1979 Gottlieb SOLAR RIDE pinball machine

Here we have a 1979 Gottlieb Solar Ride pinball machine for your viewing pleasure.

This game is very pretty and has some unique features. This particular machine is running a 2nd generation system 1 soundboard, whereas it likely had the The most obvious oddity here is the flipper configuration, with two flippers on the left and one on the right. The major problem, however, is that there's very little to shoot for on the right side of the playfield, so having two flippers on the left makes little sense other than just to be different.

One neat feature is that the drops don't automatically reset when they're all downed. Instead, the player must get the ball into one of the saucers in order to reset the drops.

Another neat feature is the gate between the main playfield and the shooter lane, which can send the ball back up to the top or down the shooter lane for a plunge from the shooter. Hitting the lit lane at the top advances the bonus multiplier and trying to get that lane requires nudging skill. And perhaps coolest feature of this game is is that if the white drop targets are hit but the red target remains standing, it lights for special.

Overall, this is a solidly mediocre game from Gottlieb on the System 1 platform. It has nice artwork and it's good for a few flips.

Solar Ride was designed by Ed Krynski with artwork by Gordon Morison (of course). The EM version of this game was the last production 4-player EM ever released by any manufacturer. See more info on Solar Ride here: http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2239