes up that way you've got a little gate over here so you can tell if you make the ramp shot there's one big ramp on it it's got a little drop target in front of the ramp so that you can knock it down and then make the shot but if you play it enough you'll notice that the ball can actually go around the drop target and up the ramp so if you make that ramp shot shot it goes up and around into this little play field over here you can see the shot goes you can see the that's your shot so it goes up and around and up to this little play field and it doesn't do anything on a play field it just comes through there's no switches or anything it just comes through and then you've got one shot that left flipper there is tied into this left flipper so you just hit the button and you've got control of that flipper and so what you're trying to do is make a shot all the way across the play field on that plastic ramp up into that target that saucer up there so it's just one shot so if you make that ramp the ball is going to fly around and you just try to time it and hit it bam and knock it up there if you make it you get 1 million 2 million or 3 million points which is pretty good really on this game um this is this game only has seven digits on the displays so you can only get the highest your score can be is nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine and it rolls over so you know one million points pretty decent three million points is really decent well the reason that you might get three million points is because it has this special little uh skill level that you can select at the beginning of the game but we'll talk about that here in a second so basically that's just one shot like if you make that ramp you've got one shot you just bam try to make that skill shot they call it you know so you can see that the whole top of the play field is dominated by this huge ramp that goes over everything okay so let's say you make the shot you'll get all your points it'll play some sound effects and then that saucer there you'll you can see how it's aimed will kick the ball out this way and it'll dribble down through there and just fall off the ramp they've got a little bit of mylar on the play field there you can see the light hitting it so that the ball doesn't tear up the play field when it falls down onto the play field right in front of their uh flipper and then if you miss the shot so let's say you hit it and it goes up here well it'll fall back down hit that gate and then roll off this way so this side comes all the way down to here and feeds the right flipper so they actually have metal on the play field where that ball falls and then if the shot goes through and you just completely miss it and don't hit it with the flipper well it'll probably fall down this way and fall off in front of the left flipper so basically if you make that shot i don't know how well you can see it because it's clear if you make that shot you get a bunch of points if you miss the shot the ball just falls back down to the bottom of the play field and that's the only thing you can do so they put in all of those ramps all that plastic probably a great expense um just for one shot which is kind of strange you think they'd build it up more they would act like you know this is a you know a game with one amazing shot but they don't they didn't really promote it i don't think in their whenever they were making a flyer and everything so anyway whenever you start the game it says in the backlash to select your skill level the way you do it is you hit the right flipper button so it starts off on single if you hit the right flipper button again it makes it double if you hit the right flipper button again it makes it triple of course and so on all of the instructions you've actually got three different skill levels so if you if you're on skill level one all the play field values are single skill level two they're all doubled skill level three they're all tripled on skill level one if you get the thunderbolt targets which are these you get twenty five thousand points but if you selected skill level two you get an extra ball and if you selected skill level three you get a special which could be a free game the difficulty on skill level one is easy skill level two's medium skill level three is hard in the player mode skill level one if you play that you're a gear head if you play skill level two you're a cruiser which is better than a gear head but if you play on skill level three look it says it right here folks player mode makes you a dome master so just so you know we'll look read the instructions each player selects a skill level before shooting their first ball flipper button select skill level ball over shooter lane switch within time limits stops the rider lights i'll have to look into that shooter lane switch within time limit so they're talking about that switch right there whenever you shoot the ball that rolls over stop the rider lights on the blue visor to collect bonus okay so it's a skill shot so basically these are lighting up and if his blue visor is lit up when you roll over that switch you get a bonus turbo saucer spots and collects million when qualified turbo saucer i believe that's that but i don't know well no that says it that must be it up there turbo boosting station and your tilt penalty is the ball in play so if you tilt the game you just lose your ball you don't lose the whole game so there it is it's got a really cool uh light package um lots of twinkling the way that you know remember they were cutting costs with the 6803 stuff so the way they made the lights work was really interesting they did them in phases they used ac power and so you know ac goes above and below it's up down up down up down they had a way somehow to make one transistor controlled two different lights because depending on if the ac was up or down if it was up and the transistor turned on made this light light up if it was down in that phase and the transistor turned on it made this light turn on so just really creative really brilliant way to do it because that way you can use half as many transistors right so save some more money but uh i think all the companies were going through that for a while