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Average Fun Rating: | 7.4/10 (34 ratings/28 comments) [ Add Your Rating! ] | |||||
Manufacturer: | Bally Manufacturing Corporation (1931-1983) [Trade Name: Bally] | |||||
Project Date: | March 24, 1981 | |||||
Date Of Manufacture: | February, 1982 | |||||
Model Number: | 1247 | |||||
MPU: | Bally MPU AS-2518-35 | |||||
Type: | Solid State Electronic (SS) | |||||
Production: | 3,500 units (confirmed) | |||||
Serial Number Database: | View at The Internet Pinball Serial Number Database (IPSND.net) (External site) | |||||
Theme: | Fantasy - Sports | |||||
Notable Features: | Flippers (4), Pop bumpers (1), Slingshots (2), Kick-out holes (5), 3-bank drop targets (3), 2-ball and 3-ball multiball. Playfield digital display. Split-level playfield with four ramps. | |||||
Design by: | Greg Kmiec | |||||
Art by: | Greg Freres | |||||
Software by: | Rehman Merchant | |||||
Notes: | Unlike other Bally electronic pinball games, their documentation for this game shows the model number only as 1247, not 1247-E. Designer Greg Kmiec's signature red post is located near the upper right flipper on this game. Artist Greg Freres offers some interesting information about the evolution of a design team: Vector was a bit of an experiment when it came to the design philosophy at that time. We were in the midst of trying to sa Greg Kmiec summed it up this way: Bally tried an experiment of "team designing" games. Each team had a des The 1982 Bally/Midway pinball parts catalog page 41 indicates the top flipper is the same part number and uses the same size rubber ring as the two 3-inch flippers at the bottom of the playfield. However, every game we have seen has the shorter 2-inch size for this top flipper (and a smaller ring). We asked designer Greg Kmiec if ever a 3-inch flipper was intended, or if changes were made during production. He confirmed his original playfield drawing has a small flipper in this upper playfield location. He said that a larger flipper would somewhat inhibit the pinball from entering the upper playfield and provide too much power for shooting at the nearby drop targets. He does not remember changing his original design to a larger flipper anytime during the production run. From this, it would appear that the parts manual is in error to indicate the top flipper is the same size as the bottom flippers. With that said, collector Enver Haase in Germany reported that his Vector, built for the German market with a European service socket, and one other Vector owned by a German collector, each have a 3-inch upper right flipper (while their upper left flippers are 2-inch). Because a longer 3-inch flipper would be, as Kmiec indicated, too powerful for the nearby drop targets, Haase reasonably believes that operators would not have field-substituted the longer flipper but that, at least for the German market, machines were built according to the specification in the manual. Pictured here are cabinet fronts of two games, each having a dual coin door to accommodate a bill validator. This dual coin door is also seen in the listing for Bally's 1981 'Elektra'. Both examples have a red start button mounted on the cabinet and centered above the coin doors in addition to having a small red push-button on the right coin door itself. We showed the Vector game to Allan Reizman, Engineering Lab Supervisor at Bally from 1977 to 1983, and asked him if Bally made these dual coin doors. He replies: I do not remember any of these games with bill acceptors being regular production. These look like lab samples or conv Collector John Mohr told us that he recalls a dual coin door on a Vector that he played in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1981-1982. The location was either a Bally's Aladdin's Castle arcade or was another arcade. He has also heard anecdotally of any of Bally's 1981 'Centaur' also having a dual coin door and theorizes if the spacing in the rivet artwork above its coin door allowed space for the red button. However, we are not yet aware of any examples of Centaur with this dual coin door. Collector Christian Jacobs in Germany contacted us in 2014 stating he noticed on a few Vector cabinets that they appeared to be Elektra cabinet artwork overpainted with the Vector artwork. He recalled one such Vector game had serial number EVE 2405. We note that Vector was the next game produced after Elektra. Claude Fernandez (designer of Elektra) told us that if Bally had any leftover cabinets from the Elektra production they would have repainted them to be used for Vector instead of throwing them out. Greg Kmiec (designer of Vector) told us that perhaps Bally cut the production run of Electra in order to push Vector into the market. | |||||
Photos in: |
The Complete Pinball Book, page 223 Mike Pacak's Pinball Flyer Reference Book S-Z Pinball Art, page 56 Pinball Machines (Eiden-Lukas), page 29 Pinball The Lure of the Silverball, page 84 Pinball (Ciuffo), pages 200-201 | |||||
Rule Sheets: |
Vector Guide (Sep/26/1997), by Ryan Avery | |||||
Owners List URL: | http://www.pinballowners.com/owners/2723 (External site) | |||||
Easter Eggs: | Available at Cows and Easter Eggs (External site) | |||||
ROMs: | 53 KB | ZIP | Home ROM V4 | |||
24 KB | ZIP | ROMs | [Bally Mfg. Corp.] | |||
Documentation: | 8 MB | Manual with Schematics | [Bally Mfg. Corp.] | |||
Files: | 2 MB | JPG | Instructions for Adjusting Award Thresholds M-469-1133-2 | [Bally Manufacturing Corp.] | ||
3 MB | JPG | Instructions for Setting Maximum Credits and Coin Credits | [Bally Manufacturing Corp.] | |||
410 KB | JPG | Manufacturer's Certificate | [Bally] | |||
3 MB | JPG | Solenoid Identification Table M-469-1335-1 | [Bally Manufacturing Corp.] | |||
Images: (click to zoom) |
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