Mike Remembers: My first memories of Flash Gordon were at the Hampton Park Bowling Alley. The incredible sound effects, two level playfield and strobe light combined with inline drop targets made it a very attractive game to play. It was a very challenging game as well and very difficult to obtain a free game on. The quarters seemed to disappear very quickly when playing this game; however, Emperor Ming would always draw you back for one more game with Bally’s amazing speech synthesis capabilities and the games taunting vocabulary.
Now Flash Gordon is fresh back from a visit to the Pinball Medics Custom Shop, Flash Gordon is now a Certified Black Label Bally, joining it’s fellow hot-rodded Classic Pinball Machines in the lineup.
Now featuring Williams Fliptronic style flipper systems all around (even upstairs), completely rebuilt pop bumpers, reenforced machine screwed posts with black rubbers, full color matched LED conversion, LED displays, and all the other features and extensive fine tuning common to the Black Label series of Classic Bally & Sterns featured here at the Arcade.
This machine, like all early Solid State multi-level games, suffered from a lack of flipper power, most obvious when trying to reach the upper play area. While some of our hot-rodded games may feel over the top to some players or purists, this is a game where these modifications can only be felt as a huge improvement in overall game play, and while this game is fast, even faster than new in fact, it now has flippers that can more than handle whatever the game can throw at them.