where they were just trying to figure out how to make these a little less expensive to where they could uh still sell them for the same price and make a little more money or you know because they were selling a lot less of them so i think this game they sold about 2 000 copies of it and you still see them around from time to time whenever we got it it had a lot of issues but we went through it like we always do worked on everything uh took the play foot all the way apart put it all the way back together cleaned everything placed all the bulbs worked on anything that was broken so i will get the tripod we'll wait till it gets a little darker out so that we can get it nice and dark so you can see it uh lit up in all its glory and uh i'll get the tripod and we'll we'll shoot a little video of it be right back all right folks as usual standard disclaimer i'm not a very good pinball player and here's the thing with bali's motor dome the sound let's just say it's an acquired taste there's four different settings one setting is chimes so you can set it up where whenever you hit the things it just goes like the old games or you can do chimes with background sounds or you can do the third setting uh digital sounds with no background sounds so the digital sounds are like people screaming um it's kind of got space type of sounds and then the fourth setting is the full monty i mean this is the one we had to do it's digital sounds with background sounds the background sounds are basically a combination of like a digital synthesizer going playing a really weird 19 remember this is 1986 a 1986 kind of digital thing and a motorcycle revving constantly so we messed around with a little bit and that's actually the best sounding but don't expect much so basically i'm going to try to make that made that big shot a bunch of times but i'm not that good at it so we'll see oh missed wow i've got a loose pop bumper cap up there too but it'll be all right oh man oh one more time i got it remember the skill shot is you try to make it over that switch while his visor's lit up kind of hard to do that got it again ah come on come on oh and i forgot to i forgot to select my skill level i'm still on level one we'll try the other ones cool spinner so it opened my right gate and said you cannot get away speed bonus i'd like to get up that ramp a little more it's doing the match now i did not match it's got nice lights there's not many flashers on this and they're kind of a weird flasher anyway but there's flashers under the red flashes under the blue flashers in the middle that's blue and then flashes way back in the back where it says turbo booster station liking right what you're seeing right now i'm gonna do the skill thing too late oh um nope did not match let's try it again a little late let me get a little better at hitting that ramp oh yeah it saved it cool the gate was open my drop target ramp is wide open folks come on i don't know if you can backhand it with the right flipper or not i was cheated it says free ball at 2 million oh man ah ah come on free ball at 2 million it says i'm at 300 000. man the drop target's back up come on now i don't think you can backhand it up well maybe because i just did i just hit the drop target backhanded but when you when you use the right flipper of course the upper right flipper engages which makes it in the way of the shot i think i kind of have to do with that left flipper that's such a simple shot anybody who was decent could make it over and over again but i'm left in my own devices here we'll try it again and then if you make the shot you still have to make the other shot got my drop target out of the way there we go here we go oh yeah it's gonna be slow i might make it oh i missed oh come on i was robbed by the way in case you're wondering i'm not one of those people who will cheat by taking the glass off and just doing it by hand that's cheating folks what are the children supposed to think if they see you doing that um oh now no all right this time i want to change the skill level because i'm thinking about it so i should be able to remember it hey i matched cool so if you don't know about a match it gives a little number at the at the top and uh if it matches what your the last two digits of your score you win a free game but it's on free play so all right so we're going to select the level the way you do is you hit the right flipper and this one will change to two or three so one two three and i got the skill shot too cool so now if i make that shot i get three million points i think you have to i think you have to light up million first before it'll do that very nice my score is a lot higher already so i guess the everything's tripled oh man oh horrible i'm gonna try one more time on that third skill level hey i matched again all right horrible even more horrible oh all right well that's it folks we'd be here all night if i was trying for that shot again i just figured we'd make a little video showing you how it uh how it plays just so you get an idea bali's motor dome 1986. i think i like the back glass the best that glass looks really cool i can get around there there we go so by the time you see this video mr motordome may have already motored on a way to its uh new house but maybe we'll have something else you're interested in if you want you can see all of the arcade games that we have available at this moment whenever you're watching this video on our website at lionsarcade.com and you can also stop by and see all of the games in person we're in downtown rock hill south carolina which is about 15 minutes south of charlotte north carolina and we've got probably 50 games on hand at all times pinball machines arcade games even a few jukeboxes if it's coin operated we like tinkering with it like this one and getting it back up and running um or if not if you're not looking for a game or you're not in this area let's say you're in france well if you're watching this video subscribe to us here on youtube and we'll be putting up many many more videos every time we get something interesting like this in we'll shoot a little video of it and just show you guys what the game was like and what it's like right now so we'll see you next time