Grand Tour - Bally 1964
http://roguepinball.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=492My exploration of the post-war evolution of pinball from the invention of the flipper through the end of the EM period has so far not included games by Bally. I will begin correcting that with Grand Tour. Grand Tour was released in June 1964 and was designed by Ted Zale. The artist seems to be unknown, at least I can't find any reference to who did the art for Grand Tour. 1,310 Grand Tour games were produced, so it is relatively rare to find one today.
Bally entered the flipper game field late, but Ted Zale (who designed most of the Bally EM flipper games) was responsible for many innovations. Among these were the Mushroom bumper, the Free Ball gate, the "butterfly rollover" that first appears in Grand Tour, along with the use of high voltage DC to power bumpers, flippers and slingshots with far more "oomph" than had been seen previously. Another thing Ted Zale had, was a set of things he always wanted to see in any game he designed. Among these were a skill shot, lots of POP bumper action and more than one way to achieve the same goals on the playfield. In Grand Tour this third rule is shown by there being two different ways to open the Tour Gate to be able to score a city.
Making the Tour Gate shot to advance a city is not easy, so getting the gate open is just the start. Overall I find Grand Tour to be a challenging and fun game, with a unique playfield layout and rule set. Pressing the "4" key toggles between a 3 Ball and 5 Ball game, and as with all of my games, pressing the "R" key will display the game rules and all of the feature keys.
